Change feels risky. But there can sometimes be greater risks if you AVOID change.
I had a great conversation this week with a guy who was stuck after 40 years of the exact same behavior, and he’s finally ready to change.
If you’re avoiding shooting your shot because change feels risky, remind yourself that staying static is risky, too.
Everybody gets stressed out by work. But regularly having a negative attitude at work can cause everyone to suffer: your coworkers, for having to put up with your negativity, and you, because you’ll miss opportunities and promotions in favor of people with good attitudes.
This is the classic sign of someone with a bad attitude. Venting and gossiping at work is a telltale behavior of an employee who is feeling toxic and doesn’t care about bringing other people down with them. Venting feels good in the moment, but it’s been proven to be a poor strategy for relieving stress, because it fails to address the root problem.
If you find yourself rejecting someone else’s idea before you’ve followed the thought process through and really considered it, odds are good your colleagues are frustrated with you. It’s healthy for colleagues to question and test one another’s ideas. But if you shoot something down by saying “that’ll never work,” before the group has had time to really turn the idea over, you’ll be blocking conversation that can lead to good solutions.
Feeling that 3pm slump is normal. Feeling tired all day isn’t normal, and it’s a sign that you could be really disengaged at work. When I work with companies to help their teams build resilience, I remind them that burnout isn’t just about being busy – it’s about being busy plus having a lack of meaning and purpose in their work. If you feel like what you’re contributing doesn’t matter, then it may be hard for you to feel awake and excited to do your job.
I once worked with a guy who said “it’s not worth my time to care about Jan (at the front desk.) She doesn’t sign my checks!” What this guy didn’t know is that Jan often made decisions about which salesperson to transfer new callers to! Not to mention she ordered the company supplies, and could “rush” things if she wanted to. She was a good ally to have in your corner… but that guy didn’t know it. If you think it’s only worth kissing up to the higher-ups, your attitude could be harming your career more than you know. People notice, and people talk. Being respectful takes no more time than being rude, so make it a point to show respect to everyone.
I get it: team meetings can interrupt your day and be a source of frustration. But tuning out isn’t the right solution. If a line of conversation doesn’t directly involve you, it’s a good idea to still listen, because it’s likely that somebody is going to get pulled into the conversation to answer a question or solve a problem. And if it’s you, you’re going to look silly if you were checking your phone or daydreaming about your fantasy football team.
My therapist calls this “turning a 2 into a 10.” Do you find yourself getting aggravated with everyday frustrations like somebody taking your sticky note pad? Or replying “thanks!” to an email chain that they could have just let drop? Sometimes we feel like life is frustrating, but it’s really our own reactions that are making us experience more frustration than we need to.
When everyone else on your team is jumping to solve an important problem, are you hanging back? Being checked out at work can be particularly noticeable during a crunch time, when other people are spitballing ideas and getting creative. If you’ve lost your passion for your work, as we talked about in #3, then it’s hard to get invested in problem-solving.
Nobody likes being corrected. But watch your reaction next time somebody makes a small correction to your work. Do you find yourself wanting to correct a mistake of theirs? Or tell them why, in fact, your original version was right? It’s human nature to not enjoy being corrected, but successful companies are made up of employees with different backgrounds and strengths for a reason. The more eyes and hands on a project, the better the end result will be. Just take the direction, because we all need to get and give corrections sometimes.
These 8 behaviors don’t have to mean you’re a bad employee – they could mean that you’re a good employee who’s on the verge of burning out. But whether it’s your innate attitude or unaddressed burnout, it’s critical to take action and curb these behaviors before they impact your work any more.
As kids head back to school, families want to set their children up for success. If you want to help your kid have a productive school year, try teaching some of these resilience lessons. Each one will help make your child more capable of navigating school year stressors.
School isn’t meant to be easy. If you knew everything already, you wouldn’t need to go to school! Learning something you don’t already know how to do is the whole point of an education. But for lots of kids, if something is difficult, they interpret that difficulty to mean they must not be good at that task, or they must be stupid.
There’s an emerging school of thought called “growth mindset,” which focuses on our capacity to learn and grow. Often in our society, we praise children for their innate gifts and skills, saying “oh, you’re just so smart!” “you’re a good artist!” When that happens, we accidentally deliver the message that a child’s success is because they’re naturally good at something. Children are then at risk of developing a “fixed mindset”, which is the opposite of a growth mindset, and tells them that their skills and talents are fixed and can’t be changed. Help your child develop a growth mindset by encouraging work that is just beyond their current abilities, showing them a path to solve the problem, and then praising them for the effort they exerted, showing them how that effort got them the outcome they wanted.
