Five Easy Ways to Build Positivity in the Workplace

Posted on by Christina Hamlett

 

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For the first time since Media Magnetism debuted in 2012,  I’m taking April off and putting this month’s column in the capable hands of  Rosalind Cardinal, aka The Leadership Alchemist. What makes Ros’ guest blog such a timely fit is that the world at large is currently awash in negative energy that not only foments distrust but also incites violence, jeopardizes global economies and causes many to view the future through a perspective of doom and gloom. While it’s a reality that nothing changes overnight, it’s the small, incremental steps we can each take on a day-to-day basis (including in the workplace) that can lead to a better – and more productive – tomorrow.

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Positivity in the workplace makes a real difference.

It not only determines a person’s well-being but their success as well. In fact, it does more than that. Positivity can also:

  • enhance team members’ ability to think creatively
  • help them cope with challenges
  • nurture their progress in their career
  • and aid them in getting along with others in the workplace

So how do we build a positive culture?

Martin Seligman, positive psychologist and author of the 2011 book Flourish, developed the PERMA model, which details the five elements that must be in place for us to experience lasting well-being.

P: Positive Emotion

E: Engagement

R: (Positive) Relationships

M: Meaning

A: Accomplishment/Achievement.

Let’s break each of these elements down further and see how they apply in the workplace:

Positive Emotion: As a leader, it’s essential you set a positive tone for your team and their working environment inasmuch as possible. One way to do that is to reframe the negatives that can and will arise at times. For instance: “We failed.” Vs. “The project wasn’t successful this time around, but we received valuable feedback that will make the next one more viable.”

Engagement: Rewards and incentives can be great motivators to keep a team focused on crossing the finish line when used correctly, but team members can also develop self-rewards of their own, even if it simply means getting a cup of coffee once they finish a section of a project. The key is to create a reward the team member will enjoy working toward.

Relationships:  Human beings are social beings, which means that we crave healthy, empowering relationships. Many studies show that people with a larger support network often outlive those without it by 22%! Devote at least 20-30 minutes a day toward relationship building. Visit a team member’s office during lunch, ask about their family, encourage them in their personal goals, and learn more about what they’d like to achieve in their career.

Meaning: People want to feel a sense of meaning and purpose in their day-to-day work life. We want to feel that what we does matter; that what we are contributing plays a central part in the ‘bigger picture’. Leaders therefore must empower their team members to see the deeper layers in their work. Revisit your company’s mission purpose and vision statements in a special meeting. How does each team member’s work relate to those statements? In what ways does each team member fulfill your company’s unique vision? Getting to the heart of it may very well be what your team needs to feel inspirited and encouraged.

Accomplishment/Achievement: We are naturally programmed to want to better ourselves. In doing so, we flourish and experience well-being. So how can leaders empower their team members and equip them with what they need in order to experience accomplishment and achievement on a regular basis? One way is to help facilitate their development. Connect employees with a training program that can up-level them. Introduce them to the appropriate connections within your workplace for the advancement of their career. Devote time regularly to reflecting on how you can help develop your team members and they’ll thank you for it.

When a leader focuses on building positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment in the workplace, a positive culture will flourish, making for happier employees, a stronger team, and better work.

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Ros

Rosalind Cardinal, known as ‘The Leadership Alchemist’, is the Principal Consultant of Shaping Change, a consulting practice in the field of Organisational Development and Human Resources. She has coached clients at Executive and Senior Levels in government agencies, private enterprises, and the community sector and is a sought-after speaker and expert at conferences and events. Visit her website at www.shapingchange.com.au to learn new strategies and game-changing ideas toward becoming a better leader and to download Ros’ free e-book on leadership.

 

Owning the Table

Posted on by Christina Hamlett

Cielito

A few months ago, my husband and I went to a favorite Japanese restaurant. The former owner – a dear friend – had recently retired so as to travel and work on his golf game. Since we had always enjoyed the food, the service and the ambience, we decided to check out how his successor was doing and have a mid-week lunch date. Although the server took our drink order immediately, it was sometime later before she returned to ask if we’d like some food to go with it. My own order arrived in a timely fashion and we both assumed my husband’s would be out next. Nearly 10 minutes passed. When she finally strolled by to ask how everything was, we asked about the still-missing order. With a shrug, she said she’d go check on it. Upon her return, she immediately threw the chef under the bus with the explanation that “He screwed up because we’re really busy” (which, rather obviously, they weren’t). When the order finally arrived – and after a long enough passage to suggest it had never gone in to begin with – it wasn’t even correct. All this time, the manager had made several strolls through the dining room; although he would likely have seen and heard what was going on, he never stepped up to remedy the problem. Suffice it to say, we won’t be going back.

