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A few months ago we wrote about annual reviews, and how to make them more meaningful, useful, and less stressful. One of the tools we discussed for the reviewer, was keeping a journal or logbook on the good points and the “needs coaching” aspects of the reviewee. Today we’re going to talk about journaling for the reviewee, and journaling in general. I have found it to be a game changer in my career, both as a worker bee, as a manager… and as a regular ole living, breathing human person! I keep three different journals: Journal # 1: … is motivational. I start my day with a personal journal. I write down what I plan to accomplish at work and in my personal life. I also do some daily affirmation things. Daily affirmation exercises are often considered a bit cheesy, and yes, Saturday Night Live did some hilarious sketches poking fun at the daily affirmation stuff. Stuart Smiley always closed the bit with, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” When I was first coached on this, I didn’t take it very seriously. But, as part of the training, we had accountability partners and whether I liked it or not, journaling was a requirement. We checked that each of us was journaling and what we were journaling (although we were allowed to keep portions of our journals private). We discussed its effects, and how this daily activity evolved over time. This was an ongoing training for management, sales, & operations personnel. With few exceptions in the group I worked with, we grew to embrace that morning journal exercise. Journal # 1 is an everyday thing for me, it has become a habit. I keep it short; I keep it positive; I refuse to make it redundant, with one exception. Here is what I wrote this morning, June 19, 2024: Keep moving… get up and walk around. Look outside!! I’m excited to see the team at A.C.M.E. Flour & Feed (fake name!!) today. Airplanes are the bane of my existence, but they are a tool of my trade… get over it and get on with it. 54 families*. I’m glad to be here. *Note: There are 55 employees in my division. 54 of them are not me. They make their living at this company, and they need to be considered in my daily decisions. “Glad to be here,” is something I write down every day. I first heard it at a keynote speech from Blue Angels Pilot, John “Gucci” Foley. Gucci is one of my all-time favorite speakers. “Glad to be here,” is something all Blue Angel pilots close their dialog with when debriefing a mission. I found that simple tag line inspirational. “You’ve gotta be ‘Glad to be here!’ And, if you’re not… you’ve gotta work on being somewhere else! If you start your day expecting things to be great and believe that you’ll be glad to be wherever you are, your chances of that becoming your reality increase exponentially. Journal #2: … is biographical. I usually put entries in this journal at the end of a day. When related to our workday, I believe in documenting successes and challenges. Spending most of my career in sales, this is sort of like a call report, but about yourself, not your customers. It can be effective in any vocation. Capturing milestones, accomplishments, challenges, & cool stuff, and how you navigated these events, is something everyone should consider. It is especially important if you’re starting out or starting anew. If you did something great, write it down… and how you did it. If you did something dumb, write it down… and what you learned from it. If you experienced a policy enforcement, or had a conversation that you disagreed with, but were afraid to speak up in the moment… write it down! Because you might forget. Work life and personal life get busy, a lot of us spenda lot of our day just wading through the mud and the mire just trying to get through it all. Have you ever gone through a challenging stage in your career or personal life, and looked back and wondered how you got through it? Do you think it might be important to remember how you overcame the obstacle? Journaling helps! The simple act of writing it down helps commit it to memory. I rarely go back and look at these journals from a research standpoint, because if you write it down, it sticks with you. This recap isn’t necessarily an everyday exercise, but it can be. Where I find it most important is in documenting success, wins, and cool stuff. Our memory banks only hold so much information, and for most people, our memories can be kinda mean to us. So many successful athletes and coaches will tell you that they remember their losses and heartbreaks much more vividly than their championships. A good way to rewire that memory bank is to write those wins down. You got a project done ahead of time; write it down! You brought up an idea that everyone loved, you made a presentation in front of a large group, no one fell asleep, and everyone applauded when you were finished… write it down!! You got married, and you really like this person… write it down! Alright, that might be extreme, someone will probably have photos. And that leads us to… Journal #3: … is a performance management timeline. I started doing this a few years after I became a people manager. Early in this management role, there was a lot of disfunction on some of the teams I worked with. I spent as much time with our Human Resources department and writing letters of reprimand, as I did performing