Tina Lewis Rowe

Friends At Work Are Special!

Who have been your best friends at work? If you think back on your work history or consider work now, you probably can smile about conversations, lunches or coffee breaks with friends who made work more fun.

My first work friends were Robert Shaugnessy, Roger Kasperson, Rand Hendrickson and Steve Kern. In another assignment I worked with Art Hutchison and Gary Gosage, and I could hardly wait to get to work just to pal around with them. We did a lot of work, but we sure had a good time! Later I worked with Tom Coogan and Rudy Phannenstiel. Bruce Chesy and Joe Goff were great friends, too. John Thompson and Danny O’Hayre were subordinates of mine, but we had a work friendship. The same was true of Larry Amman and Pat Flynn. Larry Homenick was the chief deputy when I was the U.S. Marshal for Colorado, and he and I established a friendship that is still strong. I also knew I could count on the friendship of Pat Mangravito, Sharon Ladd and Sharon Buck, among others.

I would hate to think of what work would have been like without the fun, assistance, support and encouragement those friends offered over the years. In fact, the worst times of my career have been when I have felt I did not have a friend at work and that I was surrounded by people I could not smile with, ask advice from, or even trust most of the time. Have you ever been in a situation like that?

However, as with most good things, there are some warnings and reminders about work friendships (These apply to people at any level of the organization, including supervisors and managers.)

• Do not be part of an exclusive clique. Being in a group that does everything together and excludes others, much like a snooty sorority or fraternity, may be fun for you and them, but appears very unprofessional to others, including managers. You will not present yourself as a mature person with a strong team approach if you are seen as needing to be part of a club to be happy and productive.

Talk with everyone in a friendly way. Occasionally invite someone else to lunch with you and your best friend at work. Show through your actions that, while you have close friends, you are supportive of everyone who is professionally effective. You may find you enjoy getting outside the same circle of conversation and interests. Linking with others is also a way to gain knowledge and perspectives we might never have otherwise.

• Carefully choose close friends while being friendly to everyone. Some coworkers will add to your work life and professional development and others will not. You can be friendly and supportive of everyone, without linking with someone who is creating problems for themselves through their work or actions. Being friends with someone you feel sorry for is not a good idea!

If someone you do not want to be close to is obviously trying to establish you as a friend at work, be courteous–but find reasons to limit time together. When you do join that person for lunch or breaks, invite someone else. (Have you noticed that figuring out how to distance yourself from someone at work is like saying no when someone asks you for a date and you don’t want to make them feel badly?)

•  Let your friendships support you in your good work, not detract you from work. Most complaints by managers about work friendships involve excessive conversation, extended breaks, ganging up on others, or covering for each other inappropriately. Among the worst situations are when everyone else has to hear you and your friend discuss your favorite topic, hobby, sport or family concerns every day, while others are working. Your friend is your friend, but your friend doesn’t pay your salary or prepare your evaluation.

• Think twice about extending friendships away from work. That is especially true if your work friend is of a higher or lower level than you in your organization. In addition, the aspects of your personalities that make you friends at work often do not translate well into activities that include spouses and children. Another problem is that conflicts in your social friendships will almost always affect work. Some people find it easy to be friends in both worlds–just be aware of the pitfalls. 

For most of us, memories of friends are our primary good memories of work. It is people who most enrich our lives and make it fun. Tell your work friends how much you appreciate them. Send a note to work friends from the past and remind them of some of the fun things you enjoyed about working with them. If you are a supervisor or manager, develop friends in other sections so you do not end up feeling isolated. Encourage productive friendships between employees in your workgroup. Everyone works better when they have friend nearby!  

If you want to really smile about your best friend at work, let Mr. Rogers remind you of why that person is special. Click here to listen!

