Month: November 2015

When politicians offend you, they are not talking to you.

They are talking to the people who will likely vote for them. Everything that Politicians say offends someone.

When politicians are on the campaign stump, the best politicians say things that draw headlines.  The media people pick these things from political speeches and write their headlines.  Conservative, liberal, and progressive media use headlines to draw subscribers.  They select political statements from politicians that can show how terrible stupid, ludicrous, and offensive a politician can be, and they post political statements that show how appealing an opposition politician can be.  They select the statements that appeal to the way that their readers want to view the news.

When the people in the media offend you, they are not speaking to you.

People enjoy reading and listening to media that says things that they like.  People do not enjoy reading or listening to things they don’t like.  Political media is more about what people giving people what they like to read hear than what they want to learn.

The rules for social media are the same as the rules for a dinner party.

For most people, social media is not a political forum.  It is like a dinner party.  Most people want to read things they enjoy and things that teach things.  They are there to enjoy each other’s company.

When people create social media profiles that are not political and then take political positions, they can affect their personal relationships and their careers.

Social Media 

The best practice is to follow not only the social guidelines but to stay in character.  Elise Abbott stepped out of character when, as a reporter, she tweeted a politically based opinion instead of what people expect from journalist who report the news, but do not comment on the news.

There are politicians on social media who create support for their careers through political statements on Facebook or Twitter.  These people are politicians.  Their profile says that they are political figures.  Their posts support their political views.  When people become friends with politicians on social media, these know what to expect from the relationship.  They expect and they get the politics that is consistent with the views of the politicians.

There are people on Facebook and Twitter whose profile shows them as friends connecting with friends or as business people who are seeking to promote their business.  They step out of character when their posts only support their political views:  Do these people only want friends, clients, or customers who are either Republicans or Democrats?  If they do, they are missing half of their potential customers.  I suspect that either these people do not understand the conflict between business marketing and political positioning or they just can’t resist the urge to say what they believe politically with the belief that they must take a stand.

A better approach would be to keep their personal profile built on their business just that, a personal profile built on their business by posting updates on either themselves or their business.  If they want a forum for their politics, I recommend that they create a page that represents their political views.

A way to demonstrate best practices in social media is to view the Facebook business pages of major companies.

Go to the Facebook pages of the largest companies in America.  They are no political views on these Facebook pages.  But there is information on their company developments and products.

How do successful people manage the future?  They don’t.  Even when they are planning, they are not managing the future.  They are managing their plans for the future.

The future doesn’t exists.  There is a sign that hangs above some bars: “Free beer tomorrow.”  Of course, the same sign will be hanging above the bar tomorrow and carry the same message.  People who are coming back for free beer tomorrow will just have to keep coming back forever.

But what about times when life hands us bad hands?  Don’t bad hands affect the future?  No one really knows how today’s hands will affect the hands that we get tomorrow.  Life deals everyone bad hands.  Just ask poker players.  They all get bad hands.  Great poker players know that over the long-term, bad hands and good hands even out.  Whether or not they make money depends on how they play the hand they hold in the present moment.  They focus on each hand with three questions.  Do I call raise with the present hand?  Do I call with the present hand?  Do I fold the present hand?
When I became a recruiter, I went through a training period.  The trainer emphasized the importance of treating all calls, whether good new or bad news, as having the same value.  Some calls have positive results.  Other calls have negative results.  But both calls have equal value over the course of a career in recruiting.  The key to managing the future of my success was (a) to keep making calls and (b) to become better at learning with each call.

Be the Leader in the Workplace.

There are things that I can do to make work happier and more successful for my coworkers, my boss, my customers, and me.

Give credit where credit is due.  I do not like people to take credit for my work.  I cannot allow myself to take credit for the work of other people.  If someone is giving me credit for the work of another person, I need to speak up and give credit to the correct person.

Accepting credit I do not deserve can cause me trouble later.  I may never know when I have lost the trust of other people through stealing credit.

Focus on the situation at hand.  When someone criticizes me, I can easily criticize him or her for things that they have done.  This type of response does not give any solutions.  I simply turn a criticism into a conflict.

The best thing I can do is to listen to the person.  I can create space and time until I can understand what the person is saying.

The person may have information I need to do a better job.  Even if the person has suggestions that will not help me, I can listen and avoid tension.  I can focus on the situation at hand.

Let other people have their say.  I have two ears and one mouth.  I need to learn from other people.  If I am talking all the time, I will never learn anything from anyone.

Most people talk, because they feel the pressure to say something.  Allowing people to have their say allows them to decompress.

If a person has gone off the subject, I can direct them back to the point of the discussion.

Pay attention to people when they are speaking.  When my mind is elsewhere during a conversation, people will notice that I am not paying attention.  I need to wake up and pay attention.  People respect me for the attention I give as much the attention I get.

Relax and let other people do their job.  When I am tense or insecure, I want to control people and things around me.  At these times, I am more likely to be annoying than helpful.  I remember to take a deep breath and let other people do their job.

