For 2012, we are planning a special series with a theme: Generations at Work

• What do you need to know to prosper in your work life during your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and into your 60s and beyond?

• And how can we work well across all those age groups to build successful organizations – and to make the most of our resources?  In today’s challenging financial times, that’s more important than ever.

We’ll talk about everything from first jobs and Facebook to final chapters in the workforce.

And we’ll look at the chemistry of today’s organizations – for example, what happens when the generations of “Father Knows Best” and “The Simpsons” collaborate.

Consider this an interactive adventure: Please share your reactions and experiences.   Whatever your age, tell us how you see your generation at work – and your advice for forging strong teams of all ages – kw@wunderlin.com.

Beginning with the 20-somethings

A funny thing has happened over the past several years.

I found myself in a new kind of consulting job. My kids and their classmates, my nieces and my nephews, the children of my friends … they were all asking the same questions:  How to find a job? How to network?  How to handle the new universe of life at work?

As my son graduated from college last spring, the parents of his group of friends gathered for a brunch and gave them our best advice.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Make friends with HR.

• When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

• Keep a clean change of clothes at work.

• Read Moby Dick in yours 30s, Middlemarch in your 40s and The Confessions of St. Augustine in our 50s.

• The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow…do good anyway.

So what can we tell them?  What do they need to know in their first work adventures? And what advice can we offer to the folks who work with them?

Whether you call them Generation Y or Millennials, 20-somethings bring a new set of values and experiences to the world of work.

Let us introduce you

If you read books like “Millennials in the Workplace” by Neil Howe and Reena Nadler or a recent report on millennials from the Pew Research Center, you will hear 20-somethings described this way:

• Confident Remember they are the children of baby-boom parents who’ve told them they were great since toddlerhood.
• Team-oriented. From school team projects to scheduled sports and social lives, 20-somethings have grown up multi-tasking and working with others.
• Tech-savvy. Life before computers seems prehistoric. They have mastered new technologies at every turn and are fearless about new ones.
• Socially connected. They can’t remember life before email, Facebook and texting – and have global social communities that no previous generation could have imagined.  They are comparing notes about work around a virtual water cooler.
• Racially and ethnically diverse. More travel, study and jobs abroad, Skype, those social networks, friends and families with connections across the globe – all this has made them comfortable in diverse environments.
• OK with uncertainty.  From the terrorism of 9-11 to the economic downturn, they have grown up in unstable times. Young people their age have gone to war. They have seen friends and parents laid off.  They know they have a better chance of seeing a UFO than a pension check.

Finding a first job

At the same time, uncertainty about finding a first job —well, that is not something they are OK with.  They want jobs – preferably meaningful jobs – in the worst job market in decades.

So when 20-somethings ask for my job-hunt advice, I talk about:

Focus. Some young people know they want to be a CPA just like Mom or an architect just like Dad. But most don’t have a clear picture of how they can fit their skills and interests into the jobs out there. When young people ask me for advice, we use the Myers-Briggs type indicator and Strong Interest Inventory to get more clarity.

Networking. This is old advice — but with new weight today as job applications move online and hundreds of resumes pour into HR inboxes. How can yours stand out? Who do you know at that company? Who do you know who is friends with someone there? Whose parents have a connection? Is there someone at church or the gym?  I urge young people to join organizations and set up interviews — to ask for information.   How did you choose this line of work?  What sorts of people does the organization work for?  What kinds of work experiences do you consider most valuable?  Is there anyone else you suggest I talk to?  A young woman I know used a spreadsheet to track contacts made, jobs applied for, when to check back.  She reached out fearlessly to any older adult to whom she was referred. It worked: Having a conversation with someone in a coffee shop, she was overheard and approached about a possibility that turned into a dream job!

And keep networking: Few young people I know are in their dream jobs. So staying connected to colleagues, mentors and friends is essential.  In her book “Brazen Careerist: the New Rules for Success,” Penelope Trunk has a chapter title that says it all: “Hunting for a job is not a task – it’s a lifestyle.”

For more advice on the job hunt, check out these tips from a recent New York Times column: “Ten things job applicants should know” by an entrepreneur who owns five businesses in Chicago.

One of its best suggestions: Stay in touch even if you don’t get a job, especially if you are a finalist. “There is a good chance that the new hire won’t work out or that another position will open up.”

So you have a job…

If they have a job at all in this challenging economy, the 20-somethings I know are thrilled.

Even if it’s not their ideal job, they are intent on making the most of it.

If they are highly educated and employed in transitional jobs – nannies, bike shops, farm hands, restaurant work – they are still grateful.

If they have made a beeline to grad school, even big degrees that take a long time – like Ph.D.s – they are probably working part-time as they earn new credentials and hope for better times.

What have they learned on the job? What advice do 20-somethings in the work force have for fellow 20-somethings just getting started?

• Ask questions. As the vice president of local architecture firm likes to say to young colleagues, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Most supervisors appreciate the opportunity to keep you on track. Penelope Trunk says: “Be a sponge.”

• Just say yes. Whether it’s a new project, extra training, a volunteer initiative at your office, raise your hand for the experience and to advertise your commitment. “No job is too small or insignificant for you to complete,” one 20-something friend told me.   “If you do things well and on time, recognition will come for the tasks you complete.”

• Ignore complainers. Another young friend told me he was surprised by older coworkers’ complacency and complaints. “I asked for any responsibilities or opportunities my supervisors would afford to me…and I worked much harder than many in my department. And when new promotions came available, in less than two years, I received one of the spots.”

• Learn from less-than-perfect experiences. “I would argue holding a job — one which forces you to adapt to a management style you don’t like or work you don’t particularly care for — could help sharpen your notion of an ideal career path,” one 25-year-old told me. “I would venture to say you cannot become a well-rounded employee without the experience of working in less-than-ideal circumstances.”

• Share your outside-work accomplishments, too. A 25-year-old who started a popular series of spelling bees in bars found a connection with Louisville’s Idea Festival – and a reputation as a great project manager with a sense of humor.

What is the top advice from their bosses – and older folks in the workforce?

• Cultivate relationships you can learn from – and be inspired by.  It might be a supervisor/mentor but it could also be colleague who works well with a wide variety of people – or seems to wind up assigned to every interesting project.

• Core skills make a difference in everyday work life.  Being a good listener and a clear writer, having a positive attitude and working hard will make you a standout. A recent New York Times magazine article, “The Character Test,” described key traits correlate with success, including grit, zest and curiosity.

• Expand your horizons in terms of what you read: Facebook and Yahoo’s home page are fine. But also check out some resources with authority regularly. The New York Times front page online.  The Wall Street Journal’s front page.  Try buying a new magazine each month, from “Vanity Fair” to “Fast Company.”  And read books with buzz. “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell will help you appreciate the role of luck in life. Thomas Friedman’s “That Used to be Us,” offers his take on America’s changing role in the world. “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, looks at how we make decisions. Daniel Pink’s “Drive” offers a new take on motivation.

The great hockey player Wayne Gretsky once said, “You don’t skate to where the puck is. You skate to where the puck is going to be.”  That’s where you want your thinking to be, too – looking forward.

Working with 20-somethings

The best teams capitalize on the strengths of diverse members – so recognize that their characteristic traits add value.

• Gen Ys bring enthusiasm and special skills to cross-generational teams — and they are comfortable juggling projects. The multi-tasking that stymies some people in workplaces? It’s business-as-usual.

• Capitalize on their technology know-how, both with projects you assign them and “reverse mentoring” that lets them shine helping other less tech-savvy staff members.

• Give clear feedback.  Be specific about goals – short term and longer term.

• Understand that they want to enjoy work – but that won’t keep them from working hard.

One 20-something summed it up well.  “My experience might not be much, but my capacity to learn is great!”

I asked him how he thought his life would change in the next three to five years.

“Dramatically.  I’ll be in a new job in a different city.”  He has no idea where.

My 20s decade was so different: I’m finding the experience of working with young people a great way to pay it forward. Let me challenge you to do the same.

Next up: The Thirties

I’d like to hear from folks in this age group – and people who work with them.   If you are a 30-something, what has defined your work life so far? What have you learned? What are you headed? Do you face special challenges at work – or balancing work with the rest of your life? Email me at kw@wunderlin.com.

Recently, we searched through the archives and selected our top 10 posts. They cover a broad range of topics—from how to be a great non-profit board member to defining a vision for your company’s future.

Hope you enjoy reading them, learn from them, and forward them on to others who might find them insightful.

All the Best,

Karen’s Top Ten

1. Tips for Leading Efficient, Effective, and Enjoyable Meetings
2. Emotional Intelligence: A Different Way of Being Smart
3. How to Use (and How to Choose) an Executive Coach
4. Get Better Results from Difficult Conversations
5. Making a Truly Excellent Hire
6. Defining a Vision for the Future
7. Who are You? Defining Your Purpose and Values
8. How to Be an Outstanding Non-Profit Board Member: 10 Tips
9. “George, can you step into my office for a minute?”: Delivering Effective Feedback
10. Be Creative: Success Flows Directly From Innovation!

