Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative outside, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work.
Entrepreneurship is one of our passions. We are excited to be presenting at the National Career Development Association (NCDA) conference in Orlando next week about how to start a business. We hope you can join us if you are at the conference, but if not, here are our 7 steps for starting a successful business.
After the conference, we will be launching an online course with this curriculum, so stay tuned for how you can participate in learning this information in a self-paced format online.
1 in 4 people say their jobs are the most stressful part of their lives. What is creating stress in the workplace and how can it be resolved?
Rajeev Behera, CEO of Reflektive, says that a fear-based work culture where nothing is ever good enough is a main cause of stress in the workplace. This occurs when managers use intimidation tactics, putting more value on the employees that put in the most hours, instead of those who are team players.
Rajeev saw this first-hand in his work life before founding Reflektive, a performance management and talent development software company, where he is CEO. In a fear-based environment, he said, “Managers task managed instead of people managed. A focus was always placed on the past judged by the metric of what tasks were completed or not completed.” As result of this mindset, Rajeev saw a culture of intimidation taking over the workplace.
This resulted in the wrong things being measured and rewarded, leading to nothing ever being good enough. For example, Rajeev points to time spent at work as one thing that was measured, instead of results. “Time”, he says, “is subjective. How much is enough? And you can never give enough of it.”
So how do you change it? Rajeev emphasizes several key points in helping managers move a fear based culture where nothing is ever good enough to one that is employee and future focused:
Rajeev says that one of their most popular products is Agile Goal Management, because it makes sure that goal setting is a “Collaborative process- not just one-sided- so both manager and employee agree. And if expectations change, they can edit it together, document, and focus on what to do to move the business forward.”
“So how do you get managers to become coaches instead of evaluators?” I asked Rajeev.
He offered these practical steps:
In contrast, leaders with a future oriented approach ask questions about what can and should take place to accomplish a goal and help employees plan from there.
This approach allows you to “talk about it while you’re working on it so we can partner together, instead of the go do and don’t bother me till it’s done and perfect,” says Rajeev.
While we can learn from the past, a focus on the future is what drives performance management today. Equipping organizations with the tools to look forward, instead of backward, inadvertently leads us to think about the possibilities of how great we can be instead of thinking nothing is ever good enough.
As the mom of three boys who are full of mischief, I often hear the phrase “I didn’t know” or “you never told me.” And usually it’s in response to something that I had addressed with them at least once. Sometimes I wish I could approach disciplinary issues in parenting the same way I approach disciplinary issues in my career, with a formal sit down discussion and written documentation.
One of my favorite aspects of Human Resources is employee relations. I love the opportunity to speak with managers about the performance management process and the importance of documentation.
Having kept organizations from litigation and winning tough unemployment hearings, here is a three pronged approach to avoiding a lawsuit because of disciplinary issues:
As a manager, draft your documentation and have HR review it before you present it to the employee, because sometimes you really shouldn’t write what you think! You’d be surprised at some of the things I’ve seen on written documentation. Remember that the employee receives a copy and it could be used for future unemployment or litigation purposes, so keep it professional. Have HR or another member of the leadership team sit in as a witness on the counseling. Never put yourself in a he said, she said situation.
A Performance Improvement Plan or a termination for performance (gross misconduct aside) should never be the first conversation had with an employee. If it is, then your organization is not executing your disciplinary process effectively, fairly, or consistently or does not have an effective disciplinary process in place. And if that is the case, you’re opening yourself up for potential litigation and HR will have a hard time helping your organization justify its actions.
The time spent following a structured disciplinary procedure and ensuring documentation is in order is minimal compared to the potential costs incurred by organizations that fail to do so.
What’s your best advice for avoiding a lawsuit?
Throw-up had literally been everywhere. All week. As had it’s counterpart that also comes along with what would later be diagnosed as rotavirus in my son.
I had multiple meetings scheduled both with current and desired clients. I had blocked off time to prepare for the next week that involved three different training sessions. Each required the preparation and roll out of new material. I just couldn’t wing these.
And because of said throw-up coming often at night, I hadn’t slept. Neither had my husband, and he had multiple priorities at work to attend to as well.
I canceled all but a couple of meetings. Some were rescheduled, some were covered by someone else on my team, and the ones I made were possible because my husband and I swapped out or my in-laws were available for a couple of hours to help.
In between his (my son’s, not my husband’s) trips to the bathroom, I laid with him, laptop in hand and tried to crank out the work that needed to get done, while rubbing his head. By figuring the logistics out on that, I have officially deemed myself as the master of multi-tasking.
But I really didn’t feel like a master at anything. I felt pulled in multiple directions. When my in-laws called as I was finishing up a meeting and said “He wants you,” I dropped everything and went to pick him up. When we got home, the throwing up that I thought had stopped had returned. He had just wanted to puke in the comfort of his own home. I set the computer down and took a nap with him. And then later, we made a trip to the emergency room for fluids because his blood work showed that dehydration had thrown everything out of whack.
