emily barnes

Emily Barnes

January 30, 2012 By Emily

“Executive Coach” Senior Associate

To organizations and individuals adjusting to recent, current or anticipated change, Emily Barnes brings the strategic focus and competencies gained during fifteen years of diverse experience with various leadership, relationship, performance and communication challenges.

A consultant and strategy coach, Ms. Barnes helps clients create and implement new success strategies. She coaches diverse professionals to align their individual achievements to organizational goals, identify critical success factors for both, and streamline essential job functions. Her experience with work and people management issues common to professionals in positions of authority informs her skill in helping others navigate leadership, relationship, performance and communication challenges inherent in their roles. Ms. Barnes serves public and private sector clients facing short-term, troublesome problems as well as threats to their long-term success.As one executive stated, Emily Barnes is the empathic listener, sounding board, interpreter, and strategist wanted in tight situations.

LEADERSHIP – RELATIONSHIP – PERFORMANCE – PRODUCTIVITY – COMMUNICATION
The project summaries below provide a snapshot of Ms. Barnes’ work in these areas.

Government Agencies

Small Business Administration. Targeted assistance to aspiring entrepreneurs guided the planning, development and implementation of business start-up seminars.
The World Bank. Conducted personal efficiency programs throughout agency. Measurably improved productivity among several teams by aligning work habits and systems to role expectations.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Coached team of research scientists to improved performance in work management, leadership, and communication.
U.S. Department of State. Coached information technology manager and core team to integrated performance and improved productivity resulting in faster turnaround times for customer service requests.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Led the installation of work organization processes for legal team members who reported improved performance and less stress.
U.S. House of Representatives. Coached several representatives’ staff members to improved work management and personal efficiency.

Global Organizations

A team consulting effort focused on relationship management strategies designed to redefine, support, and strengthen leader-follower relationships.
Interpersonal communication vital to team-based projects created problems for managers during collaborative efforts. One-on-one coaching closed the gap between performance expectations and skills.

Media Organizations

Guided highly successful managers and support staff of international newspaper to analyze and improve team performance following restructuring.
Strategist and sounding board for senior staff member of national news staff resulted in decision making clarity and improbable success regarding career-threatening issues.

Private

New self-management and relationship management strategies along with no-lose problem solving resulted in better relations and outstanding performance among team members previously experiencing personality conflicts at a top ten university.
Negative performance ratings in certain communities required strategic planning, program development, and implementation of diverse projects for medium-sized bank.

Nonprofit

Increased lagging productivity among core training staff for national association serving senior citizens after a restructuring of departmental roles and positions.
Restructuring plus results from 360 assessments informed the team coaching strategy to prepare managers of national credit union association for expanding leadership roles.
Coordinated the planning, development and implementation of leadership programs for thirty-six high performing professionals in seven states.

AFFILIATIONS

Advisor – Council for the Advancement of Small Business, a George Washington University program which prepares MBA students for business management.

Consultant and Coach – Executive Coaching and Consulting Associates, a consortium of highly effective executive coaches and consultants who collaborate to meet the developmental needs of senior executives and their management teams.

Productivity Coach and Trainer – Institute for Business Technology, proprietary owner of Personal Efficiency Programs (PEP), training executives, managers and staff in eighteen countries to work smarter.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

The George Washington University, Washington, DC.
B.A., International Affairs, concentration in Psychology – 1988.

Effectiveness Training Institute, Solano Beach, CA.
Completed experiential coursework, Effective Communications – 1995.

OrganizeYour Work Space for How You Work

January 24, 2012 By Emily Leave a Comment

by Emily Barnes

A well-organized office is one that not only looks good but is functional too. It is organized to match how you work, live, and travel – not how someone else does. The basic rule of thumb for placing things in a space is to put frequently used items close to you and infrequently used ones farther away with the remaining things situated somewhere in the middle. However, that rule falls short of telling you how to consider job duties while organizing your work space – so some of us use the “put-it-anywhere” approach. But, people who organize their space according to the work they do, how they want or need to do it, and where they do it, report being better organized and, generally speaking, feeling more in control of their work than the “put-it-anywhere” population.