We contrast this to quite a different experience we had this past weekend at Cielito, a delightful Mexican restaurant in downtown Santa Barbara (California). Not only was our server pleasant and attentive but over the course of our lunch we were checked in on by four other servers, both of the young hostesses and the eatery’s new owner – each of them genuinely interested in how we were enjoying our meal and whether there was anything else they could get us. In a nutshell, not only did every employee “own” that table but also clearly owned Cielito’s reputation as a “go-to” place for an enjoyable experience. Whenever future getaways include a trip to Santa Barbara, there’s no question where we’ll be headed for lunch.

So how does this correlate to your own business? If you’ve ever dealt with a snarky receptionist, a put-upon sales clerk, or a customer service rep who’s clearly in the wrong career, it impacts your impression of the entire organization and makes you disinclined to remain a customer. On the flip side, how many times has a store employee walked you to the correct aisle to find a particular item, wished you a great day or – if you’re a regular –addressed you by name?

Couple the interpersonal equation with the dismaying reality that despite the fact we’re living in a technologically rich wonderland where we can nimbly text someone 8,000 miles away, participate in chat rooms with total strangers, and share Instagram photos across a broad swath of social media channels, we have become increasingly starved for real-time face-time with fellow human beings. Such insularity subsequently breeds a mindset of spinning in a solo orbit – a potentially damaging scenario if what you project in the workaday world reflects poorly on the entity that employs you.

If we choose to define “communication” as 140 characters, emojis, and hashtags, we’re purposely choosing emptiness over the chance to connect on a deeper level, to empathize, and to not only let others know we have actually noticed their presence but that such presence has made a difference – even briefly – in our lives. It is a table ownership in which both sets of participants must be fully engaged in order for the experience to be memorable.

Tuning Out the Naysayers

Posted on by Christina Hamlett

headphones

History has given us no shortage of dreamers whose friends and foes were probably quick to say, “I told you so!” whenever one’s defiance of convention resulted in fizzles, flops and failures.

  • The eighth time was the charm for R. H. Macy after his first seven businesses went belly-up.
  • As a youth, F. W. Woolworth wasn’t allowed to wait on dry goods customers at his first job because his boss said he didn’t have any sense.
  • Fledgling author Dr. Seuss was rejected by 27 publishers before someone finally decided to give his stories a chance. Jack London tops that rejection count with 600 “no’s” before he got his first “yes.”
  • Henry Ford went broke five times before launching a car company that finally found success.
  • Elvis Presley was fired after his debut performance and advised to go back to driving a truck.
  • Long before he gave the world The Happiest Place on Earth, Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor who told him he lacked imagination and good ideas.
  • The Wright Brothers went through years of failed prototypes until they came up with a model that literally got off the ground.
  • Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime and yet kept at it because – well, he really liked to paint.

The lesson here is that if any of the visionaries on this list had caved to the pressures of the bliss-blowers and shelved their dreams in deference to a well-lit, safe and predictable path of ordinariness, what a loss it would have been to the generations that followed.

So it is as well with aspiring sole proprietors. If you have the aptitude for your chosen field – coupled with the patience and ambition to learn how to make your ideas work in a commercial context – the world is truly an oyster of your own making.

Just make sure your shell has enough layers of insulation to drown out the noise of everyone pounding on it and saying you should be making something else.

 

Excerpted from Office for One: The Sole Proprietor’s Survival Guide (available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle)

Pink-Slip Your Non-Performers

Posted on by Christina Hamlett

nonperformers

When you’re an employer, it’s no easy task to let someone go that hasn’t been pulling his/her weight and measuring up to company performance standards. Have you communicated your concerns with clarity? Are there resources or motivational strategies you may have overlooked? How will assignments be reallocated in the interim so as not to disrupt the workflow?

When you’re a freelancer – and writers are especially prone to this – it’s just as hard to let go of all the dribs-and-drabs publishing markets that are supposed to collectively sustain you until Something Really Big comes along. Yet how many of these low-paying gigs have actually increased your exposure, added to your skill sets, and/or made you feel deeply appreciated? If they’re just taking up space on your calendar and desktop, maybe they need to be shown the door.