Has your child come home and said “my teacher gave me a C on my project! I don’t know why!”? That’s language you want to catch and correct. Saying “my teacher gave me thus-and-such grade” isn’t usually accurate. Except in the rare case of a disconnected or vindictive teacher, your child most likely earned that grade. When a child phrases their grades in a way that places responsibility on the teacher instead of themselves, you’re seeing something called “external locus of control.”
People can exhibit either an internal locus of control or an external locus of control. People with an internal locus of control believe that they have some measure of control over the outcomes in their lives, and they take responsibility for doing their part. People with an external locus of control think that what happens to them is out of their hands: it’s all because of luck, fate, their boss, their mom. Listen to how your children talk about their grades, because it may be the first time you hear whether your child is prone to an internal or external locus of control, and you can help guide them to take more responsibility for what happens in their lives.
For very good reasons, schools and communities are now intervening much earlier and more seriously when it comes to bullying. Childhood bullying can cause long-term stress that even carries into adulthood, and the growing awareness of bullying is a great thing that protects vulnerable children.
But there’s one unintended downside to the rise in awareness against bullying. As children are being taught not to bully, their developing brains aren’t great at understanding what bullying really is. To a 5 year old, anyone doing something that makes them feel sad or angry feels like a bully. So saying “no, I’m not going to give you my favorite doll,” could be bullying to a 5 year old. We know better, as adults, but kids can’t always see the difference.
It’s important to help your kids navigate a world where everybody doesn’t want to be their friend. Your 9 year old may want to be friends with somebody who doesn’t want to be friends back. And it doesn’t necessarily make the other kid mean. It’s just a fact of life that we all prefer some people over others, and children are no different. So at home, if you hear about meanness or bullying, try to really tease out the actions that took place, before you get upset. (Because if you get upset, your kid will get even more upset!) Their teenage and young adult years will be filled with change friend-circles and romantic rejection, so this is great practice for what lies ahead.
Help your child develop more resilience by repeating these three mantras whenever they need a little nudge back on track. School-year stress is a real thing, but with a little guidance from you, your kid can grow into a hard-worker and a self-starting student!
When I work with teams to help employees be more resilient, one concern people tell me is that they get frustrated at work when they don’t get a promotion. Promote-able employees are – in general – positive, flexible, coachable, and resilient.
So if you’re hoping for a promotion soon, here are 4 key behaviors to keep an eye on:
Promotions mean more responsibilities. Making the leap from contributor to managing other people is one type of responsibility that often causes problems after a promotion. If you’re being considered to move to a position that includes managing other people, or even interfacing with more important people, decision-makers will be paying attention to who looks up to you. Are you coaching new hires? Are you mentoring younger team members? Do other members of the team look up to you? Behave like a leader before you have leadership responsibilities, and you’ll be the first one your bosses think of when a promotion comes up.
The words you speak at the office influence your promote-ability. Do you talk about possibilities, or only problems? Great leaders aren’t blind to problems, but they keep the conversation going until they have possible solutions. Start using solution-oriented language in meetings. Another language-related behavior to consider: How do you receive feedback? Bosses are more likely to promote team members who are coachable. Practice receiving coaching and feedback in a confident manner. Bosses often share with me that they’re telling their employees exactly what it takes to get promoted, but too many people get defensive. Only the coachable employees take the feedback and make the change.
Did your parents ever tell you “if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas”? Workplace gossip is a common occurrence. While social chatter with your colleagues isn’t usually a problem, what is a problem is something called “venting.” Venting is a type of communication where a frustration is rehashed over and over, with no solution (check out this blog post I wrote for the Office Dynamics Conference, to learn more). Venting is toxic to team culture, and being involved in venting – even if you’re just the listener, not the venter – can get you branded a complainer. Resilient employees don’t complain, they solve. To get a promotion, be a person who is up-front about bringing problems to the boss in a solution-oriented manner, not the person who vents offline behind the boss’s back.
It’s one thing to say you want a promotion. But it’s most likely to be given to the person who shows they’re ready with their actions, not just words. Do you volunteer to take on more responsibilities? Are you involved in workplace activities or affinity groups? To rise up through the company, you’ll want to see it from different angles besides just your corner of the business. Going beyond your job description isn’t a “brown nose” tactic. It’s a smart way to be exposed to more people and ideas in your organization, which will give you the knowledge you need to keep climbing the ladder.