Here’s a brief look at each of these favorites.

Tips for Leading Efficient, Effective, and Enjoyable Meetings

What if all our meetings could be decisive, productive, and no longer than necessary? Our 10 tips enable you to lead meetings that are to die for…not to die at.

Here’s how:

1. Determine if the meeting is really necessary.
2. Create and use a detailed agenda.
3. Ensure proper room arrangements are made.
4. Always have a facilitator, timekeeper, and scribe.
5. Set clear guidelines.
6. Manage participation.
7. Make periodic process checks.
8. Take and distribute action minutes.
9. Plan next steps.
10. Begin and end on time.

Emotional Intelligence: A Different Way of Being Smart

In this post about Emotional Intelligence we summarized Daniel Goleman’s seminal book, which now, from a quick check of Amazon, seems to have spawned a cottage industry of similar books and seminars.

Successful leaders need these emotional competencies:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Empathy, and
• Social skill.

This popular blog discusses leadership styles in light of the EQ concept, and provides a wealth of specifics on learning emotional competencies, and using them to create leadership styles that yield positive results.

How to Use (and How to Choose) an Executive Coach

Executive coaching has become a preferred approach to executive development– it focuses specifically on your individual leadership development needs, and can be directly applied to your current work.
Our  2007 newsletter “How to Use (and How to Choose) an Executive Coach” shows how to successfully employ executive coaching.

Get Better Results from Difficult Conversations

There’s nothing easy about difficult conversations. Whether the talk is about performance issues—Her work is just not where it needs to be—or behavioral issues—He was late again today—many of us avoid having to deal with conversations that we know will be unpleasant. Inside every difficult conversation are three separate conversations:

• The talk about what happened
• The conversation about feelings
• The discussion about what this information says about each person’s identity

Re-read “Get Better Results from Difficult Conversations” to get yourself started on more productive difficult conversations.

Making a Truly Excellent Hire

Whether we are expanding our businesses or just replacing employees lost through attrition, the need to “get the right people on the bus” never goes away. “Making a Truly Excellent Hire” focuses on five best practices:

• Learn from those who leave.
• Know what you want in a new hire.
• Base your hiring decisions on more than your gut.
• Hire for smarts.
• Don’t expect your new hires to sink or swim—orient them.

Defining a Vision for the Future

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up someplace else.” So we began our newsletter, “Defining a Vision for the Future.” Today, the need to define a clearly envisioned future is essential, and the vision processes are as important as the outcomes.

Who are You? Defining Your Purpose and Values

Start with this: What is your organization’s fundamental reason for being? Our newsletter on Defining Your Purpose and Values,” explores this essential element of a sustainable organization. Check out the model we recommend for defining your mission and values.

How to Be an Outstanding Non-Profit Board Member: 10 Tips

One of the most gratifying aspects of giving back to our communities is service on non-profit boards. In a 2006 blog, we provide 10 tips for making ourselves outstanding non-profit board members.

1. Get to know the organization.
2. Be an advocate for it.
3. Recognize that serving is volunteer, but not optional.
4. Make commitments you can keep.
5. Know your job and stick to it.
6. Find ways to translate what you know to benefit the non-profit.
7. Expand your skills.
8. Recognize that fundraising is a reality and a responsibility.
9. Don’t spread yourself too thin.
10. Rotate off.

Your favorite non-profit will thank you!

“George, can you step into my office for a minute?”: Delivering Effective Feedback

Giving candid and timely feedback may be one of the most neglected of all business skills. We all know we need feedback. So why don’t we give it?

1. We don’t know how.
2. We wait too long.
3. We don’t want to be hurtful.
4. We lose focus on why feedback is important.
5. We are fearful.
6. We are not measured on it.

For more information, see the full 2008 blog. 

Be Creative: Success Flows Directly From Innovation!

In our newsletter on creativity, we took a look at the creative process of Twyla Tharp, one of America’s foremost choreographers. In her book on developing creativity, Tharp comments: “It takes skill to bring something you’ve imagined into the world! No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that’s both painstaking and rewarding. It takes time.”

We hope you will enjoy TWC’s Top Ten and feel free to pass them along, post on Facebook or Twitter—and let us know how the Wunderlin Company can help you.

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A number of The Wunderlin Company workshops address these newsletter topics in more detail—Facilitating for Results and Advanced Models for Facilitation, Coaching as a Leadership Skill,  Effective Meetings, Myers-Briggs and Difficult Conversations.  For a full schedule or registration information, check out the workshop page on our website.

When I went to college in 1974, most women I knew still expected to marry shortly after graduation.  Many of my friends majored in nursing and teaching, the most common and “available” careers for women.  When I graduated from business school, instead of luggage and a brief case, I got a sewing machine and a vacuum cleaner! But while in school, our world began to change.  Friends switched their majors to business, or began planning to go to law school or med school.  And, most of us didn’t get married right out of school!

Then in the late seventies, we began our careers… and have ended up as CEO’s, CIO’s, GM’s, senior partners, business owners, public sector leaders, elected officials, and presidents… and that’s just my friends! We have worked in a time when social mores and expectations were shifting at an accelerating pace.

A couple of months ago, some of us were reminiscing about those days… and the idea for a newsletter emerged.  I hope you enjoy reading about and gain some in learning from our stories.

Lessons Learned:  Beyond the Glass Ceiling
Women who entered the work force in the 1960s and ‘70s – and even managed to break through the glass ceiling – may not know whether to laugh or cry at AMC’s Mad Men, set in an ad agency around 1960. If they laugh, it might be because of the truth they see in the depiction of women in the workplace. If they cry, it might be because of the truth they see …well, you get the picture.

You don’t have to turn to television for stories of behavior in the workplace of the past that would be unimaginable by today’s standards. You just need to ask the women who were there! That’s just what we did for this edition of Changing Times. Compiled here are the stories of women’s early days of their careers.  They relate, with a humorous twist, some of the challenges they faced. Then, we share gems of advice for finding success as a woman in the world of work today. And, it’s not too hard to see that many of these lessons apply to both women and men.

Looking Back
In the mid-80s I was on a team at GE that spent significant time in Japan and Korea.  My first trip there, I asked one of our Asian hosts to point me in the direction of a rest room.  Following his directions, I unknowingly walked in on all my male teammates!

As the project progressed, we developed strong bonds with our Asian counterparts. On my final visit to Japan as part of the team, we held a dinner, followed by a visit to our Japanese host’s club.  After several rounds of scotch, this fellow with whom I had spent so much time finally opened up about the question that had clearly been on his mind all along—“ Why does your husband allow you to do this?!”

I was not alone: A former manager of a firm specializing in corporate design and relocation tells the story of a phone call she thought was a mere formality to closing a deal to design a series of child-care centers. Working from home the day of the call, she failed to notice the family parrot mimicking voices in the background, but the would-be client abruptly ended the call, telling her he would not consider doing business with a woman who left a child crying in the background during the whole call.  Her explanation that the sounds were a parrot, and that her youngest “child” was a college student, did nothing to counter his position that in the South, families were revered, and he would not trust the design of his facilities to such an unfeeling “professional” woman.

One of the ways most women have succeeded is by looking for the humor in situations.  A former auditor mused that one controller asked her directly why a “gal like you is in a job like this and not home having babies.” The same man had the documents needed for the audit stored in boxes in the men’s room.  Of course, she ventured in anyway, reviewing the documents and stepping out any time someone came in to use the facility.  (That controller, by the way, ended up being convicted of embezzlement, giving her one more reason to trust her instincts.)

Other stories aren’t really tinged with humor, but rather make you cringe. A long-time IT and HR executive recalled that she was promoted to management when she was 8 ½ months pregnant, but was told that her boss’s boss at the New York headquarters of the company wanted to hold off on her raise until she returned from maternity leave – they didn’t really believe she would come back! Fortunately, her boss stood firm, saying she had earned the promotion and the pay that accompanied it.

When Everything Changed
Gail Collins’ 2009 book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, tells the story of our move from a society in 1960 where most young women grew up never seeing a woman doctor, lawyer, or engineer, and where most had to have their husband’s permission to get a credit card, through the 2008 Presidential campaign of Hilary Clinton.  The book is full of astonishing facts and stories of the early years:

• A young woman was thrown out of court in 1960 by a judge because she was wearing pants.
• A medical school dean in 1961 candidly said of women, “We don’t want them here.”
• A NASA spokesman announced that “talk of an American space woman makes me sick to my stomach.”
• The Boston Marathon was men only, because it was “unhealthy for women to run long distances.”

A report on women in management by Harvard Business Review in the 1960s noted that there were so few women in higher echelons that “there is scarcely anything to study.”