June 15th, 2008 Posted by TLR | Life and Work, Personal and Professional Development | 5 comments

Take Employees To Meetings

Almost anyone at a supervisory, managerial or executive level can remember a time when going to a meeting with the boss–or in place of the boss–seemed interesting and exciting. Come on, you know you do! I recall being asked by my captain to attend a community meeting when he was busy. I was thrilled about it, hardly slept the night before, and spiffied up for the occasion! Better yet was the time I attended a meeting held in the office of a division chief. I was a lowly sergeant and could barely believe I was sitting in the same room as someone with that much rank! I remember looking around the room and feeling as though I had arrived!

Do not underestimate the value of including employees–even those who do not seem likely to be excited about the idea–when you attend meetings that are appropriate for bringing a guest. Sometimes there are chairs around the room for those accompanying the people sitting at a conference table. (Not an ideal situation, but many attendees actually prefer those peripheral chairs.) The preferable situation is open seating when the two of you are sitting together.

If you take an employee along, make it a learning experience rather than just idle observation. You might suggest things he or she could be looking and listening for. A word of caution: Do not complain about meetings in general or the specific meeting, mock the people attending or spend all your time going and coming to the meeting being negative. This is your chance to show that you make an effort to be effective in every situation.

(Edit note after publishing this post: I have been asked by several people here and by email, if it’s OK to be truthful about not enjoying going to meetings or not to a specific meeting.  I think it is best to be truthful, but that does not mean you have to be brutally honest. Just say you sometimes get frustrated or that you find some specific aspect of it to be irritating. The important thing to is to let the employee know you will do your best to participate effectively, even though your experiences have encouraged you to feel negative. Consider talking to the employee about how any meeting could be made better. One day he or she will chair a meeting and that could be helpful information. 

A meeting with your manager: Taking an employee to a meeting doesn’t have to involve formal meetings with several attendees. Consider purposely setting up a meeting with your manager about once a month, in which you report events in your work group. Let the manager know you will always bring an employee, which is why you will not report anything confidential during those meetings.

The value of including employees in meetings.You may have attended so many meetings that the aura of mystery about them is long gone. To most employees who do not normally attend them, meetings are interesting, a break from work, and a way to meet people outside the immediate work group. If higher level managers are going to present, it becomes even more intriguing. Build on that to use meetings as a way to achieve several worthwhile things:

1. When you take someone as a guest to a meeting, they feel a stronger connection to you. If they value the meeting, they will value you more for letting them participate.
2. Employees are more likely to see the bigger picture of the organization when they hear the efforts of others to accomplish projects and improve processes.
3. Meetings outside the organization helps employees gain even broader perspectives and also helps them see the connections involved in work.
4. Attending meetings may be the thing that helps employees see themselves in a higher position, and that enthuses them about preparing for a future with the organization.
5. If you ensure you rotate the participation it will increase your reputation for being encouraging, supportive and fair for all employees.

Look at your calender and pick a meeting or two you can start with soon. Make sure it is OK to bring a guest, then invite a supervisor or employee. Talk to the employee about the group ahead of time, including what you would like the employee to do during the meeting. Follow-up afterward by getting the employee’s viewpoint of the group and the reason for the meeting. The insights you gain may be very valuable!

If you do not have anything scheduled that seems appropriate, purposely set up a meeting. Let the person with whom you are meeting know what you are doing and what you hope to accomplish. Make it a worthwhile time for the everyone. It may even renew your interest in some of the things you are meeting about!

June 10th, 2008 Posted by TLR | Personal and Professional Development, Supervision and Management | 8 comments

Who Re-Presents You?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the concept of re-presenting someone. You can refresh your memory in a new window by clicking here.  The idea was that when we pass along information at work, discuss a work project or do anything else related to work, we are direct representations of the person who first gave the information to us–often our supervisor or manager, or the higher levels of our organization.

This also applies to how those who report to us re-present us to others–and that is something we should take much more seriously than we sometimes do.  The people who report to you and the people who act on your behalf are you in the minds of many others. Make sure they represent you in the best possible ways.  

