I had several conversations during the past week and jealousy seemed to be a unifying theme in each conversation.  One person described a situation where she was being left out of the communication loop so that information critical to her performance was being withheld by her manager.

There was another person who described a situation where he felt a project wasn’t rewarded because of a past experience with the decision maker which was based on gossip.  Uninterestingly enough, the decision maker never even bothered to find out the facts; she accepted the statements at face value.

There are others who use gossip and attack others, some use exaggeration or minimization as malicious tools.  There are numerous ways that jealousy raises its unwelcome head and when it infiltrates the workplace, it impedes teamwork and productivity because working relationships are impaired and trust levels are low to non-existent.

Here are a few situations that can typically attract a jealous reaction: 
• When someone achieves something you have been wanting.
• When someone you dislike succeeds.
• When someone gets something you don’t think they deserve.
• When someone seems to be favoured by a decision maker.

Jealousy in any situation is undesirable and destructive but the intensity of jealousy tends to vary depending on how the jealous person feels about the target of their jealousy. 

At times jealousy is open and detectable so persons targeted are very clear that they are not liked.  Then there are the undercover forms of jealousy that you cannot prove and they tend to be more damaging.  

Here are a few examples:
• Persons planting seeds of doubt about you, twisting the facts behind your back.
• Persons surreptitiously “bad mouthing” your accomplishments or not acknowledging them at all so they can appear to be better than you in some way.
• Gossip

What Causes Jealousy?

Sometimes jealousy is centered on financial status, other times it is based on physical traits or style.   For some it is sparked by academic achievements and for others it is caused by lifestyle and possessions.

Jealousy is the result of a person’s view of themselves.  It surfaces when someone perceives you as having something they don’t have and because they see the world in terms of lack and not abundance, this makes them angry or fearful.  Some jealous people will fake it and overextend themselves so that they can appear to be your friend, others will not try to be congenial at all, their mission is to bully or sabotage you.

Fear is another cause of jealousy.  For instance, when new, skilled persons start working in a department, the fear of the unknown change in team dynamics causes jealousy because there is the risk that the new person will drive up the standards within the department.  This is frightening to the keepers of the status quo.  Employees who are targets of jealousy are often discredited, sabotaged and left out of communication loops.  Non-jealous members of the team are sometimes forced to take the side of the jealous ones because they don’t want the hateful behaviour to be directed at them.

What can you do if you are the target of jealousy?

The root cause of jealousy is low self esteem so there is virtually nothing you can do to change the jealous people around you.  Self esteem building and empowerment are personal responsibilities so your attempts to help the jealous person can backfire.  Instead, here are five options that are within your control:

• Be selective with the information you share about yourself.  It can be distorted by malicious intent.
• Refuse to stoop to the same level as the jealous people around you.
• Know that you have a right to choose healthy relationships and healthy work environments.  Don’t see yourself as stuck.   Jealousy can sometimes present itself as bullying so make a choice if you must.
• Many people dumb down to minimize jealous attacks.  This negatively affects you, your professional growth and your ability to enjoy your job because you are playing small.  Be who you are, jealous onlookers will see your light no matter what you do.
• Don’t be seduced by friendliness.  Robert Green, author of “The 48 Laws of Power” states that one of the Laws of Power is to, “Pose as a friend and work as a spy” so beware of this type.  Another law is, “Do not build fortresses to protect or isolate yourself – Isolation is dangerous”.   By falling into the isolation trap you will not be able to access useful information and consequently, you can become an easy target.

What can you do if you feel jealous?

If you are typically negatively affected by other people’s perceived success, understand that you are experiencing emotions somewhere on the spectrum of fear and anger.  Once you identify your emotions, identify what your emotions are teaching you.  Ask yourself why you are jealous or why you feel threatened by another person’s talents or achievements.  Find your talents; you definitely have unique abilities, so cultivate your strengths by focusing on your goals. 

When you identify the personal belief systems that are causing you to feel jealous, take conscious steps to improve in the areas you feel are underdeveloped and if this doesn’t work for you, focus on your strengths.  Learn to see yourself as empowered and choose to reframe your thoughts so that you can see your personal potential clearly.  We all have different talents and proclivities, so focus on becoming the best at what you do best and understand that everyone is different. 

