Working With Others

As I mentioned the other day on a recent post on Working With Twenty Somethings, I spent last weekend at The Fourth Annual Solstice Film Festival in Minneapolis MN. While I was underwhelmed by many of the offerings, another documentary that I thought was incredibly well-done was the award-winningBicycle Dreams.

Bicycle Dreams, directed by Steve Auerbach, is the story of the 2005 Race Across America - a 3000 mile bicycle race from San Diego, CA to Atlantic City, NJ. The synopsis from the official website reads:

They are seekers, madmen, and angels hell-bent on riding across America on a bicycle in less than ten days. But what begins as the adventure of a lifetime is transformed in an instant when tragedy strikes the race. These voyagers discover what is truly at stake as they pedal on, praying for the deliverance only the finish line can bring. By journey’s end, some are saved, others are lost, but all learn that the fuel that takes a soul toward its own true destiny is desire. … Top riders finish in under 10 days, riding over 300 miles per day and sleeping only a few hours per night. Amid the sleepless grind, riders must endure the searing heat of the Mojave Desert, the agonizing climbs and descents of the Rockies, the driving winds of the Great Plains, and the twisting switchbacks of the Appalachians before the final sprint to the finish line in Atlantic City. With little prize money at stake, the fundamental goal of the race is simply to finish, a challenge half of all riders fail to meet.

I have seen a lot of documentary films. This one is without question in my top 5 of all time. See it.

What I do want to address is the concept of individual contributor. In most organizations, this is the place where everyone starts. We have no direct reports. Our manager, who hopefully is competent, gives us assignments. And while we may work on a team, we deliver results by doing the work ourselves - alone. Bicycle Dreams and the Race Across America it documents is a story about individual contributors - those “seekers, madmen, and angels hell-bent on riding across America on a bicycle in less than ten days”. However, what becomes crystal clear is that while one individual is pedaling the high tech machine called a bicycle across deserts, mountain ranges and tall grass prairie, they are not alone. In each case, a sizable support team accompanies the racers in a large RV and provide medical, physical, mechanical, nutritional, and emotional support along the way. Each cyclist needs - no, is totally dependent on - his/her support team to succeed. And what is amazing is that the race is not necessarily won by the fastest racer, but by the fastest racer with the best support team.

So after seeing this movie, I began thinking about whether or not individual contributors in the workplace actually go it alone. Are the individuals who receive the highest performance ratings totally independent or - like the riders in the Race Across America - are they dependent on others for their success? Before I share my point of view, I’d invite comments from others. What do you think?

Today would have been my father’s 90th birthday. He died in October, 1991 of a smoking related cancer. With Father’s Day just two days ago, he has been in my thoughts a lot.

My father did not have an easy childhood. He spent his early years in the coal region of Shenandoah, PA. His younger sister drowned when he was nine. At age ten, his parents separated and he was sent to live with his Uncle in Philadelphia. By the end of the summer of 1929, he had learned how to navigate the trolley system to get to Shibe Park to watch the Philadelphia Athletics. (Some argue that the ‘29 Athletics were the best professional baseball team ever-and my dad saw them play.) I don’t know this for a fact, but I would guess my father made two promises that summer. The first was that if he ever had children they would learn how to swim. And he would take his kids to their first professional baseball game so that they would not have to go alone. He kept both promises.

To be honest, there were many times when my father and I did not see eye to eye. However, I am grateful for the lessons he taught me and I want to share them here because each one contributed to the work I do today in helping people work and play well with others.

1. A deal’s a deal. I’ve written about this lesson before.(See On Commitment.) My father maintained that one of the best things someone could say about you was that you were dependable and that you would do what you said you were going to do. He lived his life by that rule and I’ve tried to do the same.
2. Baseball. My father marched me out into the backyard as soon as I could walk and taught me how to throw and catch and how to hit a baseball. On a warm July evening when I was six, he took me to see my first big league game - the Philadelphia Phillies and the BROOKLYN Dodgers. The players were larger than life and the grass was the greenest I have ever seen. And this was the season after the Dodgers had finally beaten the Yankees in the World Series. I was hooked. Baseball is a team game. A collection of super-star players does not automatically guarantee a great team. Building a great team is hard work and I have never forgotten that lesson.
3. Don’t give up. Both of my parents were of Polish ancestry. There is an expression in Polish that translates literally to “don’t give up”. Whether it when I was trying to complete an impossible school assignment or fight my way out of a batting slump, my father would use that expression. To this day when I am feeling overwhelmed, I hang in there because I can still his voice. Years later when I visited Acoma Pueblo west of Albuquerque, NM I learned that there are words in their native language that are almost exactly the same that every child learns - “never quit”.
4. Sense of humor. My father had a wicked sense of humor and he also loved to laugh. I have very fond memories of Saturday evenings spent in hysterical laughter. What is significant is that I remember the laughter and not necessarily why we were laughing.
5. Interdependence. My father was self-employed. He had his own shipping room supply business and his office was in our basement. In fact, it wasn’t until I got to High School that I discovered that most of the other parents actually left the house in the morning to go to work. So I guess the fact that I have been an independent consultant since 1991 is genetic. What my father was very clear about, though, is this: We all need to find out what our gift is - what we can do really well. And we need to appreciate what everyone else’s gift is as well because we need each other to create a better world.