my day-to-day job. Performance reviews were all about “where you need to improve” vs. “what you are doing well.” There needed to be a change, and one of my mentors gave me the idea of a performance management timeline. A simple Excel spreadsheet that documents events, milestones, and yes, cool stuff. (You MUST write down the cool stuff!) Nobody is perfect, but I also believe no one is all bad either. As a manager, I focused on documenting coaching opportunities, and slaps on the back and “way to goes!” Currently, I have the good fortune of working with a true team, a group of people who are fantastic, passionate, self-starting, professionals. They require very little coaching, and almost no supervision. When review time came, I had limited data to discuss, so I told them to keep their own timeline journal. Writing down their wins, issues, concerns, and ideas is a requirement and needs to be presented and discussed twice a year. It has worked very well. As a reviewee, it might be helpful to your supervisor to remind them of the good work you’ve done, your accomplishments, your areas that needed improvement (in your opinion), and how you addressed them. Your manager might be doing it already, or they might not. If they are, a second data source based on your personal experience is still going to be helpful. If this exercise feels like you’re just giving yourself a pat on the back, good. A final note: … it’s not bragging. It's journaling. It’s a good way to start your day and a record of good things you do. It also helps you remember what you’re capable of when things aren’t going so great. Write it down!!
Last month, I was commiserating with a few friends about the exhaustive nature of the end of the school year. Ceremonies, class parties, volunteering commitments, exam schedules, teacher’s gifts, coaches’ gifts and more. My friend said, “You know they’re calling it Maycember now.” What she meant was, the month of May has now become as chaotic as December. And for some (including myself) the professional workload is heavy and, at times, urgent- as the summer is pressing and there’s a sense that things need to be completed before it arrives. Recognizing priorities During times when personal obligations and professional responsibilities collide at full speed, it can feel impossible to tease out the priorities. One day I locked in on a writing project for hours and missed the room parent’s last call for contributions to my son’s 5th grade teacher’s gift. Early the next morning, I frantically waited in the parking lot for the grocery store to open, bought a gift card for the teacher, and fled to the school to tuck my tardy present into the class gift basket. Scurrying around over this task all morning left me behind in finalizing a set of presentation slides I had promised to send to a colleague first thing that same day. So suddenly that task became urgent too. Panic makes it hard to see straight. I couldn’t take a thoughtful pause to consider how reordering my approach might have made things easier. The span of time when I was sitting in my car near tears in the parking lot waiting for the store to open, might have been better spent at home, completing the presentations slides. Stopping for one second might have also helped me remember that the teacher basket was not scheduled to be gifted until lunch or at the end of the day. Writing it all down When the multiple balls we have in the air seem like they’re falling all at once, stop, take a breath, and make yourself take time to write it out clearly. Taking this moment to pause and consider each item on your plate in isolation might reveal where you do have extra time or where a deadline is merely self-imposed or reactionary. Here are a couple of strategies you might try: MoSCoW prioritization method The MoSCoW method is a straightforward approach to prioritizing the tasks on your list. This simple strategy works best when the tasks are all yours and not really things that can be delegated. It involves going through each item on your list and assigning them a value: M- Must do. S- Should do. C- Could do. W- Won’t do. Once everything is assigned, delete all the W tasks. Then go through and re-order: M tasks first, S tasks next, C tasks last- or maybe save them for another time! The Eisenhower Matrix Another strategy is The Eisenhower matrix – a planning tool to help you distinguish between important and urgent tasks as a means for optimizing your productivity. Urgency refers to how quickly a task needs to be completed. Importance relates a task to your goals or values. The Eisenhower matrix divides your tasks into four quadrants: Urgent + Important (emergencies) Not urgent, but important (planning) Urgent (interruptions) Neither urgent nor important (trivial activities) Taking time to consider every request or task that crosses your desk can ensure you are putting your greatest effort into things that are timely and meaningful, and set aside time wasters. Implementing the matrix Once you’ve filled the four quadrants of the matrix, look at each category and make your plan. The truth is: Managing your priority list efficiently and productively will help you avoid taking on things that don’t relate to your overall goals and ambitions. Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything on your plate, try one of these strategies and see if they work for you.
