Author: catherinewemette

Categories
Awesomeness in the World

Dial-a-Swede

Driving home earlier this month, I caught an NPR piece on the Swedish Number and it’s quickly become one of my favorite things EVER. The idea was simple – let the people of Sweden represent the amazingness that is Sweden by connecting them directly with potential tourists. What a brilliant idea to promote tourism within the county. When I got home, I found that in addition to NPR, The New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post and countless others had already been talking about this for a couple months. How had I missed this fantastic story???

What I love so much about this idea is the basis that human connection is the best way to do almost anything. In a world where we live in front of screen after screen, chat for help and order things to be delivered by drones, going back to the basics of the telephone seems quaint. Why not a flashy social media campaign? A catching slogan? A contest? Because in the middle of all this noise, we’ve forgotten how powerful it can be to simply talk with each other. There were apparently no scripts or talking points given – just instructions on how to log into the system and be available for calls and see where the conversation takes you.

It got me thinking – how else could we connect and who else could we dial? Dial a new parent to check in and see how they’re coping and provide some adult conversation? Dial a senior who may not have many visitors? Dial someone who loves cooking when your mid-recipe and need a quick substitution for an ingredient? Dial a local for a great restaurant recommendation while traveling? Where else could we go back to human interaction for a fun twist?

Categories
Career Libby

New Kid on the Block

I have started a new job. Technically, I don’t start for a few more months, but I’ve been offered and hired and already sent to a meeting.  It was great, this meeting; it is a terrific way to get the lay of the land. It also made me very aware of my “new kid” status.

I was at my last job for over eleven years so not much was new to me, but now everything is new – it’s slightly disconcerting but it’s also very exciting.

  • Lingo: All the jargon and lingo for this organization is new to me – it’s a new industry full of new acronyms and terminology. I got lost about ten minutes into the conversation but kept jotting down everything I didn’t know – I’ve got a laundry list but it’ll be fun to cross each one off as I learn!
  • Reputation: I came from an organization where a lot of the staff where actually members – to them, I probably seem like some kind of anomaly in their midst. I am not sure of my reputation. I know that I’m held in high esteem by upper management, my new boss, but I’m not sure about my peers: Did they like my work? Did they learn from me in the past? Was my style collegial or off-putting?
  • Relationships: The staffer running the meeting seemed hesitant to have me there at first – maybe there was concern that I’d try to interfere or insert myself. It all ended up fine in the end: he welcoming, me complimentary.  But it was a reminder of the process that I’m going to have to go through to get to know people and have them get to know me: gaining trust is not an easy road…it takes hard work and a sensitive eye.
  • Work ethic: In my old job, it was (until the end) a situation where everyone knew I would get my work done and do it well. I don’t have that level of trust yet so I think that means I’ve got to work harder than ever before. My position is virtual, and aside from a few meetings, I haven’t been required to physically go in to the office – it’s my choice to go in once a week for staff meetings. I think it’s important to have that face time to build trust and new relationships, observe how I interact with people, understand that the job is important to me and that I’m a team player.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been the new kid on the block, but I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure they know I’ve got the right stuff.

– Libby Bingham

Categories
Inside My Head Karen

Loss

Loss:  the state or feeling of grief when deprived of someone or something of value. 

-New Oxford American Dictionary

The loss of a life. The loss of love. The loss of a job. The loss of health. The loss of money. The loss of friendship. The loss of a game.

Why is loss so painful?

It creates a grief in our hearts that can feel unbearable, overwhelming, deflating, disheartening, discouraging, or anxious.

We all deal with loss differently.

  • Some build walls as a shield of protection.
  • Some avoid the topic because it’s easier to not talk about it.
  • Some get angry to avoid breaking down in tears.
  • Some are overly sensitive because touching the wound is excruciating.
  • Some use dark humor to cover up the deep pain.
  • Some go quiet to silence the multitude of thoughts racing through their mind.
  • Some escape through substance to drown the grief.
  • Some flight because it’s easier to carry on than to deal with it.
  • Some meditate for relief from their anxiety.
  • Some choose retribution to avoid the feeling of rejection.

There is no perfect way to grieve loss. It’s impossible to perform flawlessly when we grieve.

Even in sports, I watch a team lose the championship and some are crying, some are throwing their towel down in frustration, some are sitting on the bench head in hands looking down at the ground, some head straight to the locker room and some are trying to remain composed and professional for the sake of the spectators.