Yenise Alonso and Vickie Brint, in their essay “Women in the Workplace,” note that social and economic changes enabled more women to attend college in the 60s, thereby increasing their job opportunities. According to Nancy Gibbs, Time magazine’s editor-at-large and author of Time’s 2009 special report, “The State of the American Woman,” the birth control pill, the civil rights movement, and a changing economy enabled women to start their families later and made us less tolerant of discrimination in any form, opening doors for women to go to work.

By 1998, the number of women entering the workforce had risen to 3 out of every 5 women, compared to 1 in 3 in 1950. By 2006, women represented 46% of those working, and in 2010, for the first time, women were generally reported to be at least 50% of the workforce.

How Far We’ve Come
Today, women have come so far that it seems acceptable to take a light-hearted look at gender issues. NBC News legal analyst Dan Abrams has written a compelling little book entitled Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else.

Using empirical evidence and a good dose of humor, Abrams makes the serious case that polls and scientific studies have demonstrated that women have better memories, vote in higher percentages, are better at using social media, are less corrupt in politics, are better at navigating a tough economy, and are even better beer tasters!

One of Abrams’ most interesting and well-documented chapters concerns the effectiveness of women police officers, who, he notes, “didn’t even have a Police Officer Barbie to look up to until 1993.” When crime and police corruption were rocking Lima, Peru, and Volgograd, Russia, in the early 2000s, the countries came up with the same solution: hire women officers instead. A study in Los Angeles backed up their good results: Women were more trusted, played by the rules, and had less tolerance for bad behavior on the streets and among their peers.

Abrams reports that a New York Times study determined that women make more money in the stock market than men. The same newspaper reported that some Ivy League schools have been accused of stacking the deck in favor of boys to try to “balance out” higher achievement by women students.  As Abrams notes: “Wow. Accusations of affirmative action policies—for men. That kind of says it all.”

Fifty years after a wholesale move of women into the work force, many people believe that all issues of gender equity are behind us. In truth, women are still chiseling away at the glass ceiling.  As one friend put it, the cracks are bigger, but the ceiling is still there.

Issues that Remain
Progress to the very top has remained slow.  While women now earn 60% of all master’s degrees and 50% of all doctoral degrees, in 2006 only 10 Fortune 500 companies were run by women.

Pay equity also remains an issue. In 2005, women earned only 77 cents for every dollar men earned. In 2009, according to the US Department of Labor statistics, that figure ranged from 80 cents through 93 cents, depending on the ages of the women. (Young women ages 16 to 24 achieved the higher level.) Pay inequality in part stems from the occupations most prevalent among women.  The number one job category for women in 2009 was secretaries and administrative assistants, and the numbers two and three – registered nurses and teachers.  So there hasn’t been as much change as one would like to believe.

Competing priorities at work and home remain an issue for women, but a consensus is developing that what women want and need in the workforce can be beneficial to men and to employers, as well.

With women’s participation in the world of work largely a foregone conclusion, some old issues have died out, but new ones have arisen. A recent New York Times article focused on a new set of issues facing academic women.  Those in scientific fields, still a minority, spend an inordinate amount of time, for example, sitting on committees, where they feel like the “token woman.”  In addition, author Kate Zernike notes that women feel they—and not the men on the faculty—are too frequently invited to participate in work-life balance panels, where they are expected to discuss family issues, like how much sleep they get, or what they feed their children for breakfast.

Keys to Success
Distilled down, here are some of our lessons learned—

• Focus on what you do well.  Your individuality is your best asset.
• Listen for hints and take advice.
• Trust your instincts. They are a major part of who you are.
• Act confident until you are.
• Always make friends with the HR people.
• Be able to understand and articulate how your initiatives align with the vision of the organization.
• Document and share your accomplishments and those of the people you lead.

Lessons Learned
So where do we go from here? How can we be sure the path from here continues to improve openness and opportunity?

One thing is certain: everyone benefits when the talents of women and men alike are fully utilized, and when employees are able to work with their employers on finding a balance that is beneficial to everyone. Policies that are women-friendly are also men-friendly and business-friendly.

The Last Laugh
Of all of the advice my friends had to offer to young women and to those who mentor them, perhaps the best was to be yourself – your individuality is your strongest asset. We’ll close with one last true story from a colleague:

“It was the early 1980s, and we were all wearing the ‘dress for success’ uniform – suit with oxford shirt and floppy bow tie. I had a friend at work who wore the uniform every day, and I mean EVERY DAY. She was very attractive, but also very shy. She said she couldn’t just start wearing something different, because everyone would notice. This continued until she got a job at another company. When she got her acceptance letter, I bought her a celebration present – a red knit dress with matching jacket that looked GREAT. She wore the new dress the first day on the job, and phased out the uniform. She’s now a senior executive at a Fortune 200 Company. While the killer red dress wasn’t the reason for her success, it sure helped her self-confidence!”

You, go, girl.

Asking for a raise. Reassigning responsibilities. Giving critical feedback to an underperforming employee. Saying “no” to a request. All difficult conversations. What are the hard conversations you need to have,  but don’t,  or don’t do well enough?

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most is a book that rarely is more than an arm’s reach away. My copy is tattered, highlighted and post-it tabbed with years of use. The tools and techniques this book offers are ones I have found invaluable.

(In fact, we wrote a newsletter on the subject several years ago.)

In response to client interest, we have developed a one-day workshop that will aid you in having your toughest conversations with less stress and more success. The course deconstructs difficult conversations into manageable portions and provides practical and actionable tools to take back into the workplace or the homeplace.

We’ll start the day with examining the three conversations that are part of a difficult conversation: the “What Happened” conversation, the “Feelings” conversation, and the “What does this say about my identity” conversation. Then we’ll move forward to mapping the contribution system (wherever we are, we all contributed both good and bad), separating intention from results (“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings.”), and how to shift the conversation from being about who is right, to a learning conversation about how to go forward from here.

An inaugural public workshop is being offered on Friday, November 12. Cost is $850 and includes all materials, course instruction, and lunch. Enrollment is limited.

Dedicated on-site workshops are also available and can be customized in length and topics to address the specific needs of your organization. For more information, please email us at: kw@wunderlin.com or give us a call at 502.895.3689.

And there’s another new workshop on the horizon…

Myers-Briggs Step II® Workshop Now Being Offered

Working in almost any organization today, chances are you have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. You know that you are a INFP (Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perception) or an ESTJ (Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judgment) or one of the 14 other combinations of psychological type. The Wunderlin Company uses the MBTI® to help individuals, teams and entire organizations improve the way they communicate, learn and work. The basic MBTI® is designed help identify your natural patterns for accessing information, making decisions and relating to people.

But did you know that there is a second part (MBTI – Step 2) that helps people better understanding their unique expression of a particular personality type? The MBTI Step 2 takes each of the 8 scales from Step 1 and breaks them down into 5 sub-scales known as facets. This gives us not 4 ways in which we differ but 40!

The Wunderlin Company is pleased to announce a half-day workshop that focuses on providing a much more thorough analysis of the Step 2 data and its applications in terms of personal development, teams, organizations, conflict, coaching, emotional intelligence and communication.

This new workshop is being offered for the first time on Monday, August 23 from 8:00 – noon and again on Monday, October 18 and Monday, December 13. The cost of the workshop is $249 and includes the Step II diagnostic test, and course instruction.

For more information, please email us at: kw@wunderlin.com or give us a call at 502.895.3689.

Fall Lineup Announced for Wunderlin Company Workshops
In addition to the two new workshops, we offer a whole series of workshops that mirror the services offered by The Wunderlin Company. Click on the one that will most help you polish your skills and get all the details.

Facilitating for Results
This introductory workshop provides leaders and managers with three days of experiential practice in both the skills of facilitators—asking effective questions, observing groups and making interventions—and the tools of facilitators—brainstorming, multivoting, gap analysis and others. The final day simulates a WorkOut style problem solving process.

Advanced Models for Facilitation
For the facilitator with some level of experience, our Advanced Models workshop enhances capability by working through Roger Schwartz’ Skilled Facilitator models, and introduces more sophisticated group processes such as Appreciative inquiry and Open Spaces and working on more complex team interventions. Advanced Models also customizes to the specific needs and requests of workshop participants with plenty of time for problem solving, Q&A and practice sharing with our very experienced and skilled faculty.

Coaching as a Leadership Skill

Often at the end of a coaching process, our clients will see the value in cascading the approaches of the one-on-one coaching process to a broader population of leaders. Coaching as Leadership Skill provides over two days the practice required to significantly improve manager’s effectiveness in communicating with and developing their associates.

Customized Leadership Development
We have also customized this workshop for several clients to specifically support their leadership development needs.

Effective Meetings
We all spend so much time in meetings… and almost universally find the majority of meetings to be a poor use of time. This half day workshop provides nine practical and immediately applicable practices for improving meeting effectiveness.

Discover Your Strengths and Put Them to Work
Building on Marcus Buckingham’s book Now Discover Your Strengths, this team building workshop enables teams to look at their collective and individual strengths and reorient both their work allocation and leadership development.

We offer these workshops both in-house and by subscription. For more information, please email us at: kw@wunderlin.com or give us a call at 502.895.3689.