The decision to promote you is in your boss’s hands, but it’s in your power to show your boss that you’re the perfect person to be promoted. Perfect these four behaviors, and your days of getting passed over are behind you!
Since the mid-1990s, emotional intelligence, or “EQ,” has been a hotly discussed topic. People with high EQ are believed to be more successful than people who only have a high IQ, the measure of intellectual intelligence.
When I first learned about EQ, I heard about it as being “people smart,” not just “book smart.” And being able to read and understand people IS a part of emotional intelligence, but that’s just half of it. The other half is being able to understand YOURSELF. For that reason, emotional intelligence makes perfect sense as a major predictor of success. (This is one of my favorite sites describing emotional intelligence, here).
So how do you know if you have high EQ? These 3 indicators can give you a good idea:
It’s not about the number of friends, but the type of friendships you have that counts, in this case. If you have friendships that include not just kindness and having a good time, but compassionate honesty, that’s a good sign that you and your friends may have high emotional intelligence.
One of my friends and I once disagreed about something in her personal life. She felt that something her boyfriend had done was “bad” and a dealbreaker. I pointed out that it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker in MY relationship, but that she had every right to draw whatever line she wanted. Having a boundary didn’t make the other person “bad,” or even wrong. She could set whatever boundary she wanted, and if it worked for both of them, then great. If it didn’t, then they should break up.
It was hard for her to hear, because her other girlfriends were all offering agreement and empathy about his “bad” behavior. But being able to voice a differing opinion actually brought us closer, and then several years later she was able to honestly tell me “Hey, I think you might be coming down on your son too hard for X and Y”! Having close friendships based in honesty shows EQ, because it combines both social skills and empathy.
When you’re mad, what kind of mad are you? Are you just plain mad? Or can you recognize different shades of mad, like “disappointed,” “frustrated,” or “embarrassed.”
The more varied and descriptive language you use for your emotions, the higher EQ you might have. The reason is because you’re tapped into what you’re actually feeling, and you’re recognizing the nuances of your experience. There are so many different ways to be sad, for example. I’m sad when my favorite restaurant stops being open for lunch, and I’m sad when my dog is sick, but I would never say those two emotions are the same!
When you use descriptive, specific language to talk about your emotions, that shows self-awareness, one of the key components of emotional intelligence. So the next time you’re feeling something, reach into your mental dictionary and see if you can pull out a fancy word. It’s a good emotional workout!
How hard are your goals? Are all of them things you can accomplish in 1-2 years? Goals should be attainable (hello, SMART goals that we’ve all heard of!), but if every single one of your goals is something pretty easy for you to accomplish, then you may be playing it way too safe just to be able to say you’ve reached all your goals.
People with high EQ aren’t afraid to defer rewards and success for a looooong time, because having high motivation is another key indicator of emotional intelligence. So with high EQ, you can stay motivated even if reaching your goals is a long, slow process. If you can feel accomplished even before you’ve reached an end goal, that’s a pretty good sign that you’ve got emotional intelligence.
Here’s the best news:
All of these indicators are traits that can be developed and improved. So even if you only see yourself in one or two of these characteristics, you can work on it and increase your EQ. Having a high emotional intelligence DOES help you be successful. So get some practice and flex those emotional muscles!
Nobody wants to work in a dysfunctional workplace. A healthy office culture plays a critical role in not only productivity, but also employee retention and happiness.
You can identify a weak team by looking for common dysfunctional behaviors. Most teams with problems exhibit more than one of these behaviors, and they’ve become a habitual part of the team culture. But there’s hope! There are ways to break these bad habits, if the whole team can start practicing healthier behaviors instead.
Gossip is one of the worst habits a work team can get into, but it’s one of the most common. It often starts with good intentions, when someone needs to process, share, or let off steam, so they turn to a friendly colleague and start to unload. But the basis of gossiping is “venting,” which is an unhealthy coping strategy (check out this blog post I wrote for IAAP to learn more), and bad for office culture. And when you gossip and vent with other team members, you’re probably doing that instead of actually talking to your manager.
Communicating instead of gossiping. Real communication involves not withholding important information. If you’re frustrated, your manager needs to know. If something is going wrong, your manager needs to know. If you don’t have what you need to be effective, your manager needs to know. To break this habit, remember what you learned as a child: “if you wouldn’t say it to their face, think about whether you should be saying it at all.” It’s fine to lean on your colleague friends for support, but in most cases, it should be done after you’ve started the conversation with your boss.
