Are You Vulnerable?

Are you vulnerable? Vulnerability is a bad idea in business. When you're vulnerable, the concern is that people can take advantage of you. You don't want to look weak.

My mother is a very open and giving person. Sometimes it appears that people take advantage of her. One time, when a friend seemed to be inappropriately using my mother, I asked her, "why do you let her do that? Don't you know she's taking advantage of you?" My mother's response was "people can't take advantage of you if you let them." I thought that was very profound. In other words, people can take advantage of the unwilling or unknowing. However, if we choose to let people do what they do, no one can say they're taking advantage of us...we're letting it happen.

Back to vulnerability. Relationships are about taking chances. Depending on how deep the relationship determines how open we are. The level of openness has a direct corollary: vulnerability.

If you believe you need to have good, solid relationships with your team members, you will have to open yourself up somewhat. When you do that, you make yourself vulnerable to those team members. You make yourself human. You show yourself to be imperfect and that you have flaws (although, they've probably already picked up on some of your flaws from working with you).

Relationships are risky. There's no doubt about it. However, in order to be the servant leader you want to be, in order to develop a sense of trust with your people, and in order to build a group of committed team members, you have to be vulnerable.

What are other risks to being vulnerable? Can you be too open with your people?

Do Your Team Members Come To You?

In times of stress, trial, or other hardships, who do your team members turn to?

Where I live now, most people have at least one relative who can be considered near by and to whom they might go when they have trouble. That isn't the case for everyone in the world. My family and I lived in Germany for 5 years. Family was 6,000 miles away. When we had stresses in our lives, we had to decide who we should talk to.

If your people are experiencing trouble, do they come to you, as their boss? Do you take the time for your folks? Do they know that you care about them as individuals as well as workers? Is there a personal relationship with each of the people directly under your care? Have you developed a culture and climate in your office that lends it to people reaching out, that lets them know it's OK to talk to the boss?

If your people have trouble, do you want them to come to you?

Smiling

Are you kidding me? Smiling? We're going to write about smiling?

Yes, of course. If you have customers, and all of us do (of one kind or another), then we want our customers to be happy and we want them to WANT to be involved with our business or operation.

When's the time to start smiling? It's when you answer the phone. Customers start making judgements about us, our teams, and our business as soon as they hear a voice (really, it's before that if you do any advertising or they've seen your web site). A voice can definitely convey a smile if we want it to.

The next smile has to be at the front desk. You know, typically the front desk person is the lowest paid in the office, but she or he often has the most important role. This person is the one who can give the first face-to-face smile a customer sees. Your front desk person has to be free to focus on the customers as they come in and should know that a "live" customer is always the first priority over customers on the phone or on email. The front desk person should really be happy to see customers coming in and that's not always easy to do. Maybe the answer is to fake it sometimes if we're not "feeling it", but often we're not that good as actors.

I can go through the list of staff in your office in reference to smiling, but the key is to be smiling all the time. Smiles are infectious and they make other people feel better. They can help our customers feel glad that they chose to come and see us.

I'm smart enough to know that a smile isn't what gets us business...it's bringing value to our customers that gets them in our doors. Still, if we bring value with a poor attitude, then is it really valuable at all? Most people like to be around others who are glad to see them. It's the same with customers.

If smiling isn't a natural expression for you or your people (it's not always for everybody...some people are just serious), then you need to practice and get the team members to help by letting their coworkers know when the smile slips a little.

You may think this is all silly, but I'm deadly serious. Our customers should expect our best and they should get it. To do business with you (unless you're in business based totally on price), they're going to want to receive value and receive it in a positive atmosphere.

So, SMILE!

Failure to Failure

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill.

There are a million quotes on success and failure. Pretty much all of them refer to how people can't have success without failure, that failure is part of learning and growing. Then, of course, less positive quotes exist, quotes like from the latest season opener of "House, M.D." when House says to his psychiatrist, "Successes only last until someone screws them up. Failures last forever." That's harsh.

I love the Churchill quote. It makes so much sense when things are going well for in people's lives. However, I understand the quote House makes because people can feel that way when they're experiencing tough times.