I was talking to someone this week who complained about an adminstrative support person (Admin, as we sometimes have shortened the title) who is excessive about her role as a secretary/gatekeeper. Here is what he said:  

“She doesn’t smile at anyone except the higher-ups and acts as though everyone is wasting her time. Her approach is that everyone except her and the top execs are too menial to see the BIG MAN.  She filters information so much, that a lot of the things people leave or send by email don’t get through. What really upsets people is that she takes on things she has no business getting involved with and has messed up several things under the guise of improving what someone else did. She’s like a bossy St. Peter at the Golden Gates! She does a great job with most of her actual work, but everyone dreads walking up to her throne…I mean, desk.”

The irony of that complaint is that the complainer is the employee’s boss! He told me he was at his wit’s end to know how to stop his Admin. from being so unpleasant and unhelpful to people inside and outside the organization.  He needed her to screen some things, but not in the way she was doing it.  What prompted his concern was that some key contacts were angry with him or had lost a measure of respect for him, based on the behavior of the person representing him.

The Alter-Ego Syndrome. Most organizations now and then have someone who becomes the alter-ego of the person they are supposed to be helping. Unfortunately they nearly always assume the role in an officious and obnoxious manner! (I think that reflects on their character in general, and what they would be like if they were given any authority over others. Some may feel sorry for their emotional neediness–I don’t, because I see and hear about the negative results so often.)

A similar situation occurs when supervisors and managers forget that the negative behavior, disruptive demeanor, poor work communications, ineffectiveness or inefficiency of their employees reflects directly and negatively on them as a leader, just as good work reflects positively.

If you have a direct report who has a reputation for negative performance or behavior: View everything that person does as being in your name. Ask yourself if it is how you want to be re-presented to those above you, the others who report to you, your clients or customers and anyone else who encounters that person.

I advised the person who complained to me about his administrative support person–but who was unsure if he wanted the hassle of trying to deal with her–to picture her with a sign around her neck that said,

“Everything I do is a representation of my manager. What do you think of him now?”

If every employee with whom you work wore such a sign, would you be responding differently to their actions, attitudes and performance? Whether you can see it or not, the sign is there!

June 5th, 2008 Posted by TLR | Life and Work | 2 comments

Your Favorite Website As A Dynamic Graph. (You’re Going To Love Me For This!)

 This is so much fun! I found a wonderful site that will create a graphic image to depict almost any website. It is based on the quantity of links, tables and images, as well as the format of the text.  It makes me want to do a few things just to make a more visually interesting graph–whether or not it adds value the material!

All of the examples I will give you here open in new windows, so you do not have to worry about navigating back and forth. To see my site, click here. Blue Moose Photography doesn’t have as many violet dots as I expected, but it’s pretty! You can see it here. To see my friend Jeff Adam’s site, click here. Judith Free’s site looks like this. Pastor Bulldog’s site looks like this. Celeste Bumpus, who writes about nutrition, has this graph. One of my favorites is the City and County of Denver site. Check out New York City and the lovely yellow flower that rapidly unfurls, by clicking here. Finally, you can look at the Washington, DC website graph by clicking here.

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links
red: for tables
green: for divisions within the site
violet: for images
yellow: for forms
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

In the future, you will notice many more links, tables, divisions, images, forms, and blockquotes on this site. Be prepared!

Do you want to see your favorite website or blog as a dynamic graph? Go to this great site and follow the instructions. Click here.  Don’t you love it?

Application in your life: Everyone you work with, everyone you know and everyone you meet, would look like one of those exotic flowers if you could see them in that way.  When you consider your own life, you know how complex it is, with all the links, images, linebreaks and data that make you what you are. The lives of others are the same. Just for the interest of it, think about your life and the lives of others as graphs much like these, and consider how amazing some of those might be.

Another application: Most of us could benefit by linking more, adding more images and developing our lives to be more colorful and interesting. For example, the yellow dots are for forms that allow input and questions from users. Maybe we should all try to get more input! And, did you notice how some of the graphs seem to keep growing and going as you watch? Like, for example, Amazon? Those are content-rich sites–a good goal for each of us!

