Joelle K. Jay

learning

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3 Ways to Re-write a Bad Work Relationship

The following article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

 

See if this sounds familiar: you’re working with a business leader who you find to be quite difficult. He’s demanding, makes assumptions that are unfair, blames others. As a result you back off from any relationship with him at all.

There is an assessment called the “Influence Assessment” that we use at LRI to help individual managers and leaders understand where they’re having a positive impact and where they could have a positive influence. One of the items on that survey reads: “Has positive relations with others regardless of the differences we may have.” What I like about that item is that even though the relationships may be partly out of our control, and even though the differences we have with the other person is certainly out of our control, we have the potential to take control of how positive the relationship is. This means taking active ownership for being the one that makes sure that the relationship is positive.

I recently worked with a client who had the same situation I just described: a work relationship with a demanding, unfair, blaming colleague. When we did her influence assessment and she read the item about taking active responsibility for having positive relationships with others, she realized two things. First, she did not have positive relationship with this person. Second, she had the opportunity to change it by taking the lead in a relationship and change the dynamic. She also realized that this particular gentleman may actually have an influence over her career.

So what do you do to improve a relationship with someone when you think it is not as good as it could be?

 

Give yourself the opportunity to reach out. I know it takes some courage, and it may not be comfortable to be the one to reach out, but you can certainly do it. Most people respond very favourably to someone coming to them and extending a hand in rewriting a relationship. In some cases we may have to apologize for something, or may have to explicitly start a relationship off on a different foot.

For example, you might say something like this: “Jim, I want to get together with you today, as I understand we started off our last discussion on the wrong note. I would really like to start all over again.” Or, “Allan, I wanted to sit down with you because I know I was harsh with you today. I owe you an apology. I realized I reacted too quickly, I was unfair and I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me for that so we can start over.”

Swallowing your pride and being the first to reach out can be all it takes to erase mistakes in a relationship and start fresh.

 

Assume best intent. “Assume best intent” means making an effort to believe that the person opposite you is doing the things he or she does for a good reason. Most people have positive motives. They want to do good and be good, but something may get lost in the implementation. I had a client who couldn’t seem to click with her manager. She was a real optimist, her manager was a real pessimist. When my client recognized this dynamic, she was able to take control of her own perspective. She didn’t want to apologize for anything, and also didn’t want to start the relationship all over again. So she instead chose to assume best intent. That simple shift in perspective helped her see that what came across as criticism from her manager was intended to be helpful feedback, and it helped her to quiet her inner critic.

 

Channel their motivations. People are driven by different motivations. Sometimes you can change a relationship by identifying what the other person wants. One of my clients was constantly locking horns with her direct report. I suggested that she might study him to understand his motivation–or better yet, to ask him. She did. She opened a conversation and said, “You’re doing your job very well. I appreciate that, but I sense there are some things you would change if you could. If you could work in the way that was best for you, how would you like things to be different?” He said, “I want to have the freedom to do my job. Just let me do my job.” It became clear that this employee’s motivation was freedom; he needed more latitude than she was giving him. Having identified the importance of freedom to her direct report, this manager was able to shift her way of doing things so that he could perform better in his role and contribute to a more positive relationship.

 

If you want to have positive relationships or a positive career with an endorsement from the people who are important to you, identify those people that you want to have positive relationships with. Who are the people who are influential in my career and who are the people for whom I am influential in theirs? Those are the people to focus on.

Businessmen and businesswomen may find the most influential people to be their managers or key stakeholders in their careers; entrepreneurs may find the most influential people to be their business partners or even their clients. You may never know who in your life is going to have the most influence over your career. But you can be the one to take control of the relationship and create those positive relations with others regardless of the differences we may have.

 

Related: 5 Ways to Lead in Challenging Times

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Let Them Hit You

When you go looking for feedback, do you get feedback from the people who will give you the bad news?

Go ahead. Let them hit you.

Don’t worry – it’s not as bad as you think. Actually, one of the smartest things we can do is to ask for feedback from the people who don’t think all that much of us. The ones who are mad at us. Who are thorns in our side.

It’s not just because you’re going to get an enlightening perspective. (And oh, you will!) It’s also because the simple act of asking for feedback can improve the relationship.

Says Dave Norton, a senior vice president at The New York Times,

It’s so disarming. When you turn around and ask feedback from the people who wreck havoc in your world, it facilitates dialogue. It’s hard to be mad at someone who’s genuinely asking you for your opinion. Just the act of asking communicates trust.

When you go to look for feedback, ask yourself, who around me will give me the best feedback? Who will give me the worst? Who will give me a perspective I’ve probably never heard before?

Then go ask them. Easiest way: ask three questions.

  • What am I doing that’s working?
  • What am I doing that’s not working?
  • What one thing do you think I should work on to improve?

