Leadership Archives - Meaning2Work

Breaking Bad News: A Wimp’s Survival Guide

You love your customers. They love you, your product, and your company. Life is grand!

Only one thing can happen when life is this perfect: certain disaster!

Your company is about to enact a change, one that may just chase away your rainbows and unicorns. What the the bad news is, for purposes of discussion, is irrelevant. It’s the impact that most important.

Imagine your about to walk into your customer’s office for the first time to explain the situation. What’s going through your mind?

Try these on for size: Man, I hope she doesn’t get upset! What if he asks a question I can’t answer? Will she threaten to go to another vendor? Will he kick me out of his office? What if? What if?? What if???

Ok, let’s think. No one likes an unpleasant surprise but, is that what THIS is? If you were in the customer’s shoes how would YOU feel? Why is the change taking place? How do YOU feel about it?

Consider these six steps to giving bad news:

Accept and understand the change for yourself.

The first step to effective bad news delivery is acceptance. Notice I didn’t say anything about being positive, that comes later. Instead, it’s crucial to first understand the change itself and why it’’s taking place.

There could be, and often is, a rational reason your company made the decision. That reason may involve survival. Your vendors not only rely not only on your product but on your company’s ongoing support. And, of course, you need a paycheck. Therefore, you both need your product to succeed!

Determine the ramifications of the change.

Once you understand what’s really happening, consider carefully the change’s possible effects on your customer. Yes, management may say they’ve done this but you have a deeper understanding of your client.

The point of this step is not to find answers but to mentally prepare yourself. When you’ve thought through the consequences of the change, you’re in a better position to provide valuable insight to your customer. This makes that first conversation more productive (and less dangerous!)

Photo by Kristopher Roller via Unsplash.com

Consider what has not changed.

After a sober review of the ramifications, you may feel more calm about the change. That’s good. Now it’s time to put things in perspective. Is the news you’re about to deliver global in it’s reach? Or, more likely, is only a portion of a customer’s business is affected.

Next, prepare to make the same point to the customer. Otherwise, they may just apply your “bad” news to everything – you, your product, and your company as a whole. People hate to change the way they work. It’s uncomfortable to say the least. The smaller the change, the easier it is to swallow.

Put it together and prepare.

Once you’ve digested the change, thought through possible effects, and put it into perspective, its time to plan what to say. I’m not a fan of robotic memorized speeches. They take me out of the conversation and make me feel like I’m in a middle school play – the kind where I dress up as a girl.

Instead, just write down the pertinent points you want to make based on the above steps. Keep in mind that you might not have or get to say all of them. Your customer may think your news is a non-event. On the other hand, what you have may still not be enough. More on this later.

It’s talk time!

Depending on the situation, you may feel the urge to kneel at your customer’s feet and beg forgiveness. Don’t. Conversely, you may think you need to “sell” them on how your bad news is really the best thing they’ve ever heard. Also, don’t. Just calmly, confidently, and succinctly explain the change itself, why it’s taking place, and it’s scope. Then make sure they’ve understood what you’ve told them.

Realize every thing we say, in addition to facts, also delivers emotion. Therefore, how we feel about the change will inevitably come out in how we present it. That’s why the previous steps are so important. Our emotions are cues for customers emotions. If you FEEL calm and confident when you present, you invite your customer to feel the same way. Conversely, if you lose your cool, you can expect them to do the same.

Lastly, ask for feedback and wait.

There’s no rules for this part. It’s the customer’s turn to process the change and respond. Sadistically, I think it’s the fun part. Whatever the customer says next will not physically harm you in any way. Stick and stones, remember?

It’s like strapping into a roller coaster, we’re scared out of our wits, yet we know it’s going to be ok. This is the attitude you must take. As your customer shares their thoughts (or gives you a piece of their mind) listen closely. Don’t jump to conclusions. Make sure YOU understand exactly what their saying.

Maybe they misunderstood and you can easily correct them. Maybe they bring up issues you’ve never considered. If you have legitimate answers, by all means, give them. If you don’t, just sit and listen. You may not be able to make the customer feel better right then and there. Just don’t forget to ask to for a chance to follow up.

When things go bad.

Let’s be honest. Despite your best efforts, you may walk away from the meeting with your pride bruised. Your delicate preparation shattered, you may be tempted to call it all a waste. Give the situation time. Sometimes, customers need the time and distance to process changes. At your next meeting, you may find them in better spirits. Suddenly what was a catastrophe is now a speed bump, a non-issue.