June 3rd, 2008 Posted by TLR | Life and Work, Technology, Blogs, A/V etc. | 3 comments

Seeing Ourselves Through The Other Person’s Eyes

One of the activities I use in a class on working more effectively with challenging employees is to have participants discuss the work situation from the viewpoint of the challenging employee. Many participants are so convinced they are in the right that they cannot see how the employee could have anything to criticize, or how the employee could justify any of his or her own actions. As a result, at first they talk about themselves, from the supposed viewpoint of employees, in only positive ways. It sounds nice but it is almost certainly not accurate!

What supervisors at first reflect as the thoughts of employees about a conflict. “Bill is a good supervisor but he pushes me to do really excellent work and I don’t like that. I want to do as little as I can and still get paid full pay for it.” “My supervisor, Mary, insists on me acting professional in the office and I don’t understand why I can’t keep acting rude to people.” “Don makes me get to work on time and he holds me to high standards. I hate it!”

The more likely truth about the thoughts of employees. Do you think those are accurate about the likely viewpoints of their challenging employees? When I stop students and make them reflect more accurately, they will finally–though grudgingly–talk about themselves in a way that is much more likely correct:

“Bill never approves of anything I do, even though my work is always better than any other employee’s work. He says he just wants me to keep improving, but since nothing is ever good enough, after awhile I don’t even feel like trying. I find it strange that he is the first supervisor who has ever complained about my work.”

“Since Mary started she has taken all the fun out of our office. I have a tremendous sense of humor that other employees enjoy, and past supervisors have commended me for my interpersonal skills. Now, out of the clear blue sky Mary says I’m offensive. I’ve asked every single coworker and they say they haven’t been offended by anything I’ve ever said. I think Mary is so hypersensitive she assumes everyone is the same way.”

“I have child care problems that sometimes make me late by a few minutes, so I stay late in the afternoon to make up for it. But that isn’t good enough for Don. He comes to work two hours early and thinks everyone else should do the same thing.  I have so much stress on me already I’m about ready to fall apart, and then he adds this! I don’t know if I can take much more.”

I do not advocate beating ourselves up over what is often the skewed opinions of employees who are having problems at work. However, it can be very worthwhile to realize that when we are talked about by employees at home–and we inevitably will be–the statements always will provide mitigation for the employee and put the bulk of the blame on us or others. A key factor is that the employee probably believes it and feels genuinely aggrieved.

What employees sometimes reflect about the thoughts of supervisors. The same thing happens when I ask participants in other classes to discuss themselves from their supervisor’s viewpoints. Once again, most employees want to present the situation in a way that puts themselves in a good light. If an employee has been counseled about work productivity, he might say, from the supposed viewpoint of his supervisor: “Joe has more tenure than me and I want to cut him down a notch, so I jump his case about productivity all the time.”

Or, if the employee has been told she can no longer tell inappropriate jokes she says, as a representation of what her supervisor may be thinking, “I’m trying to make a name for myself as a tough supervisor, so I decided to make a big deal about Julie’s remarks–even though they don’t bother anyone but me.”

A supervisor who has been told he needs to accomplish more in his team says, as he pretends to be his manager, “The reason I’m reprimanding Mark about his work is that he is a natural leader and I feel threatened by him.”

Do you think any of those comments are accurate reflections?

Try the process of reflecting the thoughts of others to better see their perspective. But, be realistic! If you are having a conflict with someone at work, talk about it to yourself, out loud, as if you were the other person and felt you were 100% correct and justified in your thoughts and actions. Don’t give yourself any breaks! You will find there is often a kernel of truth in what you say as you represent them through your words.  If you think there is some truth in it, work on those things. If you think they are completely mistaken you can consider ways to let the other person see the real you more clearly. At least you can consider ways to ensure you are demonstrating effectiveness to the point that anyone hearing the other person talk about you will not believe it!

Remember: If you are in a conflict with someone, that person will not put a positive spin on your behavior or performance–probably just the opposite. And, they probably believe themselves as they say it. Talk for them and see the situation through their eyes. You may begin to understand them better–and you may find you are not in complete disagreement!

June 1st, 2008 Posted by TLR | Life and Work, Supervision and Management | 3 comments