Category Archives: Leadership

Successful Teams

Words that Empower and Motivate Successful Teams

Leadership, Quotes, Success

Successful Teams: Words that empower and motivate teams create bonds among the team members. These words acknowledge ownership of responsibility.  Furthermore, they show recognition of team member contributions.  What are some of these words?

Categories for Words that Motivate Successful Teams

Here are four categories for words that help teams become more successful.

  1. Inclusiveness
  2. Ownership
  3. Recognition
  4. Honesty

Inclusiveness

The words “we,” “our,” and “together” create feelings of membership in a group.

Additionally, calling people by their name increases bonds.

For example, picture this presentation. A team leader is recognizing a team’s efforts in front of other people in the company.

The presentation of the team leader might go like this.

“Bill and Sue are new members on our team.  Together, our team has finished ahead of schedule and below cost.  Furthermore, we have exceeded our team goals.”

Ownership

Accepting responsibility for mistakes is an important trait for members of a team. These are examples of ownership statements.

“I regret my mistake.” “I accept responsibility for the things I could have done better.” “I can and will do better.”

Recognition
Award ceremonies serve several purposes.  One is to make people feel good about their work.  A second, is to motivate people through recognition.

However, team leaders don’t need to wait for an award ceremony to give credit.  Here are words to recognize contribution.

“You did a good job.” “Thank you.” “I would not have expected less from you.”

Honesty

Nice words are not enough to empower teams.  The members need honesty.  When they make mistakes, team leaders must help them see those mistakes.

Misleading team members damages the team’s effort.

People who are defensive about their mistakes lack self-honesty.  Insecurities cripple their ability to bond with a team.  Rather than accept responsibility and correct their mistakes, these people become a burden to the team.

Here are some ideas for dealing with people who struggle with self-honesty.

Criticism of these people makes them feel more insecure.  They become more defensive.

Team leaders can help defensive people become more effective team members by teaching them that taking ownership for their mistakes builds trust.

Additionally, team leaders can teach these people that most people make mistakes.  However, denying mistakes or repeating mistakes makes these team members ineffective.

Team leaders can teach people how to own their mistakes with the words they choose.  For example, “I was wrong. I made a mistake and will try not to make it again.”

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence: 12 Steps to Empowering Your Mind

Job Skills, Leadership, Quotes, Success

Emotional Intelligence:  Learning how to manage emotions is part of growing up.  However, becoming aware that our feelings are making us dumber is not always easy. How do successful people deal with emotions to make better decisions?

Developing Emotional Intelligence

Although it is normal to have emotional highs and lows, successful people separate their emotions from their thinking to make the best decisions.

For example, things look easier and more appealing when we are on an emotional high.  With these feelings, we may overcommit our time and money.

On the other hand, things look more difficult and unpleasant when we are feeling down.  Emotional lows can prevent us from working well with others. Furthermore, when emotional lows shut us down, we can fail to take advantage of opportunities all around us. Our coping skills become less effective.  Our relationships with others become more difficult.

Here are twelve steps that may help.

1. Live in the present moment.

Get out of our head.  Focus on what is in front of us and around us.  This focus enables us to make good decisions and take the best actions.  Leaders live in the world around them and not in the crumbling castles in their head.

2. Let go of Resentments

Ruminating on past wrongs drains our energy.  Furthermore, holding on to resentments create a permanent state of anger.

This anger clutters our mind.  Decisions become more difficult.  Patience and compassion disappear.  We either act out our anger or become passive aggressive.

3. Let go of guilt.

Carrying around guilt lowers our self-esteem confidence. There are only two things you can say about guilt.  Either you were wrong and you will try not to do it again. Or you were not wrong.  Therefore, you are not going to worry about it.

4. Let go of fear.

Fearing the future cripples our mind and imagination.  Many of the things we fear never happen.  

Solutions:  When we are feel resentful, guilty or afraid I take a deep breath.  I step away and take a break.  Often either exercise or rest help me move beyond these feelings.

