Tag: training

6 Reasons Why You Should Shuck the $@#* and One Why Profanity is Sometimes Good

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Breaking the Habit of Profanity in the Workplace

picture of businesswoman with profanity bubbleI was concerned primarily with profanity. Moments before my first on-air shift at a radio station I confessed my desperate nervousness to my Program Director. “I am scared about saying the wrong thing!” I professed. “What if suddenly I accidentally let a cuss word out or something?”

My PD assured me “You should be worried. It’s exactly the right attitude to have. The FCC doesn’t take that well!”

At the time, the Federal Communications Commission, who oversees broadcast media, had very strict rules about the use of profanity on the radio waves. A fine for the station and even for you personally was not completely out of the question, depending on severity and frequency.

“I knew that the profanity used up and down my street would not go over the air..so I trained myself to say ‘Holy Cow!’ instead. –Harry Caray, famous Chicago Cubs announcer

Our Words Make a Difference

I don’t remember the Program Director’s talk making me feel any better. I did manage to get through my few years in broadcast radio without letting a swear word slip out on-air. And there was another benefit to his little “pep talk” – it made my very aware of how language and the words we use make a difference.

Therefore, I want to encourage you to restrict the use of profanity overall – in the workplace, at home, in the community. Despite it’s prolific use today in the movies, television, and so forth, it still has a very negative aspect to it.

“All hockey players are bilingual – they speak both English and profanity.” -Gordie Howe

Here are some other reasons profanity doesn’t help

1. It’s Unprofessional

A study conducted by CareerBuilder.com found that 81% of employers believed swearing (profanity) brings an employee’s professionalism into question. A good 64% said it caused them to think less of the employee. Being a professional by its nature demands a certain level of self-control that profanity belies.

2. Words Have Impact

You know the old adage we used to say to the mean kids when we were young. You know,

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!”

Well, it’s a lie. Study after study has repeatedly shown that it DOES hurt us. Deeply. We might laugh it off as though we are too tough for anything like that to affect us, but it does.

The truth is that there is evidence according to authors Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman that words can literally change your brain. They suggest that just seeing a list of negative words makes you feel worse and disrupts many of the operational centers of your brain. Other research suggests it also changes the attitudes and behaviors of others.

Negative words, therefore, will trigger negative behaviors – not just in others but in ourselves as well.

3. Words Have Emotion

Words alone have minimal impact. It is the emotional context we put behind words that gives or takes away impact. Curse words by design have negative impact and so there is not really a way to say them with a positive impact. Some will try to say positive things that include profanity but the intent will diminish.

Think about it. If someone compliments you by saying “You F—in’ Rock!” does it really make it more positive than to just say “You Rock!“? In fact, if you look at it, the use of the profanity actually lessens the impact rather than enhances it. You focus on the F—in’ and not the rockin’.

4. It Desensitizes

The more profanity is used the less impact it has. On the surface that sounds like a good thing. Great! Curse up a storm and it eventually won’t bother anyone anymore!

Yet it also means it won’t have the impact you intended it to have. While there are some that curse as part of their second nature, overall we use curse words precisely for the impact they have; either to stress the emotions of your words or to intimidate or just to show power.

However, it’s like taking drugs. At first a little has effect but then after a while it takes more and more to have the effect we want.

5. It Impedes Communication

cartoon of man's profanity speech bubbles building a wall between peopleWhen people react negatively to curse words, their impulse is to defend. When they are defensive, they are no longer open to truly hearing what you have to say. Their response will almost always be a negative one; whether they become openly aggressive or opt for a more passive-aggressive stance. Either way, while the use of profanity triggers emotional response, unless your intent is simply to intimidate or cause emotional reaction you won’t reach your communication goals.

6. You Could Be Fired

While you do have freedom of speech guaranteed by the Amendment One of the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States also defined a category of exceptions they called Unprotected Speech. Part of the exceptions are many of the curse words we use. They are considered obscene and inflammatory and therefore are not protected by the First Amendment. It falls in the same realm as fraudulent speech or defamation.

