Steve

Procrastination is bad; procrastination is good

“I’ll just delegate this task to my future self.” At first, I thought he was making a joke out of his procrastination. Then I realized he was serious. Sometimes, the future you is the best person to work on something. I’ve had four different conversations in the last couple of months with people who were…
They’re people, not profiles

“Careful, those people tend to need detailed instruction.” “Those people have a different culture around timeliness.” “You need to give those people more frequent feedback.” It doesn’t matter whether “those people” are grouped by race, creed, geography, gender, generation, or assessment profile. What you think you know about the group may mean nothing for the…
Time isn’t why you’re burned out

“I feel swamped! I can’t keep my head above water!” You’re probably not really running out of time as much as you’re running out of energy. When your energy runs out, everything takes longer and some things just don’t get done at all. You don’t need more hours in the day; you just need the…
Make the Fun Work Conditional

I have a prioritization problem. I often find myself doing the “fun” work before the important work. I’ve been preparing a live webinar on aligning your purpose in work and life. Writing content is hard, but important. Learning how to use a live video/screenshare mixer/switcher tool is fun. I’ve found myself digging into the details…
Your words both reflect and reinforce your beliefs

Sometimes it’s, “I never realized I’ve been saying that.” Other times it’s, “I needed to hear myself say that.” You may not even realize that, deep down, you’re holding on to a false belief that is holding you back from reaching your God-given purpose. But it comes up in the words you use to describe…
No Dumping

You don’t want to be on the cover of this magazine. The March 20, 1954 edition of The Saturday Evening Post featured an art piece entitled “Anger Transference” by Richard Sargent. In four frames, it depicts a manager yelling at an employee, that employee yelling at his wife, the wife yelling at their child, and…
When you can’t push down the first domino

“But … I don’t know! I could make something up, but I don’t think that’s helpful.” That was once my reaction to a common visualization exercise used by coaches and motivational speakers. Knowing that one domino can be knocked down by one two-thirds its size, the exercise is to visualize a string of increasingly larger…
When people respect your brain but not your heart

“People don’t like to hear what he thinks, but 90% of the time he’s right.” That was someone’s defense of a brilliant technical team member who had made a lot of enemies because of how he shared his opinions. But when I consider the impact he had on the organization, I’d turn that statement around:…
Favors: The Currency of Collaboration

When your position on the org chart doesn’t give you the role power to have someone do something for you, you must rely on your influence or your relationship to foster collaboration. And in the world of business, building relationships and influence through collaboration uses a unique form of currency: the granting of favors. But…
Being right is not the same as being effective.

“What a waste of time. This is stupid.” More than once in my corporate job leading engineering teams I had a customer make unreasonable demands. In one case, the client replaced the project manager on their side just a few weeks before go-live on a months-long project. We had been working with this client for…
Motivation Paradox, Part 2: The Manager’s Job

No, you’re right. It’s not the manager’s job to motivate the team members. We talked about that last time. But still, we’d be foolish to say that managers have no impact on motivation. As a manager, what is your role? While it’s not up to you to create motivation for your team members, you can…
Motivation Paradox, Part 1: It’s not your manager’s job.

*Sigh* … “I’ve got to drag myself to work every morning.” When your motivation is low, work can feel like a duty with nothing exciting or fulfilling on the other side. Your manager can offer reward or punishment through changes in financial compensation, autonomy, and opportunity. They may give a peppy speech to open the…