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company.  If you are interested in exploring how you can create higher performing team leaders, you contact her at www.orgsoul.com.

An old friend approached me last week and told me this story.  An employee approached him to speak to an executive about a matter because the employee wasn’t comfortable speaking to the executive directly.    In the spirit of helping a fellow co-worker, my friend approached the executive on behalf of the employee and the executive was subsequently preoccupied with why the employee didn’t approach her directly instead of focusing on resolving the employee’s concern. 

So my friend asked me, what do you do in a situation like this?  This option was the most palatable to the employee because if the employee decided to do nothing, the issue would remain unresolved.  Alternatively, the employee perceived high risk in approaching the executive directly, and lower risk in having someone represent the situation to the executive on her behalf and it still backfired.

A Catch-22 is described as, “A contradictory or self defeating course of action or a tricky or disadvantageous condition.” (Farlex)   Based on the information given to me by my friend, the employee appears to be in a Catch-22 where both inaction and attempts at resolution lead to perceived undesirable results.  In environments like this, the end result is that the majority of employees collectively refrain from speaking up because they prefer to experience a proliferation of dysfunction collectively instead of being singled out and targeted as the enemy because they spoke up.

I received a similar call this week from a fellow consultant in Canada.  She said that she had a large client with whom she had a long standing, positive relationship who wanted her to perform a certain task.  The task was something she was not willing to do and when she refused, her reputation was attacked and all her contracts within the organization were terminated.   She paid the price for speaking up.

In unhealthy work environments, speaking up may be viewed as harmful to career progression.  In these types of environments, the status quo is maintained at all costs and people in positions of authority cover up the issues, distorting the truth through self deception, minimization and other types of camouflage techniques.  In fact, entire systems of reward like promotion and bonuses perpetuate this type of censorship and suppression.

So what do you do if you are caught in a Communication Catch-22?  As I mentioned previously, based on anecdotal evidence, the vast majority decide to say nothing and just “kiss until they can kick”.  I witness this approach a whole lot, but years later I often meet the same people in the same company, sometimes in the same position saying the same thing and praying for early retirement.  So here are four tips to help you to be proactive.

Strategize
In the first example, the employee deployed a strategy to ask someone to represent his case because he felt the other person could influence a desired outcome and lower his exposure to the risk of victimisation.  This is a reasonable strategy in theory but always remember to factor in as many variables as possible.    Give some thought to more of the dynamics of the situation which include:
1. The executive’s desire to help vs their need to cover up and perpetuate the system of dysfunction.  This is sometimes hard to uncover because some of us expect executives to be interested in the well being of employees.
2. The executive’s value system (does the executive value being liked, approachable and right over being challenged respectfully).  In making this evaluation, the employee should take a look at what motivates the executive to further mitigate risk.
3. Is there another way to get the message across other without using a direct approach.
4. Who is the right messenger?
5. Is there a bias against you?

Work Together
At work we learn that we have to “look out for number one” because no-one can be trusted.  One way to start changing the entire system of support for dysfunction (Silence is part of the support system) is to see yourself as part of a whole and not a single unit constantly in self preservation mode.  While self preservation may be appropriate, think about what you can do to support your co-workers. 

Connect More Effectively
Hone your communication skills so that you don’t inadvertently put the listener on the defensive.  You have no control over someone else’s ego but you do have control over the verbal and non-verbal signals you transmit.  Improving your communication arsenal by improving your listening skills, emotional intelligence, authenticity, negotiation skills and optimism can help you to connect at a deeper level and mitigate some of the risks of communication.  Authentic connection can lead to building healthy, trust based work relationships that can give you the leverage you need to speak up with lower threat of victimization.

Create or Update Your Career Plan
Everything starts with you, so think about a proactive approach designed to help you develop yourself and start on a path to finding or creating the right career and right working environment.  This may mean you will take the risk and say things that may not be palatable or you may decide to seek another work environment.  It is important to make a decision regarding whether you will stay or go and whatever the decision, create your plan.  “Knee jerk” responses are not optimal because they don’t equip you with the skills you need to successfully navigate similar situations in the future and they can create irreparable damage.

Ideally, the vision for and commitment to driving positive cultural change should start at the top of the organization and cascade throughout.  If you are not being supported by an executive vision for positive change, you can only do what is within your control.  Each of the tips will take time, commitment, wisdom and creativity and they are centered on what you can do to improve your circumstances.

