The enormity of your job

Do you ever think about the impact you have in your organization? Usually you hear about employee’s not feeling appreciated or valued by their boss or their organization as a whole.  But on the other hand, do you take the time to reflect on the impact you have on others?

Lately, I have been thinking about this a lot. The enormity of my job has really got me thinking lately.  I have thought of this in my beginning days as a business coach but ultimately, I came to realize I was the catalyst and the answers or resolutions came from the person and not from me. I still feel responsible but don’t feel the weight on my shoulders quite as much as I used to.

However, as a professor, I think about this more and more. I have been developing a degree program and recently, classes started.  With 34 students, I feel a great responsibility to each of them to ensure they are learning, applying principles, and gaining the tools needed to be even more successive after the program ends. It’s an incredible pressure that I have on myself and feel the enormity of my impact to the students as an instructor. But also, in the near future, with the adjunct instructors that will also begin teaching in the program.

However, I am not unique just because I am an instructor.  Many persons in the workplace manage others and the impact of their management skills, coaching ability and feedback on their staff are just as important and just as impactful as anything I do. As a manager, do you feel the enormity of your job and how you impact each person on your team?

Customer Service Week

It’s Customer Service Week.  Have you thanked your customer’s yet?  They could be internal, external, near or far.  We all have customers.  Let them know that you appreciate them. Because deep down, don’t we all want to feel appreciated and valued?

What is your theme?

I have received a few emails lately from readers asking in different ways what my specific blog theme is and where I get my ideas for topics. I thought they were both interesting questions and got me thinking.

What is my specific blog theme? Do I have one? I read quite a few blogs and am an active subscriber to at least 30 or more.  I love to read their posts via Google Reader over breakfast. Some I get via email.  Some folks have very specific themes, like productivity, marketing, saving money, home organization, workplace issues, leadership, etc. All of their posts are specific and refer back to their main blog theme in a very consistent way. It is in large part while I subscribe; I like hearing their perspectives on certain themes or issues.

It’s interesting, I do have a blog for my company that is specific to leadership coaching and related topics. So, I understand the questions I received.

But my personal blog is more about life in general. I tend to write about things that have happened to me or things I have observed. From my perspective, I just want to have the opportunity to share my dorky view of the world based on my own experiences or just things about myself in general.  This really comes in any form and is not predetermined by a specific topic or issue that every post revolves. What do you think – is that distracting to you as a reader that my posts can range from talking about the greatness of the holidays, or books, or movies, or school supplies, or life and whatnot? Feel free to share your comments or email me!

NOTE 9/19/09:

Read a post via email today from Write to Done talking about blog theme’s in which his lead into his post stated “Blogging and writing shouldn’t be just about talking about what you did today, or rambling about things in general — at least, not in my mind, not if it’s done well”.  I found this interesting but it is a sentiment I don’t agree.  I think the point of blogging is based on the writer. If you are like Leo Babauta, his desire with his blog is enlighten but what seems even more prevalent to me over the past few months, is his overwhelming desire to sell things especially his books and ebooks.  That is his prerogative and I don’t dislike him for it. It has however changed my personal desire to read his blog and have done so with much less frequency due to this feeling like I am being sold to.

What you choose to do with your blog and its content are entirely up to you.  Do what you want and be happy with what you do.

The state of affairs in customer service

As someone who believes she has worked in customer service her whole life, it disappoints me when folks get it wrong. This is the easiest thing someone can do and the cheapest.  Yes, sometimes my title was customer service, sometimes not. But my belief is, if you have customers, internal or external, then you should be customer service focused.

I said should be. The sad fact is, many people are not. I have been having a variety of experiences lately and for the most part, I have just been an observer of them. I have been patient and forgiving, but sometimes that just doesn’t work.  My TomTom gps thingie does not work. It hasn’t now for a few months. It was a gift from my dad and despite my very frequent desire to throw it out the window, I know that would not be nice to him.  Plus, whenever he would come to visit, he would ask where it was when we were driving around in my car.  I hate that thing, really.  And the fact that it can’t ever retrieve the GPS signal renders it useless, only makes me hate it more.  My gosh, I don’t mind checking Google maps when I need to go someplace new.  And in fact, I am back to this all over again. I digress.