5. Make new mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. Smart people only make a mistake once.

  1. Mistake made.
  2. Lesson learned.
  3. Moved on.

Furthermore, if you never make any mistakes, you have settled in to trod the path paved for you.  You are doing nothing new.  Creativity dies.  Growth stops.  Your career has high walls on either side.  When you reach a cliff in your career, you can’t go further.

Allow yourself opportunities to try to new things.  Furthermore, do not punish yourself for being less than perfect.

6. Focus on the process not the goal.

Create the goal.  Create a plan to reach your goal.  Continually update the plan.

However, the way that things turn out is beyond our control.

For example, a retail goal is to make sales.  A store can plan to increases its sales when it increases the number of shoppers in the store and the amount of time each shopper spends in the store. Retail stores focus on the process of getting and keeping shoppers in their stores.

7. Measure results, adjust, and move on.

Even with a perfect process, stores may miss their sales goals.  Many things are beyond anyone’s control:  the weather, a catastrophic event, a sudden shift in the economy.

Don’t make excuses for missing sales goals.

However, adjust and learn from the experience.  If the weather or a catastrophic event weakens a store’s sales, the store can stay open longer hours when things return to normal.  If the economy is weak, stores can carry a wider assortment of less expensive products.  Stores can change their process.

8. Practice, practice, practice, and continue to practice.

From practice comes powerful instincts and heightened intuition.  Companies teach people and show these people how to practice and improve their skills.  Employees practice new skills.  Furthermore, through practice, they increase their ability to use the skills they already have.  Great performers and athletes practice before, during, and after practice.

The purpose of practice is to raise a skill level.  Yet what really happens is that practice creates instincts and intuition to work at a higher level under pressure. As your skill level rises, you feel less stress.  You perform better and have more confidence.

9. Embrace consistency and assess change.

One of the business clichés is to embrace change. Sometimes change is good.  Sometimes change is way to get lost in the wilderness.

Change can create many feelings.  Positive change lifts our spirit.  Negative or uncertain change is stressful.

One solution is to assess the value of changes.  From there, focus your attention and your effort on positive change.  However, don’t focus on the prospects of change.  Remember, we can’t control the future.

10. Leaders value relationships as much as they value tangible assets.

It is a lot easier to lose a client than to get one.  Pleasing other people may sound shallow, but pleasing other people is the reason for repeat business.

11. Limit your daily activities.

Leaders set priorities based on the things they can get done today.  This process removes anxiety over things beyond their control.  Focusing on today’s priorities empowers the leaders to follow the process from their plan.

12. Hang out with winners.

I need advice from real humans.  It is so easy for me to believe my thinking, because I have always heard it.  When I isolate, I become inefficient.  I spend too much time at my desk.  I overlook deadlines and let important matters go unattended.

Character

Character: Four Leadership Traits for Long-Term Success

Leadership, Popular Posts, Quotes, Success

Character traits for leadership are more than a leader’s personality.  These traits are a leaders’ moral, emotional, and mental makeup.  What character traits empower leaders to excel?

Leadership Character Traits

They are many character traits that make leaders successful.  Here are four of those traits.

  1. Accountability
  2. Authenticity
  3. Commitment
  4. Humility

Accountability

President Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.”

Leaders hold themselves accountable.  I was a lieutenant in the United States Navy.  My commanding officer (that is, my captain) held me accountable for my actions.  Additionally, the Navy also held my captain accountable.

Successful leaders accept accountability for the failure of their organization.  These leaders can’t do everyone’s job.  However, they can build and train an organization for success.

At the end of the football season, the fans may blame the quarterback for the failures of a team.  However, a head coach with the authority to lead is accountable for the team’s results.

That coach can try to place the blame on the players.  But the coach is the person who hired and trained those players.  The coach is the one who is accountable.  Therefore, successful leaders must hold themselves accountable.

Authenticity

By playing politics, you may be able to gain support from people above you and around the office.  However, if you focus on politics and not performance, you will fail in the long-term.

Furthermore, authenticity is the bedrock of innovation.  When you focus on pleasing people instead of better ways to help you company, your creativity dies.