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Leadership Development company.  If you are interested in exploring how you can create higher performing team leaders, you contact her at www.orgsoul.com or at info@orgsul.com . 

Confrontation is a “four letter” word in various business environments and typically, it is avoided at many costs.  Here are three scenarios that can happen in any office at any level:

Scenario 1
Jenny is a supervisor who took over a new team this year.  Jenny inherited Sandra, who is quite skilled at disappearing during peak periods of work.   Jenny is hesitant about saying anything to Sandra because Sandra is friendly with the CEO and so when Sandra disappears, other members of the team begrudgingly take on the extra work.  Over time, the work falls behind and when Jenny addresses the team about their productivity, an aggressive, heated exchange ensues.

Scenario 2
James is a good worker and contributes positively to the performance of the team.  Whenever he participates in a meeting, he cuts off the person speaking, always seeming to have a logical reason why something cannot be done.  Over time, other employees stop offering their ideas, and the meetings become less productive because everyone has disengaged.

Scenario 3
Ronnie is a very nice person but she doesn’t get her work done.  At lunch time she collects lunch from various restaurants for her coworkers, she bakes pastries and brings them to work and she always has uplifting words for her colleagues.  She is congenial, but her work misses deadlines, is incomplete or contains errors.  No one wants to be the “bad guy” and tell Ronnie that she is not performing.

In each of these scenarios, the use of constructive confrontation skills would help to ensure trust levels are not eroded by festering resentment caused by perceived avoidance.  Constructive confrontation is an assertive approach to building healthy working relationships that engenders open communication and collaboration.  Constructive confrontation is not blaming or biased, it is engaging, fact based and solution driven.

In many work environments, employees, supervisors and managers seem to use the word confrontation interchangeably with conflict.  This is because they usually delay addressing issues for so long that the confrontation ends up erupting into an exchange laced with anger, disappointment or frustration.  In other realities, when confrontation is well timed and used in a constructive way, it can actually build productivity, collaboration and morale.

Tips for Making Confrontation Constructive
• The first tip is to manage the issue as soon as possible.  While waiting may be an effective plan in some instances, it is usually ineffective because frustration “brews” the longer you take to contend with a situation.  If you tend to take long to manage an issue, respect for your leadership will erode and employees will view you as someone who is either unfair or afraid to do what is right.   Another reason you should not wait too late to deal with conflict is that early on, a situation may be resolved with a coaching session.  If you wait too long, it can lead to disciplinary action which could mean termination.
• Don’t assume confrontation has to be negative or unpleasant.  Reframe your biases and remember if you stick to the facts and avoid words that label, blame or express a negative opinion, you can create a constructive conversation.
• Avoid confusing confrontation with conflict.  While confrontation can show up as conflict in the form of an angry or aggressive exchange between individuals, it can also present as an open, assertive, coaching dialogue designed to develop conscious, engaged employees. 
• Be clear about what you have to say because constructive confrontation can be derailed by unclear, vague language that “tap dances” around root causes.
• Be solution driven and ensure there is a clear understanding at the end of the conversation about expectations and next steps. 
• Make your approach through the language of curiosity.  Blame and judgment will attract defensiveness and positioning, not transparence and collaboration.
• Be open to listening.  You are probably contributing to the challenge.
• Manage your emotions no matter what is being said to you.
• You can use the performance appraisal process to confront undesirable behaviours in employees.   Take note, this should not be the first time they hear about your dissatisfaction but it should help to hold them accountable to sustained changes in their behaviours.

Let’s go back to the three scenarios.  Ask yourself if you have a Jenny, James or Ronnie on your team.  Alternatively, think about if you see yourself in any of them.  Then ask yourself which combination of these tips can help you to confront the issues constructively.  Avoiding these opportunities to confront can lead to lowered employee morale, compromised productivity and a lack of respect for leadership.

In the book, The Art of Constructive Confrontation by John Hoover and Roger DiSilvestro they assert that, “Constructive confrontation increases accountability and decreases conflict. When things are not confronted early and often, they tend to crash and burn. By then, there’s nothing left but conflictual, accusatory, negative, blame-placing, find-a-scapegoat, search-for-the-guilty-and-punish-the-innocent, confrontation. No thanks… Confrontation keeps accountability high and conflict low by eliminating confusion, chaos, inconsistent messages, and double standards... Constructive confrontation is the strongest tool available to ensure effective leadership across an entire organization, at every level.” 