When issues do linger, don’t shy away from passing your customer’s concerns up the chain of command. A little internal advocating can go a long way. At this point, you’re ready to repeat the process and go back in! Do your best to go back in with something new, even if it’s just a new way of thinking about the change. You never know what’s approach is going to resonate with a customer until it already has.

Now, get out there and give bad news! When we improve our delivery, not only do we feel better, so do our customers!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Competitiveness: Why It’s Better to Want (Not Need) to Win

Competitiveness ping pong — Photo by Marcus Clark via Unsplash.com

How does he do it? You know, that friend that won’t stop playing until he’s beaten you handily? Doesn’t he realize it’s just ping pong? Damn! His serve is so fast, one miss and that little ball is blistering your cheek!

Don’t we all know someone like this? What seems like a birth defect, ie. Mr. Win-At-ALL-Costs tossing bean bags, oblivious to his kid’s birthday party, can come off as genetic superiority at work. After all, don’t many of our leaders profess to have or freely flaunt an ultra-competitive attitude?

Why can’t we all be more like that?

In reality, we can, and that’s what’s scary. Think about what it really means to be that competitive. Is it realistic? Is it productive? Here are four reasons why competitiveness, left unchecked, can be a losing strategy:

Competitiveness better than you pageant — Photo by Vonecia Carswell via Unsplash.com

There will always be someone better than you.

I’m sure you’ve won something before. Felt good, didn’t it? Scoreboards and sales reports are nice ways to tell everyone (including yourself) how great you are. From that point onward, did you always win? Probably not.

Unfortunately, winning can feel so good we don’t want to wake up from it. However, the moment you become the best kid in the neighborhood, there’s someone from the other side of town who’s willing to test you. When I was a kid I thought the phrase, “Pride cometh before the fall.”, had something to do with the seasons of the year. Get this, it means that someone will always be better than you.

Therefore, needing to be the “best” is largely a waste of time.

Competitiveness craftsman — Photo by Clark Young via Unsplash.com

You will miss out on the enjoyment of your craft.

No one is more deceiving than pro athletes and musicians. That three pointer that Lebron easily makes while jumping backwards is anything but easy. Heck, try picking up a guitar and doing that finger-tapping-on-the-strings thing like Eddie Van Halen. I did, and it sounded like a bag of staplers. Virtuosos make the impossible look easy.

Little do we realize, the part of the job we see only makes up a small percentage of the actual work these entertainers do. Hours of meticulous practice, travel, and promotion build the backbone of their stardom.

Hero worship aside, few of us envy the countless setbacks and hours of practice that come with such a high level of success. THAT, my friend is the real work, and if you love it as much as the applause, you’ll go far. If a career was a meal, our wins would be only the dessert or the wine.

Competitiveness relationships — Photo by Pricilla Du Perez via Unsplash.com

You will miss out on relationships, both professional and personal.

Many of us make this mistake, especially in competitive environments like sales. Do you really want to see you coworker trip as she steps up to the stage for her award? If you knew how much the two of you have in common, you might actually be happy for her.

Yeah, I know. Many of us get compared and ranked against each other at work. Rarely, however, do the perks of competitiveness outweigh the benefits of sharing. Most co-workers face similar day-to-day challenges. Your willingness to lose to a rival may just get you the vital information you need to be more marketable, within your company and beyond.

If we share our struggles at work, we can form strong bonds, even friendships. And, in case you needed a reminder, friends help us with all aspects of life, not just with things like how to update our laptop OS. Even the best, most successful work teams split up. Good friendships can continue on.

Competitiveness growth — Photo by Ravi Roshan via Unsplash.com

You’ll stunt your own growth.

At its best, our competitiveness helps us focus. Never will you run faster (or have a higher tolerance for sweaty, stinky people) than at a 5k. Of course, the same performance benefit is true in other pursuits. The drive to compete is how humans and other animals survive, or so we think.

We sometimes picture natural selection as animals fighting for the same piece of meat. Only the strongest survive! Meanwhile, reality was a war of attrition. The weakest animals didn’t lose some Lion Kingesque battle to the death; they simply failed to pass on their genes. The lesson? If we spend too much time fighting each other we ignore the real enemy: our own weaknesses. And winning only fools us into thinking we don’t have any.

