Executive Coaching

organization

Articles For and About Women at Work

By

Lessons I’ve Learned

Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce Newsletter

Use honey, not Vinegar: A Sense of Humor Can Serve You Well

You know the old expression “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?” Well, this applies to the kinds of situations women often encounter at work where men say things they find offensive, or alienating. Sometimes women just feel left out of a discussion because there is too much “how about them Redskins” banter.

As women, you have choices about how to respond, but being able to handle delicate situations with humor will serve you well. If you respond harshly and you remind your listeners of the wicked witch of the West, you will most likely be called the “b” word. Over time, others’ perception of you may limit your chances of moving up in an organization because senior managers promote people they find easy to work with and having a sense of humor makes every day more pleasant. Besides, people appreciate being chided with humor rather than scolded. Criticism creates defensiveness.

If you fall into the category of “humor-challenged” here are some steps you might want to consider taking to “lighten-up”.

  • Self-observation: Find out what your triggers are. Triggers are events or situations that provoke an intense emotional response. First, pay attention to your internal reactions. If you have these kinds of reactions when sexist jokes or inappropriate comments are made:
  • Your stomach gets as tight as a ball,
  • Your jaw begin to clench so your teeth begin to grind uncontrollably
  • Your face gets flushed so you look like a petulant teenager
  • You dig your nails into your hands until they have those little new moon marks on them…….

Then you know these kinds of comments are your triggers. I’m not suggesting that you ignore behavior that is illegal (violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) but for a while just observe your internal reactions.

Then observe your verbal reactions – what you are saying and how you are responding. Being conscious of your reactions helps you identify the behaviors or actions you might want to modify. If you notice that you sound like the girl in the “exorcist”, you’re on to something.

  • Observation of others: More importantly, though, observe the responses of others if you react angrily or in ways that might be perceived as “haughty.” While you have every right to voice your discomfort, your listeners might, in response, tune you out or get defensive. Their rolling eyeballs, slouched postures and grim faces will be good indicators that they’re unappreciative of your “feedback”. You might want to ask yourself whether you have accomplished your ultimate the goal: Is your goal to just stop the behavior at all costs or also give people information that helps them reflect upon and then change their behavior?
  • Find a role model: Locate a woman in a leadership position in your organization who reacts to situations humorously and gets a positive response from others. If there is no one in your organization, find someone or ask a colleague or friend to recommend a woman in a leadership position whose behavior your might observe. You might want to interview her to find out how she perceives behavior differently than you do, how she chooses to act, and what she has found to be successful.
  • Try reframing the situation: See how others use reframing to respond differently to situations that send you over the edge. Reframing involves changing the context so we see the situation in a new way. For example, you think some man is a total jerk but then you find out he is struggling with a personal problem and he uses his behavior to cover-up his own pain. While you still find his behavior objectionable, you might be more empathetic and willing to suspend judgment.
  • Lastly, find a partner who can help you lighten up. Whenever life just gets too serious, I call one of my girlfriends who I can count on to make me laugh. Then I can face the rest of the day a little lighter and brighter – and my stress level goes down.

Here’s a quick story. I once worked with a female Vice President who hated sports analogies. Every time she heard one, she made a caustic remark and that alienated all of her male colleagues. Her boss wanted to promote her but knew her biting responses was a “hot-button” issue with other staff. He hired me to coach her about her relationships with colleagues. I worked with her for several months and knew she had turned the corner when she used a baseball story in a meeting. While she wasn’t trying to become one of the guys, it sent the message that she was aware of their reactions and making an effort to bring a lighter tone to her interactions with them. You had better believe that the men at the table noticed it and began to see her in a more favorable light. Her promotion several weeks later was accepted and supported by her colleagues.

So the next time you are confronted with behavior that makes you uncomfortable, take a deep breath, remember “honey, not vinegar” and try to bring a little humor to the situation. You’ll be amazed at what happens when you do.

© Kari Uman 2004

Revitalize Your Organization

By

by Ira Chaleff

If your organization is missing a high-spiritedness or is rife with discord and anxiety and you want to turn this around, read on. In working with organizations of many types and sizes I have observed seven common factors in an organization losing its vitality:

Loss of faith in leadership

Leaders get insulated from staff, even in moderate sized organizations. Staff cease to see what a leader is doing and believe the leader is ignorant about what the organization should be doing. The leader needs to spnd more time being visible to the staff. One of the most important ways of doing this is to delegate authority that has needlessly been retained. This empowers leadership at lower levels which is often full of pent up creative energy and it frees the leader to spend more time connecting with those who will make the organization succeed or fail. Delegating real authority to lower level managers and teams is much more important than the endless organization chart restructuring to which organizations often resort.

Lack of successes

Organizations exist to achieve specific results. Morale cannot be sustained in the absence of results. Winning teams need successes to feel like and behave like winners. Identify achievable results, make them happen and draw attention to them even if they are small. The losses that do occur are not as important as the attitude of the team towards those losses. A leader must convey optimism and hope in the face of losses. This is not to say that the leader denies the losses. It means that the leader is responsible for maintaining faith in the capacity of himself and the team to prevail.

Intramural warfare

Bitter fingerpointing and distrust between two interdependent departments is debilitating. Enormous amounts of productive energy are wasted by the friction in each interaction. The problem seems to be personality based and therefore unsolvable. It is, however, often soluble through energetic leadership. The solution requires zero tolerance of the dysfunctional status quo. It must be clear that the leader is emotionally prepared to let one or both parties go for the good of the organization. When this willingness is unmistakably genuine, the parties tend to rise above their entrenched positions and work to understand and meet each others= legitimate needs..