To help you organize your space so that it better suits your job functions, here’s a brief introduction to the concept. Listed in this table are a few typical job duties:

Job Duties	Desk	Car	Airplane	Hotel	Home
E-mails	*
Web research	*				*
Calls	*	*		*
Reading, analyzing			*		*
Writing	*		*		*

The asterisks indicate where these duties are performed. While most of the work is performed at the desk, some of it occurs elsewhere. Using the above example, let’s start organizing.

E-mail & Web Research. Arrange the computer monitor so that your head is not tilted too far up or down for viewing, and put the mouse pad directly to the left or right of the keyboard to avoid awkward twisting of your wrist and forearm. Make sure you do not have to lean too far left or right to reach speakers, pen/pencils, sharpener, printer, any docking stations, or disk drives. Easy access to these tools will help you move smoothly from one task to the next. Create file folder categories to hold your emails or research. Mirror these steps at work and home.
Calls. At your desk, first adjust the chair so that your back rests comfortably against the back of the chair, and your feet are flat on the floor while your arms are at a right angle to your desk surface. Position the chair towards a pleasant view – decide what that view will be and make sure that it suits your personality. Do you need a picture, flowers, a plant or something else to enliven the view? Sit in your chair and situate the phone close enough to you so that your body does not have to twist into another position to use it. Keep the basic tools required for calls in a drawer or stationed closest to the telephone: pens, pencils, writing tablets, paper calendar or electronic organizer, and files.Keep two notepads in the car (one is your back-up) and make sure you can reach one as required. Since you know you will be making calls while in the car, put these things in a box or case: headset, pen, pad and copy of your phone/address book.For hotel calls, put a separate copy of your contact list in a permanent travel folder that accompanies you on every trip. Include a notepad along with current work that might arise during the trip and a portable office kit (sized 5×7; includes clips, stapler, scissors, tape, rubber bands, ruler). What else belongs in the folder? Consider, realistically, the kind of work you are likely to do while traveling and think through the material you will need to support your doing that work. It’s a good idea to create a checklist to reference before traveling so as to make sure you include the necessary items for your trip.
Reading, Analyzing. Organize this work around the concept of mobility since you will be reading mostly at home or while traveling. But first, answer some questions. On a scale of 1-5, how important is the reading material? What’s the deadline for reading? Your answers will help you decide what you will read, take home, or take on the next trip. Separate the reading you want to accomplish in the next few days and put it in a special travel case to carry home with you. When preparing for your next trip, transfer the desired reading material into your travel folder.
Writing. Before you begin writing, clear your desk of all papers and clutter unrelated to the writing project that requires attention. Put these unrelated materials in labeled file folders then mark their To-Do dates in your calendar before storing the folders in a file cabinet. Make sure paper, reference materials, and other supplements you need for that project are handy before you begin writing. Since you might also be working on a particular project while on an airplane or at home, keep the materials for that project organized together in folders, a binder, or a travel case for easy carrying between your office, home and travel destinations.

Whether at home, the office, or traveling, you can perform your job with the least amount of shuffling. The key is to focus on what you do and how you do it, then practice doing it better. Here are three steps to organizing space to answer the needs of a job:

List your primary job duties
Determine which of those job duties you usually perform while

At your desk where you work
In your car
On an airplane, train — or boat!
At a hotel
At home
Anywhere else

Create a plan to accommodate the work you intend to perform in each place.