Provide solutions.  It is easy to find fault with other people or their work.  People who find fault create tension in the workplace.

People who solve problems build success for their customers, their company, and themselves.  I need to find solutions not fault.

Seek options to fears and frustrations.

When I feel trapped, I can panic.

However, most situations have options.  I can step back and calmly consider my options.  I can go to other people and ask what they can see as my options.

When people come to me for advice, I can help them find options.

Identifying options creates mental freedom.  I can turn my fears and frustrations into fresh ways to do my job.  I can help other people find fresh ways to approach their work.

I can bring joy to the job.

I can make work fun for my coworkers, my boss, my customers, and for me.  I can smile.  I can complement people and thank them for their work.

8 Success Habits

How do you make success a habit?  Here are some tips that work for me.

Arrive early.  I find that it is nice to arrive early for work or appointments.  When I meet someone locally, I leave in time arrive fifteen minutes early.  I can always find a comfortable place to relax before stepping into the appointment.  When I travel for several hours for an appointment, I may even go in the night before.

Keep healthy snacks on hand.  When I get a little hungry, I feel anxious.  I take things more personally.  Just eating a banana, a piece of whole-wheat toast, or a few nuts can relieve that hunger.

Seek advice.  I am very lucky to have a family and friends who can help me make decisions.  I turn to people who have experience with similar situations as my own.  It is very easy for me to overlook things or see things incorrectly.  Having other people around to work through situations is very helpful.

Make decisions.  When my wife asks me what I want for dinner, I tell her what I want for dinner.  If she asks me which movie I prefer, I tell her my preference.  Indecision on my part may seem as though I am being flexible.  In reality, by telling her I prefer to let her decide, I am putting the weight of the decision back on her when she had ask me for help with my decision.

When I go out to dinner, I keep the process simple.   I read the menu, pick an item.  Then I pick an item and order it.  Asking the waiter what I should eat or asking others what they are having may give me some options, but why make a simple process complicated?

Take action.   At one time, I might spend all day going through my email as my day progressed.  I would have the stress of reading the same emails more than one.  Most emails have the meat of the content in the subject.  I immediately delete all email that I will not need to read.  I read and move the email that I need to save to a folder labeled “Read.”  I send a short reply to email that requires an answer.  Then I have finished working on email for the day.

Take breaks.  Often when I think of taking a break to get some exercise or just to sit quietly, I feel anxious.  What I find is that after the break, I feel refreshed and work more effectively.  Putting off taking breaks is as unproductive as putting off doing anything else.  My mind and body need breaks.

Be grateful.  I find that I feel better if I stop when I feel stress and think about the many good things in my life.  By developing an attitude of gratitude, I feel less stressed.

Enjoy the moment.  I am more effective if I keep my thinking in the present moment.  I also enjoy life.  Even when I am working on a long-term plan, I am not living in the future.  I am creating guidelines that will lead me to a goal.  I try to remember that most of my worries were over things that never happened.  I enjoy the moment.

“The World’s Noblest Headhunter”

Sticking with winners is the key to happiness and success in my life.

One of the things that attracted me to my wife, beyond the fact that she is attractive, intelligent, interesting, and fun, was her family.  My wife’s parents were intelligent people.  I enjoyed being with them.  I admired them for the way that they had raised their family, and for the way they lived their lives.

For years, I had a business partner whose judgement was terrific.  The few memorable regrets from that relationship came from times when I let my ego close the door to his advice or feedback.

Outside of work, I have friends who are doctors, attorneys, clergy, engineers, bankers, contractors, mechanics, government administrators, chemists, and even one judge.

I became friends with these people, because I enjoy their company.  These people are interesting and intelligent people and teach me things.  Sometimes these things are within the scope of their profession.  Other times, they teach through helping me use common sense.

I do not pick my friends to get professional advice.  I pick them as people with whom I bond over common interests.

I have had occasions when my friends have provided me with professional services.  I met them in their office for professional purposes.  I paid one friend to write my will.  I paid another friend to write an employment agreement for my company.  One of my friends became my primary care physician.  I have other friends in other fields of medicine.  These friends do not treat me medically.  They refer me to other people for medical care.  One friend recommended that I see a dermatologist for a skin condition.  Another friend recommended that I have some test done to determine a medical condition.

A friend who is a chemist calmed my fears about my liability over a fire that broke out in one of my offices.  I was anxious about the damage to the building from the sprinkler system.  He said that the fire department would very likely find the cause of the fire and that my business could not have caused that fire.

My friend was correct.  The fire investigators found that a janitor had thrown a cigarette into a waste paper basket and started the fire.

One of my friend is who a senior state administrator and retired military colonel.  He is terrific in negotiations.  He has helped me work through more than one difficult discussion with clients and other friends.

As you pick your friends around the office and after work, pick people who can help you grow as a professional and as a person.  I have found that picking friends in this way has made my life more fun, more interesting, and has helped me through countless challenging situations.