“If you copy other people, you are an impersonator. When you remake the work of other people in ways that it becomes your own work, you are authentic. When authenticity leads you to break the rules and change the world, you are a rebel. With authenticity, rebels change the world.
~ www.jaywren.com”

Commitment

The failed expectations of others undermine leadership as much as any other event.

Failing to fulfill your commitments weakens the trust that people have in you.

To be more effective, do these things in honoring your commitments.

  • Act Now.
  • Exceed Expectations.
  • Arrival early.
  • Work through the finish of the day.
  • Be honest about your abilities.
  • Don’t over commit in the first place.

Humility

The best book I have read on humility as a leadership trait is Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t by Jim Collins.

If you personalize to your own experience, how much do you enjoy having other people take part or all of the credit for your efforts?  The people you lead are no different.

Great leaders have the humility to give credit to the team. To quote President Reagan, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Creating Future Leaders

Creating Future Leaders: 4 Steps to Leadership Development

Job Skills, Leadership, Quotes

Creating Future Leaders:  How can companies hire and train future leaders? Here are four steps companies can take to strengthen their leadership for the long term.

The Four Steps to Creating Future Leaders

Creating future leaders is critical to the long-term growth of a company.  ~ www.jaywren.com

  1. Hire for leadership
  2. Establish Authority & Responsibility
  3. Teach for leadership
  4. Increase Responsibility

Hire for Leadership

People in any organizations have specific levels of responsibility.  Some of those people will stay in same job for which the company hires them.

Other people come into a company as developmental candidates.  These people may start in entry-level jobs.  However, the company has a plan to move these people into bigger roles.  Their responsibilities increase as they master each job.

Teach Authority, Responsibility, and Accountability

For new leaders to become successful, they must know their authority.

They must know what they can do.  Additionally, they must know when to notify their supervisors.

Furthermore, they must know their responsibilities.  Knowing the boundaries of their responsibilities makes them more engaged and focused.

Last, future leaders must learn accountability.  They are not only accountability for their own mistakes.  They are accountable for the mistakes of the people under them.

Accountability is a great teacher. ~ www.jaywren.com

Train for Leadership

Authoritative leaders criticize. They control the people who work for them.

Ordering people around teaches them the things what not to do.

However, future leaders must learn more than what not to do.  Mentoring leadership builds confidence and skills in future leaders.  Without this mentoring, a company is not creating future leaders.  It is creating people who follow orders.

Increase Responsibility

For leaders to continue to grow, their responsibility must increase.  Companies promote new leaders into bigger positions.  These positions have a higher pay grade.  Additionally, they have the greater responsibility.

However, companies cannot always promote leaders. But they must keep the leaders growing and engaged.

What companies can do is relieve experienced future leaders of bottom rung responsibilities.  At the same time, companies can give them responsibilities that will prepare them for greater responsibility.

Open-Ended Questions

Open-Ended Questions: Solving Problems and Creating Leadership

Interviewing, Job Skills, Leadership, Quotes

 

Open-Ended Questions: What are they? How do they create opportunities for greater understanding in solving problems and creating leadership?

One of the most important skills in leadership is the ability to answer open-ended questions. ~ www.jaywren.com

Examples of Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions enable a person to give meaningful, well-developed answers.  The person uses knowledge, feelings, creativity, and skills of self-expression.

Furthermore, these questions show how well a person can think . That is, to see not just one solution, but multiple solutions.

Examples:

“What are business problems that you have solved? How did you solve them?”

“What would you do if you never had to work again?”

“Why should I hire you?”

Examples of Closed-End Questions

People use convergent thinking to answer closed-end questions. Additionally, closed-end questions have one answer.

“What color is your car?”
“Blue.”

“How many fish in the bowl?”
“Three.”

“Did you leave at 4:30?”
“Yes.”

The Importance of Developing Skills for Open-Ended Questions

Some brilliant people have very poor skills for answering open-ended questions. They have vast amounts of knowledge.  They know the facts and can solutions.

However, their careers falter, because they cannot express their knowledge and their ideas.

