What Speaks to You?

I'm sitting in a hotel at 4:30am, my left knee hurts enough that I can't sleep. There is a Chris Rock movie on TV. As I knit a baby sweater for a co worker, I start wondering what I'm doing. Work is thankless because it is believed that the pay is the reward. The better the "reward" the more they want us to give up. The most driven of us are easily consumed, looking for more of a reward than money. It isn't really part of the package. The employee engagement survey isn't about how the employee feels for the sake of the employee; it is for the benefit of the business. Wow, early morning thinking can be a little dismal. This leads me to thinking about who I admire or quote the most. It turns out I'm inspired by humor. I quote Dennis Miller, Ron White, Bobby Collins, Gabriel Iglesias and the rest of those talented folks that make me laugh out loud. Now, how do I leverage this to do something rewarding? Have you sorted out what you really enjoy and admire and how are you using it?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Namecalling

In spite of my habit of chatting about politics and other non-PC stuff, hence the name of the blog, this is about Assessing and Characterizing. As a HR Manager, we are expected to charaterize and assess employees. Their capabilities, their behaviors, their personalities, and any other characteristics important to the team and the business. We discuss stress tolerance and emotional intelligience like they are components of a large machine. In our usual circles, these conversations function like an engineering meeting, reviewing torque and specs to decide if the process is robust. However, in other parts of the business characterization takes on a whole new meaning. I remember sitting in an office with an African American Manager and a Middle Eastern Associate, the associate was being stalked by a customer that left poorly written notes. I asked if the customer used English as a second language. The associate was tremendously offended and became very defensive. The manager understood the question and tried to explain to the associate that I was trying to figure out how the person perceived their behavior. To me it was clinical, to the associate it was personal. The conversation went from assessing and characterizing to name calling based on perspective. It turns out that the customer was a native English speaker with limited grammar skills. Instructions were provided to the associate and managers on what to do, if and when that customer came back to visit, based on this characterization. The intervention was successful, but the associate held it against me for a long time. The leap from assessing and characterizing to namecalling comes from individual insecurities. If my language skills are poor and I'm sensitive about it, a simple assessment is more like a playground taunt. When do we teach others to separate assessment from ego? How capable of emotional intelligience are we, really? Humans are incapable of refraining from compartmentalizing (characterizing) to process information. Anamalia, chordata, mammalia, primata, homindae, homo sapiens, just like Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species - we need these boxes as much as we hate them. I am a brown haired, blue eyed, caucasian, female, human resources manager, wife, daughter, pet owner, petulant child and blogger. In the right context, any one of these is a compliment or a condemnation. Maybe this blog should be titled understanding, to truly connect we must seek to understand. What we infer, is not necessarily what is meant, so just ask!

Expectations

A ghostly thought or two on this Sunday morning on expectations versus objectives. 

Over the years, I have heard many quotes about expectations, but one particular quote has changed my life.  "There's no relationship that can't be improved by lowering your expectations."  [M. W., a personal friend]
    This quote gave me great pause when I heard it.  I thought it sounded horrible.  What?  No expectations of anyone?  Isn't that like saying everyone's incapable? What is a world with low or no expectations like?  How is this possible? 
    So much like any paradigm shifting comment in life, it took time to digest.  The mental kick-it-around on this statement has literally taken years.  To truly understand that statement, one has to consider expectations destructive instead of positive.
    Here's some definitions for our discussion.
    An objective is something that one's efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish; purpose; goal.  An objective is a goal.  My HR Manager mentors will be happy to know that I remember a really good objective is SMART - Specific, Measurable, Ambitious yet achievable, has a defined Result, and a Time for delivery.  The best objectives, my HR Manager friends tell me, are those that are shared broadly in a work group (or a family, a pair of life partners, some friends) to inspire teamwork and support for delivery of the objective. 
    This is very different from an expectation which focuses on "the act or state of looking forward or anticipating".  An expectation is a "I think it should be this way" and usually unshared, unspoken, unstructured, and rarely matches any sort of reality.  It's what one hopes will happen rather than any sort of defined outcome.  Psychology would lean toward calling expectations a projection of the expector's needs onto someone else.
    Letting go of expectations in relationships, at work or at home, isn't getting rid of the objectives or the shared teamwork, it's getting rid of the hidden agendas and often destructive anticipations.  It's choosing to accept how the deliverable presents itself rather than saying, "This doesn't meet my expectations".  Ask yourself, "Does this meet the objective?"  And if it doesn't meet the objective, as an HR Leader (or wife or husband or parent), consider these next questions, "What was the objective?  How could it have been set more clearly to have met my intended outcome and make the do-er feel more successful?"
    This isn't to say that people commit to things and don't deliver.  Sadly, that does happen.  However, this may be because the person isn't realistic about setting objectives for him or herself.  Rather than feeling disappointed when a person exhibits the over-commit-under-deliver pattern, coach him or her.  Ask a lot of questions when this person sets an objective.  "Really?  That's possible this week?  With this and that going on?"  In most cases, people want to do a great job.  They want to do what's asked well.  Not everyone is good at understanding that Time part of SMART.
    The next time disappointment with an outcome sets in, be it with someone else or yourself, ask the question, "Was there an objective or an expectation?"  If it was an expectation, do a better job moving it to an objective the next time and/or forgive the person, even if it is yourself, for not meeting this expectation.   If there was an objective, figure out what went wrong and do better the next time -- be it helping those involved better define the objective or helping align your expectations to that objective.
    We all expect our colleagues to behave like adults and our life partners to do what they say they will, but at the end of the day, they are human.  What will keep us from wrecking a relationship out of disappointment and frustration is how we choose to manage expectations.  As Marti says, "If it's important to you, do something about it.  Don't just set there disappointed."