– Warren Buffet, 2008 Letter to Shareholders

Sounds awfully gloomy, doesn’t it? Reminds me of the ballad which begs hard times to “come no more” and made fresh by Bob Dylan as he strums and laments: “Tis the song, the sigh of the weary.” (Click here for video of Dylan’s rendition). As I talk with business owners and organization leaders I almost expect them to break out into the chorus: “Hard times, hard times come again no more.” What is one to do?

Last week I took two actions to help me survive these tough economic times. Both felt like positive steps forward. First, I made a conscious decision to limit the amount of news I listen to. Avoiding reality, you say? Shying away from the truth, you wonder? I prefer to think I am preserving the sense of balance that shrill pronouncements of defeat and ruin drown out. Yes, I still listen selectively to NPR, watch the national news and read the New York Times (albeit, I pick up the Style section before tackling the World in Review). But I’ve quit listening to the “talking heads” predicting gloom and doom at every turn. I don’t need that. Thank you.

The second thing I did was read two publications that helped me frame my thoughts about the economy: Warren Buffet’s 2008 Letter to Shareholders (22 single spaced pages) and renown business writer Ram Charan’s Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty (138 pages). I highly recommend both publications, but since I realize that many of my colleagues and clients are too busy to read even these useful publications, this post highlights two quotes from Buffet’s letter and a summary of Charan’s points with some added examples.  For leaders in the not-for-profit and public sector, I have also attempted to “translate” Charan’s guidance into your frame of reference.

Charan begins his book by noting, “Whether you lead a small group of people or a whole business unit or company, these next few weeks, months, and years will test you.”

In responding to that test, he advises that you transfer your attention to cash.  “Your focus must shift from the income statement to the balance sheet.  Protecting cash flow is the more important challenge.”  You know the three sources of cash in your organization—earned funds (or donated funds in the not-for-profit world); working capital invested in inventories and accounts receivable, and proceeds from the sale of assets.  Make maximizing the cash flow from these three streams your relentless focus.

Another important change is shifting your focus from growth to gaining cash efficient market share. What Charan is referring to is that growth your organization can attain without excessive outlays of your precious store of cash. And, shrinking to providing only those products and services that provide cash will be a mandate. “Eliminate the rest,” he implores – that means shrinking will present opportunities to simplify your processes and reduce the layers of management.  In the end you will have fewer customers, fewer products, fewer facilities, fewer people, fewer suppliers –and a stronger [organization].”

In this new environment leaders need to dive into the details of operating their organizations in unprecedented ways.  Charan calls this “hands on, heads in”.  In adopting this leadership stance, we will all adopt a more intense approach to managing our companies.  We will communicate more with sales or development people, field people, our customers, and our employees who will need an ongoing balance of information from you about both the challenges of the current reality, and your optimism that your organization will come out in 2010 or 2011 healthy and strong.  The cycle for measurement and rewards will compress. Charan advises, “You have to increase your frequency of control, setting targets on a quarterly, monthly or even weekly basis.  Aggressive actions and decisions build optimism and confidence—your own and others’.”

The Six Essential Leadership Traits for Hard Times
Charan argues that the new economic reality changes the attributes leaders must have for success.  Think about your work, your decisions and your leadership since September.  Which of the following are your strengths?  Which do you need to intentionally add to your repertoire?

Honesty and credibility. Do the folks in your organization absolutely trust you to tell them the truth, even when it is a difficult truth?

The ability to inspire. How skilled are you in finding the compelling strands in your organization’s or department’s future and knitting them into a story behind which your folks can align?

Real-time connection with reality. To what extent are you getting real-time information from your customers, clients or donors?  Basing decisions from even January’s information could be very misleading

Realism tempered with optimism. How balanced are you in your communication and decision-making?  Have you unwittingly become the prophet of an apocalyptic future?  Or are you clinging too hard to the belief that this will all go away in 90 days?  How skilled are you at finding that balance?

Managing with intensity. What is your personal energy level these days?  To what extent are you modeling “Hands on, Heads In?”

Boldness in building for the future. What investments are you making with limited resources to ensure your organization’s or department’s strength when the recovery does kick in? Again from Buffet’s most recent Letter to Shareholders:

“Amid this bad news, however, never forget that our country has faced far worse travails in the past. In the 20th Century alone, we dealt with two great wars (one of which we initially appeared to be losing); a dozen or so panics and recessions; virulent inflation that led to a 211⁄2% prime rate in 1980; and the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment ranged between 15% and 25% for many years. America has had no shortage of challenges. Without fail, however, we’ve overcome them. In the face of those obstacles – and many others – the real standard of living for Americans improved nearly seven-fold during the 1900s, while the Dow Jones Industrials rose from 66 to 11,497. Compare the record of this period with the dozens of centuries during which humans secured only tiny gains, if any, in how they lived. Though the path has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time. It has unleashed human potential as no other system has, and it will continue to do so. America’s best days lie ahead.”

The balance of Charan’s Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty is organized around the actions, skills and decisions required for the major functions in most organizations, many of which build on the concepts already outlined.

Despite my swearing off (or maybe weaning off) of gloomy news programs, I did catch a recent NPR report (click here to listen) on the Arizona Diamondbacks which illustrated the success organizations can achieve in implementing Charan’s approaches (although as far as I know, Charan and the Diamondbacks are not in contact!) The Diamondbacks have lowered their cash breakeven by implementing a player acquisition strategy that keeps them significantly under the salary cap.  They forgo marquis players with back-loaded ten-year contracts in the hundreds of millions in favor of talented but lesser known players. They are adjusting their products and services to suit the times—you can now bring your own food to the baseball park, or for $25 you can sit on the suite level and enjoy their All You Can Eat Buffet.   Their General Manager, Derrick Hall notes their philosophy is “One Fan at a Time”.  By maintaining this highly personalized approach to customer satisfaction, their season ticket sales remain strong.  Hall noted that they are working with their season ticket holders to define packages for next season that fit their reduced circumstances—such as partial or split season tickets—and keep them coming to the ball park.

I hope this post has inspired at least one or two new approaches or tweaks to your leadership that will make you more effective, and more confident, and your organization more successful during these most difficult days. I’d love to hear from you about what is working for you and what you are doing to survive. Please post your comments as a REPLY in the box below.

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A New Look Is Coming Your Way

We are currently revamping The Wunderlin Company website and blog to make the format and content more engaging for our readers. We will let you know when it is up and running and available for your perusal. In the meantime, you can still visit us at www.wunderlin.com. or contact Karen at kw@wunderlin.com.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.
It’s the life in your years.
~Abraham Lincoln

While you may not be able to control the world, you can control how you respond to it. So wake up! Get going! Life is short and time is fleeting…Here’s our third suggestion for how to seize the day:

Figure out your current crossroads
Although not always apparent, we are always in a place of making choices and setting direction in our lives.  One effective response to the uncertainties of 2008 is to make your current crossroads explicit, to think clearly about your choices, and then make decisions consciously about where to direct your life.

Here’s an exercise that I often use with my coaching clients:
Take a blank sheet of paper and draw two intersecting roads on it.  Click here for an example.

Draw yourself in the crossroads.  Put a big thought bubble above you. In it, pose the focus question that describes your current crossroads in life.  For example, What do I really want to do with my career?, How can I conclude this chapter in my life? or How can I balance my work and outside work interests?

In one quadrant write about what is calling you; what draws your attention or energizes you. Your answers could range from very specific things, such as learning a new skill, to big dreams. In another quadrant, write about what is pressing; what is immediate, top of mind. Your answer should focus on the practical realities of your situation.  In the third quadrant write about who and what is involved. It should take into account your network of people and the relationships that affect your plans and decisions.  In the final quadrant, write about the possibilities. Imagine your best and brightest future.

Then return to your focus question.  Look for patterns and themes in your writing that will help you focus on the direction in which you need to move your life.

Note: Inspiration for this activity comes from The Personal Compass by The Grove Consultants.

Here’s the catch: in order to improve, we need to receive candid and timely feedback about our performance.  And, to the point of this enews, we need to give candid and timely feedback to the people who work for us.

So, why don’t we do it? What’s YOUR excuse? Why don’t YOU give your people the constructive (and sometimes difficult) feedback they need to get better at their jobs? I don’t mean to single YOU out; I run into this issue with almost all my clients!  Without singling anyone out, this is an issue I encounter consistently.  I’m even guilty. A number of years ago, a TWC team member I hired to help me with a long and complicated project confronted me with this feedback: “Karen, I’m worried that if you ever had negative feedback to give me, I would just never hear from you again.” And he was correct! When members of my team didn’t perform to expectations, my tendency was just not to use them on the next project – or maybe ever again. Doug’s feedback was a turning point for me as a leader. I learned that the folks who work with me want to know what they can do to improve their results. As a result, I’m constantly working to provide constructive feedback to them.