Consider the following:

  • “Non-performing” markets take up a disproportionate amount of your time and resources and – because you’re not seeing the results you want (i.e., a growing bank account, a bigger global footprint) – can put a negative cast on your self-esteem and sense of accomplishment. Content mills are a good example of this. On the surface, $25 for a short article sounds like a pretty easy and consistent income stream. If you can turn out said article in 60 minutes, not have to do any research, and not have your material sent back for rewrites, you’re earning $25 an hour. But what if that project takes you two hours? Four hours? Eight hours? Before you realize it, you’re now making $12.50/$6.25/$3.12 an hour. Those hours add up – and could be better spent on projects that pay more handsomely.
  • In focusing on how to correct ongoing problems (i.e., chasing down payments, dealing with difficult clients), there’s no telling how many opportunities are being missed in venues that provide greater promise. As recently as last week, for instance, I had a writer colleague tell me that she’s reluctant to dissolve her relationship with her agent despite the fact the latter hasn’t sold anything for her in almost two years. “I don’t want to hurt her feelings,” she said, ignoring the reality of her own career being hurt by a non-performer that’s holding her back.
  • Whether it’s personally or professionally, you’re also known – and evaluated – by the company you keep. As a leader, you’re judged by how effectively you’re managing your team. As a team member (albeit a subcontracted one), your reputation can be jeopardized if the entity with which you’re associated starts getting bad press. This further extends to the issue of whether you should stay with a sinking company and squeeze out a few more checks until you’re officially let go or jump ship before a replacement opportunity for new income has presented itself. While the saying holds true that it’s easier to get a new job while you still have one, how much of a sinking company’s failure do you want attached to your own name if you wait too long to leave?

This being a new year and a chance for a fresh start, it’s time to have a staff meeting (with yourself!)  and take a critical look at what can be jettisoned in order to get you where you want to be.

In my own experience, I look at three key elements in either accepting new projects or culling venues from my existing list of obligations: (1) what does it pay, (2) who will I reach, and (3) how will I feel about doing it. For a project/venue to be viable, it has to satisfy at least two of these three criteria. For example, I’ve been writing lesson plans for free since 2009 for an online resource for video arts educators; I’ll continue to do so for the foreseeable future because I’m not only reaching multitudes of teachers and schools across the country but the feedback and effusive appreciation they express makes it all worthwhile. Conversely, I’ve turned down a number of ghostwriting projects which – while they would have yielded a high paycheck – would have involved stressful interactions with demanding/unpleasant/contentious clients and left me little time or energy for the projects that gladden my heart…and bear my own name.

Lastly, it’s important to look at the consequences of off-loading business relationships that don’t seem to be doing as well as you’d like them to. Is there a way to negotiate better terms and conditions? Is it a platform for professional growth if you continue to pay your dues and prove your worth? Are there perks or networking opportunities that might not be found elsewhere? A case in point for the latter is an associate who pens freelance interviews for an arts and entertainment magazine. While he often grouses that the pay is paltry, he’s also compensated with tickets to film screenings, play previews, concerts, gallery openings and the chance to schmooze with celebrities. For the time being, it’s an association that meets the performance definition of Priceless.

 

 

Crossing the Potomac

Posted on by Christina Hamlett

Washington Crossing Delaware

When George Washington stood at the helm in his famous crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Day in 1776, it’s unlikely he brought along a boatload of emotional baggage:

  • “I wonder what’s up with Benedict’s sudden disappearing act.”
  • “Whatever happened to all those couples with whom Martha and I used to break bread at Mount Vernon?”
  • “Does Betsy Fauntelroy ever think about me?”
  • “How long is Franklin going to stay in a snit about my dissing his idea that our national bird should be a turkey?”

Nope. You can tell by the look on George’s face that he had much weightier issues on his mind:

  • What if the Hessians outnumber us at Trenton?
  • What if we run out of food and ammunition?
  • What if my soldiers whose enlistments are up on the 31st decide to quit and go home?
  • What if this wicked weather causes the river to freeze and we’re stuck until Spring thaw?
  • What if my standing upright while everyone else is sitting down causes the boat to capsize and we all drown?

These were indeed the times that tried men’s souls. Washington, however, wisely understood not only how to pick his battles but also which battles, frankly, were no longer worth his time and energy. Turns out that this is actually a pretty good business model with application to the 21st century as we move into the challenges of a new year.

In my own case, the river I’ve crossed most frequently isn’t the Delaware but, rather, the Potomac. Since 1982, my love of Alexandria, Virginia has led to annual getaways from the West Coast to enjoy a Colonial glimpse of life in the past lane and reconnect with friends and colleagues. “You always come back so refreshed,” my friend Linda said after I described the euphoria I felt every time I saw the morning sun glint off the wings of my plane as it banked over the river and followed its course all the way to National/Reagan Airport.  In time, “crossing the Potomac” became a euphemism for leaving one’s cares behind…if only for the blissful duration of a week’s stay.

It wasn’t long after that I introduced my husband to this “rite of winter” and the importance it held for me, so important that – without even asking – he always makes sure I have the window seat for our descent so as not to miss a single moment.

The euphoria is still as high as ever but on our recent pre-Christmas trip, I came away with an epiphany that makes even more sense than simply putting one’s worries and trepidations on hold. Why not, instead, figuratively release them to the depths of the river and allow them to sink once and for all?