I tried to contact Office Depot, where my dad purchased it and an extended warranty. They told me that the warranty doesn’t kick in until the manufacturer’s warranty ends.  They sounded like they didn’t care and I could here her flipping pages as she read a script (ack, that just irks me – personalize and engage). Then she transferred me to TomTom, didn’t stay on the line and dumped me off.  I guess it was the wrong place because after holding for 5 minutes, i was disconnected.  I tried their IT chat online and was told I had to pay $9 for the service. Really? My dad already paid $249 for a paperweight and if I want troubleshooting support, I have to pay more?  Nope.  I found the number to call online.  I was on hold for another 10 minutes then told that all the lines were busy and promptly disconnected. Really? This is how they do business? They sure make it hard to do business with them or give you a reason to share anything nice about their product. Oh that’s right, I’m not.  My dad is equally frustrated with all of us this as I share the latest and wants me to send the thing back to him so he can get his money back.  I will try that but am skeptical Office Depot will do this for a paperweight he bought in February.  Yes, that is it’s only function lately.

This is just one example in a string I could share. I won’t even get started on the lack of service and actually the harassment I have been feeling at the hands of school. I actually feel hassled and harassed by them lately instead of feeling like a valued member of the student community. I won’t tell you how much I spend per credit hour but I guess they do not value me as student or customer.  It may be another factor in why I am taking a leave of absence from the program for the remainder of this year.

My dad and I visited Olive Garden recently, lunch before his flight home to San Diego.  We ate in the bar area and truly had a fantastic waiter.  He was always there at the right time, anticipated needs, and brought good cheer to the interactions.  It was a wonderful thing.  Even though we only ordered soup and salad, he made it seem like we were the only one’s in the restaurant. It was a great experience.

Customer service, or service of any kind, is just so easy. So inexpensive. And provides such a bounty of riches in terms of customer loyalty, customer testimonials, and subsequently, profit. I just don’t get it.  Why don’t companies do a better job of this?  Why don’t they realize that this could be the missing ingredient to their success and the reason for their decline in revenues? If you lose your most diehard customers, don’t have repeat business of any kind, and have little new business, how do you expect to stay in business?  Word of mouth is a real killer to the bottom line.  Southwest gets it, why don’t the other airlines? SAS gets it, why don’t other companies?

It was a very good year …

1969. It was a VERY good year.  Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Huge.  Out of this world huge.  The space program was supported by the country and it was a time of great pride.  Then there was Woodstock. How could you not think of Woodstock, especially with the new movie coming out. By the way, the book it was based on was a good read.  Another big event – I was born. See, told you, it was a very good year!   Here are some really cool facts about 1969 that you know, with a few thrown in you might not know:

• The first men on Moon, Neil Armstrong & Edwin Aldrin, Apollo 11
• Woodstock Festival held in NY August 15 to August 18th
• Supreme Court rules that the 1st Amendment applies to public schools.  Pop quiz – what’s the 1st Amendment?
• 1st temporary artificial heart
• The first test flight of the supersonic Concorde
• 1st flight of the Boeing 747
• 1st Wendy’s opens
• Last public performance of the Beatles, Paul marries Linda, John marries Yoko
• Last issue of Saturday Evening Post – no more Normal Rockwell covers
• Phil Esposito becomes first NHL Player to score 100 points in a season
• Golda Meir becomes Israel’s 4th Prime Minister
• New York Yankees’ Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from baseball
• Hurricane Camille strikes U.S. Gulf Coast kills 255
• Charles Manson commits Tate-LaBianca murders
• Mary Jo Kopechne dies at 28, in Ted Kennedy’s car
• “Sesame Street” premieres on PBS
• First ATM
• Wal-Mart incorporates
• GAP is founded

That’s right, 1969 was a very good year indeed and these are just some of the big highlights. There are many, many more.  Looking back at history can be an educative experience and not everyone likes those. But it can also be incredibly fun and enlightening too.  Hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane with me!

Are you uncommon?

We all have our quirks and idiosyncrasies.  This is what makes each of us who we are. It is also what can drive each of us batty, but that’s another discussion!

Over the past ten years, I have noticed one thing about myself that others think is really uncommon and they find me quite odd for it.  I do not like being given grades.  I know, many people would love to get an A by doing little work, or doing the minimum.  Not me.  I noticed this most profoundly in my MBA program.  One professor in particular didn’t give feedback on papers, just your grade and a small comment, like good job (B) or great job (A).  It got to the point in which we all realized that she had made her mind about each of us early on based on our participation, our personality, and our first paper submission. After that, you were branded. If you happened to be branded as an A student, this was how things would go for you in every class you took with her.

This really bothered me.  I know I am a big geek because I actually want to learn, but I also want real feedback. I want my professor to be genuine in their feedback about how I could have done better or could have enhanced my point better, etc. if that was the case. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t something to comment on when in other classes, I was getting comments on my papers about these very things.  To be honest, once you get to grad school, grades really do become less important and it is more about the learning and the application. The application to your current job or for many, to a future job is paramount; not that getting all A’s isn’t a nice thing too!