I have my own theories about what keeps people from giving robust feedback, but was curious to see what other professionals had to say. I posted the following question to the online business community of LinkedIn:

Why do you think it is so hard for managers and leaders
to give their people the constructive (and sometimes difficult) feedback they need to get better at their jobs?

I heard an earful! My thanks to all who responded so eloquently. The majority of comments fell into one of the following six excuses (oops, I meant categories):

• We don’t know how.
• We wait too long.
• We don’t want to be hurtful.
• We lose focus on why feedback is important.
• We are fearful.
• We are not measured on it.

Here’s a slightly edited sample of the responses, categorized by excuse, along with ideas for overcoming them.

EXCUSE 1: We don’t know how.
“Managers do not have the skills and conversation structure for giving feedback.” – Tony Latimer, master executive coach, co-founder Horseplay Asia, training director at Asia Coach Institute, president ICF Singapore

Advice
Keep your feedback fact-based. “In order to be truly constructive, especially when it’s tough, the feedback must be as fact-based and as non-judgmental as possible. Numbers work best, and if you haven’t set measurable goals and tracked them effectively, you’re going to have a hard time giving fact-based numerical feedback.” – Tom O’Dea, owner, WSI Internet Marketing

Feedback is not about forms. A Fast Company article puts it this way: “Anyone who equates delivering feedback with filling out forms has lost the battle for smart appraisal before it’s begun.” Consultant Kelly Allen is quoted in the article saying: “If you use forms as the basis for meetings about performance you change only one thing – what might have been a natural, helpful conversation into an awkward, anxious inspection.”

Develop your skills as a coach. Today’s leaders need strong coaching skills if they are to achieve the necessary business results and support their employees’ growth into tomorrow’s leaders. Consider taking a coaching workshop so that you will know how to give really good feedback to your employees.

EXCUSE 2: We wait too long.
“Some of the hesitation to give timely feedback can be attributed to the very nature of an “annual performance evaluation” exercise which encourages you to save up these constructive tidbits to make good use of the time set aside at the end of the year. Having been a part of very well-led and very poorly-led teams, an environment that fosters timely and constructive feedback is certainly a common trait among the good ones.” – T.J. Graven, VP, Director of Business Solutions and Technology at Brown-Forman Corporation

Advice
Don’t delay. Practice being intentional about providing feedback immediately or nearly immediately.  Start with one direct report, one instance, and try to formulate and deliver the feedback within 24 hours.  A coaching client I am working with now has found that, so far, the feedback she agonized over delivering is, in fact well-received.  She has learned that folks do want to know how they can get better results.

“A working relationship is like any kind of personal relationship. Open, timely and honest communication makes all the difference in the world.” – Jeff Unger, owner, Jeff Unger and Associates, Inc. and management consulting consultant

Okay, delay sometimes.  If you are providing feedback around an emotionally charged event, wait a day or two. “Sometimes you’re so emotional that it makes sense to wait,” advises Rick Maurer, author of Feedback Toolkit. “Let your gut be your guide.” And find an appropriate time and place. Don’t give important feedback,” advises Maurer, in the hallway.”

Create just-in-time feedback. The Fast Company article mentioned above challenges managers to build feedback into routine meetings and memos. The article encourages managers to learn to deliver feedback through email, voice mail, and short notes. “If we really want a just-in-time workforce,” argues business author Bruce Tulgan, “we have to create just-in-time feedback.”

EXCUSE 3: We don’t want to be hurtful. Or, put another way: it is nice to be nice.
“I believe it [reluctance to give feedback] primarily may be due to our society’s current emphasis on being “positive” and not doing anything to harm others’ self esteem.” – Philip Eschels, member at Greenebaum Doll & MacDonald

This is an excuse that resonates with me personally.  What if the feedback provided is injurious?  What if the receiver is angry?  Anecdotally, this is the most frequently voiced concern in coaching sessions with clients.

Advice
Being direct isn’t being mean. In fact, it is one of the kindest things you can do for your employees. State the positive outcome you want to see, being as descriptive as possible. Don’t forget to communicate that you are “on their side.”  And then, tell that person the news—your feedback in a direct AND caring fashion.

Make feedback more acceptable. A recent Harvard Business Review article, entitled “A Better Way to Deliver Bad News” notes that people tend to be more willing to accept feedback when they have the feeling that:

• The person offering the feedback is reliable and has good intentions toward them.
• The feedback development process is fair – that is, the person giving the feedback collects all relevant information; allows the subordinate to clarify and explain matters; considers the subordinate’s opinions; and applies consistent standards when delivering criticism.
• The feedback communication process is fair – that is, the person offering feedback pays careful attention to the subordinate’s ideas; shows respect for the subordinate; and supports the subordinate despite their disagreements.

Partner for improvement. “Genuinely work with your employees to see how you might help them improve, either through your own actions, or training, or other resources in the organization.” – Heather Stagl, Owner and Leadership Coach at Enclaria Leadership

EXCUSE 4: We lose focus on why feedback is important.
“I believe that the person delivering the feedback has to ground themselves on why the feedback needs to be given: 1) to help the individual grow and 2) to be a good steward of the organization. When I have to deliver tough feedback, it helps me tremendously to remind myself that I am not doing the individual a favor if I withhold important, though difficult, feedback. I would also not be serving my employer properly if I don’t seek to improve the performance of the organization’s resources.” – Raul Pino, technology and strategy executive at CARE

Advice
It is your job to give feedback. Giving feedback to your employees is essential to grow and develop and to build successful organizations. With coaching clients, we frequently create a “coaching grid” that lists each direct report and one or two specific development needs for each person.  Keeping the grid foremost in their daily work then greatly increases leaders’ likelihood of taking advantage of their daily interactions with employees to focus on their improvement and deliver needed performance feedback.

EXCUSE 5:  We are fearful.
“For some, it may be fear of potential conflict, for others maybe fear of not being liked or fear of damaging a relationship that they value.” – Bo Carrington, senior consultant at The Hayes Group International

One reason I believe managers are reluctant to give hard, but constructive feedback, is fear – fear of how the feedback will be received by the employee (i.e., they might be mad, cry, etc.) and fear of how they, the manager, will be perceived. This fear often stems from a lack of practice in effective coaching.” – Lynette Green, interactive project manager at Brown-Forman Corporation

“Even managers and leaders want to be liked – at least most do. And difficult feedback doesn’t appear to go hand-in-hand with being liked. Ironically, well prepared and delivered feedback could be the most valuable contribution a manager can make to an employee’s development.” – Tom O’Dea

Advice
Make feedback an expected and routine part of your supervisory style. The more often you give feedback, the easier it becomes to do – and the easier it is for an employee to respond to. Remember employees are starving for feedback and recognition. They want to be challenged and they want to know how they are doing. If you regularly compliment accomplishments and identify problem areas with the intent to teach, rather than punish, feedback will become an expected and welcomed part of your style.

EXCUSE 6: We are not measured on it.
“I have worked within organizations where leaders were hesitant to give critical feedback because their performance was graded partially (but significantly) on how well their employees ‘liked’ them.” – Bo Carrington

“I believe the discussions fail to take place when a manager is not being appropriately measured and held accountable by his/her own manager. – David Metzger, sourcing at GE Consumer & Industrial

Advice
Measure your managers for how well they develop their employees. Along with metrics around hard business deliverables, managers should also be measured on soft deliverables: team morale, team member development and promotion, succession planning, conflict resolution. We focus on what we’re being measured on.” – David Metzger

So, think about it. What is your excuse? What is your feedback phobia? And what are you going to do about it? Please share your thoughts/action plans with us.

Many thanks to my connections on LinkedIn who provided important and helpful comments for this newsletter!

• What’s the best advice you ever got?

Mayor of New York City, founder of Bloomberg LP

“I can’t remember who told me this, but I certainly didn’t grow up knowing it, so I must have gotten this advice at Salomon Brothers in the 1970s. The advice was, first, always ask for the order, and second, when the customer says yes, stop talking…” Fortune Magazine, May 12, 2008

On a long flight recently, I was catching up on some reading. An article in Fortune’s May 12 issue got my attention: The Best Advice I Ever Got, featuring responses from 19 very successful people including Larry Page, the founder of Google, Tina Fey, Gen. David Petraeus, and Robert Iger, CEO of Disney. (Click on the article name to read all 19 pieces of advice.)

And it got me thinking about the best advice I had ever gotten…

From Rollie Tillman at University of North Carolina’s Business School
“Separate the decision of what to do from how to pay for it.”

So frequently in strategic planning sessions with clients or when making personal decisions, the tendency is to go immediately to the shortage of current resources. This sage advice from my professor has frequently helped facilitate first the conversation about “What is the right action to take here?; What do we really want?; What is our vision for our best future?” Then, armed with a compelling view of what we want, we can begin to think about how to achieve it, and how to pay for it.

