Check those personal problems at the door

Personal problems are something that every person has to deal with. Everyone has issues in his or her personal lives that can take up some or all of our free time: kids, relationships, money, health, etc. The rub comes when people start bringing their baggage to work.

For managers, what do you do when your people start bringing their personal problems to work? Your team members are paid to come to work...AND WORK, not sit around whining and complaining about the problems in their lives. They are supposed to focus and be productive. You've seen what it can do to an office or organization:

• Distract from work
• Depress the whole office
• Suck other people into the problems

As bosses, you have every right to expect your folks to focus on their duties while you're paying them. What can you do to keep personal problems from changing the atmosphere at work? You're not a heartless beast who cares nothing for those around you, so what do you do? Some suggestions I've heard are to:

• Set expectations up front (leave your problems at the door)
• Listen (like during 1:1 sessions)
• Help find counseling
• Provide time off, if necessary, to deal with the issues

I have two questions for you:

What other issues are caused by people bringing their personal problems to work?

What ways can bosses help their people while still completing the mission and ensuring customer care doesn't slip?

Don't Underestimate Yourself

I know people like this: people who underestimate themselves. It's really too bad, you know, because it's often only their perception instead of everyone else's reality. Still, people like this are all around us, aren't they?

I have family members, friends, and past colleagues who all struggle with problems of self-confidence. I have, too. It can be fairly debilitating at times, keeping people from trying, allowing them to quit an activity or group, or affecting how they present themselves to others. What's most frustrating about it is that so many people are really good at what they do, but just can't believe it about themselves.

When I was a young teenager, I used to read Sherlock Holmes books. One of the comments Holmes made, that still stays with me, is that it is just as bad to underestimate ourselves as it is to overestimate ourselves. That's really true, isn't it?

Like I said, there were times in my life when I questioned my abilities when I compared myself to others. I had to tell myself, "those other people aren't any better than you. They make mistakes. They fail. They're not any more perfect than you are." Telling myself these things really worked for me. Sometimes I had to tell myself more times than once, but it did work. The trick is to ensure you are doing your best while making statements to yourself like I did.

Another trick you can try is to think about one or two things you do really well, maybe better than most other people, and remind yourself of those things when you're feeling insecure.

Bottom Line: If you can step back for even a moment and look at yourself objectively and you can see you are:

• Prepared
• Practiced
• Poised

then there's no reason whatsoever to be beating yourself up. You can always do better, but so can everyone else around you. As someone told me about a general one time, "he puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like me."

What other tricks do you know of to help offset the "underestimation blues"?

What are you building?

As leaders, we should constantly be building. We should be building up our people, we should be building relationships. We should be building on our successes - on what works for our team and our organization. We should be looking at what's not working and see if we can build something positive from whatever is lacking.

What is making me write all this? Well, I guess it's because I read a lot of blogs and that means I read a fair amount of ranting posts...ranting about what we don't like, what we think is wrong with other people or organizations, and what somebody needs to fix. I've even ranted a few times, myself. Ranting is probably cathartic at times, but when you step back and look at it, does ranting get you anywhere long-term?

So, what's our direction? We should ask ourselves that question on a regular basis. What's our direction? Are we moving forward? Are we marking time, stagnant in our work and maybe our lives? Or worse yet, are we moving backward, moving downward away from the positive parts of existence?

Each of us only has so much time on this earth. While we don't need to get maudlin about our lives as we age, it's not something we can just dismiss. At least it shouldn't be. If we're blessed with leadership qualities, we have a responsibility - no - mission to help build whenever we have the chance. People are looking to their leaders for direction and it's up to us to point them in the right way.

What are you building? What's your direction? If you don't know, give it some thought and get moving...forward.

Leaders Never Quit

Leaders never quit? Leaders never quit what?

One of my favorite quotes is from Nathaniel Greene, one of Washington's generals during the American Revolution. He was a self-taught military man, but often thought of as only second to Washington in military talent during that conflict.

OK, the quote: We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.

On the surface, some could look at this quote as another "rah, rah" quote. It's much more than that, though, because of the words in the middle: "...get beat, rise...".

Greene is speaking about failure. He failed. I fail. You fail. We all fail. We all get beat from time to time. Greene is speaking about failure and then overcoming failure to fight again.

For me, the thing that is so inspiring about Nathaniel Greene is that he never quit, even when he wanted to, even when he threatened to. He was totally devoted to his causes and, in the case of America, its freedom.

We're all imperfect human beings. We're all imperfect managers, coaches, and workers. We're all imperfect leaders.

Let's get back to the title of this post: leaders never quit.