Flexibility and The Love-Fear Hypothesis

Ghost Writer stalks after Marti answering her latest question on flexibility with her own hypothesis of two emotions.

    For those close to this Ghost, I have long hypothesized there are merely two emotions in the human condition -- love and fear.  Every other emotion is just a shade of gray between these two.  Hope, a murky one, is often been the challenge emotion tossed into the conversation when I bring up this hypothesis.  My response, "Hope for?  Hope against?  One is love. One is fear."  So feel free to toss that one out at a cocktail party, and let me know how it comes out in your field tests. 

    In the mean time, how does this apply to Marti's blog on flexibility?

    Inflexibility is a fear emotion.  Usually it's a fear of the consequence of the proposed solution.  I can picture Marti pretty dug in against an idea, and that reaction comes most clearly when she's confronted with an opportunity to be flexible in a way that makes her fear the consequences more than embrace the proposal on the table.  In her line of work, I'm sure these opportunities are often.  As an HR Manager, I doubt she often sees an opportunity to be flexible that doesn't sound in her mind like, "Great, and when am I going to have to hire/fire/remediate the mess this is going to make?"

    The good news is, for Marti and even regular HR Leader folk like me, we generally neither do brain surgery nor rocket science for a living.  We work in regular work environments where the worst that can happen is someone has to be hired, fired, or corrected in some massive way when a flexibility opportunity runs astray.

    So, Marti, awesome friend you are, when you have a moment to be flexible, take these steps.

    1.  Ask yourself, "What's the WORST that can happen?"  If no one could die and you won't be left considering how many bodies would fit in the company car trunk, it might be worth considering.  This acknowledges your fearfulness in the situation and gives you space to understand it.

    2.  Ask yourself, "What's the BEST that can happen?"  See caveat on #1. 

    3.  Ask the proposer, the prior two questions.  Make him/her sell it to you a little and consider the consequences for him or her self.  While you're quite often the smartest person in the room, coaching the person through your thought process might rub off on him/her in a way that imparts some wisdom.

    4.  Depending on his/her answers, you may want to give them this question.  "May I have [some appropriate timeframe] to think about this?"  Really, most decisions outside of the brain surgery/rocket science realm really can wait a few minutes for a thoughtful position made on a decent night's sleep or after one's first cup of coffee, at least.

    Well, and for everyone, this may help you be a better HR Leader, wife, husband, life partner, or parent, because as I found out this weekend, sometimes I'm not the most loveble person when I'm inflexible.  May you all find a space to love others enough to go through a process rather than being so concerned with the consequences and potential fear that you're inflexible.