So, do you lack competitiveness? Do you lose more than you win? I’d wager these “faults” have made you more realistic, more likely to improve, and a lot easier to be around than any self-proclaimed winners. And, isn’t that something to be thankful for?

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

Ps. For a deeper dive into human motivation, check out The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden. I also really liked a recent Episode of Ryan Holiday’s Podcast entitled The Daily Stoic: We’re lucky not to get what we want.

Strong Teams Value Relationships Over Results

What is the perfect team? Is there such a thing? At an instant, most of us can offer a championship sports team as an example. We can easily point out how each teammate played their role to perfection and sacrificed self-interest for the greater good.

Still, can it be that simple? In real life, don’t we have to look out for number one? Every company is looking to form a group of players who have complimentary skills. What about complimentary relationships? When examining successful teams, we need to look past results and resumes and consider social bonds.

Interestingly, for as often as we portray them as exemplary, one would expect championship sports teams to stay together. Instead, the players are usually off to bigger and better contracts within a year or two. While sports analogies have their value, they don’t go far enough to explain how we can build and keep strong teams in our lives.

To enhance the quality of teams in everyday life, consider the following factors:

Humility

In sales, people both work on teams and are compared individually. These rankings dictate not only income but long term employability. In the face of this tension, are the members of your team able to give each other credit for good results in person and in meetings? A strong teammate will congratulate another on an accomplishment, not stew in silent jealousy.

In addition, when it comes to receiving accolades, how willing are your team members to credit others and acknowledge luck? Rarely do good ideas surface in a vacuum. We’re often inspired by the words of others, sometimes without realizing it. And, like it or not, we know luck, bad and good, is inseparable from sales. Therefore, we’d always do well to acknowledge it, so our teammates can see we’re human and derive inspiration (not shame) from our success.

Personal Connection

It’s a misconception to think the best teams, being so engaged, only talk about work. It’s simply not true. The best teams I’ve been on have real conversations about a variety of topics. Our relationships became friendships, and bonds of trust were formed. This enabled us to have more productive and powerful conversations.

Better communication empowers people to come up with better ideas. Conversely, energy spent on guarding ones own interests comes at the expense of problem solving. Stress and fear inhibit the creative process. We can’t solve problems when we’re afraid of saying the wrong thing at all times.

Change Management

When teams are humble and closely connected, they become more able to handle serious change. When people can express honest opinions within a team about a change, they can safely “bounce” thoughts off each other. Therefore, each member gets to both share their own feelings and hear a non-judgemental outsider’s opinion. Crucially, this allows the team members to change their own beliefs without the burden of pride holding them back.

Through exposure to differing perspectives, members of strong teams are more confident to take action. After all, what do they have to lose? They know their teammates are there to support them. On weaker teams, denial of a change can fester and block progress. Consequently, once again, self-preservation can siphon away the energy needed for success.

Admittedly, it’s hard to argue with success – unless one counters with sustained success. We all can be lucky once, just not repeatedly. Therefore, we’d all do well to recognize and appreciate the humility and personal connection of strong teams when we find them. Otherwise, we risk seeing last year’s world champs crumble at the slightest obstacle.

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

In Sales, “Playing The Game” Means "You Lose!"