From another business school professor
Professor Rader at the Darden School taught Rader’s Rules and they had a profound impact on my husband, David. He has often shared them with me and the one I have found most useful is: “Get the facts or the facts will get you.” Harold Geneen, CEO of ITT called this “shaking the facts”. He told the story of buying a tract of land in Canada because of the plentiful and high quality lumber. After purchasing the land, someone finally went to see the land… and learned that the trees were all very small and thin because of the short growing season, and were many many years from being harvested. A graphic example of the need to verify the facts!

So often a conversation or problem-solving session roams from opinion to opinion. Those who know me know I am not always right, and I am rarely in doubt! Life has taught me to look for the facts in a situation and to base my decisions on them. If ignored, the facts have this incredible way of showing up when my actions contradict them.

From my Aunt Alean
“Don’t expect anyone to take care of your financial needs except you.”

My aunt had a difficult life as a single parent in the 1960’s. She and my three cousins even had to come live in our three bedroom house for a time – and it already had seven people in it! Her determination to provide for her girls when life threw her some serious curve balls helped me see the value of being able to take care of oneself.

It was the same important lesson that Maria Shriver shares in her book: Ten Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Went Out in the World.This short book is based on a commencement speech she gave at the College of the Holy Cross. It is full of wisdom and insight for young folks beginning their careers. Now, how do we transmit that value to our children? It is a question that has real meaning as our children, Julie and Ed, become young adults.

So, what is the best advice you ever got? Please share it here by hitting the comment button… we’ll compile all the responses and share them later this summer!

Bing Crosby may have been on to something when he sang these lyrics by Johnny Mercer in the 1944 patriotic film, Here Come the Waves. Whereas in the past, much of psychology and organizational change initiatives focused on fixing what was “broken,” there is now a whole body of research that points to the effectiveness of building on strengths and competencies — focusing on “what’s working,” not “what’s broken.” In the human realm, this emphasis is called Positive Psychology; in the corporate world, it’s called Appreciative Inquiry.

In our work with individuals and organizations, we see the power of this positive emphasis — and, along with our clients — it awes us. During a recent Wunderlin Company workshop built around the book Now, Discover Your Strengths, Chip Keeling, VP of Corporate Communications for E. ON U.S. stood up and said to the group, “I used to say, ‘Don’t let X go to any more writing courses. She is already an excellent writer. Have her go to a workshop that addresses a developmental need.’ I now realize the folly of spending our very-limited training dollars trying to make improvements in areas of weakness. We need to focus our training budget on developing our talents into strengths — making our best writers better.”

In this issue of Changing Times, we share resources and techniques for building on your strengths and also on those of the people you manage, and we share some ways to build a strengths-based organization.

So, as Crosby sings, let’s:

“Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.”

Focus on Exercising Your Strengths

“The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have.” — from Now, Discover Your Strengths

Ask most people what their strengths are and they have a hard time articulating them. Ask them about their weaknesses and they become experts. They spend untold time and effort trying to repair their flaws while their strengths are consistently underused and underappreciated.

In their book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton help individuals identify their talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy consistently, excellent performance. Based on the Gallup study of over two million people, the authors introduce 34 dominant themes with thousands of possible combinations, and reveal how individuals can translate them into personal and career success. (The inside flap of the book’s jacket includes a unique identification number that allows you access to the StrengthsFinder Profile on the Internet. This web-based assessment analyzes your instinctive reactions and immediately presents you with your five most powerful signature themes.)

Buckingham and Clifton advocate the need to become an expert at finding, describing, applying, practicing, and refining your strengths. The authors challenge their readers to adopt the two following assumptions and launch a strengths revolution in their own organizations:

1. Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.
2. Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strengths.

They believe that these two assumptions explain why great managers are careful to look for talent in every role, why they focus people’s performance on outcomes rather than forcing them into a stylistic mold, why they disobey the Golden Rule and treat each person differently, and why they spend the most time with their best people. In short, they propose, “these two assumptions explain why the world’s best managers break all the rules of conventional management wisdom.”

The authors encourage you to “look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest threads, reinforce them with practice and learning, and then either find or carve out a role that draws on these strengths every day.” They promise, “When you do, you will be more productive, more fulfilled, and more successful.”

How Full is Your Bucket?

Donald Clifton (one of the authors of Now, Discover Your Strengths) collaborated with his grandson, Tom Rath, to write How Full is Your Bucket This slim, upbeat book offers positive strategies for work and life. Organized around a simple theory of a dipper and bucket, the book teaches you how to increase the positive moments in your life — while reducing the negative. The theory goes like this: “Each of us has an invisible dipper. When we use that dipper to fill other people’s bucket — by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions — we also fill our own bucket. But when we use that dipper to dip from others’ buckets — by saying or doing things that decrease their positive emotions — we diminish ourselves.”

As you read the book, you will discover the power of bucket filling in your own life.

Uncovering and Understanding Your Strengths

Before you can apply and practice and refine your strengths, you need to figure out what they are. We use a number of diagnostic tools to help our clients uncover and understand their strengths.

• We’ve already mentioned the web-based StrengthsFinder Profile that forms the core of the book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The profile uncovers your five signature themes – each of which contains the promise of a strength.
• Ever since founding The Wunderlin Company in 1992, we’ve been an advocate for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® — both Step I and II. We use MBTI® to help individuals gain a deeper understanding of themselves and how they interact with others. We find it to be a powerful tool for helping people transform themselves — improving how they communicate, learn and work.
• Right brain. Left brain. Whole brain. The Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) measures how individuals’ thinking preferences, or “brain dominance,” affect the way they work, learn, and communicate.
• 360° Feedback is literally an opportunity to receive feedback from all the groups of people with whom you work. (Picture yourself at the center of a circle.) Unlike a traditional performance evaluation, 360 feedback includes evaluative data from peers, direct reports, administrative associates, customers and any other group with whom you work directly. Most 360 instruments provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback and can be invaluable in forming a new perspective on areas of strength and opportunities for development. In a previous issue of Changing Times, we featured an article on the use of 360° Feedback in the coaching process. Click here to read that article.
• DISC Personal Profile System is personality testing profiling using a model of normal behavior. Based on the 1928 work of psychologist William Moulton Marston, it helps people explore behavior across four primary dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.
• The Predictive Index Survey is a managerial assessment tool that provides insight into the natural workplace behaviors of prospective and existing employees, resulting in improved hiring decisions, team performance, overall communication, and workforce productivity.

We believe that you must know where you are now in order to know where you want to be in the future. You need to know where you excel and where you struggle. This rich and objective data becomes the platform for your professional development.

Strategies for Dealing with Your Weaknesses

We hope by now that we’ve convinced you to stop dwelling on your weakness and instead focus on your strengths. This doesn’t mean you can ignore your weaknesses; instead, we challenge you to find ways to manage them. Here are suggestions offered by the authors of Now, Discover Your Strengths:

• Get a little better at it. While this strategy may not be much fun, it is often the only workable one. Some activities are baseline requirements for almost any role. Authors Buckingham and Clifton cite such examples as communicating your ideas, or listening to others, or organizing your life so that you are where you need to be on any given day. The authors advise you to hunker down “or these weaknesses may well undermine all your great strengths in other areas.”
• Design a support system. Often people will come up with an idiosyncratic support system that serves as a crutch for one of their persistent talent weaknesses. The authors suggest that “it might be as straight-forward as buying a Palm Pilot to help you keep track of your life or as peculiar as imagining your audience naked in order to calm your nerves before a speech.” Whatever it is, if it works, go for it.
• Use one of your strongest themes to overwhelm your weakness. We often recommend this strategy to Wunderlin Company coaching clients. For example, one of our clients was a very effective sales person; his customers loved dealing with him because he was always so knowledgeable and a creative problem-solver. However, his internal staff found him very difficult to deal with. Eventually he learned to use the questioning and listening skills that worked so well with his clients on his internal staff to improve results and relationships.
• Find a partner. It takes a strong person to ask for help. It requires a willingness to admit your imperfections. However, if you do, you can often find a complementary partner. Think of the “numbers-blind” entrepreneur who deliberately partners with a “numbers-mad” accountant, or the gene-splitting genius who sensibly seeks out a legal expert to secure approval for their miracle drug. Together, they are strong.
• Just stop doing it. That’s right. As a last resort stop doing it. Three outcomes may surprise you. First, how little anyone cares. Second, how much respect you can earn. And third, how much better you feel. The authors advise, “Confess that you have lost the battle with your unfixable weakness, and you may well win the trust and respect of those around you.”

Each of these strategies can help you as you strive to build your life around your strengths. But no matter which strategy you use, advise the authors, “Never lose your perspective.” They explain, “These strategies do not transform your weaknesses into strengths. They are designed to help you manage around a weakness so that it doesn’t get in the way of your strengths.” Think of them as damage control.

Two Ways of Looking at Life

Martin S.P. Seligman, Ph.D. has spent more than 30 years researching the influence of optimism on our lives and developing techniques to help people rise above pessimism and the depression that accompanies negative thoughts and to build a life of rewards and lasting happiness.