For example, financial executives must have skills to know the accuracy of their calculations.

CFOs must be able to explain to a board what the numbers mean.  Additionally, they must be able discuss how the company got into a financial position and how to manage the company’s finances going forward.

Presentation Skills

The place to start learning how to answer open-ended questions is presentation skills.  Developing these skills with help you do many things.

  • Sell more effectively,
  • Interview more effectively,
  • Become a more effective public speaker,
  • Be a leader in workplace meetings.

In short, you will be more successful when you develop your skills to answer open-ended questions.

In conclusion, here are articles that will help you become more effective in answering open-ended questions.

Triggers

Triggers: When Emotions Control Our Thinking

Leadership, Quotes, Success

Triggers are anything that cause negative emotoinal response. Everyone feels stress. However, the degree that people experience stress, the things that create stress, and the way people respond to stress varies.

Different Triggers for Different People

We all have individual triggers.  I say individual triggers, because different things create different feelings and different responses in different people.

For example, heights frighten some people. For other people, heights are thrilling.  Furthermore, the amount that people feel fearful or thrilled varies from person to person.

In the case of bungy jumping, some people are fearful of leaping off a high place to the extent that they cannot even walk out to point where other people jump with glee.  Between these extremes are people who have more intense or less intense feelings about jumping off high places.

How Powerful are Triggers?

When triggered, we experience the impulse to act.

Emotions are not thoughts.  And, under some circumstances, our emotions can fire faster than our ability to think before acting.

For example, two people see a person fall.  One laughs.  Another one winces.

Neither person thought about how they would respond to what they are seeing.  Instead, they are impulsively responding to a visual experience.

Becoming Smart to Avoid Triggers

In many cases, we can recognize patterns in the emotions governing our thoughts.  These patterns are circumstances that increase the likelihood that we will respond emotionally rather than mentally. However, we can become smart to avoid triggers.

When we recognize these patterns, we can make changes in our behavior that affect our ability to deal with stress.

For example, in rush-hour traffic on the freeways, there are miles of cars.  The way that each driver experiences the drive varies from calm awareness to rage.

Rage can lead to dangerous actions.  If we recognize the patterns of behavior that precede the rage, we can change that pattern.  For example, caffeine, hunger, fatigue, and starting late increase anxiety before we even get on the road.

Additionally, anxiety can press us to try to drive faster than the flow of traffic.  When we become frustrated with drivers who slow us down, our anxiety increases further.

The solution is to eliminate or change our behavior before we get on the road.  In this case, we avoid the stimulates, eat, take a break, and start early.

Once we start our drive, we can decide to be part of the flow of traffic and not an intimidating threat to our own safety and the safety of others.

Toxic People

Toxic People: How to Deal with Destructive Personalities

Leadership, Quotes

Toxic people create stress that spreads throughout an organization. What are the skills that you can develop not only to survive but to grow around destructive personalities?

Change What You Control

If you can control the actions of toxic people, your first step is to stop what these people are doing.  The way that I have ended toxic behavior is confronting these people with the facts of their actions.  From there, I have shown them the price they will pay if they continue their destructive behavior.

Avoid the Poison.

When I can’t change the behavior of toxic people, I avoid them. If there is no reason to have to deal with them, I don’t.

Skills for Becoming a Healthier Person

Toxic people: When you can’t fight them, don’t join them.  However, make yourself healthier.

When I can’t change the behavior of toxic people or avoid these people altogether, I focus on the changes I can make in myself to become a healthier person.

Here are some things that work for me.

1. I write about my feelings.

In writing about my emotions, I name my feelings.  Fear, anger anxiety, insecurity, and resentment are common feelings that people have around toxic people. You may have other bad feelings. When I experience these feelings, I write about them.

2. I write about my actions.

In this step, I can see what things I can change in my own behavior to reduce the damage in a toxic relationship.  For example, if I act out of anger, I can change my actions.

3. I discuss what I am feeling with a mentor.

One of the problems with writing about my feelings is that I have trouble seeing solutions.  Instead I focus on how people have harmed me.