Can be Beneficial

That all being said, most of do curse at least on occasion, me included. For those of who do once in awhile let loose with an expletive or two (or three) are actually finding a little bit of pain release, whether physical or emotional. A study reported at PsychCentral.com actually found it provides an outlet for pent-up emotions. We are less likely to to become violent when we let loose with a few profanities and can actually improve our well-being.

The same study, however, did find that high frequency diminished any of the positive effects. So if you are going to use curse words, be careful of how much and how often.

“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” -Mark Twain

So intent matters. Overall, remember that profanity is pretty much meant for negative and not positive impact. Choose the words you say and when you say them for optimal positive impact.

Do you use curse words in the workplace? Do you work with people who do? How do you think it affects work relationships?

Share your thoughts here in the comments or email me at psimkins(at)BoldlyLead.com

7 Signs of a Poisonous Corporate Culture That Destroys From Within

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Snakebit Corporate Culture

snakebit corporate cultureSome know what it feels like to be in a corporate culture in the groove.  The organization is in the right place at the right time with the right environment that encourages everyone to shine. We like that feeling and hope to feel it again.

What keeps us from having that feeling with many organizations is a corporate culture that destroys instead of builds; It discourages instead of encourages. Consequently it becomes the wrong place and the wrong time. Like venom from a snakebite, it courses through the veins of the organization. The venom causes a breakdown of the people and processes that allow us to succeed. Without eradicating the poison, it overtakes us and immobilizes us.

Avoiding the Poisonous Corporate Culture

Luckily, spotting a bad culture both as an employee and as a leader, is not hard if we step back and take a look. Before you allow your organization to fall prey to the snakebite, look for the presence of any of these symptoms.

Overly Formal Communication Channels

When just about any communication requires a memo or a broadcast email, it’s a good sign that there are some very deep problems. Sometimes, in industries where thorough documentation of processes is required, what would seem to be excessive formal communication is actually required and perhaps even regulated. In most cases, however, overly formal communication is a sign of a lack of trust and micromanagement – killers to a healthy corporate culture.

Too Many Secrets

When people aren’t talking it’s almost certainly because they are hiding something, not because they are so intent on their work. If the employees aren’t talking, you have to start asking questions such as “What are they fearful of?“, “What’s going on that they aren’t sharing?“, and as a leader “What don’t I know?”

On the management side there are those who regard information as power. Sharing information is equivalent to sharing power and some don’t want to do that. Or some simply want to leverage what they know.

Information is only truly powerful when it can used to create positive change. The more people know, the more likely they are to be part of that change.

[tweetthis]Information is only truly powerful when it can be used to bring about positive change.[/tweetthis]

Every Decision Waits on a Manager

In a poisonous culture, managers who want to maintain power and control will insist that nothing gets decided or done until they have given their OK.

I once worked for a manager who reminded me frequently to “don’t do anything. Bring it to me and I will handle it.” This despite having hired me because of my extensive experience handling precisely those types of situations. That often meant that something that could have been handled effectively in a few minutes or an hour would sometimes take a day or two. And I got bored quickly because I wasn’t really being challenged, I was carrying out whatever the boss decided whether I agreed with it or not.

Too Many Meetings

employees not listening to bossI have worked with organizations where they had so many meetings on the schedule I actually asked them how they found time to get anything done. This kind of corporate culture bogs down many organizations in, to use an old southern phrase, they are constantly “fixin’ to get ready“.

Meetings can have distinct and useful purposes. Too often, however, we call meetings just to have “status checks”. We gather everyone in a room and one-by-one go around the table. The vast majority will say everything is fine and we have now wasted another 30 minutes to an hour of productive time.

When people have tight deadlines, places to go, family to spend time with, and lives to lead then having a lot of formal meetings becomes an annoyance and a morale killer. Find alternatives that are more efficient and less time consuming; and don’t have a meeting to flesh it out.

Rigid Adherence to Policy

In a previous post, I mentioned about a study done by Jay Hall and Telometrics on the performance of 16,000 executives. In addition to the overall conclusion of a direct correlation between achievement and the ability to care for and connect with people, they also contrasted high performers and low performers. One of their findings was that

  • High performers focus on communication and collaboration and have a very participative style.
  • Low performers don’t communicate well and rely on policy and procedure and have a very bureaucratic style.