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul Ltd., an HR Consulting and Training Company.  Contact her at info@orgsoul.com or at  www.orgsoul.com.

Constructive criticism is usually hard to give and receive because the receiver can react negatively to any type of criticism, especially if they regularly receive criticism that is angry, blaming or condescending.

I come across managers, supervisors and employees who avoid giving any type of criticism for fear of the conversation going in an undesirable direction.  So what usually happens is the target of the criticism is allowed to get away with inappropriate behaviours because the boss is reluctant to take any type of corrective action.

Then there are managers, supervisors and employees on the opposite side of the spectrum who tell the cold, hard truth, with good intentions.  Unfortunately, depending on how cold and hard the truth is, it can strip away the dignity and humanity of the receiver and can lead to an angry or withdrawn response.

A Model of Constructive Criticism

Managers sometimes use approaches designed to deliver criticism in a constructive way.  There are writers that suggest the “oreo” approach where you start the conversation with something positive, then introduce the criticism constructively and then you end on a note that reinforces the employee’s strengths and your intent to provide support.  A key consideration is to try not to sound rehearsed because you will be perceived as inauthentic or phony.

Authenticity

There are  people who avoid  telling the whole truth when providing criticism because there is the clear and present risk that it can be held against them by the receiver.  This is because most people don’t want to hear the truth if it isn’t aligned with their perception of the truth, even when they ask you for your views.

Curiosity

Curiosity is open, interested and unbiased.  It invites trust, openness and creativity by:

• Posing questions that are not assumption based
• Being open to diversity
• Avoiding placing labels on people and situations

Questioning is an important tool that is an integral part of curiosity.  A leader should never have all the answers or advice so you can invite the person receiving the criticism to provide their views and alternative solutions.  The best questioners are skilled at formulating questions that will help the receiver of criticism build their confidence and knowledge.   Two quick tips for questioning in situations where you want criticism to be constructive are to avoid questions that lead the receiver to your desired outcome or ones that cause the receiver to feel interrogated.

Timing

When providing anyone with criticism, timing is everything.  The first tip is to avoid telling them the truth in front of others.  This causes you to appear to be unprofessional and it is easier for someone to accept criticism if they are not embarrassed. 

Secondly, avoid providing criticism if you are in a negative emotional state.  Finally, try to avoid constructively criticising someone if they are in a rush.  They may not decode your message accurately because they are in a stressed state or because they are focused on something else.

Communication Tips

Respect is very important if you want your communication to be constructive.  Avoid labeling people using words like liar or stupid.   Stay away from shouting and profanity or using words like never and always.  You can get your message across effectively without expressing your negative opinions. 

For instance, if an employee tells you something that sounds like an untruth, you can say, “I realize you think that is the case but based on my investigation I found something else to be the case.  Help me to understand the gap between what you are saying and what I found to be the case.”  In this example, you are not calling the person a liar, you are inviting them to help you understand the facts because you may have been provided with misinformation.  

Another communication tip is to be clear and concise.  Managers, supervisors and employees start out with good intentions to provide constructive criticism but they “chicken out” and use language that is so vague and tactful that the real message is lost in tactfulness. 

The Art of Listening

When providing constructive criticism, you will be more effective if you are equally adept at listening objectively to the person receiving the criticism because you need to know if they are listening to you. You can tell if the message is not being received as constructive if they are defensive, blaming or giving excuses.

In closing I would like to leave you with a quotation from an unknown author, “Constructive criticism is essential in any arena that requires creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Since leadership requires all three, leaders need to be sure they are not only open to criticism, but that they actively seek it out. Ask people — direct reports, peers, customers — to poke holes in your ideas and approaches. Critique can be a useful approach to test ideas.”  

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul, an HR Consulting and Training Company.  For more information contact us at info@orgsoul.com.

A few days ago I was sitting in a restaurant and there was a change in shifts.  As a result of the shift change, a new waitress approached the table and started clearing the used dishes and utensils without saying a word, making no eye contact with me, not even asking me if I was finished.   She seemed preoccupied about something.