 

Inflexibility

What triggers inflexibility? Most days, people are generally open to information. We listen to the news, radio, coworkers, family, and even read the paper. People absorb and select information through various filters. In my work in HR, there comes a point where people stop letting information flow and filter. They freeze, stiffen and everything stops at the closed door to their logic. I have become angry, offended, or sleepy and decided that whatever is proposed just won't work. Generally, this is short lived, but there have been times where I have indulged it, verbalized it and regretted it. Regret generally involving having to apologize for something. This is driven by good old fashioned pride. Call it Ego, dig up your best Freudian analogies, whatever. Once inflexibility is triggered, good luck getting through. Feedback is futile. No matter how well intentioned, nothing by the owner of the inflexibility can fix it. If you are the bad guy to that person, you will stay the bad guy in spite of your efforts to help this person succeed. If they were already in trouble, your efforts to save them would be met with hatred. The feedback is an attack and the messenger will not fare well. Many a person has scuttled a career, damaged a reputation, and harmed their own psyche with inflexibility. I welcome any tips on overcoming inflexibility. It would be nice to avoid causing it, but since it is a personal choice, God help us all!

When no carrot remains

The not-so-ghostly writer asks the profound question, "So HR folk... What do you do when there is no carrot left?"

In today's mail bag, a career professional, more than qualified for the next level, gets permanently blocked for promotion. He says, "There is no carrot!" I agree. Other than this person's will to do good work, he's at a crossroads -- continue to suck up the same old draft from the lead dogs or choose another path.

While we're all masters of our own destinies, this situation stinks. What advice would you give my career man?

Professionalism - a poetic tribute

I love, therefore I feel
I hate, therefore I feel
I feel, therefore I am human
I am human, therefore I need
I need, therefore I work
I work, therefore I cannot feel
I work, therefore I cannot be human
I am not human, therefore I cannot feel
I cannot feel, therefore I cannot love or hate
I cannot love or hate, therefore I am professional

(Yes, it's been a tough week)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Rarity

It is rare that ghost writer names the alter ego. It is rare that I blog on the same night as a contributor. It is also rare that I mistakenly forward an email to my blog that I don't mind seeing there. This has been a rare week. Among these rare things is a great person that we are interviewing for possible future openings with the company. I reached out to her after a scheduling issue and we are back on track. It would have been easy to assume the negative thought that she was not interested and move on. Assuming positive intent saved the day. There was also a challenging issue where a lot of negative twists were made to things I said. I am unapologetic about my interest in handguns, the fact that some things are just funny, and that I believe people need to lighten up. Unfortunately, this can make one easy prey for anglers. I still believe that the world is abundant and that we can all have great success. The world is not a win-lose proposition and everyone has choices to find their prosperity. Remembering that there is abundance no matter what happens has lessened the pain of being used. The rare actions of contributing, assuming positive intent and remembering abundance offer a great deal of comfort in a challenging world. Engage in some rarity!

Lessons from the Hamster Cage

While Marti works the Big Box Goat Rodeo, the Ghost Writer studies the Hamster Cage. 

    So as an HR Leader, I get to travel a great deal and almost as much as Marti, but I enjoy a much bigger land area in my roaming.  What goes along with travel is eating out, and well, either choosing to get fat or finding a way to exercise in a hotel.  Exercising in a hotel sounds easy – go to the gym.  Right?  No.  Some hotels (yes, even in today's modern world) don't have gyms, and some of them aren't worth being in for 5 minutes let alone long enough to get a recommended daily dose of healthy sweat.  That's the hotel I'm in this week – gym not worth using in a climate too cold for running outside.

    Being the persistent soul I am, Self and I have a chat (we do that, it's weird, we know).

    Terri:     We need to work out.

    Self:       Yes, we do.  The gym at this hotel sucks, though.

    Terri:     This hotel has stairs and hallways.  Big spaces to walk.  We have a pedometer on this new iPod, we can do 10,000 steps.

    Self:       We will look like a dork.

    Terri:     I said walk, not run.

    Self:       Ok…

    Self and I strap on the Asics Gel Nymbus shoes we're breaking in for running, the Polar Heart Rate Monitor, and the pedometer and head out in the hotel.  Looking like a hot-wired, hippy robot in fancy turquoise and silver sneakers, Self and I determined there are 5 stairwells and 5 unique hallways in this hotel.  We've got space.  900 steps per self-defined lap and running on the stairs is an option, as no self-respecting, airline-potato business traveler or tourist uses those.

    About half-way through lap three, we start chatting again.

    Terri:     I feel like a hamster in a Habitrail® – up the stair tube, across the third level tube to another tube, back across the second level tube.  (Google Habitrail®… it's a bunch of tubes for rodents to crawl around in for exercise.) 