Policies were created to define standard responses and consequences to situations. The flaw in that is that people and situations are not so easily defined. The result is that the responses and consequences have a great likelihood of being unevenly applied. People don’t respond well when they feel they are unfairly treated no matter how consistent it is with the policy manual.

This is also why many organizations have tossed the HR policy manual and moved towards a more values-based approach and relying on using storytelling to provide guidelines for expected behaviors.

Aggression Rules the Roost

Aggressive bosses make for poor corporate cultureHave you ever had a boss proclaim “My way or the Highway!“? Then you know what we mean here. When managers and others use aggression they are trying to intimidate others into following their command or giving in. The aggressive manager wants to win at all costs, with no concern whether anyone else wins. In fact, they want you to lose.

These managers are also the ones who usually hog the credit for team success, They are the ones who stare people down, tower over them, and look over their shoulders as they work.

Their impact on morale and engagement is obvious. Most people reacts to aggression with either “fight or flight”. If they fight, even when they win they lose and the aggressive manager will be that much more determined to make sure you lose the next time. If they choose flight, they go passive-aggressive, showing resistance in subtle ways, or they leave.

The Only Line is the Bottom Line

Let’s get this out of the way: there is absolutely nothing wrong with profits. I like profits. The problem is when our profit and loss are the only drivers for our corporate behavior. I mean, did you see “The Wolf of Wall Street“? Then you get the picture of the detriment of a profit first and only mindset.

So many other drivers, when we pay attention to them, have a positive impact on the profit line that we really don’t need to focus on the traditional bottom line – it will take care of itself.

Companies like Copper Leaf Creative and Patheos and others have added additional parameters of success, many ranking customer satisfaction and employee retention above the financial bottom line.

Are you seeing the signs of a poisonous corporate culture in your organization? How do you think it got there? What has been done to turn it around? Leave your comments here or email me at psimkins(at)BoldlyLead.com

Not sure where you are or you know where you are and not sure how to stop it? Call me to arrange a FREE Discovery Strategy Session at 321-355-2442 to discuss ways to stop the poison.

What’s Keeping You from Really Connecting with Your Team and What to Do About It

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Team Building Through Connecting

Connecting with others yields big benefitsAlthough an often misused buzzword, connecting with others is one of the most critical leadership skills. If you are not connecting with your team and they are not connecting with each other you have trouble. Maybe not immediately, but very soon. Without connecting then communication, collaboration, and execution become significantly harder, if not impossible.

What is connecting? Simply put, it is the ability to identify with people and relate to them in a way that increases your influence with them. 

Why Are You Connecting?

So why is connecting and increasing our influence important? Influence is the precursor to success with people.

Jay Hall of the consulting firm Telometrics studied the performance of 16000 executives and found a direct correlation between achievement and the ability to care for and communicate with other people. In other words, caring and communicating translate to influence and leadership which translates to success.

Benefits of Connecting with Your Team

Increasing Influence

As we mentioned above, a primary advantage of connecting is building influence. We all influence; some big and some small, some positively and some negatively. Where we win with people is developing our influence to be greater and greater and always positive.

Strengthening Trust

When we reach the level of connecting with others they learn to trust us more. And we learn to trust them. Trust is the foundation for any group of people to be able to work together effectively and productively. Not fear. Fear has short-lived results and disastrous long-term results. Trust builds.

Meeting a Basic Human Need

Believe it or not everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, desires to connect with others. Introverts, extroverts – doesn’t matter.

Personal Accomplishment

According to a Harvard Business Review article, “The number one criteria for advancement and promotion is the ability to communicate effectively”

Why Aren’t You Connecting?

Bosses and leaders have trouble connecting because they don’t lay the groundwork. But why don’t they lay that groundwork? While the answers may vary, generally I believe it falls into one or more of these reasons:

You Don’t Care

This is the biggest barrier. If you don’t care, you can’t connect. And frankly, if you don’t care there may be nothing that can help you. To be blunt about it, if you don’t care you have no business being a leader or a manager. Quit. Now.