But it gets worse in doctoral programs, or at least in some. I have seen more professors give grades than who give comments and are invested in challenging the student to go further and think deeper.  In the recent past, I submitted a paper in which I highlighted a date so that not only could I verify that I entered it correctly, but to make sure the source was updated if needed on the reference page.  This was not noticed or caught, nor graded down for not only not checking but not updating my source on the reference page. Based on the grading rubric, I should have lost points for this. I did not.  My paper received all of the possible points that it could.  I should be elated right?  Instead, I wonder if the professor even read my paper. Had he read any of them? I was getting 100’s on every paper I submitted. This seems impossible to me.  Although I have been given compliments on my academic writing ability, this seems too good to be true.

What I am left with is doubt about my papers.  Are they hitting the mark? Am I applying the principles and theories with relevant support?  But more than this, even more than being given a grade, I am disappointed in the professor. I have lost respect in him.  I no longer see him as an educator. And as an educator myself, this is a big blow.

Some of my friends know, based on a prior rant, that I have been questioning my doctoral program.  The goal in achieving this was to push myself to learn more, to research different paths based on some of my organizational questions, and to ensure my ability to teach at the university level (not just as I am now, but through retirement).  These goals have not changed, but my motivation to achieve them in the current setting sure has.  I wish I could be less uncommon and just push myself intrinsically to meet these goals and let the other stuff go. Or maybe I need to become even more uncommon and ignore the grades aspect (extrinsic motivation) and focus on my own goals.  Ahh, but that is just not me.

How do you spend your day?

I have noticed quite a few bloggers talking about this lately, including Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly column and a mention in the New York Times regarding the topic.   So, how do you spend your day? It used to be that talk was solely about time spent watching tv and that our average in the US was about 5 hours a day. When you consider that you work at least 10 hours (commute time, lunch or errands and the actual work day) and we sleep for about seven, five hours of our day devoted to tv sure seems like a lot.

Some of my friends say that they aren’t actually watching tv, but it is on, like background music.  Interestingly, now the question has become how much time are we spending in front of a screen, be it tv, computer, iPhone, blackberry, etc.  There are many articles talking about how much time Gen X and even Boomers are spending online, with Facebook especially!

Some bloggers are now putting the kibosh on some of their online activities because their personal inventory led them to the conclusion that 4 hours of emailing a day is not the best use of their time. Or spending 3 hours a day on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites when they would rather be with their kids, friends, or pursuing their personal dreams. Others are indicating they have recently sold their tv’s and gotten rid of cable in favor of utilizing other avenues when a true viewing need arises.

What I love about the New York Times graphic is not only the entries of what we do, but when we do these activities with the most frequency. I enjoyed playing with the different buttons to see how things differed by age, degree, etc.  What kind of insights does it give you?

Three Effective Ways to Enhance Your Willpower

I am a Zen Habits fan. The blog is full of wonderful ideas, but mostly I love how real it is. Who and what we learn about Leo is who he is. I think this is the way it should be when you write. The greatest compliment I have ever received came when someone told me they could hear me talking as they read some of my work.  That I could speak to them via my writing was a priceless gift for me. And that gift is many years old and it’s still awesome!

In the spirit of being real, the post below was written by Ian Newby-Clark of My Bad Habits and was shared on the Zen Habits blog. I wanted to share it again here as I think it is a great read. I love the inclusion of research studies (always a fascinating part of any article, book, or post), as I am a research geek. Enjoy!!

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Control yourself! We all say it, mostly to ourselves. We say it when we ‘indulge’ in behaviors that cause short-term gain for long-term pain. And guilt. I cite many of the usual suspects: eating the wrong things, being lazy, staying up too late, drinking too much. There are others, of course. Why do we do such things? After all, aren’t we entirely in control of ourselves all of the time?

Nope.

Research tells us that willpower is a limited resource. Each of us only has so much of it. The studies demonstrating this are rather ingenious. I will share one of my favorites with you, though there are many more.

You are a student at a mid-Western university and you are in a psychology experiment apparently concerned with taste-testing. The experimenter seats you at a table. In front of you is a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. There is also a plate of radishes. Your stomach is growling because, as instructed, you didn’t eat anything last night.

The experimenter asks you to taste-test the radishes. You are not to taste the cookies. In fact, don’t even touch them! No cookies for you! Next, the experimenter asks you to help out another experimenter with a puzzle experiment. You start working on the puzzle. It’s rather hard …

Times passes …

You are having trouble solving the puzzle. Undeterred, you press on.

