I wasn’t ready. I had no prospects and no plan. I didn’t think I’d be successful. In fact, I was reasonably convinced I’d fail. I was consumed with fear. But for the first time, my desire had become greater than my fear.

Two things moved me out of vacillation and into action.

Catalyst #1:  For the first time in my career, I had a job I didn’t like. Before my last job, I would have done every career-related (a.k.a. real) job I’d had for free. In my last job I made a lot of money but was unhappy. I swore I’d never be someone who kept a job for the money.

Catalyst #2:  I didn’t want to look back at the end of my career and wonder, what if?  When I was in high school I was captivated by the Henry David Thoreau quote, “I want to live deep and suck the marrow out of life.” I made a decision then that I would not live my life controlled by fear.

So I quit.

My definition of success was low. All I wanted was to be able to pay my mortgage and not live under a bridge or with my parents. Given how low I set the bar, it’s amazing my first year in business was as good as it was.

The past five years have been the most fun, rewarding time in my life. I’ve had the privilege to speak in seven countries and on three continents, in 23 states, and with organizations of all types and sizes.

Our work is different. It is edgy and direct and rarely what people are expecting.  I cherish the feedback from conference attendees and clients, “You are a breadth of fresh air.” I can’t imagine being told anything better. Fresh implies different. And different can be scary.

We help organizations shift from cultures of silence and fear to a climates of candor and trust. Creating a more candid culture takes courage.

Thank you for your courage and your trust, and for believing that your organization can be a place people want to work and where they do their best work. I look forward to the next five years.

These situations annoy us, but we often don’t say anything because giving feedback is simply too hard. Why risk the person’s defensiveness? Or we don’t think addressing the situation will make a difference.

Giving feedback can be hard. Asking for what you want is easier, but most of us don’t do it.

The question is why? If making a request is easier than correcting someone’s behavior, why not ask for what we want upfront? Why wait until expectations are violated to make a request?  The answer is simple.

We don’t think we should have to make requests. We assume our employees, coworkers, and friends will do things as we do.

We would never turn in work without checking it for accuracy or come to a meeting late. So we assume others won’t either. And when they do, it feels too hard to speak up, so we don’t.

I’m going to suggest you approach relationships differently –more proactively.

Ask for what you want at the beginning of a relationship, project, meeting – anything new. Set clear expectations. If you want to start and end meetings on time, tell people that during your first meeting.  And if you have an existing behavior you want to shift, simply say, “I realized I didn’t tell you that starting and ending meetings on time is really important to me. Going forward, we’re going to start and end all meetings on time. So please be ready for that.”  If you need a quiet work environment, when you get assigned a new desk or seat mate, tell your coworkers that you are easily distracted by noise and ask them to take all calls via a hand or head set and to limit posses of visitors. If it bugs you when people wear shoes in your house, tell them when they arrive. Don’t expect people to guess you’re frustrated  and alter their behavior without you making a request. It’s not going to happen.

Consider all the things that annoy you. Then consider what you did or didn’t ask for. If you haven’t made your expectations clear, it’s not too late. Asking for what you want is easier than you think.

If your coworkers talk to you about other people in your office, why wouldn’t they talk to others about you? Likewise, if you talk to your friends at work about all the dolts you’re forced to work with, why shouldn’t your friends assume you will talk negatively about them.  Like you, they’re special, but not different.

Gossip exists in every organization everywhere. It’s been around forever and is here to stay. The problem is that gossip creates environments of suspicion and fear and kills organizational cultures. Employees watch his or her back, wondering from where the next jab and stab will come. And when people are worried about how others will damage them, they work alone versus together. They hoard information and recognition. All of this is, of course, very bad. But the distrust and paranoia that gossip creates isn’t the only reason to reduce the gossip in your organization.

An even more compelling reason to reduce the amount of gossip in your organization—it’s exhausting.

My clients split hairs attempting to convince me that gossip and venting are not the same thing. They insist that venting is productive—it allows people to blow off steam and problem solve. Here is my one word reply:  Garbage. That is complete garbage.

Although I am the least woo-woo person I know, this next thought may sound a little woo-woo.  So hang in there with me. If an hour after a meeting you and your work friends are still talking about how inept the meeting facilitator is, you might as well still be sitting in the meeting. If you go home after work and complain to your spouse about the people you work with who do little work, then you might as well still be at work. You life is what you talk about and with whom.  That’s the woo-woo part.

If you want a different experience, say something different. If the meetings in your office are ineffective, talk to the meeting facilitator off line. Offer suggestions; offer to run the meeting, or stop going. Do anything but talk to people who can’t impact the situation. If you’re working harder than the people around you, either talk to them or your manager, or simply do less. Sometimes we have to let things break for others to know they are broken.

Whatever you choose to do, know that talking about the things that frustrate you to people who can’t do anything about them makes you feel worse not better.

I’ve already conceded that gossip isn’t going anywhere. So what to do?