Are you playing the game?
Do you ignore the inept policies, bad managerial decisions, and unrealistic expectations that come with your sales job in hopes for a brighter future? Do you instead do EXACTLY what you’re told in the manner you’re told to do it? Do you tell management what they want to hear, not how you really feel?
Why We Do It:
You look good to your manager.
You get favored treatment.
You have job security.
You see no other alternative, except the shame of undperformance.
Why We Shouldn’t Do It:
1. You look good only if your numbers are good.
Most of us are only two bad quarters away from a performance improvement plan. Following company protocols rarely, if ever, saves anyone with weak sales results.
2. You take incomplete or bad advice.
If making the sale was as simple as following the 5 step strategy you learned in training, you wouldn’t have a job. A high school kid would be doing it. There is always more to do and learn than management tells you.
3. You often don’t improve your skills.
Doing only what your told is a convenient excuse for not trying anything new. It’s been years since your boss has really sold anything. Have the courage to expand your abilities by talking to customers, reading books etc.
4. You are vulnerable to the next market change.
Selling by the book may pay handsomely now, but when your market changes, you’ll be behind the reps who were thinking ahead.
5. You annoy your customers.
Your customers pay for the value that you and your product bring them. Even the ones that like you have limited patience. Don’t waste their time with anything that doesn’t meet their needs even if it makes the boss happy.
6. You perpetuate the very conditions you complain about.
Can you lose weight without diet or excercise? If you don’t at least TRY to change your company for the better, nothing will happen! The pharmaceutical industry is a great example. For years, many doctors have often not allowed sales reps to talk to them. To make their sales call metrics, pharma reps have, for years, simply put fake calls into their CRM systems. The result? Unrealistic call metrics never go away!
Modern research supports not playing the game as well. For a more in-depth analysis, read on:
Sales is a world of accountability gone wild. When they say “Sell!”, we say “How Much!” Yet we are only as good as our latest sales report. Again, regardless past achievements , most of us are only two bad quarters away from a performance plan. You tell yourself you seek challenge, achievement, and money but more so, you fear failure.
In her book, “Leading Professionals: Power, Politics and Prima Donnas”, Professor Laura Empson says that many companies look for employees they describe as “insecure overachievers”. These employees hide their insecurity behind a tremendous work ethic. Many salespeople suffer from what I call the Oxygen Mask Problem. “Please put your own mask on before attending to children” We’ve all heard the safety message when flying. The Insecure Overachiever does the opposite. He or she thinks that taking care of everyone else will ultimately result in taking care of herself. Except the world doesn’t work that way, especially in sales.
Playing The Game
Playing the game in a sales job means blindly following a set of rules with the hope that your career will be taken care of. As an official game player, you may see others who don’t follow suit as irresponsible or reckless. Ironically, it’s you that is not facing up to reality.
Sales people complain about everything from unfair pay, to manufacturing delays, to the color choices for their next company car. Some complaints are frivolous. Some are not. Either way, when at the next company meeting, a manager asks for feedback, you, the good rule-follower, remain hidden in the crowd refusing to speak up. Then, at the hotel bar later that evening, you unleash your complaints on whomever will commiserate. Congratulations! Send me your jersey size because you are officially playing the game!
You tell yourself there are valid reasons for doing this. It’s what everybody else does. It avoids getting you noticed for being a complainer. It puts you on your boss’s good side. Playing the game paves the way to your next promotion. It’s the best thing to do for you and your family. When the opportunity comes to act independently or speak up you turn it down. Ironically, in an effort to avoid betraying the system, you betray yourself.
Take A Time Out
Change is scary isn’t it? The system you hate is still one you know. Why take a chance when things can get worse? “I’ll just put my head down, do my job, and wait until things get better,” you may think. Unfortunately, things don’t usually get better on their own. Some have thought, “I’ll change the system by first rising through the ranks and then working to make a difference.”
Eric Barker, author of the popular motivational book “Barking Up the Wrong Tree” calls this sequencing. It’s the belief that you can plan your life in large chunks. Life often intervenes with family issues, health isssues, and anything else to send your dreams up in smoke. After downing the huge dose of conformity it takes to be promoted, you will you have the willpower to think of the less fortunate souls you left behind? There’s a reason newly minted sales managers are know for playing by the book. They are pre-selected based on their willingness to do so.
So, am I saying you should flip off the boss at the next meeting or conduct a Ghandi-style hunger strike until conditions improve? Absolutely not! Let’s revisit some reasons not to play the game and explore some ideas of what to do instead.
Reason One: Your Boss Is Human.
Sales people, like craftsmen, see their skills grow with experience. Unlike craftsmen, the material they work with, their customers, change constantly and have a mind of their own. Chances are, the customers and situations your boss dealt with, as a salesperson, are not the same as yours are now. High performing salespeople don’t even make the best managers, according to a large study published by the National Bureau of Economic research entitled, “Promotions and the Peter Principle“. The sales advice your boss gives you has it’s limits. The more experience you have in sales, the less valuable this advice is. Lower your ROI expectations on what your boss tells you.
Reason Two: You are being judged on your results, NOT on how well you follow rules.
What you do means more than a number on a spreadsheet. Like it or not, this is still the way most salespeople are evaluated. Whether or not you agree with the system is irrelevant. Most managers are playing their own version of the game and you have to live with it. In reality, how much you sell trumps everything else. A stellar record with turning in reports and kissing up to the boss rarely saves anyone with low sales numbers.
Reason Three: Remaining silent helps no one.
The Bystander Effect, coined by researchers John M. Farley and Bibb Latané in the 1960’s, is a phenomenon in which witnesses to emergencies are less likely to help a victim when in a crowd. Sound crazy? It’s not when you consider that each individual expects someone else to help out. Ignoring serious problems doesn’t solve them. It’s like telling your 13-year-old to skip all the difficult problems on his Math final. Not bringing up a legitimate concern to management can do a disservice to your real boss – the customer. Don’t forget, he or she makes the buying decision, not your manager. For a more thorough discussion of this point, check out my post “Think BACk: Free Will Is A Bitch!” Speaking of customers, how often do they change their buying habits without you or another salesperson supplying them with a reason? Serious problems don’t solve themselves. YOU need to speak up. It’s that simple.
What you can do about it.
Take responsibility of your own happiness. To address problems you can’t solve on your own, you have three options: bring the issues to the attention of someone who can solve them, decide not to let them bother you any longer, or seek out a better job.
Be thoughtful in the way you present your concerns. Do not make your complaint personal or deliberately insulting. Explain the ramifications of the problem as you see it. How does the problem hinder the sales process or your customer’s business? Finally, be prepared for any response. If you’re miserable and your company shows no signs of improving, look for a better opportunity. The same holds true if your company ignores problems and sacrifices the business you worked hard to win.
Be brave enough to demonstrate how much you care about your company. It’s unlikely you’re alone in noticing what needs improving. You might gain more respect from your peers for doing it.
Regards,
Meaning2work