When my father was born nine decades ago, the United States was less than a year from being out of World War I, the Great Depression would start ten years later, and World War II was twenty-two years away. When he died, my aunt told me “John, your father was a good man; you could always count on him.” Thanks, Dad.

When workplaces introduced “diversity” into the organizational lexicon, it usually referred to racial, ethnic, and/or gender diversity. Recently the importance of style and generational diversity has received attention as well. I’ll offer a few thoughts on style diversity in this post and consider generational diversity at Working With Twentysomethings.

There are many style tools in use today. One of the oldest, most common, and most well researched is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®). The MBTI®, which has been in use since right after World War II, is based upon Carl Jung’s personality type theory. The MBTI® provides information about our preferences regarding where we get our energy, how we perceive data and make decisions, and whether we prefer to orient ourselves to the external world in a structured or flexible manner.

While it is no surprise that we are generally more comfortable being around people who are similar to us, we also learn that life can be richer and more interesting when we choose to be with those who are different from us in some way. The MBTI® is no exception. We tend to be more comfortable around people with the same type preferences because it is easier to relate to them. However, people who have similar style preferences, also tend to share the same blind spots. So surrounding ourselves with people who have styles different from us opens the possibility of richer conversations and better decisions that benefit from those different perspectives.

Sometimes I will see organizations where there are one or two style preferences that predominate. And by the organizations’ own admission, everyone seems to see the world the same way. What I have noticed is that when one style preference is in the majority, an organization may unconsciously continue to hire people with that same preference. So the style of the organization can get more homogeneous.

As an aside, the same phenomenon exists when a company tends to recruit talent from the same schools year after year. As a Princeton graduate, I can say that the senior thesis and the instructional method of using small classes called preceptorials has a profound effect on shaping the way students from that institution think. The senior thesis is an 18,000-word research paper that all students complete in order to graduate. The preceptorial method, introduced in 1905 under Princeton President Woodrow Wilson’s leadership, is a method of study in which a small group of students meets in regular sessions with a faculty member. As a result of the senior thesis experience you learn how to research a problem, think critically, and write coherently. And when you are in a small class with your professor and six to eight other students you learn to be prepared. If I work in a company with only Princeton graduates, I know we will have had those common experiences and I will have a pretty good idea of how people will approach a problem. What I lose is the diversity of thinking that would come from being with other smart people who have had a different academic experience – and learned from different teachers.

So, while the diversity tension that comes from bringing together different styles and academic experiences can be challenging, those different perspectives can pay dividends for a company.

Today, my colleague and I kick off another weeklong new manager development program. At the beginning of the session, we always do introductions to help the participants and us get to know each other a little better. One of things we all share is a fact about ourselves that know one would know unless we told them. Past examples include, “I once jumped out of an airplane”, “I’m afraid of birds and don’t eat chicken”, and from an older participant, “My father was born in 1899 and was 70 when I was born!” One fact that I often share is that I follow a minimalist lifestyle and do not own a TV. Class reactions range from “how can you possibly live” to “Hmm, I’ve thought about getting rid of mine, how is it going?”

For me the decision to jettison the TV came down to two observations. First, one evening I was sitting in front of the TV with the remote control scanning the program guide to see what I wanted to watch on the satellite offerings. When I found nothing I wanted to watch that evening, I turned off the TV and picked up a book to read. When this scenario got repeated several evenings in a row, I decided (a) I was paying far too much each month for satellite/cable service that offered nothing I wanted to watch on a regular basis, and believe me there were a lot of choices, and (b) there were other more interesting things to do than watch TV.