More time passes …

You still can’t solve the puzzle! You sometimes get close, but then you make a mistake and start over. Eventually, you give up. When the experiment is over, you learn a couple of interesting facts. First, the two experiments, taste-testing and puzzle-solving, were related. Those sneaky psychologists! Second, some people taste-tested the cookies. Lucky ducks!

Persisting at the frustratingly difficult puzzle takes willpower. But will the radish-eaters and cookie-eaters have the same amount of willpower? The experimenters think that the radish-eaters have less will-power than the cookie-eaters because the radish-eaters had to resist grabbing a cookie. So, the radish-eaters should give up on the puzzle sooner than the cookie-eaters. That’s what happened.

That study, and dozens of others like it, show that people only have so much willpower. When you have to control yourself, there is less willpower available to you for other parts of your life. This fact is a good one to know because people who lose their will-power often do things that they would rather not. They become aggressive, sexually impulsive, and give up too early on puzzles.

This has nothing to do with being physically tired. Your self-control is at low ebb when you are mentally exhausted. So, what lessons can we learn from what the science is telling us? How can we be in more and better control of ourselves more often? I have three tips:

1. Anticipate and plan for your times of low self-control. Now that you know that self-control is a limited resource and that depleting it means less for later, you can do some anticipating and planning. For example, make sure that you’re not in the chips and cookies aisle of the grocery store after a long day at work. Don’t start on your tax return after a frustrating commute.

2. Exercise your willpower muscle to get more of it. Roy Baumeister, one of the leading researchers in this field, thinks that willpower is like a muscle. Exercising a muscle in the short-term leads to its exhaustion. In the long-term, though, exercising a muscle causes it to grow. In fact, there is some good evidence that exercising your willpower, though temporarily depleting, means that it will be stronger in the long run. So, push yourself. Things to do that will deplete your willpower:

• Work on a tough to solve puzzle;
• Watch a funny movie but resist the urge to laugh;
• Watch a sad movie but resist the urge to cry.

3. Drink some orange juice. It turns out that glucose is one of the key ingredients that your brain needs for effective self-control. Willpower. It’s not just for breakfast anymore!

I hope that you find my message enlightening and helpful. Some of you, I am sure, will be disappointed to learn that your capacity for self-control is less than infinite. You do have willpower, just not as much as you might like. But now you know how to get more!

Read more from Ian Newby-Clark at his blog, My Bad Habits.

Blogs of the World III – zen habits

I don’t know how many of you out there are zen habits readers, but it’s an awesome blog. The author, Leo Babauta, is a bloggerX2 and a now a novelistx2.  His blog, the aforementioned zen habits, is hugely popular and sprung forth a book, The Power of Less.  He had also previously written an ebook, Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System, that was touted as the most successful productivity ebook sold in history. I have no idea if that is true or not, but that was said at the time!

He has written another book co-authored with  Eric Hamm called The Essential Motivation Handbook. He calls it a companion to his Zen to Done ebook.  If it is anything like it or the Power of Less book, this one will be a winner as well. I am devouring it now so stay tuned!! If you are interested in purchasing, check it out:    Click here to view more details

And for those of you who wondered, hey she said he was a bloggerx2, don’t forget to check out write to done. He shares some awesome writing tips, not just for bloggers, but for all writers.  Check it out!

The cavalry is coming

When you hear this phrase, what immediately came to mind? Are you wrestling with an issue and felt some relief that help was coming? Do we all still feel a need to be rescued sometimes?

I believe help comes in many forms. The trick is you need to be aware and ready for the help.  It doesn’t help if you are turned in a different direction or your eyes are closed.

Lately, I have been having some challenges with anxiety.  By nature, I am a  planner, an organizer, a linear thinker. I am also creative, spontaneous, with boundless energy. These two sides can come into conflict which causes anxious moments. Right now, I have many been struggling with my doctoral program while finishing up my coaching practicums toward PCC certification, adjuncting at one college while working full-time at another. That’s just the big stuff

But what do you do when the anxiety hits?

Luckily, I am good at recognizing when I am anxious and keyed up. I have not always been successful about how to mitigate those feelings though!  But thankfully, I have taken some steps lately and by doing so, the phrase ‘the cavalry is coming’ always springs to mind and I immediately feel relieved.  As a coach, some of the same steps that I use to assist my clients are ones that I utilize myself. And luckily, they are wonderfully effective.  I’m curious. What do you do to help yourself and practice a little self-care?