Here are a few things you can do in your office to create a more positive and trusting culture:

1. When you find yourself talking negatively about someone who isn’t present, stop.
2. If there is something you’re unhappy with at work, tell someone who can do something about it. Just be careful not to dump a problem at a manager’s door. It burdens managers who are already too busy and annoys them. State your observation; recommend a solution; ask for their support if you need it.
3. Create a no gossip policy in your office, and charge a $1 every time you hear gossip. The money can go to charity or towards funding company parties. People are hesitant to part with their money. You’ll be surprised at how much $1 can alter behavior.  The people you work with may look at you funny, but they know how badly it feels to be thrown under the bus. Others will, in time, appreciate the policy. Working in an environment where you know others won’t talk about you when you’re not there creates an unprecedented feeling of confidence few of us will ever experience.

Ultimately the answer is simply to:  Desire to have a different working environment and draw attention to the gossip you hear. That alone will help. You want people to trust you. And you want to work with people you trust. One of the fastest ways to build and repair trust is not to speak negatively about the people you work with. Plain and simple.

What did I do to incense my students to the point of complaint?  I gave them a grammar lesson.

I was teaching a graduate level leadership class. While reading my students’ first papers, I found myself correcting their grammar – for an hour, per paper. I found the papers too hard to read without fixing the grammar.

When I handed the papers back I told my students, “You want to be leaders. Not being able to write will hold your career back more than your leadership abilities. So we’re going to work on writing today.”  Then I reviewed some basic grammar rules. The students who complained said that they weren’t paying to learn how to write. They were paying to learn how to be leaders.

They missed the lesson.

When I screen resumes, I eliminate candidates whose resumes have typos and spelling errors. And many other managers do as well.  A resume is like a first date. You’re working to impress. And as my dad says, it doesn’t get any better than it is at the beginning. If your date behaves badly early on, it will only get worse. If candidates don’t pay attention to their own marketing tool, why would they pay attention to yours?

Some people say that the prevalence of texting and Instant Messenger has changed the standards of what type of writing is acceptable at work.  I disagree.

When clients receive proposals with errors, do they want to hire you? When you send an email or report with grammar errors or typos to the people in your office who can impact your career, do they dismiss the errors or make a mental note that you’re careless? I suspect the latter.

Being successful at work is hard enough. Don’t give people a reason to discredit you.

• Spell check your work
• Be succinct. If you can say it in 10 words, eliminate the extra 20 you’ve written.
• If you are struggling with writing, take a class.

Little things matter.

The meeting facilitator wants to do something but feels like s/he can’t. How do you tell someone two levels above you to put away his phone and pay attention?

The majority of meetings are too long and a poor use of time.

You can impact the meetings in your organization, even if you don’t run them.

The bad meeting behavior mentioned above is predictable. It’s happening everywhere.

If you want your meetings to be different, ask for something different, before problems occur.

The reason your meeting facilitators feel as if they can’t tell their boss’s boss to show up and pay attention is because there has been no expectation set that it’s ok to do so. Meeting guidelines have not been established. And if they were established it was done long ago and the expectations were long forgotten.

Running an effective meeting requires courage AND an understanding that the meeting facilitator has permission and is expected to address people who break the rules. Even the most senior person in the room has given the facilitator permission to correct him. Without this permission, your facilitator can’t say anything, which is why s/he doesn’t.

How to have better meetings:

1. Get meeting attendees’ agreement on the rules.
2. Give the meeting facilitator AND attendees permission to enforce the rules.
3. Take two minutes to set expectations before every meeting. Yes every meeting, even standing meetings. People forget. When you remind people of the rules, it’s easier to enforce them.
4. Post the rules in all of your conference and training rooms as reminders. Make the posters with large font that can be read from any seat in the room. We’ve made it easy for you with our Make Meetings Work Poster.
5. Periodically discuss how meetings are going – what’s working and what can be improved.  Create occasions and grant permission to give feedback. If it isn’t safe to tell the truth, nothing will get better.

Stop wasting your time in meetings. It’s never too late to set expectations. Hang them up on the wall for everyone to see. Anyone, at any level, and in any role can suggest setting and adhering to meeting guidelines. People in your organization want someone to take control.  Maybe it will be you?

At work this might sounds like, looking for employees who will do good work with little to no oversight, be open to feedback, and never get defensive, no matter what bad news we give them.  Otherwise known as, no baggage.

Unless you work alone, you know that people come with baggage. I’m calling our negative experiences with other people –parents who lost their tempers when we expressed a counter point-of-view, bosses who punished us for saying what we really thought, and peers who killed us off when we told them the truth – baggage. Every time we got yelled at, in trouble, or punished in any way for giving feedback, we learned it was not safe to speak up.

Your direct reports and coworkers have been trained by every person who came before you, both personally and professionally.  We have all been trained.

We all know that when we tell most people what we really think, and they don’t like it, there are negative consequences. So we learn, pretty quickly, to keep our opinions to ourselves.

