The Red Suitcase

I was getting ready to board a flight with my husband, the second leg of a flight to our final destination.  I travel light and carry my luggage on board.  With me was my red roller-bag – the one that has an interesting, deceiving contour.  It slopes up, but the highest part of the case is the same height as a normal roller-bag.  It fits in the overhead bin, handle first versus wheels first.  It’s the same size as all the other roller-bags.

The gate agent stopped me and said, “You’ll have to check the bag – it won’t fit.”  “Yes it will,” I said.  “Wheels first?” he asked.  “No, it fits ….” I started to reply before he cut me off.  “Then you’ll have to check it,” he scowled.  As I began to measure it to prove that its dimensions were a standard fit, my husband joined the conversation. “It fit in the overhead bin just fine on the last flight.”  The gate agent finally acquiesced, after wasting precious time during the boarding process – all because my suitcase had a slightly different look.   I understood his concern – that if I placed it in the bin horizontally it would take up too much room.

We were early to board, and after settling in my seat, I observed one gentleman very nonchalantly placing two bags horizontally in the overhead bin – not appearing to care about other passengers.  I couldn’t help but wonder if he was scolded by the gate agent as I was.  I observed a woman place a carry-on bag that should have gone under her seat in the overhead bin without a care in the world taking room where another roller-bag could have gone. 

We make assumptions all the time.  Sometimes they are based on people’s characteristics, sometimes prior experiences.  We make assumptions about new or different things or ideas because we've had no experience with them. Ninety-five percent of what we do, we do with an unconscious mind. The gate agent was so focused on the shape of my suitcase, he lost sight of the other passengers. Focus is good – I certainly want the pilot focused on his job. When focus becomes rigid, it runs the risk of taking all judgment out of the process.

Bottom line is that when we make assumptions, we're looking backwards and making judgments.  We're blocking our ability to see how the person, thing or idea can contribute to the organization.  We're letting our biases overshadow our thinking.  We’re stifling creativity and creativity and innovation are important in today's business environment. 

Keys to Success

Never did I think I would be writing about success and chicken soup—but a recent article in USA Today on May 12, 2015 was about the 10^th anniversary of The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield, co-creator of the very popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series, changed my mind.

In this book, the author has some very good advice—he says, “If I could live my ideal life, what would I be doing?”  Or, he suggests you think of someone whose life and work you admire, and then think of how you might create something similar in your own life.

Think about all the career advice you’ve received—this is so simple but I think he is really on to something.  In this book, he discusses 67 principles for success and in the formula he uses in all the Chicken Soup books, he tells stories of people who’ve applied these principles to their lives.

Some of the principles he discusses are:

1.     Take 100% responsibility for your life.  You can’t blame others for the parts of your life you don’t like.

2.     Take action. He says, “When you take action, you trigger all kinds of things that will inevitably carry you to success.”

3.     Develop four new success habits a year—one at a time.  Consider what habits you either want to change or develop.  For example, I’d like stop (or at least limit) procrastinating.  He says it takes three months to change a habit—guess I will start on that tomorrow!

4.     Commit to constant and never –ending improvement. He says that successful people are extremely curious and commit to learning something every single day.  They are often voracious readers (and as an author, I love that!)

5.     Face what isn’t working.  He says, “A lot of people don’t deal with what’s not working, because it means they’d have to do something that is uncomfortable. They stay in jobs they don’t like because they think they can’t get another one, but instead they need to get out and get training to get another one. If you gave up one hour of TV a day, that would be 365 hours or 9 and ½ 40 hour weeks of additional time to exercise, read, go back to school for your master’s degree and take on-line courses.”

6.     Be a class act.  He says, “Class acts leave places better than they find then.  They are always positive. They are always willing to help.”

7.     Find a way to serve.  He says that “research shows that people who volunteer live longer, recover from illness faster and report being happier.”  I know this to be true—my mother volunteered until she died at age 94.  She even asked us to tell people at her memorial service that volunteering was important and reminded us that when you volunteer, you get back even more than you give.  Mother was a great role model for me and so many others!