    Self:       Yep, but at least we're not the stupid hamster in the wheel running for his life and going nowhere.  We're choosing how we move rather than letting the situation limit us.

    Terri:     Isn't that the point of Marti's Blog on "How Do You Want to Go Out" (October, 2010)?

    This is what self and I were doing.  No matter what the circumstance, we were choosing how we wanted to go out, and really that's a big lesson.  Every moment in life is a choice of "How Do You Want to Go Out" and sometimes it's straight down the tube outside the front door of the office and telling this job to take itself and shove it.  Self and I chose to go out walking in the hotel, regardless of passing the same guy twice in the hall and looking all red-faced in public, because I would rather know myself as a person of principled self-care than as someone who gained weight by staying in her room for lack of a likeable alternative.   Choosing how to go out does require one to keep moving, even if it's just hanging around in the Habitrail® until a better alternative presents itself.

Introduce Yourself

When you are in a social setting. How do you introduce yourself? I imagine you say your name. What is the next question? Come on, you know this. You are asked where you work. This is why it is so hard for people to be out of work. Even when someone is unemployed because of restructuring or a company going out of business, it is embarassing to be without that identity. We talk about wanting a life and that we are more than our 9-5, yet we let our job be a major driver of our identity. One of many epiphanies that have failed to sink in appropriately for me. We often fail to take our own advice. I found some notes where I reminded myself to keep in touch with the world. Interesting considering where my head has been for the past two months. That little thought prompted a question. To what are we sacrificing ourselves? There are great stories of love and giving everything for a true belief. Short of running your dream company at a high level of success, your job is not a noble thing to give your health, happiness and life to support. In HR, we are on the front line of providing life altering messages to people. We offer jobs and promotions. We also turn down candidates and preside over terminations. The need to manage our conscience allows us to believe that it is just business. This isn't personal. Bull*%$#! It is definitely personal for the person receiving the news and it weighs on us. If the non-HR readers think we haven't been on the receiving end, they are wrong. Personal experience has included reinterviewing for my job twice, getting struture out once and being on administrative leave awaiting a verdict. As I sit here, I'm asking a question. Who will be there for us when it is all just business, but our needs aren't? Introduce yourself to nice people that want to eat hotdogs with you on your deck and don't care where you work. Introduce yourself to people in need that you can help. Introduce yourself to the people that live in your house and call you family. Introduce yourself to the family that doesn't live in your house. Join a group that does something you truly enjoy and identify with it. Then you have an answer to the question, "who will be there".

Lack of Balance

There is no replacement for the things that bring us balance. The expectation to meet the excessive pace of business today places significant demands on our time and our mental stability. The ease with which we give up fitness, hobbies, reasonable bedtimes and time with the people we love to please the people that pay the bills is frightening. I disappeared from my blog to manage a major rollout and a communication/training initiative. We lost our best buddy and first dog together, Demon, but I was at a corporate meeting during his last days. I came home in time to drive from the airport to the vet to have him put to sleep. That sucked. My music, vocal and instrumental hasn't happened and finding new groups hasn't happened. My diet has managed to stay intact and I'm down 39 pounds, but no energy for the exercise bike or the punching dummy. Managed to get some daffodils planted and to start some seedlings. My wonderful husband feeds the pets, contracts a group to build my garden beds, keeps the house and the bills. Otherwise, I might be another foreclosure statistic due to lack of energy to send out payments. My sleep is erratic and I am tired most of the time. Today, I decided to end this. It is time to get back to HR association functions, hobbies, groups, friends and the things that are truly important. The toughest part will be getting enough sleep. I never got past the little kid thing where I will stay awake well past effectiveness and insist on one more puzzle, TV show, or knitting stitch. I have fallen asleep midstitch. If you are a hopeless workaholic, obsessive boss pleaser, or basic masochist, cut it out and do somthing fun. Today, we visited the sculpture garden and conservatory where they have a live butterfly exhibit. In 40 degree weather in Michigan, you can actually go to a tropical oasis and spend hours with swarms of butterflies. Find something pretty, thrilling, or enthralling and do it. I owe ghost writer a pair of slippers, so this will be welcome news to my periodic contributor. Watch for regular posts. My commitment to this group of friends that have been neglected.