In his groundbreaking national bestseller, Learned Optimism: How to change Your Mind and Your Life, Dr. Seligman shows you how to chart a new approach to living with “flexible optimism.” He advocates that optimism can be learned by practicing thought patterns that encourage it. In his book he provides step-by-step techniques designed to change your interior dialogue, allowing you to learn to be optimistic.

In Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Seligman explains that the way we habitually explain bad events indicates our explanatory style. This style reflects a habit of thought, learned in childhood and adolescence. It stems directly from your view of your place in the world. Do you think you are valuable and deserving (optimistic), or worthless and hopeless (pessimistic)? According to Seligman, there are three crucial dimensions to your explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization.

Permanence: People who give up easily believe the causes of the bad events that happen to them are permanent. They believe that the bad events will persist and that they will always be there to affect their lives. If you think about bad things in “always’s” and “nevers,” chances are you have a pessimistic style. However, if you think in “sometimes” and “lately,” using qualifiers and blame bad events on transient conditions, you have an optimistic style. For example:

The optimistic style of explaining good events is just the opposite of the optimistic style of explaining bad events. People who believe good events have permanent causes are more optimistic than people who believe they have temporary causes.

Pervasiveness. While permanence is about time, pervasiveness is about space. Seligman explains it this way, “Some people can put their troubles neatly into a box and go about their lives even when one important aspect of it — their job, for example, or their love life — is suffering. Others bleed all over everything. They catastrophize. When one thread of their lives snaps, the whole fabric unravels.” A pessimist often makes universal explanations for their failures and gives up on everything when failure strikes in one area. Optimists, on the other hand, will make specific explanations and may become helpless in that one area of their lives, yet go forward in the others.

Whether or not we have hope depends on these two dimensions of our explanatory style — pervasiveness and permanence. Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope. Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.

Personalization. When bad things happen, Seligman explains, we can blame ourselves or we can blame other people or circumstances. People who blame themselves when they fail have low self-esteem as a consequence. People who blame external events do not lose self-esteem when bad events strike. On the whole, they like themselves better than people who internalize the blame.

However the opposite is true when explaining good events. The optimistic style of explaining good events is again the opposite of that used for bad events. It’s internal rather an external. People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people and circumstances.

If you tend to have a pessimistic exploratory style, you should be aware that you are likely to get depressed easily; you are probably achieving less at work than your talents warrant; your physical heath and your immune function are probably not what they should be; and life is just not as pleasurable as it should be. Seligman argues that by altering your explanatory style (i.e., learning optimism) you’ll be better equipped to cope with troubled times and keep them from propelling you toward depression.

Bringing Out the Best in Your Organization

Imagine bringing employees together to talk not about problems, but rather about their greatest successes. Imagine asking them “What is it like when our department/organization is working at its best?” And then listening carefully to the responses.

This process, of focusing on what’s working rather than on what’s broken, is called Appreciative Inquiry (AI). In our work with clients we employ it as a powerful mechanism for envisioning a desired future. Working backwards from their vision, they devise the changes that are required to achieve the vision. We have successfully added an appreciative inquiry approach to WorkOuts, leading to even better team results.

Appreciative Inquiry emphasizes and builds on a company’s strengths and potential. It is both pragmatic and hopeful. By asking the right questions, it seeks to locate, highlight and illuminate the “life-giving” forces of an organization’s existence. As David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney and Jackqueline Stavros explain in The Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, “Appreciative Inquiry seeks out the best of what is to help ignite the collective imagination of what might be.” A while back, we published an entire newsletter on this subject. If you want to read more about Appreciative Inquiry and how it might be used within your organization, click here.

Dig Deeper into Your MBTI® Preferences

Chances are, somewhere in your career past, you’ve taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) personality inventory. It helped you figure out your preferences on four dichotomies:

• Extraversion – Introversion
• Sensing – Intuition
• Thinking – Feeling
• Judging – Perceiving

The various combinations of these preferences result in 16 unique personality types. You might be an ESTJ or perhaps an ISFP or maybe an INFP. The results of your MBTI® inventory help you identify your natural patterns for accessing information, making decisions, relating to the outside world, and coming to closure.

What the results from the basic inventory are not able to do is explore and identify a person’s unique individuality within the type code that best describes his/her pattern. The MBTI® Step II instrument accomplishes this. Recently we have been administering and interpreting the Step II inventory, providing coaching clients the opportunity to dig deeper into their preferences.

In the MBTI® Step II each of the four dichotomies are composed of five facets; the facets explain the uniqueness of the individual in greater detail, and serve to identify the differences that are experienced between two persons of a given type.

For example, a person who has an overall preference for Extroversion exhibits preferences on the five facets: initiating, expressive, gregarious, active, and enthusiastic. An introvert will exhibit varying strengths in the following facets: receiving, contained, intimate, reflective, and quiet. For each, an individual may be stronger in some facets than others.

If you want to learn more about Step II and how it might help you target areas of personal strength that are clear and specific, click here.

Want to Build a More Positive Approach?

If these approaches intrigue you, we would be delighted to work with you to define the optimal approach to introducing them to your organization, be it via Appreciative Inquiry in a large group, a StrengthsFinder, or an MBTI® workshop, or executive coaching. One of our values is looking for the best in people, situations, and organizations. We’d be honored to partner with you in the spirit of that value. Please email us at: kw@wunderlin.com or give us a call at 502.895.3689.

In addition, the resource page of our web site features articles, books and web links that we find helpful in understanding how to build on strengths and how to develop strengths-based organizations. Click here to see what we recommend.

You may want to consider attending our newest Wunderlin Company workshop, Discover Your Strengths & Put Them to Work. This workshop for teams and work groups is built around the book Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. Prior to attending, you’ll take the StrengthsFinder Profile which will identify your five most powerful signature themes. Time will be spent at the workshop discovering the source of your strengths and how to manage them.

Success in business today demands that we constantly innovate. We must continually reinvent our organizations and ourselves, dissolving old ideas and creating new models for changing markets. We must continually look for the next opportunity by finding hidden connections and insights into new products or services. Creativity is a requirement.

Savvy managers understand that brainpower is their most valuable resource and that harnessing creativity requires passion and commitment. The payoff is big – as success flows directly from innovation!

The conference room at TWC is plastered floor to ceiling with white boards. When one of us gets stuck we go into the conference room, alone or with a colleague, to map out the issue and get new perspective. Just freeing ourselves to work in a big informal space, make problems visual, and use some color and drawing frequently leads to new and creative insights. To find out how your organization can ignite the creative spark and foster innovation, read on.

It’s Not a Gift; It’s a Habit Formula for Creativity Involves Preparation and Effort

Creativity: it’s not a gift from the gods bestowed by some divine and mystical spark. Rather, it is the product of preparation and effort. It’s a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.

That’s the premise behind Twyla Tharp’s new book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life. Tharp should know a lot about creativity – she is one of America’s greatest choreographers and a very successful business woman. She takes the lessons she has learned in her remarkable thirty-five year career and shares them with her readers.

Tharp tells us that creativity is not just for artists. “It’s for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it’s for engineers trying to solve a problem; it’s for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.” She claims, “It takes skill to bring something you’ve imagined into the world! No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that’s both painstaking and rewarding. It takes time.”

Here’s a peek at some of the practical advice she offers.

Routine is as much a Part of the Creative Process as the Lightning Bolt of Inspiration

To get the creative habit, you need a working protocol that’s habit-forming. Tharp touts the rituals of preparation. For her, it’s rolling out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and hailing a Manhattan taxi to take her to the gym for a two-hour workout. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training she puts her body through each morning; the ritual is the cab. “The moment I tell the driver where to go, I have completed the ritual.” She believes that it is vital to establish some rituals – automatic but decisive patterns of behavior – at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up or going the wrong way. For Tharp, turning something into a ritual eliminates the question: Why am I doing this? “By the time I give the taxi driver directions, it’s too late to wonder why I’m going to the gym and not snoozing under the warm covers of my bed. The cab is moving. I’m committed. Like it or not, I’m going to the gym.” Her morning workout ritual arms her with confidence, jumpstarting her creativity.

To Help You Focus on a Project, Consider Subtracting Things from Your Life

Before Tharp begins a big project, she tries to place herself “in a bubble of monomaniacal absorption where I’m fully invested in the task at hand.” She lists the biggest distractions of her life and makes a pact with herself to do without them for a week. Here are some of the things she suggests that you consider cutting out: television, the Internet, mirrors, clocks, numbers, and music. She believes that subtracting your dependence on some things you take for granted increases your independence. “It’s liberating,” she says, “forcing you to rely on your own ability rather than your customary crutches. The act of giving something up does not merely clear time and mental space to focus you; it too can become a ritual.”