Too often our journeys in life are so weighted down by regrets, disappointments, anxieties, betrayals, doubts and anger – usually over events which aren’t even within our control – that we lose sight of the possibilities and opportunities that are within our reach. Instead of steadfastly focusing on the road ahead, we become obsessed with looking in the rearview mirror to either see what’s gaining on us or to speculate ad nauseum why we’re not being followed by those whose loyalty we once trusted would always be there.

Not all destinations can be reached by land, sea or air, especially if it’s a dream that dwells within the heart. In order to reach it, you must first cathartically lighten the emotional load which has been taking a toll on your spirits, zapping your energy levels and causing you to believe that every problem – real, imagined or even someone else’s – is realistically fixable. And while it’s a stretch to fathom Elsa’s “Let It Go” as a soundtrack to George’s historic crossing, it’s nonetheless a theme as relevant to a Frozen fairy tale as it is to an ice-locked landscape or the inertia of stuck sensibilities.

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Here’s the line-up of this month’s guest contributors:

Tuning Out the Naysayers – by Mandy Wildman

Hidden Energy Users, How Much Is It Costing Your Business? – by Graeme Ambrose

Emerging E-Commerce Trends For 2015 – by Jason Kane

How Shopify Reinvented the Wholesaler – by Sean Allan

 

Don’t Touch That Couch!

Posted on by Christina Hamlett

couch

You’ve probably heard the expression “creatures of habit.”  As psychologists explain it, human beings are unique, complex and known to incorporate a wide breadth of rituals into their daily routines. These rituals – whether silly or serious – not only enable them to imbue their lives with a tidy sense of structure but also give others a sense of predictability on how they’ll react in habitual situations such as making breakfast, getting dressed, or cleaning the kitchen.

They’ve observed, for instance, that Janice always keeps the milk and cream on the right side of the refrigerator’s top shelf and the orange juice on the left side of the door. They’ve noticed that Jeremy always aligns the shoes in his closet with the toes pointing north. They’ve asked Lily why she folds her cotton dishtowel into a square and places it within the framed grout lines of the tile counter and she consistently responds, “It’s just the way I’ve always done it and I think it saves time in the long run on grout cleaning.”

There are good habits and there are bad habits. There are habits that have been ingrained since childhood (i.e., eat everything on your plate), habits influenced by parents (i.e., there is only one “correct” way to hang toilet paper), and habits we develop on our own as a matter of convenience (i.e., if I put out my clothes the night before, it will save time getting ready for work).

The longer a habit has been part of one’s personality, the harder it is to break. Likewise, the passage of time may even have rendered it impossible to remember why or how it started in the first place. If those long-term behaviors aren’t healthy or helpful, it tends to make relationships with people that are impulsive and spontaneous all the more challenging. I’m sure you’ve known individuals who waited until their forties – or even later – to finally get married and co-mingle their possessions. Unless there’s an “esprit de compromise,” things could get ugly the first time a partner suggests even the simplest nudge to the everyday routine or existing décor.

The same scenario can unfold when the owner of a one-person business decides to share office space with a fellow professional. Even if they’re not forming a partnership and are only looking at this as a convenient way to save on rent, share a receptionist, and have a kindred spirit to chat with on a slow day, they both need to consider whether they’re too settled into their respective comfort zones to really make it work.

Authors encounter similar challenges whenever someone says, “Hey, why don’t we write a book together?” Clearly they’re channeling their inner Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and assuming that if the right kids just get together and go find a spiffy barn, the show will be a smash success. Sure it sounds like a great idea at the start, not to mention twice the fun and half the labor. When a pairing of kindred spirits exceeds their scribatious expectations, both parties can’t wait to work together again.

For the flip-side experiences, though, when you realize your business roomies aren’t quite working out, you have to deal with the pain of disappointment – and dissolution – in the very same way you’d pull off an adhesive bandage: as quickly as possible. Yes, there’ll be a major “OW!” that briefly hurts and then stops. In the best case scenario, you’ll still stay friends. In the worst case scenario, they’ll be out of your life forever…but you’ll still be able to move that couch wherever you want to because it’s back to being 100 percent yours.

*****

This month’s issue continues our showcase of entrepreneurial journeys and the epiphanies that made those dreams come true.

A Dog’s Way To My Heart – by Amanda Pravia

Breaking Into The Freelance Writing Market – by Rashida Tayabali

My Journey to Becoming a Wedding & Events Planner – by Courtney Lutkus

Swapping Bytes for Bites – by Sheryl Thai

An Ancient Business in a Modern Age – by Isabella Kleiman

Bubbles, Bling, and a Book – by Maria Nicola