However, I have close friends I can trust.  These people keep what I tell them a secret.  These friends are mentors who show me how I can grow and improve my behavior.

Simplicity

Simplicity: The Essential Leadership Skill for Success

Leadership, Quotes

Simplicity: As situations become more complex, simplicity is a powerful tool. How do leaders eliminate the clutter to create success?

Simplicity creates clarity and empowers leaders to remove the roadblocks to success.   www.jaywren.com

The Clarity of Simplicity

Simplicity creates clarity.

  • When leaders speak with simplicity, their message is easier to understand.
  • Simplifying their schedule creates clarity on the things that leaders must do to be effective.
  • Creating simple strategies clarifies the mission and reduces mistakes.
  • Simplifying product mix and services creates clarity in the purpose of the company.
  • The clarity of simplicity throughout an organization empowers the organization to do the big things that count the most.

Simplicity and Priorities

The most important things don’t automatically become visible.  Simplicity helps leaders see what is important.

To speak effectively, leaders eliminate the words and ideas that are not important.  Therefore, the only thing left to say are the simple things that effectively make the leader’s point.

Likewise, leaders must know the actions that are distractions and the actions that are essential.  They eliminate everything that is a waste of time.

On a grander scale, leaders of large companies simplify product mix to the products that guarantee the greatest success in sales, market share, and profits.  Simplifying successful product mix by eliminating the products that detract from the company’s successful products is one of the greatest and most important challenges in leadership.

Stating the Purpose Increases Simplicity

Employees must know what to do.  Without stating the purpose, leaders leave employees to find their own purpose and to work on projects that take them further away from the goal.

In product development, the first step is to state the purpose of not just the project but, also, of the product.

Case Study Statement: “The purpose of the project is to create a hand soap.  The purpose of the new hand soap is to increase market share through increased product effectiveness.”

This step simplifies the focus and makes developers stick to the mission.

From there, developers and project managers must use this focus to create a project plan.  With this plan, developers and project managers can stay on task and measure progress against milestones.

Simplicity Reduces Stress and Increases Engagement

Focused people have a present-moment experience that eliminates the stress of a cluttered mind.  Furthermore, a focused mind is more engaged in work and less engaged in distracting thoughts that create fear and regret.

Great People

People: 18 Point Check-Off List for Making Great Hires

Leadership, Quotes

People: What are the steps for building teams? How do you know which person is best for the work you need done?

If a company has great people at all levels, great goods and services will follow. ~ www.jaywren.com

The Challenging Work of Selecting Great People

As a recruiter who worked with wonderful human resources people and hiring managers, I know the challenges people face in making great hires.  Over the years, I built a check-off list of traits I considered when making referrals.  Using this list, I increased my placement to referral rate.  Furthermore, I increased the long-term success of the people my clients hired.

Here is that check-off list that you as an HR or hiring manager may want to use.  If you believe that anyone in your company will find this list helpful, please share it with them.

1. Intelligence

I believe in hiring smart people at all levels.

As a junior Navy officer, I had a petty officer working for me who had an MBA.   He edited the ship’s newspaper on the carrier USS Midway.  Although he was intelligent to do my job, he didn’t want to pressure of a Navy officer.

Every secretary I hired had the intelligence to do my job.  These people just didn’t want a job with the responsibilities I had.

However, their intelligence gave them the ability to make decisions and recommendations.  I was fortunate to have these bright people work for me.

2. Professional Skills

There is very little exception to making great hires without fundamental skill sets. If you are hiring a coder, the person must know how to code.

If someone already has the skills to use the applications and processes that your company uses, the person will become effectively more quickly. Furthermore, this person will save your company money from lost time in training a new hire.

3. Soft Skills

I have three articles on this subject. If you are not familiar with soft skills, these articles might be helpful.

15 Leadership Soft Skills that Create Greatness

The Top 6 Soft Skills

Job Searching: Hard Skills and Soft Skills

4. The Ability to Grow

Ideally, you are hiring someone who can grow into a bigger role and expand into dissimilar roles within your company. The ability of employees to grow helps a company make long-term hires.

