Tag Archives: Comfort Zone

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Dealing with Change: Both Wanted & Unwanted

Will it kill you? Or will you thrive?

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Once upon a time, I hired a fun-loving woman with great recommendations, strong experience, and impressive tenure. (True Story!)

Not long after she joined our team she began to struggle.   Things that she thought would be easy to learn were harder than normal, which chewed away at her confidence, which made it even harder to learn, which ate away even more confidence. Sometimes when we spoke privately, tears flowed.

At one point she shared that in her last role she was so confident that she would put on a pink feather boa. And when she wore it – everyone knew a special announcement was going to be made. Here she wanted to be her authentic self, but was afraid…

Each time we spoke, I would remind her:

  1. She was grieving. (She had just left a role that she knew backwards and forwards and upside down in a place where she felt understood, appreciated and loved and moved and started a new job.)
  2. She really was smart, capable, fun and wanted!
  3. She was focusing more on her mistakes and emotions than on what she knew she could bring and that was causing her to struggle harder.
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How to Refocus & Recharge – With or Without a Vacation

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Several years ago I was in a role that was getting busier and busier. As the demands and distractions poured in I began to feel less energized and lose my focus.
 
And as my focus shifted, so did the focus of the entire team that I supported.  With no corporate retreats in our future we needed to figure out how to refocus and recharge. 

Create an Experience1.  Create an EXPERIENCE:  

  •  I brought some tiny matchbox cars to a meeting and asked everyone to take a car and personalize it.
  • Then I gave them a bunch of foot-long crepe paper streamers and asked them to use a streamer to list one thing that was causing them to lose focus.  (And they could use as many streamers as they needed to.)
  • There were so many that the streamers quickly covered the cars and we talked about how hard it is to drive forward when you feel so covered up that can’t see the people you are working with, let alone where you are going.
  • Then I brought out a rocket.  (The kind you buy in a toystore that you can actually launch.)  The rocket was “beautifully decorated” with each of our objectives, and we talked about how looking up and focusing on where we were going could help us prioritize the demands and distractions, decrease our confusion and stress and increase our focus and results.  

And yes – when we achieved all of our objectives we drove to a field and shot off that rocket!

[Tweet “If you don’t have time to go away – How do you refocus?”]
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Executives: Do you have the courage to sit and listen?

Your team has just offered you the gift of honest feedback, will you open it or return it?

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Have you ever had someone that works for you ask you for a meeting? …Try to share a concern with you? …Or passionately try to share an idea?

How do you react when that happens?

 Have you ever considered that they are bringing you a gift?

  • The person that is coming has chosen to take a risk and invest in you and in the organization.
  • No matter what their title is – they have knowledge and experiences that you don’t have.
  • No matter what their role is – they see things in your organization that you don’t see.

~ Thank them for their courage.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ~Winston Churchill

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Leading Up: When to accept, speak for change or move on…

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Sooner or later we will all find ourselves in a situation where we could be leading up…

  • And will will need to choose to either accept what is happening, speak for change, or move on.

Each time I find myself in that situation the words below grow more powerful…

God grant me…

 The serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

The courage to change those I can.

And the wisdom to know the difference..

 Last week I read a very powerful article by Alli Polin that emphasized how leadership thrives when two people work closely together and titles don’t matter.

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Continuous Improvement: Cures The Two-Year Itch

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Several years ago I had a long but fun job interview. In that interview I was honest with my prospective employer about my strengths, my passions and my need to be challenged.

I pointed to my historical pattern of two years of achieving in a role, before I got bored and needed to learn something new and needed to make a greater difference. (Which usually meant I moved on…)

The interviewer smiled and nodded and shared that he had the same problem. …Until he came to work in this company…

He had my attention.

I had his attention.

And I got the job.