These keys to success ring true for me—how about you?

The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook

The Essential Workplace

Conflict Handbook

A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager, Team Leader, HR Professional, or Anyone Who Wants to Resolve Disputes and Increase Productivity

Barbara Mitchell and Cornelia Gamlem

Authors of The Big Book of HR

Today’s workplaces are dynamic, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that tension can develop quickly and ruinously. THE ESSENTIAL WORKPLACE CONFLICT HANDBOOK: A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager, Team Leader, HR Professional, or Anyone Who Wants to Resolve Disputes and Increase Productivity (Career Press, September 2015) is the ideal resource for anyone ready to confront conflict at work rather than run from it. Managed correctly, conflict can be a positive source for innovation and creativity.

Using examples drawn from wide range of corporate and entrepreneurial experiences, along with checklists and other practical tools, THE ESSENTIAL WORKPLACE CONFLICT HANDBOOK will help employees, managers at all levels, and business owners answer the following important questions:

·      What’s changing in the workplace and the workforce today?

·      Are the right issues being addressed?

·      How can we create more options to solve conflicts?

·      What’s my conflict style, and why is it important?

·      How should I set and manage expectations?

·      What happens when disruptive behavior gets out of control?

Positive interactions are critical to successful workplaces. THE ESSENTIAL WORKPLACE CONFLICT HANDBOOK gives you the confidence you need to communicate effectively, as well as clear understanding of your individual responsibility, no matter your title or role. It also gives the organization a plan for what it can do to foster a tension-free workplace.

For more information or to request interviews, please contact Tess@TessWoodsPR.com.

THE ESSENTIAL WORKPLACE CONFLICT HANDBOOK

A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager, Team Leader, HR Professional, or Anyone Who Wants to Resolve Disputes and Increase Productivity

Barbara Mitchell, Cornelia Gamlem

Career Press

978-1-63265-008-5

$14.99

September 2015

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, & Independent Booksellers

Choices & Flexibility

Marissa Mayer announced that she’s pregnant with twins and plans to take a short maternity leave (two weeks) when she delivers in December. The chatter about this news is all over social and mainstream media. Endless numbers of people are weighing in on her decision. I caught part of a discussion about it on the TV news while waiting for an appointment. Should she take a longer maternity leave? Did she have a responsibility to do so since women have fought long and hard for expanded benefits? Shouldn’t she serve as a role model for all women? The same morning the Washington Post’s column “On Leadership” was also talking about her parenting decisions.

As CEO of Yahoo, Ms. Mayer has some decisions to make – both about how to parent and about how to run a company. She’s not the first CEO to make such a decision. Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy, the on-line commerce sites, took a full paternity leave when he and his wife adopted a child in 2012. In each case, both CEOs had to weight the circumstances of their situations – which were similar, but not identical – to make their decisions. For Dickerson, the timing of his leave was at the height of the holiday shopping season. He had to go to the board to explain the importance of taking this time off and provide a plan for their approval. Mayer’s company, Yahoo, is going through a critical period in its life cycle, spinning off Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, a transition that will be completed by the end of this calendar year. Their situations are unique in comparison to the situations of other employees in their respective organization who are facing the same decision about parental leave. Their positions in their companies are not distinctive and not representative of the typical parent (mother or father). 

As I listened to the debate on the TV about Mayer’s choices, I couldn’t help but think that there’s not a cookie cutter approach for how new parents deal with the demands of their growing families and the responsibilities of their jobs. It’s yet another aspect of diversity. Jena McGregor, the columnist who wrote the piece on Mayer, rightfully pointed out that as CEO, she may not have as many choices as other expectant mothers at Yahoo might have.

Organizations in this country are making great strides in offering more robust benefits to help all employees, not only new mothers and fathers, have better work-life integration. The stigma surrounding men taking paternity leave is dissipating. We’re making progress, but still have more work to do as a country on this issue. Despite how far we have, or haven’t come, it’s a journey that continues. More choices are available than a generation ago and more should be available to all working parents. Flexibility continues to be an important issues for workplaces today. In the meantime, it’s important to respect the decisions that individuals choose to make. 

