Just Say No to Saying Nothing – Speaking Up at Work

Unless I’m out of town or steeped in laziness, I go to a yoga class most Monday nights. There is another class in the same studio right after the class I attend. During the last few minutes of this week’s class, people attending the next class began to congregate outside the studio and were talking loudly enough that our class could hear them. The teacher walked outside and asked them to be quiet. Then she walked back into the room and told our class that she just did something she doesn’t typically do–speak up. When the class was over she went back outside and apologized to the people she’d asked to be quiet.

Why!? Why!? Why!?

What is the big deal with giving feedback and asking people to do something differently?

Unless you live in a cave, this happens to you too. People talk near your office or cubicle and it’s distracting, but you don’t feel you can say anything. Someone in your office cc’s your boss every time he wants something from you. It annoys you and makes you distrust the person, but you don’t feel you can say anything. The people sitting in front of you at a movie theater talk throughout a movie, it’s annoying, but you’re hesitant to say anything.

Again, why, why, why!?

I already know what you’re going to say. People will be angry at you for speaking up at work and will kill you off.

That may be true, but what the heck?! That’s crazy. We do stuff. It annoys other people. They tell us.  BIG DEAL!  No one died.

My entire business, Candid Culture, is focused on helping people feel they can be more candid at work. Speaking up at work is a struggle in every organization. People are afraid to give feedback. They fear retribution –real or imagined.

Make a pact with each other that it’s ok to tell the truth. And that people will take the feedback in the spirit it was intended –to make something better, not to be critical. Give each other permission to be candid without consequence.

The more often you find yourself speaking up at work and giving feedback, the easier it will be.

Dealing With Difficult Coworkers: Three People No One Can Work With

If you read your organization’s handbook carefully you will see, in the very fine print, the rule stating that there will be three people in your organization who no one can work with. Everyone knows who these people are. They are the people who employees are afraid of, who tend to make others’ lives hard, and who no one wants to work for.

Employees wonder, doesn’t anyone in management know about these people? Why isn’t anyone DOING anything? Someone is most likely doing something. Dealing with difficult coworkers just take time to work themselves out. And managers can’t talk about others’ performance with you, as you wouldn’t want them talking about your performance with others.

What to do in the face of a crazymaker who doesn’t appear to be going anywhere?

Crazymakers are often bullies and bullies push the people around who let them do so. Despite your fear, give it right back to a bully. Chances are she will back off and find someone else to pick on. Do this professionally. Don’t compromise your own reputation by interacting with a bully in the way she interacts with you.

Work around the person. I’m not giving you a pass to avoid the people you don’t like working with. If you have done everything you can to work well with someone and he won’t work with you, do your minimal best. Be polite and respectful. Keep the person in the loop when necessary. But don’t go out of your way to nurture the relationship. You can’t work with someone who won’t work with you.

Doing everything to work well with someone includes talking to the person about your working relationship, admitting it’s strained, and asking for feedback about what would improve the relationship. Doing everything might involve getting a third party or outside mediator to broker a conversation. It might include weekly meetings to ensure regular communication. If you’ve tried ALL of these things with no outcome, then you can work around the person. But everything is NOT, “I sent three emails and didn’t hear back.”

You can leave your organization to avoid the person who makes you crazy, but s/he will be waiting for you at the next company in a different body.

If you like the work you’re doing and, for the most part, like where you work, don’t let dealing with difficult coworkers drive you from the organization. Ask for help. Let someone who can do something about the situation, assist you or at least give you the go ahead to work around that person, when possible. And if the situation becomes untenable, before you resign, tell someone in a position of formal authority that you’re at the end of your rope and you’re planning to leave. If something is going to change in the short term, he or she will often know and tell you.

Self Esteem At Work – Your Self Esteem is Impacting This Relationship.

Your self esteem is impacting this relationship.

This is a line I’ve always wanted to use. But I won’t. Because although I think it’s true, saying it would be unhelpful.  And unhelpful critique is just mean.

People who think highly of themselves are easier to work with than people who don’t. They are more confident and self assured. They don’t need a lot of reinforcement. People who have a high self esteem at work know they’re good. They may appreciate it if you tell them, but they don’t need you to tell them.

People who don’t think highly of themselves need an endless amount of reassurance. No matter how much reinforcement you provide, you will never fill the need. You can’t fill it.  No one can make someone else feel good about him or herself. No amount of reassurance or accolades replaces a lack of belief in oneself. That belief must come from within.

People who don’t have high self esteem at work come off as arrogant.  They’re the people who tell you how great they are, rather than letting their results speak for themselves. They’re slow to partner and quick to point fingers. They’re often the bully of the organization. They make others’ lives’ hard and take the credit for others’ work. They are the people employees get warned about when they join a new company.