Good for you for deciding to have a conversation with your boss about something that’s been weighing on you! But before you walk in there, let’s take a look at what you’re going to say. In my second job out of college, the cultural norm was that people complained to their bosses A. Lot. I didn’t realize how much I had internalized the habit until I moved into my next job, with a management title. It was my job to solve problems as a manager, yet I was routinely approaching my boss with complaints, and no solutions
Solving instead of complaining. Think up at least one potential solution before you walk into your boss’s office. That solution may not work. It may not even be feasible to try! But your boss will likely give you bonus points simply for having a solution-oriented mindset. And the more you practice this new habit, the better you’ll get at coming up with workable solutions.
In today’s work environment, time is at a premium. Faster is always better. And because we value speed, I’ve noticed that a lot of workplaces rely on assumptions. Workers assume that X will be handled the way it always has. They assume that Y colleague is taking care of Z issue. Making assumptions can save time, but only if the assumptions are correct. If they’re wrong? Well, you’ve wasted far more time than you’ve saved.
Asking instead of assuming. When I work with organizations going through change, I often hear employees saying “I don’t want to ask because I don’t want to look stupid” or “I didn’t ask because if I asked about the project, I thought they might assign me more work and I’m already too busy.” This points to both a trust issue and a communication issue. But no matter your title, you can model healthy inquiry (that doesn’t earn you more work or a label of being stupid!) by phrasing things like “I’d love more context on X, so that I can answer any questions the clients may have” or “you seem to be really knowledgeable about Z, and I’d love to know more. Could I buy you a cup of coffee and tap into your wisdom?”
It’s hard for one person to change an office culture alone. And if you notice these bad habits at your workplace, it may take more than just you to fix it. But if you start with open communication with your superiors, then show them that you’re a problem-solver who isn’t afraid to ask tough questions, you may just have a shot at influencing a team-wide culture change.
I get asked this question ALL. THE. TIME:
“How do I help X person in my life get a better perspective? How do I help them be more resilient?”
It’s a tough question, because there’s not a perfect answer. You can’t GIVE somebody else perspective.
But because everyone seems to want to know the answer, I’ve done some research and some thinking, and there are 3 things you CAN do to help.
#1 is probably the toughest, because it requires vulnerability that we may not want to show.
If there’s someone in your life (your child, your employee, your sibling…) who could stand to be a bit tougher, check out this 4 minute video on what you can do to help them find resilience.
Resilience is an attribute that many companies appreciate, yet can’t describe. Like a lot of corporate culture issues, it can be a matter of “I don’t know how to ask for it, but I’ll know it when I see it.” So how does a company become a resilient company, and create a corporate culture that values resilience?
There are 4 main qualities you’ll find in resilient companies. And by the way, not all successful companies are resilient companies! Some companies are successful but haven’t yet weathered a big storm. But most resilient companies can turn out to be successful companies, because they have these 4 characteristics in place, to allow them to adapt and grow.
John Paul DeJoria is the founder of Paul Mitchell haircare and Patron tequila. But before he shampooed some of the most famous people in Hollywood, he lived in his car and sold hair products door to door. He credits his early life difficulties to helping him develop the work ethic that built his global businesses. But he’s also notorious for retaining the same employees for decades! Some leaders act like they can only get the best out of their team members by pushing them to the breaking point. But leaders who have truly struggled in life tend to understand that true leadership has more in common with compassion than fear. With that perspective, they can help their teams learn the lessons of resilience.
Workplace conflict can be distracting. But it doesn’t have to be destructive. In fact, there are two types of conflict, and one of those types of conflict is GOOD for your organization! Task-related conflict is when two people disagree on *how* something should get done, but they agree on the desired end result. This kind of conflict, if handled correctly, can help companies be more solution-oriented and innovative. Of course, if handled incorrectly or ignored, even the good kind of conflict can turn into people-related conflict, which is the bad kind. To build a resilient company culture, managers need to not be afraid to step in and keep conflict task-related. (If you need more information about telling the difference between task-related conflict and people-related conflict, check out my video here.)
Many companies know that vertical communication and letting employees’ voices be heard is an important part of employee engagement and building an inclusive corporate culture. But it’s also part of building a resilient company, as well. Vertical communication builds resilience within your culture by helping your organization identify and respond to all possible problems and issues quickly. If only the highest levels of leadership are talking back and forth, and then communicating *down* to the staff but not listening back, they may be missing major problems on the horizon. This kind of communication is important all the time, but it’s *especially* critical during change. When a company is going through transition, employees need to feel like communication is happening in all directions, so they can get on board with the change.