Until the new waitress approached the table, I was experiencing a series of gastronomic delights.  Not only was the food delicious, the table service was meeting my expectations.   So back to the new waitress.  There could have been many things going on with her but it appeared to me, that serving restaurant patrons was a necessary evil and this negatively affected a previously delightful experience.  The impact of the surly waitress was that I will probably go to the restaurant again but not soon.

Business owners and executives know that quality customer service can help to differentiate their products and services so they often lament the bad customer service attitudes displayed by their front-line employees.  Their first thought is that they need to find a good customer service trainer to provide employees with training designed to improve customer satisfaction levels.

The trainer is hired and comes and goes. The participants have a learning experience and training evaluations are completed.  Based on the fun in the class and the positive training evaluations you are thinking the training day was a success.  You are optimistic about your plans for differentiation and then the following week, you watch for modified behaviors but the new skills are not being integrated into everyday customer service routines.

Last week I read an e-mail by a consultant that was part of a Caribbean HR Forum dialogue that sums this up.  The Consultant stated, “We ‘spray and pray’, with our myriad of training initiatives providing individuals with techniques, leaving their serving spirit underdeveloped.  With their awareness untouched, participants return to the workplace with great intentions that easily evaporate with uncaring, uninformed, busy and toxic Supervision.  How therefore do we get past these knee-jerk, reactive, piece-meal (customer service training) initiatives?”

 I always took the position that training in isolation will not work unless you have an extraordinarily motivated team and an organizational culture that wont “chew up and spit out” all attempts for cultural change.

Here is an example.  We usually go into a restaurant and no matter the quality of service we are obliged to pay a tip.  This creates a culture where the tip becomes an entitlement and not a motivator of quality customer service.  So how do you expect training alone to make a meaningful difference if your system undermines your training efforts?

Here are a few tips to help you to bring about authentic changes in customer service:

Create a Service Strategy

Your Customer Service Strategy should start with a vision for customer care.  Decide what you want customer service to look like and how you plan to move from your current state to your desired state.  This means you need to evaluate your actual service gaps and conduct cause and effect analyses so that you are strategizing based on root causes.

Customer Service Standards

As part of your Service Strategy exercise, create service standards.  Everyone should know and have access to the standards for customer service.   All employees should know that internal customers are just as important as external customers because in many cases, internal customers are serving external customers.

Performance Management

Identify key customer service competencies you would like your employees to embody so that customer service training can be specifically targeted at skill gaps.  The competencies can be integrated into performance appraisals so they can be used as drivers that will help you to customize customer service training.

Compensation and Reward

Review your compensation and reward systems to determine if they support the changes you would like to observe.  Whether or not employees are in an environment that makes gratuity part of the bill, employees probably expect tips. The big tippers usually get the best service.  Others who stick to the prescribed 10-15% don’t usually receive any extra effort.  Some organizations combat this by setting policies related to accepting tips so that employees are aware that there could be corrective action but this is difficult to monitor.

Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Decide how you will measure customer satisfaction.  Many organizations conduct customer satisfaction surveys and hold managers and supervisors responsible for results and action plans.  This process introduces an accountability factor that can lead to quality customer care.

Training

Customer service training should target actual deficiencies identified by your customer satisfaction survey and internal observation.  Targeted training practices combined with a customer service strategy can bring about meaningful results and authentic customer service.

There are many business owners and executives that go through the painstaking process of creating job descriptions for each position and then an annual process of assessing performance.    On the surface you took a step in the right direction.  You implemented a process to manage performance but are you really managing performance or are you using performance management as a tool to assign bonuses and merit increases while performance levels remain static?

In some cases, performance reviews happen once per year.  Annual reviews with no other reviews during the year are a sure recipe for drama, suspense, surprise, disappointment and anger.   When there is only one review each year, some employees are rated higher than they actually performed because you never told them they are not meeting your expectations.  These employees end up with inflated assessments and this has the reverse effect of disappointing employees who actually worked harder and smarter than the employees with the inflated ratings. 

Then there is the drama linked to annual appraisals.  All year round employees are blissfully unaware of your perception of their performance and then they receive unexpected news that all year they were not performing as they thought.  The employee had absolutely no indication there was a gap between their perception and yours.  Managers tend to avoid these performance discussions, leaving them until the end of the process. 