It doesn’t matter how we deal with loss, the reality is we all identify with loss.

Here’s the kicker: and as much as you want to get over it, you don’t bounce back. Yes, time will heal, but not in a bouncy way!

Healing the experience of loss is more like filling a bucket of water with a syringe. Each drop is one step closer to restoring a full bucket inside you. We forget we need to replenish our souls! The expression “a cup of cold water to the soul” is about filling the bucket back up. And filling the bucket takes time.  It’s a process.  Replenishment takes time, and some buckets may take a little longer than others.

All that is required of us is this: simply say yes to the process. A willingness to allow ourselves to be replenished.  Time is patient.

– Karen Thrall

* also published on www.karenthrall.com

Categories
Career

Find the Tina(s) to Your Amy

While this article was posted last year, it just recently came across my path: What No One Tells You About Your Career When You’re 22 by Katie Burke. The concept itself isn’t new – passing along wisdom gained through experience to those who don’t yet have said experience – but among the advice you might expect to see, there was one piece that stood out to me.

We would expect to see advice about receiving feedback, strengthening weaknesses and taking ownership, but number three on Burke’s list if “find the Tina(s) to Your Amy.”

“A lot of people talk about how developing friendships at work can improve your personal life, but these relationships can also have a huge impact on your career path. Just look at Tina Fey and Amy Pohler — they’re best friends who also push each other to achieve amazing things in their respective careers.”

Full disclosure: I LOVE Amy Pohler. I adore Tina Fey, too, and since Burke has claimed Fey as her spirit animal, I’ll happily take Pohler. I admire their individual talents, smarts and candor, but the thing I love most is how much they love working together.

One of my favorite quotes from Pohler is “do work you are proud of with your talented friends.” As I’ve grown in my career, I’ve learned I work best with a partner in crime. I step up my game, I enjoy the work more and two heads are always better than one. I also love having a co-conspirator – someone with whom I can plan surprises for the larger team. And I especially love a break from the Real Housewives model – women going after each other for sport. Lifting up two women who go out of their way to support each other and other women around them warms my heart. Those are the examples I want to see.

So among all the advice to lean in, take risks and embrace gratitude, first and foremost, find yourself a partner in crime. The rest will follow and come what may, you’ll have each other to lean on.

Categories
Awesomeness in the World Karen

Innovators Spit on Worry and Carry On

What makes us shrink back or hold back?

When I’m hanging out with my wisest friends (who are 70 years and older), I notice a common occurrence: they are less affected by circumstances. They carry an acceptance about where they are, who they’re with and what they’re doing in that very moment. All that matters is now. And in that now moment, they are real, true to themselves, honest, present, sincere and worry-free.

Innovators are similar.

Innovators are such a gift to the human race.  If you’re an innovator, stand tall. You have a greater purpose than simply coming up with new and exciting ideas.

Innovators seem to have the least amount of struggle with falsity. In my opinion, they are uncompromising people. They seem to not invest a lot of their energy in what other people think. They are unapologetic for their opinions, actions and convictions. Okay sure, some innovators are difficult to work with and have peculiarities that might occasionally drive us crazy, but wouldn’t that simply be their unique style, not a flaw in their character?

I am a fortunate woman because my clients are primarily innovators. They are a gift to my journey. Though they may identify with my moments of worry, they have the boldness to spit on worry and carry on.

Let me speak to the heart of an innovator for a moment. If you’re one of them, this is what I think of you.

You teach the rest of us how:

  1. to be present
  2. to remain true to our unique self
  3. to be confident in our thoughts and actions
  4. to be unapologetic for the decisions we make
  5. to embrace the convictions we want to live out
  6. to have faith in what we are pursuing
  7. to not give up
  8. to bend but not break
  9. to be immersed in thought
  10. to radically believe

You remind us to stay the course.

If you’re an innovator, part of your purpose is to inspire us to walk in our true self, worry-free. Those are big shoes to fill, but you’re the people that can fill them.

When I’m with an innovator, it’s amazing how quickly nothing else matters. What worried me, no longer has power. The world is full of options. How can we possibly accomplish anything if we worry? Worry breeds falsity. Possibilities diffuse worry. Innovators understand this.

“Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen.  Keep in the sunlight.” – Benjamin Franklin

 

– Karen Thrall

*also published on www.karenthrall.com

 

Categories
Career

Ah, the Apology Battle

Apologies. Everything has something to say about them. Including me, last year. Lena Dunham just published Sorry, Not Sorry: My Apology Addiction on LinkedIn. Not surprisingly, a rebuttal, Dear Lena, stop telling me to stop saying sorry was quickly published in US Today by Lindsay Deutsch. Apologies are a popular battle ground, especially for women – right up there with swearing (some insist on abstaining and other insist it means you’re smarter).

I was doing a training a couple months ago where we were discussing apologies as part of a well-rounded skill set. We wandered off into a similar discussion being had by Dunham and Deutsch about apologies in the workplace and gender. One of the women asked about apologizing when it seems more and more like women are being told not to apologize. In response, one of the men in the training made the observation that maybe we should be looking at it the other way – rather than telling women to apologize less, we should be encouraging men to apologize more.

Apologies (and swearing!) can be powerful, and it’s dangerous to completely eliminate them from your vocabulary. Like most things, we shouldn’t always or never. There is a time and place for everything, and as Dunham so eloquently points out:

“One of the most important things a person in charge can do is own their mistakes and apologize sincerely and specifically, in a way that shows their colleagues they have learned and they will do better.” – Lena Dunham 

 

Categories
Inside My Head Karen

Know Your Stressors

Taking inventory of our internal well-being on a regular basis is fundamental to healthy living. When we go through a challenging time, a big change, an unexpected disruption (or a planned one), it’s a good idea to ask ourselves, “Heyyyyy youuuu inside there, how are you doing?”

The most important part of stress is this:  
Are you handling it okay?  

When I did this quiz, my stress results were very high. I knew they would be. There’s been a lot of change over the past 12 months. Along with the change, stress. Of course! It comes with the territory.

How we handle stress is what we need to measure.

Ask your closest relationships: Do you think I handle stress well?

For me personally, I’m making life-changing decisions and carving a new path – a path I want to live. The impact these changes are having on me, the inner-person Karen, are monumental. The paradox of this stress and change is that I’ve chosen it. I want the change.

Regardless, change comes with risk, which inevitably induces greater levels of stress.

Although stress is a complex subject, I know what I have to do in order to stay healthy.  I don’t want stress to invoke physical ailments.

Since I’m in a season of high stress (note:  a season), I find myself much more diligent in making sure I’m doing okay. Here are a few of my go-to’s that I find highly valuable and helpful:

  • Find the calm in the chaos.  (I continually say, “All will be well. I’m on the right path.  Keep going.”)
  • Spend time outdoors reflecting and pondering your thoughts.
  • Enjoy solitude and find time to think so you can unpack the clutter in your mind.
  • Give yourself permission to feel your fear, worry or uncertainty. (I used to stuff my feelings. I don’t do that anymore.)
  • Choose gratitude and every day speak out that for which you’re truly thankful.
  • Remind yourself that love is greater than stress. Stay connected with the people that mean the most to you!
  • Every year have a medical check up and blood work done to make sure you’re healthy.
  • Choose to eat healthy and drink lots of water.
  • Love laughing. (I make sure my days are filled with joy.)

Stress is a normal part of life, but it’s not to dominate our lives and it must not be given any controlling power on our circumstances.

– Karen Thrall

*also published on www.karenthrall.com

 

Categories
Career

The Price of Silence

6 Ways Nice People Can Manage Conflict by Travis Bradberry recently showed up on Huffington Post and I was struck by his first point: Consider the repercussions of silence. When it comes to conflict, we so often tend to think silence is easier – if we can just grit out teeth and get through it, things will be fine. But the behavior continues and we find ourselves rolling our eyes, coughing loudly, making snide comments and, before we know it, we find ourselves in passive aggressive territory, or even just aggressive territory. Both of which are surefire ways to make sure a problem doesn’t get resolved.

The reason this struck me as the first point is that silence is often viewed as not making a decision or the absences of a decision, but I would argue that it’s very much a decision – it’s a decision to allow the bothersome behavior to continue. We think people know their actions are problematic, but that assumes they make a conscious decision to make our lives difficult. And as much as we’d like to cast people in the role of villain, that just simply isn’t the case most of the time. They’re working with the information they have, which if we remain silent, is just one side of the story – their own.