All of us have things we love to do outside of work that keep our attention rapt. How great does it feel to get so involved in what you’re doing that time flies and you can think of nothing else! In this month’s newsletter, we’re going to talk about finding that same intensity of focus in our work. Making space to be creative Before we dive into the concept of a “flow state“ let’s make space in our schedules for being creative. Here’s why: the most optimal time for reaching deep concentration and originality is when the challenge at hand is compatible with your competencies. Cleaning the junk out of your email inbox, for example, is unlikely to inspire the greatest contributions to your work. That’s because deleting blinking ads and coupons is annoying but not very hard to do. Try to automate mundane tasks that keep things orderly but don’t require a lot of heavy lifting. In the case of email housekeeping, you could tidy your inbox at the same time every day. Set a 10-minute timer to avoid overthinking the process. Make folders for things you aren’t ready to delete but shouldn’t be distracted by right now. Perhaps email isn’t your easiest task but take the effort to decide what is. To isolate the items in your workload that can be compressed into automation, make a list of your departmental responsibilities. Put them into categories such as “simple”, “moderately challenging”, and “complex.” Tasks that don’t take up too much brain power shouldn’t overstay their calendar time either- even the ones that are tedious. Plan your approach for these tasks, be prescriptive in how often you’ll tackle them and how long they should take, and then slide them in your schedule at regularly occurring intervals. “The Secret to Happiness” Now that your daily routine is a little airier, it’s time to talk “flow state.” First, some background on the topic. Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave a Ted Talk on what he claimed to be “The Secret to Happiness.” Growing up in post-war Europe, he was surrounded by hopelessness. He noticed that some of the adults around him remained devastated by WWII and couldn’t find their way around the sadness. He began considering what makes people truly happy and quickly realized it wasn’t money. He zeroed in on creatives such as artists and musicians because of the devotion they have for their craft even without the promise of “making it big.” What would make someone work that hard for such little reward? His years of study revealed that all kinds of people take on hobbies and sports they find so satisfying that they lose all sense of space and time when doing them. Their contentment is their reward. Csikszentmihalyi says we can all access our creativity and retreat into this intuitive mental state or “flow.” We’re not talking about things that are a cinch (please see section on automating tasks that come easy to you!). The idea is to find yourself so deeply focused on whatever you are doing, that nothing- not your phone, fiddling with the music, or wondering how long until lunch- is going to distract you. It’s being completely present. Not only is regularly dipping into a “flow state” satisfying, if we can access this process at work, flow can help us to be productive, motivated, and even foster an appreciation and sense of loyalty for our organizations. Finding your flow state It’s true that you can’t totally manufacture the flow state. Often, getting in the zone is most powerful when it happens spontaneously. But you can certainly optimize the chance of finding your flow by following these steps: Choose the right task. We already decided what’s too easy. A recent article in BBC Worklife warned, alternatively, against choosing something unfamiliar because the process of learning something new can be too frustrating. You can’t get the flow going if you’re irritated. - Pick something you’ve done before, and you find a little bit challenging but isn’t so unfamiliar that you get stressed either. Just like you did with the simple tasks in your workload, try making a list of the exciting components of your job. When do you feel most invested? What captivates your attention? What do you find meaningful about your work? Ready your work environment. A quiet, orderly workspace, with minimal distractions is best. Put your phone away and close your calendar. Put on a sweater if it’s chilly. Some people like working with quiet instrumental background music, others prefer stone silence. You might also try a “brown noise” playlist on Spotify. Brown noise is a low-frequency sound that is meant to provide a feeling of calm and focus. Set a clear goal. This step is very personal, of course. Start broad- what is the overall purpose of this exercise? To improve upon a certain system? From there, continue fine tuning your thoughts to establish your desired outcome, how to measure your success and report your results.