5. Current Compensation

Hiring someone who is at a pay grade lower than you are paying will allow you to reduce costs. Furthermore, you will be able to give the person raises for a longer time without having to promote the person into a higher pay grade.

6. Cultural Skills

A person who has cultural skills is someone who can work with people across diverse cultures.

As companies grow, the challenge in dealing with diversity becomes greater.

For great long-term hires, human resources managers and hiring managers must hire people who can adapt to changes within the company. Often those changes involve cultural diversity in the workplace.

7. Team Skills

People who have team skills, know their own role as a team member.  Furthermore, they can support other team members when needed.

If you look closely at a baseball game, you will see that players work in pairs.  The pitcher knows when to race behind home plate to back up the catcher.  The right fielder knows when to move behind first base to back up the first baseman.

If you have ever watched a base runner caught between two bases, you will see players from several positions form a team to trap the runner.

Each player knows what to do in their primary role and their back up role.

8. Mental Stability

Hire people who can make sound decisions in their work and in their personal lives for the long-term.

In an interview process, you are looking for examples over the course of years of how your prospect has made solid decisions in a variety of rolls.

9. Commitment

People who have commitment can make things work in challenging times.

Jobs are not always fun.  Sometimes, they are stressful, challenging, and demanding.  Every job brings its own set of problems.

However, people who start with a commitment will find ways to adjust and still be healthy when riding out difficulties.

10. Flexibility

Some people are naturally flexible. The boss tells them they are working late on Friday.  They think nothing about working late on Friday.

However, in the alpha society of the competitive organizations, strong leaders make decisions based on what they believe is in the best interest of the company.  Their flexibility stops where the interest of the company begins.

11. Motivation

Motivation generates the energy to create a positive mind set in even the toughest times.  When the job is easy and exciting, motivation is easy and exciting.  However, when challenging times come along, the best people find the motivation to rekindle their own spirit and encourage other people.

12. Resilience

The resilience issue centers around situations in which the prospect had stumbled and bounced back.  Ask the prospect about tough times and how they worked through them.

13. Reliability

This trait appears easy to check when doing references.  However, the evidence of reliability is readily available in the prospect’s resume.  Has the person worked for a company for ten years and had progressive responsibility? The logical conclusion is that the prospect is reliable.  On the other hand, if the prospect has ten years of moving laterally through several companies, you should see a red flag on the person’s reliability.

14. Integrity

Once, in the evening after my secretary had left the office, I went to her desk drawer to find a pen.  This drawer was also where she kept the stamps.

When I opened the drawer, I saw a note that read, “I owe Jay 2 stamps.”

The note reinforced what I knew every day.  My employee had solid integrity.

15. Punctual

Before making a job offer, you must know without a doubt that the prospect is punctual.  Nothing damages morale more than having to deal with people who are always late.

16. Presentable

Defining presentable is part of creating a company culture.  The players on Wall Street dress differently than the leaders in Silicon Valley.

There are no universal standards.  The people you hire must be able and committed to adapting to the standards of your company.

17. Work Ethic

People who love to work, make a manager’s job much easier.  It is easier for a manager to turn off the lights and tell an employee to go home than having to plead for a worker to stay late.  Make it easy on yourself. Hire people with a magnificent work ethic.

18. Love of the Job

Hiring people who will love their work is one of the wisest decisions in the hiring process.  There is no greater motivator than passion.  People who love their job can make up for shortcomings in some of the other areas.  These people intuitively focus on doing their work to the best of their ability.

Winning Behavior

Winning Behavior: 8 Bad Habits to Break

Leadership, Quotes, Success

inning Behavior: The things we don’t do are as important as the things we do to be a winner in the workplace. Here are eight things to avoid as you work to build a successful career and become a leader among your peers.

Sometimes it’s the things that you don’t do that count the most. ~ www.jaywren.com

The Pitfalls to Winning Behavior

Some of the pitfalls to winning behavior are habits that seem normal, but annoy others and detract from our accomplishments.  I have been guilty of some of the things I am going to discuss.  Seeing the harm of these habits has helped me become more engaged with other people and more mindful of their needs and interests.