Or look inside yourself and realize you really do care and the reason must be somewhere else.

[tweetthis]If you don’t care you have no business being a leader or a manager. Quit. Now.[/tweetthis]

You Worry About Changes in the Relationship

When someone has or moves into a position of official leadership there is a concern that there must be some kind of invisible wall there that separates us from them. The wall is our protector because if we actually care for and connect with our team then we risk emotional impact when they leave – no matter the reason they left.

Fear of Vulnerability

Leaders need to show vulnerability if they want to connect with their team. They have to know you are a real person and that you can empathize with what they are feeling because you are or have felt it yourself. However, some equate vulnerability with being weak and think that showing weakness opens you up to attack or challenge. It goes back to the us vs them mindset.

Trust Issues

If you basically believe that everyone is lazy at heart, if they automatically try to get away with doing as little as possible, and will take advantage of you the first chance they get then certainly do not trust them. If you do not trust them, connecting with them does not seem like something you want to do. And it’s definitely something they don’t want to do because if you don’t trust them they don’t trust you.

Self-Esteem

If you don’t like yourself, it’s hard to like anyone else. As I researched this, I ran across several forums where people were talking about their inability to connect with others. The biggest reason for it was that they just didn’t like other people. Most of them also expressed that they didn’t like themselves very much either. It runs from the inside out.

You Don’t Know How

Many just do not know how to connect with others. They are terrible at “small-talk”, are uncomfortable with revealing questions, and are simply not sure where start.

Connecting 101

So let’s work with that last one on the list of reasons: you don’t know how. It’s somewhat understandable. To people who are task-oriented connecting with others just seems like fluff and they never bothered to learn. Others have varying levels of social awkwardness and even social anxiety that make it difficult.

But connecting IS a learnable, very learnable, skill. It starts with just a few simple techniques.

Connecting Requires Finding Common Ground cartoonStart with Common Ground

This should be the first technique you try because it is easy and you can do it right now. Find something that you have in common with the other person. What seems to be small-talk about significant others, children, activities, and so on are actually very important topics for finding common ground with others. Remember, too, that common ground is ALWAYS personal. Just working in the same place is not usually a good connecting point.

Keep It Simple

Too many people want to make what they say seem important by making it complicated. Yet simpler is better. Sometimes, simpler can be harder to do. The mathematician Blaise Pascal once wrote to a friend, “I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.“

People generally see through our attempts to cloud things with complexity. Remember that good connectors bring people clarity, bad communicators leave them confused.

Be An Encourager

Just like we all want to connect, we also want to be encouraged. No one rejects an encourager. And people willingly connect with an encourager. A caveat: be genuine with your encouragement or you will have the opposite effect.

Focus on the Other Person

Be interested. Listen carefully. Dale Carnegie in his flagship book How to Win Friends and Influence People puts it this way: “If you want to be a great conversationalist, be a good listener. If you want to be interesting, be interested.“

Disconnect

Put down your smartphone, stop tapping on your keyboard, and pay attention. We make better connections with people when we aren’t connected to anything else in the moment.

What’s the biggest challenge you have connecting with others? Can you think of someone who connected well with you? What did you learn from that?

Comment here or send our thoughts to me at psimkins (at) BoldlyLead.com.

Want to learn about caring for employees more? Get my eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank. It’s my gift to you.

Why Core Values Are the Foundation to Team Success

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Core Values Build the Team

Building a successful and productive team or organization takes time. You build it one block at a time. You want team members to know their roles and understand the expectations for behavior and performance. Yet that’s the goal not the beginning. Start off with that and you are building a house of cards.
If a new building is to be structurally sound, the first thing they do is establish the foundation. The higher the building, the deeper the foundation. Skimp on the foundation and everything else is weak and at-risk. Disasters results.
So, too, does building an organization require a strong, solid foundation. Skip establishing the foundation and eventually everything collapses; either because of a lack of guidance or because of behaviors that tear down trust. You must have a strong foundation. You lay that foundation with core values.

What Are Core Values?