Loss of founding purpose

Organizations are usually founded with a crystal clear mission and vision. As the organization succeeds, the vision often fades into the background and the processes and activities associated with its success become what the organization most values and preserves. This works for a time but eventually is insufficient. The organization loses its internal guidance system and implicitly or explicitly makes the very largest decisions based on expediency rather than a coherent value system. Discontent begins to pervade the organization because, at the deepest level, human beings demand their lives have meaning, and meaning requires coherency. An organization at this juncture must create the forums in which fundamental conversations can occur about the organization=s identity and unique role.

End of business life-cycle

Organizations which have built their success around a service or product that once met a societal need which has now changed often go through protracted deaths. Leading and working in this environment is highly stressful. Expectations are based on historical achievements not future potential. Layers of systems are in place to keep the organization going so it hangs on in a sadly diminished capacity. There are only two alternatives for organizations in this stage – on orderly wind-down or a complete reinvention in which the business idea itself – the unique match of capabilities and needs which generates wealth – is fundamentally restated. The sooner this reality is accepted, the greater the options that remain open in either direction.

Lack of decency

Decency is about how people treat each other as they go about their lives and work. Whether an organization behaves decently is determined by the culture instilled by the founding team and the values and behaviors of the current team. Organizations which are successful can thrive despite a lack of decency because they have the resources to pay staff enough to put up with a demeaning environment. Organizations struggling to survive don=t have this luxury. Leaders seeking to revitalize a struggling organization must be very thoughtful about their staffs= feelings and perceptions and take great pains to communicate what they are doing and why. How they implement tough decisions is as important as making the decision. It sends a strong message as to whether people are valued or expendable. Staff will act accordingly.

Lack of re-investment in organization

Morale slowly drains in organizations which do not continue to invest in their own development. Old equipment, outdated software, junky furniture or office space, inadequate staffing and training all fly in the face of management=s exhortations for excellence. There are many reasons organizations are denied the investment they need. Regardless, revitalization requires finding creative solutions for renewing the organization=s infrastructure. While plant investment will do no good if organization purpose and design are deeply flawed, it must be factored into a revitalization effort. And while solutions are being sought, staff must be kept fully informed and invited to participate by contributing their ideas for renewal.

There is a bonus factor in all this. Anyone working to revitalize an organization is paying a steep personal price as the demands are often heroic. If they are to take good care of the organization over the long run, they must also take good care of themselves. They require opportunities for reflection and renewal, harbors in the storm to refresh and collect themselves. If you are one of these, organize your life so you have the time, space and support for this reflection. It will serve your organization well.

Organization and Team Performance

By

Our organization development services are tailored to fit the client’s needs. The services can include a combination of any of the following:

Assessment:

  • Confidential interviews of individual members of management team
  • Confidential interviews with board directors, customers or members, subordinates and others with an interest in the outcome of the process
  • Work climate survey instrument development and benchmarking
  • Observation and analysis of key communications and operational processes
  • Evaluation of management team cohesiveness and conflict management style
  • Evaluation of management team problem solving and decision making style
  • Evaluation of environmental scanning, information distribution and interpretation processes
  • Identification of distinctive competencies and competitive advantages
  • Evaluation of robustness of strategic thinking and communication
  • Written and oral reports on strengths and weaknesses of organization and identification of mission-critical issues

Interventions

    • Design and implementation of processes to address critical issues
    • Management team briefings
    • Team skills building workshops
    • Organization-wide communication processes
    • Staff morale programs
    • Senior team-building retreats:
  • Visioning ideal futures
  • Values clarification
  • Trust development and repair
  • Work group climate improvement
  • Strategic conversations facilitation
  • Creativity enhancement
  • Action planning
  • Ongoing team observation, implementation support and coaching

Case History: Team Building for an Organizational Change Effort

By

ISSUE:

The division is undergoing a mandatory restructuring and decentralization, anticipating personnel growth of ten-fold in the next 12-18 months. The senior team wants to meet the challenge by laying a solid foundation of principles which will guide them in working together during this period of rapid and dramatic changes. The senior executive of the organization wants to self-assess his skill-set for the leadership tasks ahead.

INDUSTRY:

Information Technology, Federal Government

SIZE:

Senior Management Team for Telecommunications Division

CLIENT:

Five Senior Managers and Nine Direct Reports

SOLUTION:

In conjunction with the client, a series of steps were designed to analyze the individual players and their respective roles in the existing and desired organizational structures. The first effort was to guide the leader and the team through a three-day, remote-site exercise that would result in a set of operating principles by which the organization and its people would undertake the change process.

Demographic data along with background information and a questionnaire informed the design of a series of team-building, immediate feedback, and trust-building exercises. The three-day working sessions were built on small group work, and reviewed in a facilitated plenary session. Two coach-facilitators, a woman and a man led separate portions of the group work. After completing a full day of team building exercises, the next two days were filled with intensive “outcome” oriented processes. A healthy set of operating principles resulted from the exercise.

Two week after the off site working sessions, interviews were held with three people whom the senior executive identified as “believer, neutral, and non-believer” regarding the implementation of the change process to be guided by the operating principles developed and unanimously adopted by the senior management team.

RESULTS:

The coaching assistance to the senior executive was fruitful and reassuring in that the skill-set that included leadership, loyalty, vision, communication, and dedication, were self-assessed and group assessed with high marks. The senior management team ended the three-day working sessions with a renewed sense that they “are a team, and we can do this together”. A well conceived and unanimously adopted set of operating principles will serve as a guide to all of the division’s employees as they carry out their responsibilities, whether serving customers, developing internal relationships, or engaging in problem solving. Clearly understood action items were assigned to each member of the senior management team, and a “process-overseer” was identified by the senior executive to hold each member accountable. At the conclusion of the three-month process, the levels of cooperation and optimism had never been higher.