So in my new digs in Minneapolis, a TV is missing in action. Here is what I have noticed:

1. I do not feel disconnected or out of the loop at all. I can still stay connected via the Internet and my radio. Quite a long time ago in the eighties, we were part of a Nielson survey in which we had to monitor our TV viewing. What I discovered was that about 75% of what I was watching was news and news-related programming. I can follow the news online – it is actually more timely than what appears on a TV and more convenient since I spend a lot of time online. And as a baseball fanatic, I can follow my favorite teams on the Internet, and listen to the games on the radio – which is how I did when I was a kid.

2. There were some TV shows that I did follow such as Monk, The Office, and mini-series such as John Adams. Well, all are available on DVD and I can watch them on my MacBook Pro. If there is a TV program I feel I need to check out, there is http://www.hulu.com/.

3. When I had a TV and a cable or satellite subscription I found that I felt compelled to watch because I was paying for it – it’s that cognitive dissonance thing we all experience from time to time. No TV, no guilt. I can now spend my time writing, reading, and with my friends in the lost art of something called conversation. For someone who focuses on how people work and play well with others, I get to do exactly that more often. I get more daily exercise – outside. And I am more mindful of what is going on around me because TV has not dulled my senses.

I want to be clear that I do not want to impose my life style choices on others. And I am aware of how TV shaped the lives of people – particularly of the baby boomer generation. I simply want to be open about a choice I have made – for now – and share the benefits I have experienced.

As I am getting ready to do another week-long new management development program with my friend and colleague Linda Houden, I am thinking about a question that we are often get asked by participants: “Can you recommend any books on leadership/management for us?” I have written previous blogs about my bias against popular “business books”. However, the question is a legitimate one and I have decided to devote the next few blogs to answering it.

An easy recommended reading is Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project. One of the challenges that I find often confounds even the best leader is how to have that really thorny conversation. This book really helps. It is so accessible and practical that even the busiest leader will find it a worthwhile read. More to follow…

There is a reason that the nickname for Minneapolis is “The City of Lakes”. One of the perks about living where I do is that I am with two blocks of one of these lakes and briskly “walking the lake” is a convenient way to get my daily exercise – and because the city keeps the walking path plowed all winter I can get out pretty much everyday – unless the wind chill factor in the winter is dangerously low – and that is an entirely different subject!

When spring comes to the Twin Cities, however, EVERYBODY seems to be out walking the lake. A common sight along the path is a parent pushing a stroller with a baby or toddler inside. Today there was a little boy – somewhere around 24 months old - struggling to extricate himself from the stroller. His parents did not help him – nor did they stop him. They just watched as parents do when their kids do something for the first time. Within a few seconds, this young toddler was bounding gleefully down the path stopping only to joyfully touch each new dandelion he came across. There was a sense of discovery and wonderment that, of course, his mother needed to capture on the digital camera she just happened to have in her tote.

This event reminded me of the employee a manager keeps confined to her cubicle. And casts a wary eye when the employee is not at their desk poised in front of the computer – working. How much creativity are we stifling by simply the way we organize office space and the way we expect employees to work. I’ve always said that we organize around a purpose and that every organization is perfectly organized to get the results it gets. I think this true of workspace and style as well. Any thoughts?

A project that has occupied my time these last few months is the creation of a new blog. While I have addressed generational issues in the workplace fairly frequently here, I sensed a need to create a new blog that was more specialized in its approach.

About three times a week for the past six months, a Baby Boomer or Gen X boss rants to me about a member of the twenty-something or Millennial generation who has done or said something that leaves the boss speechless. The rant usually begins with, “You wouldn’t believe what happened” and often includes the words “slacker”, “entitled”, “uncommitted”, and “Facebook junky”. And with the same frequency, I also hear twenty-somethings, complain about their technology-challenged bosses who cling to outworn policies and procedures, who need to “get a life”, and who don’t really care about the twenty-something’s career.

As someone who tries to earn a living by helping people to “work and play well with others”, my cross-generational work is focusing more and more on helping Gen Xers and Baby Boomers understand the newest generation – the Millennials – and conversely helping Millennials adapt to a world of work that the generations that came before them created.

There is a major transformation occurring in organizations today. Baby Boomers are going to transition out of the world of work, as we know it – maybe not as fast as once thought given the decline in value of various retirement accounts. But they will move on. The reality is that Generation X, the next in the birth order, is much smaller than the Boomer generation. So future talent and a significant percentage of the leaders of tomorrow are going to come from this Millennial or twenty-something generation of flip-flops, nose studs, and tattoos.