Core Values are the foundation for everythingCore Values are the characteristics and qualities an organization, a team, or an individual defines as being at the heart of what they are about and how they will conduct themselves. They are the principles that determine who you are and what you are about above all else. It is the soul of the organization. Your core values are unshakable – no matter what you will always reflect these values in everything you do.
Yet core values can also outline behaviors you expect with the members of an organization. For years, one of Google’s core values was “don’t be evil”. Infusionsoft, a popular sales and marketing software company, lists one of their core values as “We do the right thing”. For many other organizations, they are simply one or two word statements such as Integrity, Honesty, Communication, Employee focused.
[tweetthis]Your core values are unshakable – reflect them in everything you do.[/tweetthis]

Why Are Core Values So Critical?

Establish Non-Negotiables

Determining your core values make it clear to employees, to customers, and to yourself what you will never compromise. When you establish a core value of integrity you are saying that no matter what else happens you are trustworthy, dependable, have strong morals, and people can count on you to do what you say you will do. Core values say you would rather the company go under than violate them. If you are not willing to die for it, then it’s not a core value.

Foundation for Mission and Methods

Interestingly enough, I have found that when core values are in place first then writing those dreaded mission statements become easier. Determining the methods by which the team accomplishes its mission and goals becomes clearer. One leads to the other.

Outlines Expected Behaviors

As a result, when your values are set in stone and your mission and methods are established from that, it ends up describing the behaviors you expect everyone to exhibit. If honesty is expected and modeled, you tend to get honesty. If employee-focused is expected and modeled from the top it floods down to every department, every manager, and every team.

A Must-Have for Empowerment

For that reason, you cannot have real empowerment with having values in place. Or, more accurately, you cannot expect consistent performance in empowered employees without core values. If make a profit is emphasized but core values of honesty and integrity are not established, then the empowered employee feels free to do whatever they feel is necessary to make a profit, including cheating customers. Values create the guidelines within which empowered employees operate.

Attract the People You Want

In my mentor John C. Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership he talks about The Law of Magnetism.  This law states that who you attract is not based on what you want, it’s based on what you are.  Who you are is who you attract. By developing your core values, you proclaim for everyone who you are, what you stand for, and what is really important to you. As a result, you will attract people who share those values.

Start with the Core

Therefore, like a bodybuilder starts by developing their core to strengthen their whole body, you start with core values to strengthen the organization. You define qualities that are necessary for consistent and strong performance. You make clear the standards that are non-negotiable in everything the organization does.
In fact, they should be in front of everyone’s faces, displayed for the whole world to see. It holds employees accountable, it holds you accountable, and it sets expectations for customers.

Three Steps to Establish Core Values

  1. Brainstorm a list of values, qualities, and character traits you would want your organization to reflect at all times.  Write them all down. Don’t evaluate them, just write them down. If you already have a team in place, do this together. You may come up with a huge list and that’s okay.
  2. Now that you have the list, we can evaluate. Look at each item and first ask yourself, “Am I willing for the organization to die rather than violate this?” If the answer is no, it is not a core value. Strike it off. If you are honest with yourself on each one you should find your list pared down significantly when you are done.
  3. Next to each one, on a scale of one to 10 rate your organization on how well it is displaying those values. Rate yourself and ask each team member to rate themselves as well. That accomplishes one of two things: it helps identify areas that need work or it causes you to question how important that value really is to you.

Can you identify the core values of your organization easily? How well are they followed? How do you make sure you attract the right people now? Drop me a line at psimkins@BoldlyLead.com.

If you are finding it difficult to establish your core values, contact me and let me help.

Tough Talks: Vital Conversation at Exactly the Right Time

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A Time and Place for Vital Conversation

Avoiding Vital ConversationNow is Not the Time.

You ever hear that from someone when you want to have a vital conversation? You want to talk about where the relationship is going.

I am not ready to talk about that.

You want to discuss your future in the organization.

This is not a good time to have that discussion.