In a high performing work environment, performance is managed more than once a year.   This sounds like more work, and it is, but it also leads to less stress at the end of the year because you are arming employees with feedback so they can recalibrate before the final rating. 

Performance Management Basics:

In tough economic times, Managers look for ways to create higher productivity.  Here is how you can use performance management tools to improve productivity:

Job Descriptions

Create clear job descriptions.  There is nothing worse than working in an environment where duties are not clearly defined.  Overlap can occur and turf wars can result because employees claim duties they prefer for various reasons.  They may perceive the need for status, visibility and familiarity and low morale will inevitably result.

Recruitment

Effective recruitment practices are essential to high performance.  The key is to select the right people for your vacant jobs.  In the book “First, Break all the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, they state that hiring managers get duped into thinking  experience and training in an area are equivalent to talent and performance.  Buckingham and Coffman assert that we should hire based on talent, not experience because experience can sometimes be misleading.  They also maintain good managers recognize, “People don’t change that much so don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out.  Try to draw out what was left in.”

Objectives

Job descriptions should not exist in isolation.  Employee objectives are a necessary piece of the productivity enhancement puzzle.  Objectives are measurements and they reduce subjectivity and introduce accountability.  More objectivity in the process also means less “wailing and gnashing of teeth” at the end of the year because measurements are unmistakable.  Deadlines, volumes and ratios are all examples of ways you can introduce objectivity to the process.  Ideally, your objectives should flow out of your company’s strategic plan so that every employee is aligned with the strategic targets.

In some companies, the strategic plan is a shrouded in a cloak of obscurity.  For higher performance, your company can create higher levels of transparence and cascade key components of the plan into employees’ objectives. 

Appraisals

There are Performance Appraisals that exist that are purely subjective.  They leave it up to the manager to decide on ratings based on perceptions.  Then there are appraisals that are based primarily on measurements.  While there is more objectivity in the latter process, the process isn’t always completely objective because it is not always easy to measure important behavioural competencies.

Performance Coaching

Effective coaching routines complement the Performance Management process by providing a stream of continuous feedback to employees.  The more you provide constructive feedback the higher the possibility for improved productivity and the more employees feel valued.  Some people leaders coach employees weekly, others every two weeks or monthly.  One caution here is for you to be careful not to use the coaching process to micromanage unless you have a disciplinary issue.

Appraising employee performance doesn’t have to be an unpleasant exercise at the end of your fiscal year.  Once you lead constructive performance coaching conversations regularly, employees will have opportunities to improve their results and you can avoid the disappointing conversations that affect employee morale and impair trust levels.

Yvette Bethel is CEO of Organizational Soul Ltd., a HR Consulting and Training Company.  Contact us through our website at www.orgsoul.com.

You have a suggestion to make and you know if you make it to your boss she will say something like, we tried that before or find a reason why it wouldn’t work.  You have at least two options: take a chance and give your boss your idea or circumvent your boss and take it to someone further up in the hierarchy who can act on it.

In the book, “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene, his very first law is “Don’t outshine the master”.    He defines this law saying an effort to display your talent does not always impress others, it can inadvertently inspire fear and insecurity.

Here are some reasons why you may decide to circumvent a boss, friend, family member, a peer or a member of your support staff.

No Voice

Many times I witness supervisors and managers who have no voice in an organization because of a past mistake or current performance issues.   If a supervisor has no voice, they can’t be the voice of their direct reports so their direct reports have to choose between circumventing the hierarchy if they want to be heard and keeping quiet to protect their supervisor.

Negative attitude

No-one likes to be around a person with a negative attitude unless this is their comfort zone.  Know-it-alls, condescending people,  gossips, bullies, blamers are all examples of types of people who are avoided.  While some of you have no problem facing bearers of negativity, others of you prefer to reduce your ‘face time’ with them.  If you obviously circumvent someone who is negative, brace yourself for his or her negativism to be directed at you but keep in mind that sometimes it is worth the risk…

Insecurity

People are insecure for any number of reasons.  None of those reasons probably have anything to do with you.  They could be insecure about your idea being better than theirs or they could be uncomfortable with you are dressed up all the time. 