You might be wondering when I became an arm chair psychologist. I didn’t. But I work with a lot of organizations and a lot of people. And the more organizations and people I work with, the more I see how similar people and organizations are.

Every organization has power struggles, egos, and similar communication challenges. I’ll tell you what I tell the organizations who tell me that their companies are worse at feedback and open communication than other companies. You’re special, but you’re not different.

The best thing you can do for your organization is to hire smart, driven, emotionally healthy people. As most of us know, that’s easier said than done. How do you identify emotionally healthy?

I ask these questions of EVERY person I interview both for my company and when I interview candidates for my clients.  And a candidate’s answer is often a deal breaker that ends the interview process.

• What’s some negative feedback you’ve gotten in the past?
• What did you learn?
• What did you do with the information?

I will only hire people who are self aware. People who are self aware know where they’re strong and they know where they need to develop. There is no one who has gotten to adulthood without receiving some negative feedback. And if a candidate can’t muster up an example of this, then they’re not open to feedback. And people who are not open to feedback aren’t coachable.  People who aren’t coachable are very difficult to work with.

You need coachable, introspective people in your organization. And not having those traits should be a deal breaker in your hiring process.

I would put $1000 on the table and say comfortably that the people in your organization who are difficult to work with are not self aware nor open to feedback.

Add assessing self awareness to your hiring process. Don’t hire people who don’t know themselves and aren’t open to feedback, and your organization culture and performance will improve. I guarantee it.

You can access the rest of our interview questions for hiring managers here and candidates here.

Workplace Gossip – Gossip is Killing You

Dating turnoff:  A guy who tells me negative things about other women he’s dated. If he’ll talk smack about other women to me, he’ll talk poorly about me to other people. I know I’m special, but I’m not different. And neither are you.

If your coworkers talk to you about other people in your office, why wouldn’t they talk to others about you? Likewise, if you talk to your friends at work about all the dolts you’re forced to work with, why shouldn’t your friends assume you will talk negatively about them.  Like you, they’re special, but not different.

Workplace gossip exists in every organization everywhere. It’s been around forever and is here to stay. The problem is that gossip creates environments of suspicion and fear and kills organizational cultures. Employees watch his or her back, wondering from where the next jab and stab will come. And when people are worried about how others will damage them, they work alone versus together. They hoard information and recognition. All of this is, of course, very bad. But the distrust and paranoia that gossip creates isn’t the only reason to reduce the gossip in your organization.

An even more compelling reason to reduce the amount of workplace gossip — it’s exhausting.

My clients split hairs attempting to convince me that gossip and venting are not the same thing. They insist that venting is productive—it allows people to blow off steam and problem solve. Here is my one word reply:  Garbage. That is complete garbage.

Although I am the least woo-woo person I know, this next thought may sound a little woo-woo.  So hang in there with me. If an hour after a meeting you and your work friends are still talking about how inept the meeting facilitator is, you might as well still be sitting in the meeting. If you go home after work and complain to your spouse about the people you work with who do little work, then you might as well still be at work. You life is what you talk about and with whom.  That’s the woo-woo part.

If you want a different experience, say something different. If the meetings in your office are ineffective, talk to the meeting facilitator off line. Offer suggestions; offer to run the meeting, or stop going. Do anything but talk to people who can’t impact the situation. If you’re working harder than the people around you, either talk to them or your manager, or simply do less. Sometimes we have to let things break for others to know they are broken.

Whatever you choose to do, know that talking about the things that frustrate you to people who can’t do anything about them makes you feel worse not better.

I’ve already conceded that workplace gossip isn’t going anywhere. So what to do?

Here are a few things you can do in your office to create a more positive and trusting culture:

1. When you find yourself talking negatively about someone who isn’t present, stop.
2. If there is something you’re unhappy with at work, tell someone who can do something about it. Just be careful not to dump a problem at a manager’s door. It burdens managers who are already too busy and annoys them. State your observation; recommend a solution; ask for their support if you need it.
3. Create a no workplace gossip policy in your office, and charge a $1 every time you hear gossip. The money can go to charity or towards funding company parties. People are hesitant to part with their money. You’ll be surprised at how much $1 can alter behavior.  The people you work with may look at you funny, but they know how badly it feels to be thrown under the bus. Others will, in time, appreciate the policy. Working in an environment where you know others won’t talk about you when you’re not there creates an unprecedented feeling of confidence few of us will ever experience.

Ultimately the answer is simply to:  Desire to have a different working environment and draw attention to the gossip you hear. That alone will help. You want people to trust you. And you want to work with people you trust. One of the fastest ways to build and repair trust is not to speak negatively about the people you work with. Plain and simple.

Open to Feedback – Train People to Tell You the Truth

Looking for a 5 10’, 45 year-old with some of his hair. Must enjoy long walks on the beach, dogs, and great conversations. No baggage please!!