Perhaps you have used this response yourself with others. Maybe even told it to yourself when you are faced with something that had to be addressed in the workplace or on your team. Adam is a gregarious person and has been with the team a few months. Everyone likes Adam. He always makes everyone laugh and he’s always ready to make the party lively. The problem is Adam is consistently not meeting his deadlines for deliverables on projects. It puts the project behind and causes everyone else to have to work longer and harder to make it up. So far, because Adam is so likable, the rest of the team has been good-natured about it but you know it won’t last for long.  You need to have a critical conversation now and it will be unpleasant.

Well, we have a couple of fires we need to put out, we’ve had somewhat of a crisis around here, and we need to meet these deliverables. It’s not a good time to upset the apple cart. Now is not a good time.

Vital Conversations Are Timely

As I write this, we in America are a day away from experiencing what is now being called The Worst Mass Shooting in American History. In Las Vegas, someone with unknown motives (at this time) utilized a number of rifles modified to be fully automatic to rain gunfire down on a crowd at a concert. Fully-automatic means the one pull of the trigger will fire off a lot of bullets within a very short span of time. The result at this moment is over 58 killed and over 517 wounded. It is tragic and horrendous. Across the country, emotions are high on this one.

Predictably, some have seen this as an opportunity to renew discussions of gun control. Others have railed against those people, calling them insensitive and politically opportunistic. They say that now is not the right time to talk about these things. Yet that is precisely why that vital conversation needs to occur.

Timing is Not Easy to Determine

Timing is a tricky game. Those who have mastered a sense of timing have gone far because of the right action at the right time. The rest of us struggle and learn from it (or don’t) every day.

However, because mastering timing is so difficult, many of us fall victim to what John Maxwell calls the Law of Diminishing Intent. In his book, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, Maxwell defines the law as one of increasing inaction. Specifically, John Maxwell says “The longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the odds are that you will never do it.” In other words, every time you put it off for later, the less likely it is you will address it ever.

Therefore, the time is now. Or at the very least we should set the time to discuss now. At least that action in the right direction is progress. Life Coach Mel Robbins advances another theory which factors in here that she calls the Five-Second Rule.

No, this is not the one regarding food on the floor. I’ve seen too many floors and the ways that too many people clean floors to buy into that one.

Robbins’ states her rule like this: If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.

It’s Now

The time for vital conversation is now.So the time for vital conversation is now.

The time to talk about gun control is now because in five seconds our mind will be on something else. Waiting got no results after Sandy Hook School shooting, it got no results after Pulse Nightclub shooting, no results after the Virginia Tech shooting, and nowhere after the University of Texas shooting.

It’s time to have that vital conversation about contributing to the team. Or about your future with the organization. And about where the relationship is going.

Rules of Vital Conversation

Just remember some basic ground rules for vital conversation, because to talk strictly out of emotion is to step back and not forward.

  1. Get Yourself Straight. Make sure you are in the right mode to have the conversation. You need to put aside strong negative emotions and be in a mindset for positive intent. If we start off making the other person the enemy we won’t get positive results.
  2. Eliminate Assumptions. Don’t go into the conversation assuming what the other person will do or say. That’s dangerous because we tend to then create the entire conversation flow around that and develop our mindset accordingly.
  3. Tell Your Story. In the book Crucial Conversations, this is expressed as sharing facts and then sharing the meaning you attach to those facts.
  4. Don’t Accuse. A vital conversation is not a denouement or court. Your role is not to blame but to find a resolution.
  5. Invite Exchange. Hear their story. Use Active Listening skills to find understanding. Look for shared meaning or connection. That’s where real vital conversation can begin.
  6. Agree to Action. That action might be a plan of improvement or an adjustment of roles. Sometimes it is simply another meeting date and time to continue. Other times it could be separation.

Action is Critical for Moving Forward.

Without an action plan of some sort, we are having vital conversations for the sake of conversation and nothing else. Without positive action, resentment grows – on both sides – and productivity fades further away.

What ways have you faced up to vital conversation or avoided it? Which point hit from above hit you the most? What more can you add?

Leave your comments here on this page or email me at psimkins (at) BoldlyLead.com

And be sure to ask for a copy of my eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care (and Not Break the Bank). It’s yours FREE!

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