© Emily Barnes 2004

How to Outwit E-Junk Thugs

January 24, 2012 By Emily

by Emily Barnes

As long as you are a participating member of an electronic mail service, you are going to get it. Unless you have a team of highly aggressive e-cops patrolling your e-premises and taking down the bad e-guys before they reach your desktop, you are going to get e-junk. Get used to it. But, rather than let e-junk rain on your e-motions, take charge! You really can outwit e-junksters, electronic mail thugs. Here are five actions to take starting now:

Set-Up A Junk Room. Many internet service providers allow users to have multiple mailboxes. Use one of them exclusively for receiving junk e-mail. Create an e-junk mailbox and use it exclusively to surf the internet, register at web sites, engage in discussion groups, or have online information sent to you. Conduct all of your “public” activity only from the protection of this junk mail control center. When lurkers grab your e-junk screen name while you browse, they will get a first-class seat in your junk room! Now, how cool is that? (If your primary mailbox is already inundated with junk e-mail, make it your junk room and create another address for controlled use.)
Never Open E-Junk. Sometimes spam mail contains an HTML code that, when the e-mail is opened, returns a message to the originating server saying the addressee’s account is active. In such cases, additional e-junk is guaranteed to follow. For this reason, it is better to delete e-junk than to open it. Some senders invite you to “Unsubscribe,” another way to “register” you for more junk mail. Avoid this by simply deleting the e-mail before opening it.
Always Delete E-Junk. Spammers attempt to get you to open their e-junk by using subject lines that suggest they know you: “Remember Me.” They pretend to respond to a query you never made, “Here’s the information you requested.” Your choices are to delete, delete, delete all of it or suffer the consequences of opening it.
Rule Your Junk-Free Mailbox. Make your e-junk mailbox the decoy for all of those e-thugs lurking in the shadows, for folks sending lots of e-jokes, for everything unrelated to your important business or personal matters. Browse it occasionally, read the funnies, scan it for relevant information, and feel your power when you delete the trash that is sure to accumulate there.
Expose E-Junksters. Every once in awhile you will dislike seeing the same old no-good thugs passed out in your junk room. Go ahead and turn them over to the e-cops. One very proactive authority is the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS www.mail-abuse.org) which has a database that lists internet service providers who allow their members to send unsolicited mail or to profit from having it sent. Subscribers to MAPS can block traffic from offending ISPs listed in the database. Another resource is SpamCop, www.spamcop.net, which offers free and paid spam reporting and prevention services. If you register for these services, remember to do it from your junk mail control center. You cannot be too careful.

These five steps create a handy acronym for controlling your e-junk. Without looking back, what is it?

First, let’s review: If you really want to outsmart e-thugs, you will need at least two e-mailboxes. Use one as the waiting room for strangers and the other as the waiting room for people you know. Surf only from your junk box, delete junk mail without opening it and report e-thugs as often as possible. You can control e-junk! Now, the acronym: SNARE. That’s right. Snare e-junksters; turn’em in!

© Emily Barnes 2004

Four Steps to Better Managing Your To-Do List

January 24, 2012 By Emily

By Emily Barnes

Raise your hand if The List (your to-do list) is as long as your arm! If you add more to-do’s in a day than you check off in a day, you might be a bona fide Monkey Farmer. I’d bet you the first jungle harvest that you really want to be a Monkey Charmer. But how does a self-afflicted List Maker, Breaker, Taker or Faker (one who adds completed tasks to a perfectly enormous list just to check them off) move from farming to charming that clinging monkey right off the back? I’ll tell you in a minute.

First, if there’s a ring of familiarity to all this monkey talk, you might remember a book, “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey,” by William Oncken, et al., written over ten years ago. The Monkey is a metaphor for the tasks that are yours to complete. Whenever someone gives you a task to do they are putting a monkey on your back and you have to do something to get it off. Accept enough tasks and you can be weighed down by all those monkeys. Oncken and his esteemed colleagues, Hal Burrows and Ken Blanchard, showed us how to keep other people’s monkeys off our backs. Now, we need to learn how to keep our own monkeys off our backs!

This article is dedicated to Monkey Farmers, those diehards who habitually rake in ideas, to-do’s, must-do’s, and other tasks that absolutely must be completed today! A Monkey Farmer is a true monkey lover — someone whose to-do list is not about meeting other people’s priorities. Instead, it’s about one’s own habitually unrealistic attempts to do more than any twenty-four period will allow and the subsequent anxiety related to it.