If we don’t take the opportunity to speak up when we have a preference for something else when it comes to a behavior or decision, it’s just as much our fault if we don’t like the result. In the absence of anything else, our silence is our implicit endorsement. So next time you find yourself thinking it’s easier to stay quiet than to share your preference, think about how unhappy you’ll be next time that behavior occurs or a similar decision is made. Because with your silence, the only thing that’s guaranteed is that the same thing will happen again.

Categories
On the Job

Times of Team Stress

Prepping last minute details for a big conference. Launching a new product. Gearing up for your annual sale. Anytime we take a detour from business as usual, we put ourselves in a stressful situation and one of two things seems to happen: we band together in our foxhole or, desperate to save ourselves, we turn on each other.

Much of this is human nature and we can’t help ourselves. It’s rooted in our adrenaline to either fight or take flight in times of stress. And since we can’t typically take flight from our jobs during these stressful times, we’re left with the option of fighting. Fighting isn’t always bad, especially if you can band together against a common enemy – fatigue, mediocrity or unanticipated problems. You can also fight for something together – your highest number of sales, fewest onsite issues or even just making it to the closing bell. Any team member from a successful fight will tell you how much they bonded with their teammates as a result of the battle. You have war stories to tell together, common experiences and inside jokes you had to be there to get.

So when you find yourself in the middle of a stressful team situation and you notice people frustrated with each other, getting shorter with their responses or complaining more, see what you can do to shift the fight and band together.

And for the record, baked goods are always a highly recommended battle tool. Or chocolate. 😉

Categories
On the Job

Knowing Your Time Goal

I was asked last week for a fun time-keeping tool to use in a meeting. Obviously the words time-keeping and fun aren’t usually used together, but I get what they were after and I can work with that. The real issue was that we didn’t know the concern we were trying to address, so the request prompted a deeper dive. It’s typical for a number of issues to get swept up into the “we need to keep better track of time during our meetings,” so it’s important to know what you’re trying to fix or avoid.

  1. One or two people monopolize the conversation. For these folks, I find the best solution usually isn’t a tool, but a one-on-one conversation outside the meeting to get these people on your side as your ally. “I could really use your help with our group. You’re so passionate about topic x, that when you share your ideas first, people tend to just go along with them because it’s easiest. In our next meeting, I would love if you could help me out by waiting until a few other group members have shared before you weigh in.”
  2. You’re trying to establish a new norm for conversation within the group. Ideally, this is something the group can set at the beginning, but if you’re trying to make a shift in conversational norms, a reverse brainstorming exercise can work wonders. Rather than brainstorming solutions for a problem, you brainstorm how to get the worst-case scenario. For instance, with conversational norms, you might want to brainstorm how to ensure nothing gets done and everyone leaves feeling miserable. Your brainstorm may then include things like everyone is on their phones, no one comes prepared and you have to review everything that happened last time, everyone interrupts each other and so on. Once you realize these are certain ways to ensure inefficiency and bad feelings, you can work together to avoid them.
  3. You’ve got an emotionally charged, high stakes conversation coming up and you want to make sure everyone gets to speak. If this is the case, I like to recruit one or two people to volunteer to go first, and then I like to use opening arguments (or opening statements, if you’re in political debate season). Everyone gets three minutes (or whatever time works for your group and agenda) to share their options and perspective. It’s not time for conversation or debating, but it ensures everyone starts with a chance to talk and you start by getting everything out on the table.
  4. Everyone participates equally and the conversation is good, but you’re always running out of time or running over the allotted time. This is where agenda setting is your friend. A timed agenda with clear chunks of time for each discussion topic can help you as the planner and as a participant. We often try to pack too much into our agendas, so thinking through how much time each conversation needs will help prioritize what needs to be discussed now and what can wait for next time.

Now, these are issues that typically come up within established teams who are working together. For new teams, I find it most helpful to establish the ground rules and norms at the beginning so that everyone is on the same page. One of the groups I worked with established a “no beating a dead horse” ground rule at the beginning and would frequently come back to that within their conversations. They would say to each other, “We hear you and that horse is dead.” It may sound harsh to someone coming in from outside, but because the group established it themselves at the onset, it was an effective way for them to let each other know they’d been heard and keep the conversation moving in a timely way.

What are some of your tips and tricks for managing time and keeping things moving?