So www.workingwithtwentysomethings.com is the new blog for and about the twenty-somethings in the workplace. I invite you to check it out.

I will continue to post blogs related to workplace issues from the current topic list here. However, I’ll address cross-generational workplace topics in the new blog. Thanks!

When my friend Kelly asks her husband Don why he has not made more progress on the myriad of projects on his “to do” list, he informs her he is not very good at multi-tasking. Don, in fact, is a self-proclaimed “serial doer” –someone who completes one thing at a time.

I can now explain the conspicuous infrequency of postings to this blog as a result of my strong tendency toward serial doer behavior. My mother’s insistence on doing “first things first” probably contributed to this tendency. (Although I’m not certain I can even use the phrase “first things first” anymore because Stephen Covey trademarked that expression years ago – which is a whole other topic – but I digress). Now don’t get me wrong, I can multi-task when necessary. However, the serial doer approach is my preference.

So for the last few months I have been taking care of one thing at a time in my relocation back to Minneapolis. I won’t bore you with the details. However, I’ve been collecting material for possible posts and I am back in blogging mode. I’ve also had a chance to update the site so it now has a new look. And for those subscribers who are interested, you can follow me on Twitter by going to www.twitter.com/DrJohnDrozdal. See you online!

When my generation was in high school, one of the career opportunities that was not even on the radar screen was barista as in “one who makes expensive latte drinks at chain coffee shops”. Another is “life coach” as in “someone who helps one navigate life’s sea of change - be it career, personal or otherwise”. Back in those days, you made coffee on your stove top perculator and if you needed help with life’s vagaries, you talked to your friends at a diner or bar. Coaches stuck to the sport they knew.

Given the economy, and the fact that at least one national coffee house chain is closing outlets, baristas are no longer in the demand they once were. Life coaches seem to be multiplying exponentially, though - as are the certification programs to become one. My friend Bob recently emailed me that “there is not enough ‘life’ for all the coaches out there”. He may be right.

If you google “life coach certification programs” you will find a plethora of avenues to become a certified life coach. Here is what I observed when I did just a little bit of digging. First, the programs range from a day-long (or less) program to a several month course of study - and at the end of either extreme one becomes a “certified life coach”. The variability of the length and the content of the courses suggests that there is no agreement of what constitutes the preparation for a life coach.

Second, these certification programs can cost several thousand dollars - and for many it is hard to even find out how much the program costs. Again, a pretty suspect fact. Makes one think that the “certification process” itself was created by a few as simply a money-making proposition.

Finally, I found little evidence in my quick search of either a threshold for entry into the program - that is, an application process - or a demonstration of competency at completion of the program. What tends to be emphasized is the lucrative opportunity that waits for certified life coaches. My question is, does anyone ever wash out of these programs and if they do can they just try another?

Now that I have raised the above warning flags, I do know several executive coaches who are excellent. And there are probably some credible life coaches as well. However, in the absence of agreed upon standards of what makes a great life coach, my advice to all is that if you have exhausted your friends’ patience regarding your life issues and you really need a life coach, check references!

“When it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?”

This is the question that Katie Couric asked Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Media critics have labeled the question ”gotcha journalism”. When I look at the current Presidential campaign through a leadership lens, I not only think it was a fair question, I think it was an essential one.

One of the characteristics that I value in leaders is the ability to think critically – that is, to be intellectually curious, to entertain opposing viewpoints, to see the big picture, and to be able to anticipate the second, third, and fourth order consequences of the actions they take and the decisions they make. One of the clues to how a leader thinks is found in what they read. In my coaching practice, I will often ask a leader, “What are you reading?” And I must say I usually get a specific answer such as the “Wall Street Journal”, Jim Collins “Good to Great”, “The Harvard Business Review”, etc. And I will suggest other possibilities for new readings that may challenge that leader’s viewpoint. And most are willing to try those suggestions.

And when I have the opportunity hear an executive speak, I will often ask that person what they read. And sometimes the answer surprises the audience – as in “I just finished reading Aristotle’s “Neomachean Ethics” and now I am reading David McCullough’s “John Adams”.
Every so often I come across a leader who tells me they don’t read anything other than memos or emails. That kind of answer makes me worry about that leader’s ability to think critically. So Katie’s question was a fair one when it comes to trying to get insights about one’s leadership.