I think one can argue some validity for either quote...IF a person chooses to accept that kind of attitude. It's really about the attitude and outlook someone adopts.

Since people have choices on what path they will take, why not choose to take the positive one? House's psychiatrist replied to him, "You acknowledge failure and then you move past it."

That's key, too. The doctor didn't say to ignore failure. He said to acknowledge it, think about it, learn from it...and then let it go. Human beings will always make mistakes. That's the nature of being human. The point is to not make the same mistakes, but to grow (so we can make different kinds of mistakes...that's OK...that's a part of life long learning). In that way, people can achieve success.

I'll work on my procrastination when I get around to it.

There's never a better time than now. It's just that procrastinators are likely to put off trying to fix their problems with procrastination.

We know it's a bad habit. We know we shouldn't do it. We know we need to be more productive. So how can we master the procrastination problem?

Perhaps the first step we could take is to figure out what is causing the procrastination. Is it just that we lack self-discipline, in general? If so, that's a way bigger issue than procrastination regarding a particular task. For self-discipline issues, I recommend you read Steve Pavlina's blog series on developing self-discipline. Let's take a look at other reasons we may be putting off handling a task or tasks:

Stress: When we're stressed, we often have a tough time focusing on the tasks we need to accomplish. We need to figure out what's stressing us out so we can remove the stress and get back on track.

Overwhelmed: Similarly to stress, when we have too much to do, we don't keep our eyes on the ball very well. We need to take a breath, step back, and prioritize. Every task hopefully doesn't have to be completed today. We can also take a look to see what tasks we might be able to share with others (you know, teamwork).

Don't understand: Often we procrastinate when we don't know how to do the task and are afraid to ask. Intimidation can get in the way, for sure. We don't want to look stupid. I advise others that you don't look stupid when you ask questions. It's when you don't ask questions and then can't get the job done that you look stupid.

People Issues: Sometimes we procrastinate because whoever we have to partner or coordinate with is someone we don't like, someone we have trouble relating to, or someone who makes us feel uncomfortable. Regardless, someone else is in the way. There's no rule that says we get to like who we work with. Often, dislike or discomfort stems from lack of communication. We need to act like mature professionals and put aside our biases because the other person is probably not going away and the task definitely isn't going away.

Are there other reasons that cause us to fall into the procrastination trap? What do you have to overcome to get tasks completed on time?

3 "People" in the conversation

Yesterday, I was providing some coaching advice specific to how to best communicate with a team member who is not doing what the boss wants. I was explaining that it's very important for the person being coached not to think he or she is being attacked.

The key is to look at such a coaching situation like there are 3 people in the conversation:

• Boss
• Team member
• Action (offense)

During the session, the boss must ensure he or she addresses the "offense" separate from the "offender". Therefore, Suzie is not bad. Instead, what Suzie did or failed to do was bad. When the boss and team member are able to focus on the offense, hopefully, the team member will be able to interact more objectively and progress can be made.

For more information on both situational and ongoing coaching, follow this link to my 5-part series.

A Man of Success

Albert Einstein once said, "Try not to become a man of success but a man of value."

When you are a professional, whether it be in business, in the government, or part of another organization, you are often pushed to be successful at just about any cost. You've seen it. You've seen people so focused on success that it's all they can do, all they can think about.

How do you measure success? Many of us measure from a perspective of:

• Fame
• Fortune
• Power
• Influence

So many times, these measurements are focused almost solely on ourselves. They can be very selfish and self-serving. I think Einstein is saying that the focus of our lives can't be primarily or even mostly about ourselves. It's just that a life focused totally inward seems kind of an empty existence.

I've mentioned it before: most all the motivational speakers out on the circuit today (people like Zig Ziglar) will say you can't be a true success until you've helped people around you be successful. For the majority of people, possessions don't really make them happy, not long-term, anyway. It's the people around us, people we care about, who do that. It's about relationships and being valuable to others.

"Try not to become a man of success but a man of value." In the end, that's where true success lies.