What should leaders never quit doing? Leaders should never quit trying to:

• Inspire
• Set a positive example
• Push others to grow
• Have an empathetic spirit
• Be decisive
• Walk the walk
• Properly delegate
• Coach regularly
• Use influence instead of force
• Listen
• Be a servant

Even as imperfect as we are, real leaders never quit. They always try to make themselves and the people around them better.

What other things should leaders never quit doing?

Encourage Constructive Feedback

We all want to be great leaders and managers don't we? Hopefully, our bosses provide good feedback to us. Still, we can definitely learn from other people than just our bosses. There are several other key people in your work lives who can help you grow by providing their feedback: Peers, Mentors, and Team Members (people who report to you).

It's one thing to ask for feedback and it's another thing all together to mean it. How can you prove to your colleagues and your team members that you really do want and appreciate what they have to say?

1. Ask for the feedback (duh, I know, but they can't read your mind even though you may think they should).
2. Thank them for the feedback.
3. Act on it (if it makes good sense). If the feedback is correct, let them know they were right. Even if you decide not to act on it, let them know you considered the advice...that you were listening.
4. Acknowledge the change, but without making too big a deal of it. You don't want to go around bragging on what an enlightened and mature person you were for taking someone else's advice ("Oh look how great I am. I can even take feedback from the little people." No.).
5. If you don't like what you hear, don't take it out on the messenger. You asked for it.

We can't become great managers and leaders without dedicated people around us. The feedback and advice they will hopefully share can be invaluable for us, both personally and professionally.

Do you know of other ways to encourage feedback from peers and team members? Do they need to be communicated or just shown by our actions?

Presentation Styles

Remember when I wrote the post, "If you look bad, you are bad"? Well, this post is kind of an extension of that one.

Specifically, I'm writing about presentations to others. I've heard people say that when you get up in front of others to speak, the only way you can look really put together and professional is to speak extemporaneously: no notes, no nothing. I guess they think speaking in an impromptu manner like that reflects great ability. I'm sure it does. I'm also pretty confident that very few people can pull that off. I can't. This type of communication can lead to lengthy, rambling discourses if you're not very careful. No, thanks.

Another way to seem really prepped is to memorize what you want to say before getting up before your audience...kind of like being an actor in a play. That looks really good...if you can pull that off. What happens if you get interrupted and get off track? There's a story about General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, of Civil War fame, who used to memorize his lectures to his students at the Virginia Military Institute. When a student would ask a question or Jackson would get interrupted, his only course of action was to start his memorized lesson all over again. The memorized way of presentations is, therefore, limited because it is very inflexible. It also gives little opportunity for interaction with the audience.

People can just read out the text of their presentation word-for-word. That can get the point across, but most presentations these days have PowerPoint slides accompanying them. I absolutely hate it when someone writes thoughts or points on a PowerPoint presentation and then reads them verbatim to me. I can read. If presenters are just going to regurgitate what's on the screen, they can just email me the presentation and give me a deadline to have watched it on my own.

I'm someone who loves bullets in a presentation. Bullets give your audience some information without giving them too much. They have to listen to you to get the full picture. That's a good thing. I'm also one who believes in writing things down so I don't forget anything. My suggestion is to lay out your presentations in a bulleted format and then practice expanding on the bullets. This allows you to be and look prepared. You can have a laptop or monitor in front of you so you can look at the bullets and talk about each without having to read over your shoulder and talk to the screen. One important point is to have your notes on 3x5 cards in front of you or have a hard copy of the presentation in case something goes wrong with the AV or you have an extra point or two that you want to jot down and have in front of you for the talk.

If you look good while presenting, you may or may or may not have anything compelling to say. However, if you mess your presentation up by being too rambling or by being too stiff, you'll lose your audience. You won't appear professional and you won't have gotten your points across.

Prepare smart and you'll be great. Do you have any thoughts on the best way to make public presentations? What works best for you?

Step away from your people's work

I had someone mention to me that where she works, when people complete a project, the boss often redoes the work. Why would that be?

• Perhaps it is because the work produced is not up to the boss's standards. Perhaps the expectations were not totally clear so the boss had to change content.
• On the other hand, perhaps the boss likes work to be a certain way and the product has to look exactly like what the boss prefers.
• Finally, maybe the boss only trusts the work that he or she cranks out and anyone else's is just going to be less than suitable.

One of the examples above is about substance. The other two examples are about style and preference. If the quality of work turned into us, as bosses, is of substandard quality, we need to help our people understand what's wrong and give them the chance to correct the material. If the work is styled in a manner that isn't "us", we need to let it go. As the old saying goes, "there's more than one way to skin a cat". Our way is probably different than that of our team and it may not even be as good.

Either way, redoing our people's work is a sure way of stifling creativity and helping our folks become disengaged...two things we just can't afford.

So, I say again, "step away."