0 Upping Your Presentation Skills
The way we speak is often the first cue we give others that they can count on us to provide meaningful information, that we are credible and trustworthy. However, one of the trickiest things about public speaking instead of writing- whether in front of a big audience or a small group- is that it’s happening in real time. We don’t get the extra few minutes to review and polish like we do when writing an email. Public speaking is hard. Sometimes our minds race much faster than our ability to form words which causes us to look nervous or pepper our presentation with fillers. And while some can improv, many of us need to practice or even memorize lines before we can talk comfortably in front of a crowd. For anyone with an eye toward leadership, public speaking is a crucial skill. Doing it well assures listeners that we will be dependable when leading, supporting or managing whatever task is at hand and gives us an opportunity to draw them into our causes and interests. In this month’s newsletter, we’d like to provide some strategies to help you do it better. Eliminate filler words Filler words often creep into our vernacular without us noticing. It’s okay to let that happen sometimes, but if you find yourself saying “like…”, “um…”, or “you know what I mean…” a lot, be aware that you might be deflating the power of your message. Fillers often operate like a brain break, a second to catch up, a mental breath. Our brains do need breaks, but it’s better to stay silent than fill the space with nothing words. A recent article in Mental Floss explained that great speakers often take pauses- sometimes even as long as two or three seconds. Taking a break when speaking might seem long to you but, to others, it comes across as being thoughtful and organized. Here are some strategies for cutting filler words: Take a moment before speaking to mentally focus. You can use mindfulness tricks or visualization strategies. Inhale deeply and imagine each breath scrubbing your brain of excess worry and unrelated topics. Create pauses when you speak. Remember that a good public speaker pauses when they need a quick second to plan their next sentence or even transition ideas. In fact, well-placed pauses can add suspense and excitement to your delivery. Break the habit with practice. Tape yourself or enlist a mentor or colleague to target the filler words you are most prone to overusing and then attack them. For example, if you tend to say, “she was like” practice replacing like with said. Then make a list of substitution words such as “explained”, “complained”, “expressed”, “enthused” …Your goal is two-part: ditch the “likes” and replace them with more interesting language. Practice, practice, practice. Non-verbal speaking cues Not to pile on, but what you do with your hands and the rest of your body matters too. Get yourself into the habit of making eye contact by starting with your family, roommate, or even yourself in a mirror. It can be awkward to look people in the eye but looking at your notes or focusing on the back door dilutes your credibility. So maybe the next time you ask your neighbor if the recycling truck is coming this week, notice the color of their eyes when they answer. It sounds incredibly awkward but taking that step will force you to linger just long enough to show your interest in sincerity in their answer. Mind your posture too because standing up straight exudes energy, confidence and poise. Here’s a checklist to make sure you are standing up straight: Brace your core Hold your elbows out to the side, lace your fingers in front of you Feet pointed straight ahead Keep your shoulders down, away from your ears Hold chin high Fold practice in your daily routine When you have something coming up that involves speaking in front of others, fold practice into your daily routine. Maybe you are being interviewed by a late-night talk show host on your commute or serving as an expert witness in a courtroom while fixing dinner. When it’s just you, talking to yourself doing the things you normally do, you tend to be more experimental. Try out an anecdote or explaining a complex idea. Ask a hard question or predict which ones might be thrown your way. Formulate an outline and fill it in with details in these moments where the stakes are low. If you find something that works, write it all down so that the next time you practice…you will have a script. Ask a mentor: Your mentor has likely had many opportunities to speak in front of a group, ask them for tips and strategies to do it better: What do you think the most confident speakers do in front of a crowd? How do you prepare for a presentation, big or small? Have you ever signed up for Toastmasters or any other public speaking training? Are you willing to observe me giving a presentation and then give me feedback?
