Baby Steps to Euphoria

When I asked the participants in our leadership class today what their big takeaway was, one attendee answered, “To slow down.” He said that his daughter, who recently went off to college, sent him a letter telling him the same thing. Class became a big “aha” for him because that idea was reinforced.

How often do we need to hear the same message before we really hear it and work to make change?

Whether at work or at home, changing ourselves is very difficult. It can seem overwhelming and, in some cases, impossible. My husband has a saying: “Baby steps to euphoria.” This has become a motto for me. It reminds me to calm down and take things one at a time, breaking the problem into smaller tasks.

For example, let’s say you want to change how you procrastinate on big projects.
1. Lay out the goal of the project.
2. Write down a list of all the things you need to do to complete the project, breaking it down into smaller pieces.
3. Count back from the deadline and commit to completing a few tasks on the list each day until completion. If you have 10 days to complete a project with 20 items on the list, you’ll need to tackle a couple items on the list each day. It seems possible, and even obvious, but we don’t do it.

How many times do you need to hear a message to make change?

Wasting Time

What do you do that wastes time?

Thinking about this question made me remember last weekend.
My husband and I took his mom out for her birthday and we were trying to keep track of time in order to make a movie. My husband asked me the time on several occasions throughout the afternoon and, not wearing a watch, I had a sense of what time it was within about 10 minutes. Each time I made my prediction we would find a clock to confirm my accuracy. It became a game for my husband and made me acutely aware of how much attention I pay to time.

Time has hogged my attention for most of my life. In fact, the first poem I wrote as a teenager was about time and how quickly it goes.

I have to wonder, is this what I should be paying attention to? Or does spending too much time thinking about time actually waste time?

Who's responsible for developing leaders? The organization.

As I mentioned in my prior blog, an EPI client hired us to develop a front line leadership program. Currently, we are piloting the program and the feedback has been great and it’s rolling out nation-wide starting in January. To make my point further, it is up to the organization to develop its leaders. Developing leaders is key to the organization’s survival. Leading is not about tasks, but the people in the organization. Through the shift in the economy and downsizing, many organizations have cut their leadership development and training programs. This hurts the survivability of the organization and even impacts organizational performance. In fact, with these cuts, employee morale, job satisfaction and employee satisfaction is reduced and decreases the overall organizational performance. The research is clear.

EPI is positioned to develop your leaders. If you’d like to partner with us, we suggest focusing on performance management, emotional intelligence, mentoring, succession planning, employee development, team building, hiring and retention strategies, etc. Now is the time for your organization to develop its leaders.

Who's responsible for developing leaders?

How many times have you heard, “How did that person end up being my boss?” or “How did she ever get into a leadership position?” Recently, I spoke to a group of graduate students about generations in the workplace and a member of Gen Y asked, “Shouldn’t my boss be a leader and even a mentor?” My response was, “Yes, absolutely.” However, many organizations are not developing their leaders.

In fact, many leaders are promoted based on their expertise, instead of their ability to lead people. It’s not about the tasks: it’s about leading people. As organizations promote and think about their succession plan, it is key that they have a leadership development program in place. Today, we have seen many training and leadership programs be cut from the budget. This is a mistake. As a result, there are many unhappy and unmotivated employees. They need leadership during the challenging changes that organizations are undergoing today.

I’m proud to say that EPI is launching a front line leadership program nation-wide with a Denver based company. To hear more about what we’re doing, log on to my next blog.

Happy Enchilada

The incomparable songwriter John Prine tells a story about a fan who keeps asking him to play “the Happy Enchilada song.” He explains that while he’s written some weird songs in his life, he sure doesn’t remember one about a happy enchilada and he asks her to tell him how it goes.

As most diehard John Prine fans know, what the woman sings is “It’s a happy enchilada and you think you’re going to drown…” to the tune of That’s the Way That the World Goes ‘Round, the lyrics of which actually are: “It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re going to drown...”

It’s a funny story, a clever song, and an excellent illustration of how we hear – or mishear – things.

The mishearing isn’t usually physical. We don’t have to have actual hearing problems to garble what someone is saying to us. It’s often a case of inattentive listening, a wandering mind, or being oversure that you already know what’s going to be said and then having to backtrack when the other person dares to say something not in your internal script.

It’s a kick with song lyrics, but not so fun when it happens in real life with personal or work relationships.

We’ve been working on a client leadership training program that has taught me a lot about communication. In particular I’m struck by the fact that 55% of messages between people are communicated through body language and facial expressions and another 38% just through tone. That means that only 7% of what we’re trying to communicate comes across through the words themselves.

No wonder we get song lyrics so very wrong sometimes. And no wonder it’s so easy to misunderstand a friend or coworker, especially when much of our communication these days is through email and blogs.

It’s a good thing to keep in mind as we plow through our email every morning and hammer out those rapid-fire responses. It might be better sometimes to let things just slow cook. Like a happy enchilada.

(Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9DA-u2EhmA&feature=related to hear John Prine sing the song and tell the story mentioned here.)