You may find those enemies were on your side all along.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Beliefs of a Leader

Your beliefs are a powerful driving force that can work for you or against you. Some beliefs empower you, while others limit you. By becoming aware of your beliefs, you can keep the ones that serve you, weed out the ones that don’t, and choose the ones that will support who you want to be.

Here’s an example. A common belief of busy leaders is, “I have to work hard to get ahead.” Immediately the limitations of this belief are apparent. Working from this belief implies that you must sacrifice parts of your life (home life, health, and hobbies come to mind) to “get ahead.”

Now consider this belief instead: “I have to be my best to get ahead.” This belief is more empowering, because it opens up the possibilities. It still accepts the potential for working hard if that is what’s required, but it also allows for the fact that getting ahead sometimes means taking time for the rest and renewal that keeps you at your best.

An example can illustrate how to turn a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Andy was the president of a structural engineering firm who was raised to believe that if you compliment people too much, they become lazy. He was afraid to commend his team, because he believed that to do so would take away all motivation. His belief limited his ability to praise the people who worked for him, and they were becoming bitter and resentful.

To turn the situation around, Andy studied his limiting belief:

“If I praise people too much, they will become lazy.”

As long as he believed this, he would never be the supportive leader his firm needed. He could see that unless he tried something new, he was going to lose support. He tried this empowering belief instead:

“If I praise people more, they will become inspired.”

Andy rehearsed his new belief by trying it out 100 times. Every time he hesitated to praise someone, he stated his empowering belief to himself and gave them a sincere compliment. Before long, the results – a more agreeable, cooperative staff – convinced him to retain the new belief.

Beliefs are fundamental to the way your life plays out. The difference between a limiting and an empowering belief is quite literally the difference between a limited and a powerful life. Choose your beliefs carefully. They make you who you are.

Developing empowering beliefs is a three-step process.

  1. Become aware of your beliefs. You can go after them directly by asking yourself, “What do I believe,” or you can go after them directly by noticing your behavior and asking yourself, “What would I have to believe to behave this way?”
  2. Write down your beliefs. Take a look at them on paper with some objectivity. For each one, ask yourself, Is this belief limiting or empowering?
  3. Turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Just change the words, looking for the exact opposite of your limiting belief to find one that’s more empowering.

The process of distilling your beliefs takes time. Allow yourself time to try on different beliefs and see what fits and what doesn’t. Notice when you feel limited and deflated, and when you feel expansive and energized. Keep working with the wording of your beliefs until you’ve created the ones that you can claim with conviction—the beliefs that will help you be the leader you really want to be.

 

Exercise
Use the Your Beliefs worksheet in The Extension to identify a few beliefs that guide your thinking and actions. Assess them. Are they limiting or empowering? How could you develop new beliefs to help you achieve your vision?

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.

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Learning By Chance, Learning by Choice

Leaders are encouraged to learn “on the job.” The problem is that many of us don’t. Either because we’re too busy, we forget, we don’t know what we need to learn, or we don’t have the resources we think we need, we end up learning by chance or command. Neither one is very powerful.

Learning by chance means you take opportunities to learn whenever they show up, but you don’t necessarily go looking for more. A conference brochure arrives; it seems interesting; you go. A friend recommends a book; it looks good; you read it. You take opportunities to learn as they come to you – in other words, when it’s convenient.

Learning by command means you learn when someone else demands it. When your colleagues tell you that you need to learn to be more decisive, or when your profession requires that you get an advanced certification, or when your boss sends you to a workshop to learn specific skills, you are learning by command.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these approaches to learning. Any learning that advances your expertise and builds your capacity may be worth your time.

Or it may not, and that’s the problem. You have so much potential, and there are so many opportunities to learn, and there is so much to be gained by learning that it simply doesn’t make sense to relegate your learning to the whims of chance and command. You need to learn by choice.

Learning by choice means carefully setting up your own learning opportunities based solely on what you need to get better results.

Learning by choice is based on a number of assumptions.

Learning is leadership. Learning is an essential component of leadership. Some experts go so far as to say learning is leadership, a leader’s constant quest for the improvement of the business, people, and results.

Learning is profit and competitive edge. The soul of business is innovation; the soul of personal leadership is the innovation of the self. You can’t have one without the other. If you want to have, run, or be part of a business that succeeds in a time of change, you need to be willing to change, as well.

Learning is life. In addition to learning for all of the practical and rational reasons that contribute to your effectiveness as a leader, there’s one more: learning is part of the fun of life. When was the last time you picked up a new sport, game or hobby? We learn these things not because we have to, but because we want to. Your vision and goals will be infused with a new sense of exuberance when you commit to learning what you need to learn in order to achieve them. You will know that you can do anything you want to as long as you know how to learn.

If you really want to lead well and live well, you must learn to learn well, too.

And if you’d like to master the ability to learn as a way of excelling as a leader and in your life, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find a free guide called Your Personal University to help you choose the most powerful way to learn.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be making strategic decisions about how to learn and what to learn in order to excel as a leader and in your life. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.