Most Plans Lack One Crucial Ingredient: Humility

You’ve gotta have a plan.

Plans are essential, are they not? Without a plan, your weekend jaunt to the Carribean can, thanks to a tropical storm, turn into a hotel room Netflix marathon. Without a budget, you may unknowingly forego your next home repair for an extra round of drinks. In short, if you had clean underwear and gas in your tank this morning, you have planning to thank.

Without a doubt, we need to have plans and not just for practical reasons like the ones discussed. Thinking ahead makes us FEEL better too. Theoretically, without the worries of tomorrow we are free to enjoy today. Not only that, a solid plan can make us feel just a little superior to others, like those poor souls who didn’t use call ahead seating at the restaurant.

It makes no sense to fight city hall (or the Future).

Despite their enumerable benefits, our best laid plans inevitably come under scrutiny. If you’ve ever done a major addition to your house, you’ve probably had to submit building plans for approval from a Zoning Board or Commissioner before beginning construction. In response to your submission, you typically get one of three responses: an approval, a denial, or an approval contingent on changes. In short, the process is not as simple as picking up a hammer and swinging.

Unfortunately, even outside of the construction world, life’s response to our planning efforts can be similarly uncontrollable. It’s as if a Future Commissioner hands down judgements of our plans. However, unlike the Zoning Commissioner, the Future Commissioner requires us to enact our plan before she decrees one of the same three answers, a denial, an approval, or a conditional approval.

Humility – the missing link to most plans.

Can you imagine cooking multiple meals for guests and allowing them to sample and pick their desired main course? In essence, we never truly know the right course of action in any given situation until we take action. And, however well-researched or thought-out, our plans can still be toppled as easily as a child’s tower of blocks. To acknowledge this fact we must be humble.

What if we somehow could see the future? No, I don’t mean in a prophetic way like a character in The Matrix. Instead, we can use an ability we’ve had since childhood – our imagination. Most conventional planning wisdom regards failure as something to be planned against, not accepted. What if, instead of fearing the worst we made peace with it? Wouldn’t we then be more capable to respond when things go bad?

It’s one of the most commonly misunderstood facts about planning. Failure is not an option, it’s an outcome. Success is also an outcome. Neither is a choice. If a Boeing MAX 8 lands on your car during your commute, anything else you planned to do that day will technically be a failure. True humility involves a surrender to fate.

Even if failure is not an option, it’s still a possibility.

At this point, you might claim your secret to success is denying the possibility of failure. In essence, you use pressure to motivate yourself. While stress has been shown to produce a short term boost in productivity, it’s also been proven to reduce creativity and drain our energy. Doesn’t this seem like a steep price to pay for the luxury of temporarily fooling oneself

Humility – the best insurance policy.

When it’s time to face the truth, humility can free us from the feeling of loss. The humble person knows they were never entitled to a good outcome in the first place. Our hard work was a prerequisite not a guarantee. The good news? It’s impossible to lose something we never had in the first place. We didn’t lose anything and, instead may have gained valuable experience.