Stop, or it will cost you dearly. Is anything on The List really worth hyperventilation? Chances are slim that the answer is yes. So, before you even look at The List for the day, adjust your attitude. Get a grip; calm down. Take a lonnng deep breath. Before you know it, you will be able to tame your monkey loving tendencies — (ahem!) and then write a story about it. Here’s what you do:

Define your Big Picture.
Know your Payoff.
Simplify your Role.
Negotiate your Tradeoff.

Notice that each step requires the same thing. What is it?

Define Your Big Picture
The first step to taming your monkey is to recall why you’re doing what you’re doing. What is your Big Picture? If you have already formed your Big Picture, take a few minutes to review it. This awareness alone will help you at least stay on the fringes of a realistic perspective as you approach The List.

If you have not already developed your Big Picture or need to fine-tune it, this exercise might help: Ask yourself: “What must I do in order to feel great about how I manage this area of my life?”

Health — Physical and emotional well being
Career/Work — Livelihood
Self Image & Presentation — Personal care, professional style
Spirituality — Relationship with higher power
Home — Place to relax, recharge, energize, play, sleep
Relationships — People who really matter to me
Family / Spouse, significant other, children, relatives
Fun & Adventure — Playtime, hobbies, travel
Wealth — Financial resources
Social Responsibility — Contribution to people and causes

When you have answered the question for all the areas above, you will have a better idea about the Big Picture you’re striving to create in your life. The idea is to give yourself a reference point, or Filter, for decision making concerning your monkeys.

Know Your Payoff
With your Big Picture in view, look at The List and put every item on it through your Big Picture Filter. Starting with the first monkey on The List, decide if this thing is worth doing in the first place. If it is or will be important to at least one of the areas in your Big Picture, your payoff for doing it will be pretty good, good, or great! Putting your energy into doing it will return something valuable to you or to an outcome you want in the Big Picture. But, if something on The List does not create at least a pretty good payoff in your Big Picture categories, do not waste your time doing it. Cross it off the list! Quickly!! Lose that monkey and move on.On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being very important, decide what the payoff is for every item on The List. If your payoff is pretty good or better than that, your next decision would be when to do it: now or later. If you choose to do it later, then schedule the time NOW for you to do it later. The monkey just turned into an appointment.Simply put, The List is really a bunch of appointments to keep with yourself. Perhaps, at last, you will really scrutinize what goes on it! Your goal is to make sure that the pay-off you get by doing a task is tangibly related to your Big Picture.
Simplify Your Role
Once an item actually survives the Big Picture Filter, consider how you might be able to simplify your role as it relates to completing that item on The List. For example, for monthly transmissions to your accountant, you can streamline this routine process so that it becomes simpler to do. It might mean making an extra copy of an invoice when it is first produced and putting it in an envelope already addressed to the accountant — which would mean spending a few minutes printing enough address labels to last for the year so that the process of mailing is finger-snap easy.Be alert to making your weekly or monthly routines more difficult than they need to be. Look for opportunities to simplify your work; you might discover new ways to get it done faster and to keep your role as simple as possible.
Negotiate Your Tradeoff
Sometimes no matter how dreadful a task may be, it still might rank high in your Big Picture. It might take more time than you want to give it, or you cannot figure out how to simplify your role. At moments like those, you absolutely must recognize that sometimes it is impossible to balance what you really want to do (or avoid) with what you actually can (or can’t) do. Balance may be so impossible to achieve you might as well acknowledge that a trade-off is required. For example, if starting a business is high on a person’s list, she may trade it for relationships or her own health. The problem for some people is that they’ve made tradeoffs-by-default — that is, they didn’t intend to trade one thing for the other. They just kept doing things they wanted to do while avoiding making deliberate decisions around the same issue until the trade-off resulted from a chain of events. Don’t let this happen to you. First, decide what you want for yourself. Then, decide how you will do what you can to make it happen without sacrificing other things in your Big Picture.In the best of worlds, life will throw us monkeys out of the blue. When faced with a conflict regarding monkeys on The List consider the tradeoff required to take one course of action over another. This pause between thought and action might be exactly what’s needed to focus on the Big Picture.