If you want people to tell you the truth about what’s not working in your organization or about your own performance, you need to retrain them. You need to get your employees and coworkers to believe that it’s safe to tell you the truth, even when the news is bad.

So how do you make people feel safe giving feedback and speaking up?

1. Ask for their opinion.
2. Promise that no matter what they tell you, you will say “thank you”.
3. Manage yourself and ensure the other person felt heard. Say “thank you” out loud, regardless of what you say inside your head.
4. Then walk away.
5. Once you’ve had some time to process the feedback, you can go back to the person to discuss it.
6. If you got defensive, apologize and recommit

Every time you get defensive you train people it’s not safe to tell you the truth. The more often you ask for input and take it graciously, the more information you’ll get.

Host Sponsor: Charles Schwab

Topic: It’s Your Career. Manage It.

Guest Speaker: Shari Harley
Owner: Candid Culture, a training and consulting firm
Too many professionals are waiting for their boss to make their career happen. Your boss may give you the right exposure and opportunities to grow. But ultimately, it’s up to you to create the career you really want. During this session you will get the tools and language you need to take charge of your career and get more of what you want and less of what you don’t at work. (Read more about the March Savvy Salon).

Program Details:
When: Thursday, March 29th
Where: The Inverness Hotel and Conference Center, Englewood, CO
Time: 4:45 PM – 7:00 PM
Register Today!

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 11th
1:00 – 4:00 pm
Minnetonka Community Center, Minnetonka, MN

A Special Professional Development Workshop sponsored by MN AWWA, MPWA, and SUSA

There is no cost to attend this workshop – but you must sign up quickly as space is limited! See below for details on how to register.

Giving feedback is challenging for everyone…No one wants to hear that they aren’t doing a good job.

Get a simple formula to make even the most difficult conversation easier. Conversations will be short, specific, and on point. They won’t be personal. They will be actionable. You’ll be able to say what you want to say, when you want to say it, in a way that the other person can hear you and take action.

Shari Harley will present…
How To Say Anything To Anyone …and
Just Say It: Making Difficult Conversations Easy
Wednesday January 11, 2012 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Minnetonka Community Center; 14600 Minnetonka Blvd
Minnetonka, MN 55345; 952.939.8390

Shari Harley runs a training and consulting firm helping organizations get and keep the right customers and employees by creating more candid business relationships. Shari spoke at the 2010 AWWA Section Leadership Training in Denver.  The program was extremely fun and useful.  Since then she has spoken for other AWWA sections and events.  We’ve been trying to get her to our section for almost two years. Don’t miss this opportunity!!!

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Leaders, managers, supervisors, and HR Professionals.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
There is no cost to attend the training. The Minnesota Section of the American Water Works Association (MnAwwa), Suburban Utilities Superintendent Association (SUSA), and Minnesota Public Works Association (MPWA) are sponsoring the professional development workshop.

HOW DO I REGISTER?
Email your intent to attend to jeaton@ci.bloomington.mn.us. Space is limited so register quickly!

HOW CAN I FIND OUR MORE ABOUT THE TRAINING?
See the attached flyer for more detail about the training content. Visit the website www.leadershipandsalestraining.com for demonstration videos, more details about the speaker, and other training opportunities.

Could and should I have anticipated that he really wanted it last week? Yes. But I’m not unlike your good employees. I’m good at what I do, but I put off the hard stuff that is complex and takes a lot of focus and time until it is due.

I told my client what I tell all the managers I work with, don’t set deadlines as the final, drop dead moment you need something. Build in time to review work and have a few rounds of feedback and edits before final deadlines. The biggest opportunity I see for managers to make their lives easier and less stressful, in addition to giving employees regular and timely feedback, is to delegate better.

A sales person I was coaching lost a project because he submitted the RFP on the day of the deadline. The prospect said that because the salesperson waited until the last minute to submit the proposal, she feared he would leave all work to the last minute, and she just couldn’t work with someone like that.
Rather than test people or set them up to fail, just tell people what you really need.

Employees are not you. They don’t do things the way you do. If you have a picture of how a project should look, I’ll bet you any amount of money your employee has a very different picture of how that project should look. As you assign work, if you picture data being put in a table or a graph, your employee most likely has a different picture. If you want a color coded process map, ask for a process map. If you want three bullets rather than a detailed narrative, ask for three bullets, rather than being frustrated by receiving too much information you now have to weed through.

Set realistic and meaningful deadlines. Don’t set short deadlines because you don’t trust your employees to do what they say they will do. If you have an employee who constantly misses deadlines and doesn’t do what he says he will do, that’s a different conversation. That’s a feedback conversation.

You want to give employees enough room to stretch themselves but not enough room to fail. If you have a project that’s due at the end of January, ask to see pieces of the work along the way, perhaps weekly. Give feedback regularly, enabling employees to make changes to small pieces of work rather than to the entire project. Reviewing small pieces of work regularly reduces frustration and rework. Finishing a project and being told to start over because it wasn’t what the other person was looking for has damaged many working relationships.

You get what you ask for. What are you asking for?