Before You can Think Out of a Box, You Have to Start with a Box

A box, the kind you buy at Office Depot for transferring files, is Tharp’s solution for an organizing system. She starts every dance she choreographs with a box. “I write the project name on the box and as the piece progresses, I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance.” For Tharp, this means a card with the project’s goal(s), notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of her working alone in her studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books, photographs and pieces of art that may inspire her. For Tharp, the box “makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet.” It also represents a commitment. “The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I’ve started work.” The box also means that she doesn’t worry about forgetting.” One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place. I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box.” Tharp notes one final benefit to the box: it gives you a chance to look back. The box gives you the opportunity to reflect on your performance. “Dig down through the boxes archaeologically and you’ll see a project’s beginnings.” Ask yourself: How did I do? Did I get to my goal? Did I improve on it? Did I change along the way? Could I have done it all more efficiently?” Tharp contends that, in the end, “your box is proof that you have prepared well.”

Scratch for the Small Idea

When you first begin a project, you must dig through everything to find something. Big ideas are all around you, but when you can’t wait for the thunderbolt to hit you, you must scratch for a small idea. Twyla Tharp gets started on most of her new dances by scratching for the idea. “A dance doesn’t hit me whole and complete. Inspiration comes in molecules of movement, sometimes in a nanosecond. A quick combination of three steps is an idea.” And from that idea, she builds her dances. “When I’m scratching, I’m improvising,” she says. She likens it to a jazz musician jamming for an hour to find a few interesting notes; a choreographer looks for interesting movements. Tharp believes that there are as many ways to scratch for ideas as there are ideas. To get you started, consider:

Reading. It’s your first line of defense against an empty head. Reading generates ideas, because you’re literally filling your head with ideas and letting your imagination filter them for something useful. “If I stopped reading,” says Tharp, “I’d stop thinking. It’s that simple.”

Everyday conversation. If you listen, you will hear ideas. Tharp recounts how Paul McCartney and John Lennon spontaneously wrote “Eight Days a Week” after being inspired by a comment that a chauffeur made when McCartney asked, “How’ve you been?” “Working hard,” said the driver, “working eight days a week.” That comment became the launch of “Ooh I need your lovin’…”

People’s handiwork. Take a stroll through a museum; go to a theatre or an exhibition. Inspiration abounds.

Mentors and Heroes. Use the paradigms of your mentors and heroes as a starting point. Ask yourself, “How would they solve this problem?” But, be careful, warns Tharp, not to turn yourself into an imitator rather than a creator.

Nature. Step outside. Observe wildlife, plants, and sunsets. Mother Nature is a wonderful source for scratching.

Tharp sums it up this way: “Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.”

Prepare to be Lucky

There is a fine line between good planning and over planning. You never want the planning to inhibit the natural evolution of your work. “In order to be habitually creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative,” says Tharp, “but good planning alone won’t make your efforts successful; it’s only ” after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into your efforts. Tharp tells us that creative endeavors can never be thoroughly mapped out ahead of time. “You have to allow for the suddenly altered landscape, the change in plan, the accidental spark – you have to see it as a stroke of luck rather than a disturbance of your perfect scheme.” She tells us that you don’t get lucky without preparation, and there’s no sense in being prepared if you’re not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.

Build Your Creativity on a Foundation of Skill

Tharps reminds us: Great composers are usually dazzling musicians. A great chef can chop and dice better than anyone in his kitchen. The best fashion designers are invariably virtuosos with a needle and thread. The best writers are well-read people. A successful entrepreneur can do everything and anything – stock the warehouse, negotiate with vendors, develop a product, close a deal, placate an unhappy customer. Her point is that all these people have mastered the underlying skills of their creative domain, and built their creativity on the solid foundation of those skills. “Skill is how you close the gap between what you see in your mind’s eye and what you can produce: the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be.”

Don’t Get Stuck in a Rut

“It’s going to happen sometimes: despite all the good habits you’ve developed, preparation rituals, the organizational tools, the techniques for scratching for ideas, there will come a time when your creativity fails you,” acknowledges Tharp. You are in a rut. Tharp offers a three-step process for dealing with ruts: First, you have to see the rut. Second, admit you’re in a rut. Third, get out of the rut. It’s this third part that is hard. “Knowing and admitting a problem are not the same as solving it,” acknowledges Tharp. “But executing a solution is also the fun part, because the solution saves you and gets you moving again.”

The Long Run

Tharp tells us that there is no long run for a creative life without devotion, commitment, and persistence. “When creativity has become your habit; when you’ve learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demands of others; when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose – then you’re on the way to an artist’s ultimate goal: the achievement of mastery.”

We hope the ideas presented here trigger you to think about how you develop your own creative habit. We’d love to hear what works for you – and what doesn’t. Click here and share your thoughts with us.

Gain a Different Perspective to See an Issue Freshly

By Judy Futch, TWC associate

“People…they just keep trotting back and forth thinking there is something better on the other side. If they would just wait quietly – something good will come along. But no – with humans, it’s rush, rush, rush, every minute.”

“So how do you do it?” Her colleague asked.

“I sit still a good part of the time and don’t go wandering all over creation. I know a good thing when I see it. I stay put and wait for what comes.”

What wise sage made these statements? Of course, it was Charlotte; the renowned web-designer from Charlotte’s Web and Wilbur, the pig that was radiant, terrific, and “some pig.”

So what can we learn from a spider? To tap into your creative side, you must begin by accepting that you have a creative side – even if you are the most linear of thinkers. We all have insights that come from our unique backgrounds and experiences.Sometimes you have to walk away, literally or figuratively, from the issue to gain insight. That may mean a physical walk, run, or swim. Rhythmical action lets your brain rest and stimulates the creative side of your brain. For some people, spending time outdoors – gardening, walking in the woods, or extended time in the wilderness, gives them insight from the natural world. The idea to repackage potato chips into an uniform shape and thickness (Pringles trademark) came from an observation that after a hard fall rain leaf piles were condensed to half their size. The issue? Potato chips were packaged in bags to reduce breakage but shipping was too expensive. The idea? Reduce potatoes to “mash” (like wet leaf piles), dry the mash, and “cut” uniform chips that would fit into a cylinder. Uniform potato chip shapes, uniform container, cheaper shipping costs, and all because of a walk in a fall rain!

Sometimes one of the best ways, as Charlotte suggests, is to sit and wait for what comes. It takes moving from the question of what and how…to the question of why am I focusing on this issue. What is underneath the need to create or to know? And then allowing the image to emerge.

From The Power of Appreciative Inquiry, A Practical Guide to Positive Change by Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom (Berrett- Koehler Publishers, 2003) inquiry creates change and the moment we ask a question, we begin to create a change. What are key questions that you can use to stimulate your thinking when you are in a creative funk?

• Think of a highlight from your experience when you were engaged in a creative activity (woodworking, child raising, problem-solving). What did you do? What did you feel like? What sparked that insight into the possible?
• If you were eight years old and unencumbered with the rules of the adult world, how would you look on this issue?
• What are your three hopes or wishes for you…your organization…this issue, that a creative spark will help resolve?

It helps to identify people who are your creativity catalysts – people you can call upon to exchange ideas and who stimulate your thinking and perspectives on the world. It sometimes just takes explaining the issue to someone who thinks differently, who works in a different field, who views the world somewhat differently to re-ignite your creative spark. It’s there. Like Charlotte, you may just need to gain a different perspective to see the issue freshly.

Jump in the Shower to Jump Start Creativity

Why is it that inspiration often strikes while you are lathering up in the shower? Does something magical happen when you blend soap, water, steam, and a few minutes alone? Turns out, the answer is “yes.”

A recent article in Inc. offers this explanation: According to clinical psychologist Joshua Coleman, “Creativity requires an attitude that is a paradoxical blend of attention and relaxation.” What better place to cultivate such an attitude than the shower? Steven M. Smith, a cognitive psychologist at Texas A&M. describes it this way: As we scrub, “our minds revert to a sort of neutral state in which we are receptive to issues or themes that bother us or that are unresolved.” The author of the Inc. article, Alison Stein Wellner, speculates that as our minds wander as the water beats down, “it is easier to entertain playful thoughts. In most cases, these playful thoughts lead to nothing, and you leave the shower all wet. But on occasion, you’ll hit on something really great.”

The shower is a near-perfect environment in other ways, too. Assuming you are showering alone, you are in a personal space, free from anxiety, negative feedback, and other distractions. Your relaxed mind is free to generate and sort creative ideas.

Now that you know this, you needn’t feel guilty about spending a few extra minutes alone with your soap and your thoughts in the shower. It could be a “Eureka!” moment.

Lessons from an Expert

Hewlett-Packard Company, a leading global provider of computing and imaging solutions and services, holds “invention” at the heart of its core values. Its culture is based on the belief that invention depends fundamentally on creativity and that creativity is a process and a skill that can be developed and managed throughout the entire organization.

HP’s philosophy for fostering an environment for creativity and innovation is embodied in its core values – its way of thinking and a set of behaviors – published under the title: Rules of the Garage. (The reference to the ‘garage’ is to signify how and where HP started, in “the garage” at Palo Alto California, where Stanford University classmates Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded HP in 1939.) Click here to find HP’s Rules of the Garage. By most accounts, they seem to be working!