The Glass Closet

The news has been filled with aspects of diversity lately – the Supreme Court’s decision on same sex marriage, the greater awareness of the transgender community thanks to Caitlin Jenner, and the recent decision of the EEOC that employers who discriminate against LGBT workers are violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  But how does all of this relate to the business community (beyond the obvious legal implications), and what can business professionals do to better understand and leverage diversity?  May I suggest a great addition to your business reading list – The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business by John Browne – to help answer your questions.

The name “John Browne” may sound familiar to you.  He was the successful CEO of BP until he was involuntarily “outed” via a very public scandal.  John Browne’s message is clear – people are more productive and effective if they can bring their true self to the work environment, and that can only be done if they are free from prejudice and anxiety.

"I wish I had been brave enough to come out earlier during my tenure as the chief executive of BP. I regret it to this day. I know that if I had done so, I would have made more of an impact for other gay men and women. It is my hope that the stories in this book will give some of them the courage to make an impact of their own." —John Browne

You may be thinking:  this sounds like a personal journey and decision (which it is), and encouraging people to be their authentic self at work is great, but what does that have to do with my business?  I’m already supportive of diversity in the workplace.  Well if you are, that’s great, but it’s not just about diversity – it’s more importantly about inclusion.  So what’s the difference?

While each of you may have a slightly different definition of diversity, most of you would all generally agree that diversity consists of the characteristics that make people different from one another, including characteristics a person has little or no control over and characteristics that can be adopted.  This goes far beyond the things that many people typically think about when they hear the word diversity – race, religion, gender, sexual orientation – and expands to encompass the numerous other ways in which we’re different – educational level, economic level, veteran status, family status, and on and on…  And if asked why diversity is important to businesses, most would quickly reply that diversity in the workplace lends itself to a competitive advantage for the business.  True. 

Which brings us to inclusion.  Inclusion is simply the environment in which diversity thrives.  In other words, what good is it to recruit or develop a diverse workforce if your new talent isn’t comfortable in the workplace and leaves?  A business should have the goal of fostering an inclusive environment that encourages individuals of different races, ages, gender, ethnicity, religions, sexual orientation, and abilities to reach their full potential.  This is the point of The Glass Closet.

So what does an inclusive work environment look like?  An inclusive work environment is one in which:

·       

    Employees are appreciated and valued for who they are as individuals (i.e., not negatively judged for being “different”.)

·       

    Employees relate to others in the workplace in a respectful manner both as individuals and as members of their cultural groups.

·       Individual employee differences are seen as potential business advantages.

·       Those differences are effectively leveraged for the benefit of the organization.

The company results of building a corporate inclusion program include:

·       An inclusive culture that can drive business results; a competitive edge in the global economy

·       A workforce that looks like the marketplace – it allows penetration into new markets and captures multicultural consumers

·       Improved corporate image and ability to connect with community to be a good corporate citizen

·       Improved employee morale and retention, increased talent pool, and, ideally, reduced litigation

Great!  Sign me up!  But how?  As in any effective business goal, this takes time and a strategic approach.  Some imperatives for making diversity and inclusion work include:

·       CEO and executive management commitment

·       An actionable strategic plan for integrating diversity and inclusion into every aspect of an organization

·       Accountability assigned for achieving diversity goals

·       Metrics established to measure results (If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.)

Basically, diversity and Inclusion must be incorporated into every business decision.  Diversity and inclusion are not an option in today’s completive business environment, but a business imperative.  And they’re not just about compliance.  They’re about employees being able to bring their whole selves to work, and being comfortable when they do so.  The result will better products, increased customer value, increased profitability, and improved competitiveness.  So get started – increase you own understanding and awareness – and read the book.

Lynn M. Lorenz, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP

Lecturer, Marymount University

School of Business Administration