I propose the key to better planning is a better perspective on planning. It’s a valuable tool to move us toward better outcomes – no more, no less. It’s time to acknowledge that we can never fully control what happens as a result of our efforts. Just as we have plans for the future, the future will inevitably have it’s own plans for us. We can only learn, adapt, and respond.

Sincerely,

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Pride: What Ben Franklin Knew About It (and You)

Aside from Electricity, bifocals, the pros and cons list, and numerous other discoveries, there’s one idea Benjamin Franklin is credited for which you may not be aware. It affects you on a daily basis and has to do with your pride. Consider the following story.

According to his autobiograhpy, Ben Franklin once deliberately asked to borrow a valuable book from one of his political opponents. The rival obliged and, thereafter, treated Ben with a greater level of generosity and respect. In fact, they later became friends. This human desire for consistency was later labeled the “Ben Franklin Effect” and, most recently, was classified by psychologists as Cognitive Dissonance.

I’m the type of person who would…

Cognitive Dissonance is the tension we feel when we act in a way contrary to our past. Ben knew if he could get his opponent to do him one favor, he’d be more likely to continue doing them. For example, the moment you order steak at the seafood restaurant, you’ve just increased the liklihood you do the same on you next visit.

Ironically, Ben used Cognitive Dissonance to change someone’s behavior when, by definition, it’s more often used as a reason NOT to change. In my sales career, resisting change has been mostly detrimental. Early on, I was the type of guy not to ask for the sale. Therefore, I lost business. Later, I was the type of guy not to speak up at a meeting. Therefore, I remained unhappy and disengaged with my job for long periods of time. Whoever we are, we usually want to stay that way.

The Ben Franklin Effect = Cognitive Dissonance = Pride

I believe the issue truly at hand is pride and what puzzles me is the following paradox: pride in a possession entails care and periodic improvement. When we take pride in our house we tend to the lawn and replace things like shingles and gutters. Pride in ourselves, however, largely means being unwavering and resistant to change. A proud person holds fast to core beliefs knowing themselves and the truth.

Why the dichotomy in our definitions of pride? I attribute it to fear of being alone. In a literal sense, anyone who doesn’t know themself is forced to uncomfortably spend their every waking minute with a stranger. Therefore, we feel we must act in ways WE can predict. Besides, the alternative is a very traumatizing condition known as Amnesia. In comparison, we can easily see in our possessions (and our relatives and friends) the constant need for improvement.

Photo by Samuel Zeller via Unsplash.com.

Can I take pride in who I want to be?

Still, can’t we pride ourselves, not by the past, but by what we want to be in the future? Perhaps, like the car enthusiast toiling for hours on a heap of metal, envision what we plan to be and take pride in that.

Our biggest obstacle is how we understand and use power. A landscaper has the ability to dig, trim, and plant with their own hands. She can therefore make what she envisions come into reality. Many of our dreams involve money or accolades coming from others. And, try as we may, we don’t control others, we can only influence and observe. As we wait for the compliments, Facebook likes, and glowing performance reports to come in, we relinquish the power to cultivate and shape ourselves.

Is change mandatory?

Yes (gasp), at least in a scientific sense. Our bodies replace most of their cells over a period of seven years. Therefore, it would be impossible for us to physically stay the same, even if we wanted to!

One could argue that, in a mental sense, change is mandatory as well. After all, the people and situations around us are in constant flux. Some degree of change is mandatory just to adjust. That said, the way we change needn’t be dictated by someone else. We can certainly act as our own catlyst.

Again, that darn pride issue pops up! We look down on people who change to please others and, at the same time, yearn for people to like us for who we are! Pride without the willingness to change is essentially a lie. It’s like someone proudly showing you their rusting car, citing how sexy it was when they drove it off the lot. Who we are is fluid. We don’t have to live in the past.

Who’s in charge here?

To those of us, myself included, who desire too much to be perfect, the very suggestion of change can be an insult. Who are they to tell us how to change? You know you’re defensive when you can’t even question yourself! This is when we have to give up and resolve to no longer defend who we were in the past and instead plan what actions we can take in the future.

Of course, not all advice is good and much of it, however well-intentioned, should NOT be followed. Still, we shouldn’t dismiss criticism based solely on the source. That would again give up our own power to choose. Rest assured, when we think for ourselves, the choice to take advice is never weak. It’s probably the only way we can excercise true pride – the kind that improves who we are and doesn’t cling to the past.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Leadership Lessons from Chernobyl

Over the years, thanks to HBO, I’ve learned quite a bit about dragons, Wight Walkers, and Valyrian steel. This year, before I routinely cancelled my subscription, I gave into the hype and watched Chernobyl. After doing so, I couldn’t help but draw some lessons applicable to today’s business world. Before reading any further, please be advised I’ve included a nuclear disaster’s worth of spoilers below.