A company can’t be resilient if it doesn’t have resilient employees. And it can’t have resilient employees if it doesn’t hire for resilience, train for resilience, and let go of people who can’t be part of a resilient culture. In fact, failure to let go of underperformers and employees with poor attitudes is a major resilience-drainer for organizations. A company with a resilience built in to the corporate culture will make it a priority to hire and retain employees who show individual resilience, and those priorities should be reflected in writing in their HR practices.
Nothing ruins a great job like bad company culture. If you’re looking for a company that has a strong culture, it’s hard to know what to look for when you’re just interviewing. These 4 qualities are key indicators that the company may have what it takes to both be successful and be a great place to work, at the same time.
There’s something hanging over your head right now.
Something you’ve put off because it just seems annoying, boring, frustrating, or impossible.
My six-month checkup at the cancer hospital is one of those things that I don’t look forward to, for sure.
But this is my method for taking those things I dread and making them MUCH easier to get done. If I can’t just Mel Robbins 5,4,3,2,1 my way into doing something, I fall back on this technique.
Give it a shot yourself and see if it works!
Bullies don’t always stop at the playground.
Most adult conflict happens when two people hold different (but at least somewhat valid) opinions, and they butt heads. But SOME people weren’t taught healthy conflict skills, and some of THOSE people end up just plain mean.
If you have an emotionally bully in your life who won’t leave you alone, there’s a 3-step process for handling yourself and dealing with them in a healthy, productive way.
Most people dealing with an emotional bully will have the instinct to put space between themselves and the bully. Follow that instinct! The more physical distance you can have, the better it is for your mental health. When I was in my mid-20s, I had a good friend who used to get upset every time something good happened for me. If I got a new job, she complained I didn’t have enough time for her. If I got some recognition for work or my volunteering, she would make some undercutting remark. I don’t even think she realized she was doing it! But every good thing that happened in my life made her uncomfortable, and she’d start to beat me up for it.
There are two problems with this first step, though. The first problem? Most people stop there. They think physical distance will solve the problem, but usually an emotional bully isn’t deterred by a little space. Which brings up the second problem: that you can’t always put enough physical space between you and someone trying to get under your skin. Especially if the bully is a colleague, for example, you can’t just quit your job and run far away. So that’s when you deploy the second step…
Getting emotionally detached is a tough one for me. I have what my family calls a “justice bone,” this innate piece of me that wants people to REALIZE when they’re being unkind, admit it, and knock it off. But with true emotional bullies, that’s a pipe dream. They may NEVER clue in, and you’ll be waiting a long time. (Spoiler alert: I’ll probably be waiting right there next to you on the bench!)
What I learned when I worked with a very scary bully (see this blog post here for a little more background) is that the best thing I could do when I HAD to interact with him was to be as unfazed as possible. No matter what ridiculous thing he suggested to make my job harder, I would nod and say “Mmmm… interesting thought.” If he’d say something vaguely threatening, I’d reply “Fascinating.” If he said something insulting: “What a strange thing to say.” The less I replied, the more he turned his focus to someone who would give him a more emotionally charged response. It’s just like my mom taught me when I was fighting with my brother as kids: “if you give him a reaction, he’s just going to keep going.”
Practicing emotional detachment works in two ways – it hopefully makes the bully back off because he’s not getting the payoff he wants, plus it keeps you from being quite as frustrated, because you allow yourself to be less invested in “fixing” the bully.
No matter how good you are at emotional detachment in the moment, you’re still going to have some feelings come up. And you’re for SURE going to need to deal with those feelings. It’s important to find someone who is NOT a part of the environment where the bully is, to be your sounding board. Depending on how severe the situation is, I highly recommend going for at least a few sessions with a professional. The strategies I’ve learned for how to manage MYSELF (and the other person) in these situations have been incredibly valuable.
Whether a friend, family member, or a professional, find someone whose advice-giving style aligns with what you’re looking for. If you just want some sympathy, don’t turn to a well-known problem-solver. You’ll both be frustrated. Before you start the conversation, lay out clearly what you’re looking for (just to vent, advice, someone to be in your corner, etc.). Dealing with an emotional bully can feel lonely, so getting someone on your team is a critical part of the coping process.
Even as adults, we may still run into bullies sometimes. I like this Inc. article’s list of the 5 types of adult bullies. Dealing with an emotional bully is draining, so take these three steps to protect yourself mentally, so you’ll have the energy you need to keep focusing on what YOU need to get done.