Earlier I asked what each of the four steps listed above have in common with the others. Answer: Each step requires you to ask the right questions when you consider adding a task to your list.

1. Define your Big Picture. What is my Big Picture? Where does this task fit into it?

2. Know your payoff. Considering the fit, is this task very important, mediocre important, or not that important? What value does it give me?

3. Simplify your role. If I do this, how can I simplify it? How can it take less of my time and energy?

4. Negotiate your tradeoff. What must I give up now to get the outcome I want later?

The message is simple: Do not treat monkeys lightly. Although your ambition might sometimes exceed practical reality, you can always stop and start over again. Stop, take a deep breath. Start over. Now go and manage that list.

Designing Your Resume for Justin Thyme

January 23, 2012 By Emily

Emily Barnes

Your telephone rings and you answer it. The caller is Justin Thyme, a long-time recruiter extraordinaire. She’s been an excellent resource for you throughout your career and is calling now to tell you that one of her clients is buying another mid-sized company. Justin says one of the players believes you’d be a tremendous asset in a new division there and suggests that you simply name the job you want. It’s yours. No kidding. The circumstances are ideal, she says, for the client to meet with you when she comes to town in a few days. Are you available? Are you prepared for the meeting? Send me an updated resume. What’s that noise in th.-

Your alarm clock rings; the dream is over. You don’t have an updated resume, do you?

Given the opportunity to define the new job or career that truly fits your interests, talents and skills, you might be prepared to name it and claim it. But, for the sake of making a point, let’s say that you certainly wouldn’t want your existing job and are quite uncertain about what a new job would look like. In that case, you would be stuck. The following steps will help you to loosen up a little, to get unstuck about this issue so that you can begin to take constructive action towards designing a resume that suits your needs.

Step 1. List at least ten achievements that really matter to you – not just the ones in your career but throughout your life. Anything that deeply engaged you belongs on the list. Label the list: #1 – Achievements.

Step 2. On a sheet of paper labeled #2 – Payoffs, write the reasons why each achievement was particularly meaningful to you. Did you learn something, teach someone, love the challenge, discover something about yourself, make a difference somehow? What positive outcomes did you experience?

Step 3. Call the next sheet #3 – Skills and Talents and list the skills you used to accomplish each achievement. What skills, talents, traits, characteristics, attitudes, and behavior did you demonstrate?

Step 4. On sheet #4 – Likes and Dislikes, review each job you’ve held from the first one until now and list what you liked and disliked about each job. Anything from the commute to the work itself or nice or mean co-workers is fair game in this exercise.

Step 5. Review each job again and this time determine the skills you used to perform each job. What skills, talents, traits, characteristics, attitudes, and behavior did you demonstrate? Add your response to sheet #3.

Now use the data you have collected to look at your past in a new way. For instance, how do your achievements relate to the jobs you’ve held? How do your payoffs relate to your job likes? What payoffs from #2 also appear in #4? Do you notice any obvious patterns throughout the exercises? What skills are listed several times but used differently? How many other ways could you use the same skill? Your answers to these questions will guide you to new ways of thinking about your job preferences.

The key to creating a great resume is making it read like you would sound when you speak so that the reader gets a felt sense about you. This kind of congruity between your written and oral presentation always works to your advantage. So, practice describing your current job using the skills you want to use in a new job. Or, practice writing a new job description based on the skills you would want to use in a new job. Give your resume a silent voice by integrating in it the clues learned about yourself in each of the exercises above. The process of sifting through your experiences will help you to capture the consistent behaviors you have demonstrated throughout your life. It might also help you discover something about yourself that you might be taking for granted.