Corporate Communism

In the miniseries’ pivotal moment, main character, and nuclear physicist Valero Legasov, surprises the scientific community when he not only testifies to operator negligence at the plant but also a host of bad decisions made by the Soviet Government and their subsequent cover up. In response, the KGB isolates him from his colleagues and takes away all his professional achievements. There was no need to kill him because his exposure to nuclear contamination would, in a few years, do the job for them.

Costly Corners Cut

Inspired by our news shows, we may fight tooth and nail to preserve a free and open marketplace. How else can we foster innovation and healthy competition? Remarkably, inside our corporations, we permit a version of communist rule. By this I refer not to the “we’re all equal” ideal but instead the “never question the state” reality of most communist governments. We therefore resolve to keep our praise public and our complaints private.

The nuclear reactors throughout the Soviet Union at the time we built in such a way that a disaster was bound to happen. They each had the same emergency shutoff feature that used rods of an element called Boron. When the reactor produced too much nuclear energy, the rods were moved close to the nuclear elements to slow down or stop the reaction.

To save money, the Soviet government made the tips that secured the rods out of graphite. Graphite, under extreme conditions like those at Chernobyl, doesn’t slow nuclear energy production, but enhances it. It was like throwing gas on a flame. As a result, the reactor exploded and began steadily throwing more radiation into the atmosphere per day than 48 Hiroshima bombs.

I suspect most of us are thankful not to work in such dangerous environments! The average American is much more likely to die of heart disease or Cancer than a nuclear explosion. Yet, somehow, the growth of insurance deductibles, premiums, and co-pays always seem to far out-pace wages. Yes, healthcare costs in our country are out of control but is that the fault of employees themselves? In the name of pleasing investors we shift the health cost burden to employees.

We All Sacrifice More Than We Think

Although many of the workers who worked at the plant or responded to the disaster died, not all knew the risks. They accepted, in some cases, large promised payouts without knowing they’d never be around to collect them. Many of them endured painful deaths over weeks as nuclear contamination melted their bodies at a cellular level.

Few us will ever have to make that kind of sacrifice. Yet, it’s not unheard of to spend 1/4 to 1/3 of our lives at work. If that sounds low, remember we also have to sleep. Does the time we spend at work adequately support the rest of our lives? That’s a question everyone must answer for themselves. That requires us, however, to take the time to think about the true meaning and value of the work we do.

Will our sad state of affairs every change? Not if we don’t. Instead of complaining, we can challenge our employers, current and prospective, to prove they value employees more than their competitors. After all, isn’t that what a free market is for?

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Skill vs. Luck: A Useless Debate

Photo by Joel Danielson on Unsplash.com.

My sales career (rose-colored glasses required):

When I’ve crushed sales goals, won awards, and made the big bucks, it was in situations where I had a:

Realistic sales quota
Territory with high quality customers
High quality product
Reasonably priced offering

In my mind, these factors combined to reveal the talent I already possessed. Finally, I was getting the recognition I deserved!

Sure, I know I’m special – a one of kind salesperson. See how I excelled when given the proper opportunities? Heck, I’ve even done well without having one or two of the above factors on my side!

Conversely, when my numbers were lackluster and the accolades weren’t flowing, my:

Sales goals were way too high
Territory had little to no potential
Product was low quality
Product was overpriced

I was clearly set up to fail! Luck and circumstances were not on my side!
And I went on thinking this way – for years.

Eventually I saw a pattern. When times were good I always took the credit. When times were bad I took none of the blame. And, in doing so, I wasn’t special. In fact, based on those around me, I was rather ordinary.

Are you ordinary too?

We all have a natural tendency to attribute our accomplishments to skill and those of others to luck. Ironically, when it comes to failure, we do the opposite. Ours is due to bad luck and theirs is due to lack of skill. Check out Thinking In Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke for an interesting read on this topic.

Sadly, all of us, from entry level reps to VPs of sales regularly fall victim to what Ms. Duke calls Resulting. It’s the tendency to judge skill and effort based on results. In doing so, top reps get promoted and bottom reps get fired sometimes for doing the exact same things. Only we don’t see it that way. Surely the top performer MUST be doing something better than the bottom one?