Awareness is part of the battle.  Many of us refuse to see the truth because it is uncomfortable so we opt to stay in a comfortable, unaware space.  If you choose to see the truth and act, circumvention is one of your options.

Procrastination

Procrastination is the enemy of many well laid plans.  If there is a procrastinator on your team, your productivity is impacted because you are reliant on the procrastinator for their part of the plan.  Procrastinotors are not easy to circumvent so you can either decide to let them sink or you can help them.  If you have the authority you can reassign the work.  

A Complaint

It takes emotional discipline and the ability to articulate your complaint in a constructive way to complain to the person you are complaining about.  Even with effective communication skills, this kind of conversation can go off track so persons with complaints tend to circumvent the perceived perpetrator.

Fear

In some work environments there are employees or bosses whose sole purpose seems to be to keep you in a state of suspended terror.  They are bullies and they often know no other way to be.  They either bully you into submission and you lose your voice or you circumvent them and brace yourself for the fallout.

Dependence

Some people believe their power resides in keeping others dependent on them.  If you don’t want to get caught in this trap you will need to learn what you are not being shown by circumventing the system of dependence.

Circumvention guidelines:

Here are a few tips to help you decide if you will circumvent:

• Decide on your objectives and your priority values given the situation and circumvent if it aligns with your objectives.  In other words, choose your battles.
• Remember one of the Laws of Power, if you outshine the Master be prepared for the possible consequences.
• Think ahead and consider the possible positive and negative consequences of your actions.  Then determine the worst-case scenario and whether or not you can live with it.

If you decide to circumvent, you can do it in a few different ways.

• You can provide information to the appropriate person understanding that one possible outcome of this is that you will not be trusted.   To get around this I have seen people “accidentally” tip off a person in authority.
• There are others of you who will circumvent a dysfunctional system with no regard for the possible fallout.
• You can give information to someone “off the record” but remember that it is sometimes their job to put it on the record.
• Set up someone to represent you.
In all of this, remember that circumvention in and of itself is neither right nor wrong.  It all depends on how you play the circumvention game.  

Most people I come into contact with have a very real sense of stress because work keeps coming at them and they have to constantly shift gears and absorb the extra work.   What typically happens is a new priority is communicated by executives and employees put aside their current activities to start a new project.  The projects that are put aside start piling up and there is a very real sense of not being in control. 

Getting organized can have multiple benefits for your performance.  You will be able to improve your productivity because you will have a better sense of your priorities and what needs to be done right away.

Clear Your Clutter

The first step in getting organized is to clear your clutter.  If you have clutter around your office or on your desk, get rid of it.  But before you get rid of anything, go through your active files and create a diary system of some type so you can keep track of what you are doing and what you have delegated to your direct reports so you can diarize active files as you de-clutter.

A Diary System

A diary system will only work if you have the discipline to record what needs to be done and to follow up on activities on a daily basis.  An effective diary system can help you to get projects done before they are due and to track simultaneous projects. 

There are many types of diary systems you can implement.  If you prefer paper based systems you can purchase a diary, log or notebook and record your activities, due dates, delegated activities and priorities.  Another paper based diary system is one where you date and file active files and pull them on the date they are due.  You will need additional filing space for a diary system of this type.

Then there are electronic diary systems that are part of your email solution that can be synchronized with your Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to facilitate reference to diarize items and activities while mobile.

“To Do” Lists

Once your information is diarized you need additional discipline to build your “To Do” list.  It can be a daily list which some people find perplexing because they can rarely finish a daily list due to interruptions.  Some of you prefer making a weekly list because over a period of a week you are more likely to see progress, even if you don’t get to everything you planned.

“To Do” lists work better if you include a column for prioritization.  If you miss this step, you may end up with a long list of things to get done and this may not help reduce your stress level.  You can create any system of prioritization you prefer: (High, Medium, Low), (1,2,3) or (A, B,C) – whatever your rating system, prioritization helps to take the pressure off because it lightens the load by helping you to focus on what needs to be done first. 

When creating “To Do” lists, some of you prioritize to get the quick wins first and others prefer to tackle the slower, more complex activities first to get them out of the way.  Sometimes a combination approach has to happen because of impending deadlines. 

Avoid Procrastination

We sometimes put projects or activities on hold because we are not quite sure where to start or because it will take too much time.  Whatever the reason for your procrastination, make a conscious decision to get to it.  It takes will, discipline, planning and sometimes problem solving skills.