During this time research, that I had seen before, showed up again on my radar. Taken from a Business Insider article, titled “Parents of Successful Kids have these 12 Things in Common”. Number eight reads: “The moms work outside the home”:
According to research out of Harvard Business School, there are significant benefits for children growing up with mothers who work outside the home.
The study found daughters of working mothers went to school longer, were more likely to have a job in a supervisory role, and earned more money —23% more compared to their peers who were raised by stay-at-home mothers.
The sons of working mothers also tended to pitch in more on household chores and childcare, the study found — they spent seven-and-a-half more hours a week on childcare and 25 more minutes on housework.
‘Role modeling is a way of signaling what’s appropriate in terms of how you behave, what you do, the activities you engage in, and what you believe,’ the study’s lead author, Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, told Business Insider.
‘There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother,’ she told Working Knowledge.
Hmm, I thought. He had definitely seen his daddy role model that it’s not just mommy’s job to clean up the throw up. But as I looked at the same article, number seven on the list was “the (parents) are less stressed.” Was there some methodology and importance to the order of this list? Does being less stressed trump me working outside the home when it comes to my children’s success in life? If multiple priorities raise my stress level, should I choose just one- my kids? Will this lead them to success? Or is success what matters? These research findings point to nothing related to happiness and joy.
As I contemplate this idea a few weeks later, I’m solely focused on work, because I’m alone in a hotel room. And when I’m alone, I catch up on reading while I work out in in hotel fitness rooms. While reading Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, (I had about zero grit in reading this book considering I started reading it in 2016) I quickly scan through the author’s quiz on grit- which is a measure of passion and perseverance- and, as the author shows through research, more important that talent in success. I realize by this quiz, I’m short on some grit.
The author says just after the scoring for the quiz. “Keep in mind that your score is a reflection of how you see yourself right now. How gritty you are at this point in your life might be different from how gritty you were when you were younger. And if you take the Grit Scale later again, you might get a different score.”
Yeah, I thought. I’ll take this quiz in about 16 years when both my kids are off at college because I’ve made them so “successful” because I’ve worked “outside the home” while simultaneously raising them, doing my best to keep them alive while basically being able to focus on nothing with passion and perseverance because something like the rotavirus is always lurking.
But passion and perseverance does come in raising children. And it does come in work- even if there are bouts of intensity in hotel rooms- followed by periods of idleness because of other demands.
One author, who wrote on the same research findings about what parents of successful children do says, “There is no such thing as a complete list.” He points to grit saying, “like virtually every other trendy article on this subject, they recommend teaching ‘grit,’ defined as the ‘tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals.’ While that’s virtuous in a vacuum, I think we’re going to find as a society that the way we teach grit omits something serious: the ability to maintain motivation while simultaneously, continuously reevaluating your goals.”
Sometimes goals are as short term as making it through a nap with your kid without throw-up ending up on either one of you. And sometimes it’s about getting an article done about such a topic.
But overall, as we approach mother’s day as a time to celebrate all the mom’s in this world, motherhood is a lesson in grit, whether you work outside the home or not.
Give yourself some credit moms (and I’ll try to do the same for myself), realizing that there is a time and season for everything, and it is up to you to choose what is best for you and your family right now. Grit or not, don’t let anyone tell you that it is not okay to shift focus for the sake of what is important when it is important. That will teach your kids to be successful because they have been taught through your “modeling” to know what is important and adjust accordingly.
“Not having a mentor is just stupid,” said a young and successful sales professional in a meeting I attended a few weeks ago. She was giving the group advice on how to be successful in sales.
I couldn’t agree with her more. Not having a least one mentor (and seeking to be a mentor to someone else) is just about the dumbest mistake you can make in business.
I was fortunate to have a wonderful academic and professional mentor in college (he passed away a few years ago and I still miss his sound advice), and I continue to have a few professional and personal mentors. They may not even see themselves as my “mentors”- we haven’t been so specific as to have a DTR aka high school code for “Defining the Relationship”- but they are.
I’ve never thought about how important having a mentor is in all aspects of life until reading Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant. Like most things, business books end up teaching me more about parenting than they do about business!
In his book, Grant states:
The paradox of encouraging children to develop strong values is that parents effectively limit their own influence. Parents can nurture the impulse to be original, but at some point, people need to find their own role models for originality in their chosen fields…. If we want to encourage originality, the best step we can take is to raise our children’s aspirations by introducing them to different kinds of role models.
But how do we establish mentoring relationships for our kids, and ourselves whether in business or in personal relationships that grow us as people and as professionals?
Sheryl Sandberg in her book, Lean In, emphasizes that asking someone to be your mentor isn’t the right approach; instead these relationships should grow naturally. I do think, however, you can set-up some framework to help these relationships grow organically:
Diversity of ideas and thoughts can help people grow more than the familiar. Like I hear many parents that come to us for career advice for their kids say, “You don’t have a dog in this fight”. What they mean by this is since we aren’t so close to it, we can give more objective advice that people are more receptive to receiving and acting upon. The kind of wisdom that comes from a mentor is not the carrot or the stick approach on advice that often comes from our parent(s) and/or our boss.
What the best advice you’ve received from a mentor?