Is motivation the key?

It could be that those who find motivation are destined to win. Unfortunately, we see it as a prerequisite for superior performance without realizing the opposite may be true (I call it the Performance Effect). Seriously, what’s more inspiring than a rosy sales report or more damning than a performance improvement plan?

So, how can someone inspire themselves when their sales numbers scream, “There’s no use! You’re destined to fail!”? Here’s what I did: I stopped caring about things I had no control over and started focusing on things I did. Sales results? They never were totally about skill or luck, just a combination of the two. I control what I put into my job every day, not what comes out.

Skill vs. Luck – A Useless Debate

How much of our job is skill and how much is luck? It’s the million dollar question. Perhaps the answer would assure us a place at the top of our sales rankings indefinitely. Winning the lottery would be nice too! We may never know the answer. It may differ from job to job and rep to rep. For my own sanity, I’ve stopped pretending to have all the answers.

I’ll focus on what I can control.

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Beware of Representativeness

Photo by Taneli Lahtinen via Unsplash.com.

Are you an ideal salesperson? Do you possess the right habits and personality traits? Before you critique yourself, consider you may be battling an unseen enemy- representativeness.

Consider the following hypothetical scenario:
You’ve just learned your getting a new next-door neighbor. All you know is she will be one of two salespeople. Salesperson A drives a BMW. Salesperson B drives a BMW, has a confident personality, and travels extensively for work. Who is more likely to be your new neighbor, person A or person B? If you chose person B you would be… (drum roll please) wrong!

How is this possible? By definition, people like Salesperson B are a subset of people like Salesperson A. Therefore, the group of people who comprise all BMW-driving salespeople has to be bigger than those with the same car who are also self-assured road warriors. This means the likelihood of your neighbor being Salesperson A is higher. The reason it’s so easy to chose Salesperson B is because, in our minds, the extra details provided make them more representative of a typical sales rep.

According to Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, representativeness is a mental shortcut. We use it to judge probability by looking for patterns. As a result, it’s easier to believe the validity of comparisons between reps when one meets our stereotype of the ideal rep and the other doesn’t.

In real life, high performing salespeople are a topic of great interest. Leaders, often set out to find what makes these overachievers unique. In doing so they often mistakenly settle on the traits they expected them already to have. And, rarely do they look any further. Rushing to judgement, leaders may neglect factors, like the local economic climate, that can have a strong influence on sales.

As we know, the comparing of salespeople is serious business. For reps themselves, it can determine not only their income but their overall job security. Given the stakes, sales reps and leaders both need to slow their thinking and look deeper into the validity of their measurements. It’s time to value representatives over mere representativeness.

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Illusion of Control

There I stood, spandex clad and heart pounding, at the start line of a bike race. BAM! The gun went off and I was going. Call it the ultimate test, me vs. the other riders vs. the muddy trail. Despite all my preparation, I got to the start line late and had to start in the back of the pack. To make up ground, I put my head down and focused on passing other riders until I was – in the front?

That NEVER happened before! I was in CONTROL! I no longer heard the other riders, just the rush of the air through my helmet and the pounding of my pulse. That day, I finished a respectable 3rd out of 20 racers. Despite leading most of the way, victory was snatched from me at the last minute.

It didn’t matter, from there on, I was hooked! I spent 2 years training and racing to replicate that result. It never happened. Later, I learned that another big race took place that fateful day and many of the skilled riders attended it. Sadly, my ability to control a race was a mere illusion.

Psychologist Ellen Langer named this fallacy the Illusion of Control. It’s the belief that we control things in our lives that we don’t. Imagine a gambler thinking she’s “on a roll” and can’t lose or a day trader thinking he can make a stock price rise just by buying shares. It’s not hard to see their folly.

However, are we able to spot this illusion in our own jobs? Do we in sales control what our competitors do? Do we set the purchasing budgets of our customers? We know these and other factors heavily influence customer behavior but ignore them after we’ve had a good year. THAT accomplishment came from us alone! At the same time, when our numbers are sub-par, we point to a multitude of factors out of our control. And, leadership often suffers from the same bias, no one wants to tell their team a dose of luck may be essential to achievement.

Therefore, we need to acknowledge that control of anything requires time and effort – two resources we MUST use wisely. When we stop straining for things out of our reach we free ourselves to be accountable for the things we DO control – our thoughts, actions, and skills.

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com