Learn to Negotiate Deadlines

Many of you feel that you shouldn’t say no to your boss because you may appear to be uncooperative.    The truth is that you don’t want to face your boss at the end of the year and have the fact that you said “No”, revisited and become a cost to you.  If saying no is not an option, learn to negotiate your deadlines.  If one assignment becomes a top priority and you have a competing priority, ask your boss if you can have more time to complete the other assignment/s. 

Delegate More

If you have someone you can delegate to, go ahead and delegate.  Don’t hoard the work, train someone to help you so you can be freed up to do more.  Just be sure you are delegating to someone who can do the work and then remember to always follow up.

So Get Organized!

Getting organized improves your productivity, your capacity and it helps you to appear to be more professional and prepared.  One of my clients went through a process of organizing her work and office instituting a diary system and de-cluttering.  Once she was done she said to me,  “I was stressed out because I thought I had so much work to do but now I realize I have time to do much more!”.  

The Trust Walk is a popular training exercise designed to demonstrate the transformative potential of trust.  Participants are grouped in pairs.  One member of the pair is blindfolded and the other member guides the blind folded participant through an obstacle course.  The blindfolded participant has to fully trust the leader to make it through the obstacle course without seeing a map of the obstacles.

This is a great metaphor for how trust can work in an organization.  Leaders  guide employees through changes and at times, employees won’t see or understand the big picture so they have to rely on and trust the person leading. 

A lack of trust can surface in many different ways.  It can look like micromanagement, a lack of transparence, an inability to delegate, suspicion, disrespect or double talk, this is by far not an exhaustive list but it gives you an indication of some of the tell-tale signs. 

Tips for Building Trust that Lasts

When trust is impaired, it is difficult to build.  In some cases it will be impossible to rebuild and you will have to determine if this is the case.   In cases where trust can be built here are tips you can use to start your trust walk:

• Transparence – This goes both ways.  Employers sometimes withhold information because information is power.  These bosses neglect to understand that the right information is empowering and keeping employees abreast of needed information is not luxury.  Employees often cover up issues that managers need to be aware of.  They probably withhold information because they want to avoid an unpleasant outcome.  So where does the trusting behaviour have to start – with the leadership and the opening lines of communication.

• Consistence is important for building a track record.  Employees and employers will trust you if your behaviour follows a predictable pattern.  Consistence can refer to walking your talk or it can refer to establishing a pattern of behaviour.  Whichever the case, consistence is necessary.  A simple tip someone told me once that you trust people to be who they are so learn about who you are dealing with and trust them to be who they are.  This was a huge AHA moment for me.

• Confidence can instill trust.  This is true if employees are confident you will be fair and balanced.  Or if employees are confident that  you know what you are doing.   One tip for building confidence is as simple as being prepared.   Lots of people show up and try to wing it.  This is a detectable practice that whittles away at trust levels.

• Intentional, frequent and relevant communication lends itself to transparence.  Developing effective systems of communication is about, constructive, deliberate communication through established channels.

• Confidentiality – If you are perceived as being a gossip, you will undermine your efforts to build trust because you will be viewed as lacking integrity.

• All I have to say about authenticity is, “Get real if you are not already”.  Anyone can spot a fake.  Integrity can also lend itself to your authenticity. 

• Holding team members accountable – This builds the integrity of the team and it assumes that goals are clear and team members are being given the tools they need to succeed.

• Build an environment of mutual respect where differences are harnessed as positive instead of being viewed as concerns or complications.  To be more specific, acceptance and inclusion help to build mutual respect but so does the demonstration of developed conflict resolution skills.

• Attempt to understand your blind spots or the things you do unwittingly that can sabotage your efforts to build trust.  Talk to someone who will be real with you and make a list.

It takes a village to build trust, the team should be open to making changes within the dynamics of the team.  Once you build trust and, leaders will need to train employees how to think because they were probably in self preservation mode for so long that they lost the use of their creativity and critical thinking muscles. 

In closing I am leaving you with a quotation from an unknown author.  “Trust as a foundation for high performance means just that: trust comes first. When we try to make the plan before the trust issues are resolved, we deal with symptoms rather than causes and repeating problems just change names.”