In ways that I can’t measure, avoiding these behaviors has help me build relationships and increase my network.

1. Using Long, Uncommon Words

Building your vocabulary is a good practice. However, using big words to try to sound intelligent and impress people is phony and annoying.  Furthermore, using long or uncommon words confuses people and detracts from your point.

It is narcissistic to throw around words that few people know or that people know as pretentious. You become like a person who poses in front of the mirror in a public restroom.

As a lesson about my own use of words that meant little but I used to impress others, my Mother once said to me, “You are so bombastic and I am so illiterate that you will have to elucidate for me to comprehend.” Lesson delivered, lesson learned.

2. Using Facilities and Parking for the Handicapped

People who need handicapped facilities have no choice.  They need them when they need them.

Abusing the use of handicapped parking is not only annoying, it is illegal.  Most states have stiff fines for using handicapped parking without legal authorization.  Furthermore, most people have no tolerance for people who abuse the use of handicapped parking.

Restroom facilities become more challenging, because some locations only have one or two stalls.  I have been in a one-stall restroom when a person in a wheelchair was waiting in line. The situation was awkward even though I had no choice. The best practice is, whenever possible, to defer to people who might need the handicapped facility.

3. Yacking on Your Cell Phone

There is something odd about strangers carrying on a conversation on a cell phone when they are next to you.

They have entered your space and are holding a conversation that doesn’t involve you.

I have been guilty of using a cell phone in a supermarket.  As my wife gave me instructions on the things she wanted me to buy, I passed one shopper three times.  The third time he suggested that I stop walking around talking on my phone and make a list.

This was an awakening to me just how easily cell conversations annoy the people around us.

Around the office, it is good to be aware when you are carrying on cell phone conversations around people who aren’t involved in the discussion.

4. Winning Behavior in Meetings

Texting and sending emails on a phone at the wrong time can be just as annoying.

At work, you can quickly annoy people, including people you need to impress.  Look at the situation.  You are in a meeting, and everyone is discussing the topic of the meeting.  Your mind wanders from the discussion, and you suddenly feel the urge to send a message or read your email.

You mind tells you that you must deal with your priorities. However, you are creating a distraction for everyone in the room.  People who are in a meeting are mentally like members in a marching band.  They are in coordination. When you start texting or sending emails, you break step and become a distraction.

5. Blocking the Exits

Blocking the exits or any other passageway is annoying.  Some people do not know how to navigate blocked hallways or aisles.  Other people feel awkward asking to get past.

People often gather at the entrance to meetings or at the door when leaving.  If this is a problem in your office, I recommend that the senior person in the room ask people not to block the door when they are leaving.

On the other hand, if you do need to get past people in a blocked passageway, simply say, “Pardon me.

6. Constant Complaining

Negative information creates bad moods.  A constant flow of negative information destroys morale and increases turnover.

Everyone has problems.  Solving those problems makes you look like a leader.  Whining about those problems not only is annoying.  It soon makes you look incompetent.

Instead of complaining, especially constant complaining, focus on solutions.

7. Self-Reference

Receiving credit for your work is a crucial step in the path to success.  However, constantly talking about yourself is annoying and makes people see you as shallow.

If you are not receiving credit for the work you are doing. talk with your managers.  Having them reference your accomplishments is far more effective than when you are doing it.  Furthermore, avoiding this behavior has helped me build a strong network.

Additionally, give credit to other people for their accomplishments.  People not only enjoy receiving credit.  They often remember the people who helped them receive credit.  This type of winning behavior will help you build a powerful network.

8. Trying to Be Funny

I remember an article that helped me know that not everyone understands the impact of their failed attempts at humor.  The author started his article with religious jokes.  These jokes were off topic.

The jokes weren’t clever.  They were flippant.  Furthermore, they distracted from the point of the article.

The author was undermining his own work, by not practicing winning behavior.