At work this might sounds like, looking for employees who will do good work with little to no oversight, be open to feedback, and never get defensive, no matter what bad news we give them.  Otherwise known as, no baggage.

Unless you work alone, you know that people come with baggage. I’m calling our negative experiences with other people –parents who lost their tempers when we expressed a counter point-of-view, bosses who punished us for saying what we really thought, and peers who killed us off when we told them the truth – baggage. Every time we got yelled at, in trouble, or punished in any way for giving feedback, we learned it was not safe to speak up.

Your direct reports and coworkers have been trained by every person who came before you, both personally and professionally.  We have all been trained.

We all know that when we tell most people what we really think, and they don’t like it, there are negative consequences. So we learn, pretty quickly, to keep our opinions to ourselves.

If you want people to tell you the truth about what’s not working in your organization or about your own performance, you need to retrain them. You need to get your employees and coworkers to believe that it’s safe to tell you the truth, even when the news is bad.

So how do you make people feel safe giving feedback and speaking up? Be open to feedback:

1. Ask for their opinion.
2. Promise that no matter what they tell you, you will say “thank you”.
3. Manage yourself and ensure the other person felt heard. Say “thank you” out loud, regardless of what you say inside your head.
4. Then walk away.
5. Once you’ve had some time to process the feedback, you can go back to the person to discuss it.
6. If you got defensive, apologize and recommit

Every time you get defensive you train people it’s not safe to tell you the truth. The more often you ask for input and are open to feedback, the more information you’ll get.

Commemorating September 11th

Every year on September 11th I appreciate being alive and wonder why I’m not dead. I worked in the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001. Tower Two. I was out of town that day. I easily could have been there, but was not. And each year I ask myself the same questions.

How is the world different because I lived on September 11th when others died? What have I done in the last 12 months to make the world smaller and to build community each time I get on a plane, walk in a store, meet someone new and have a conversation? Where have I played small?  Said yes when I meant no?  Said no when I wanted to say yes? Or didn’t say anything at all?

The further we get from September 11th the more it impacts me. I’m struck by the people who died and didn’t finish what they started. I’m struck by human being’s continued approach to solving problems with violence. And each year I debate how to mark the day.

I think about marking the day privately, in my own way. But I always feel compelled to reach out. For me September 11th is the outcome of a lack of community and thus it is a public conversation.

Each year I reach out to my friends and colleagues at OppenheimerFunds who shared the days after September 11th. I let them know I’m grateful for them and I’m happy they’re alive. I remember my mother’s panicked call needing to confirm that I was indeed out of town on September 11th, and what it must be like for a parent to fear her child is in harm’s way. And then I reflect on my year.

Perhaps September 11th is my day of atonement. It is the day every year on which I reflect on my contribution to the world and how the world is or is not different because I am in it. What difference have I made, will I make? What am I doing that I love and who am I doing it with?

I will leave you with this. What are you doing that’s important to you, today? What are you doing that’s not? How did you make the world smaller, today?

MeetUps Are a Product of September 11th

I didn’t know that MeetUp groups were created as response to September 11th.  I received this message by the Founder of Meet Ups and thought you might find it interesting.

Fellow Meetuppers,

I don’t write to our whole community often, but this week is special because it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and many people don’t know that Meetup is a 9/11 baby.

Let me tell you the Meetup story. I was living a couple miles from the Twin Towers, and I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn’t matter much if we’ve got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hoped they wouldn’t bother me.

When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they’d normally ignore. People were looking after each other, helping each other, and meeting up with each other. You know, being neighborly.

A lot of people were thinking that maybe 9/11 could bring people together in a lasting way. So the idea for Meetup was born: Could we use the internet to get off the internet — and grow local communities?

We didn’t know if it would work. Most people thought it was a crazy idea — especially because terrorism is designed to make people distrust one another.

A small team came together, and we launched Meetup 9 months after 9/11.

Today, almost 10 years and 10 million Meetuppers later, it’s working. Every day, thousands of Meetups happen. Moms Meetups, Small Business Meetups, Fitness Meetups… a wild variety of 100,000 Meetup Groups with not much in common — except one thing.

Every Meetup starts with people simply saying hello to neighbors. And what often happens next is still amazing to me.

They grow businesses and bands together, they teach and motivate each other, they babysit each other’s kids and find other ways to work together. They have fun and find solace together. They make friends and form powerful community. It’s powerful stuff.

It’s a wonderful revolution in local community, and it’s thanks to everyone who shows up.

Meetups aren’t about 9/11, but they may not be happening if it weren’t for 9/11.

9/11 didn’t make us too scared to go outside or talk to strangers. 9/11 didn’t rip us apart. No, we’re building new community together!!!!

The towers fell, but we rise up. And we’re just getting started with these Meetups.

Scott Heiferman (on behalf of 80 people at Meetup HQ) Co-Founder & CEO, Meetup New York City September 2011