To be honest, I’m fascinated sometimes that my career is even necessary. I spend a lot of time helping others become more self aware and more skilled interpersonally. Quality communication and interpersonal skills are the heart and soul of great leadership. I love what I do whether it is on stage, with a client group, or with my awesome students, but… isn’t it odd that so many of us are in need of education and coaching on these basic fundamentals?

Odd or not, here is our reality: we spend the vast majority of our education time on route memorization of facts and tools. This is true for kids in elementary school and for graduate students in MBA courses. It does not change much at work. We spend the vast majority of our training and development dollars on issues other than communication. We continue to fail to realize one profound truth: no amount of knowledge will add value to your life unless you know how to communicate effectively!

Think about life at work for just a minute. Is there a shortage of people with sharp functional skills? Usually not. Look hard enough and you will find many flavors of competent functional specialists. Yes, but are you surrounded by spectacular colleagues, teams, and bosses? Likely not… We have many skilled people yet few great communicators. That equates to massive wasted potential for you and your organization.

Here is my quick advice. Start by actively observing the quality of the communication and interpersonal skills around you at work. Try not to cry. If you run a team, make the decision to stop neglecting this issue and make it 1) something you regularly talk about, and 2) something you add to your training efforts. Next, for your personal professional development, don’t rely only on what your organization does for you. Proactively seek out communication-related blogs, articles, books, courses, and other resources (e.g., www.fuel4leaders.com) – you are in charge of your professional growth! Finally, please do us all a favor as we look down the road to future employees – spend time working with your children to ensure they understand how to communicate effectively! So many smart people and smart teams underperform due to poor communication skills. Don’t waste your smarts!

There, I feel better. As always, if you know of someone who needs to hear this rant, please send it along!

I have two quick thoughts to share…

First, thank you Washington Post for the publicity!!!!!!

Second, the review misses the point. I’ve been accused before of being simple and targeted towards the basics and/or new leaders, as opposed to more senior folks who need more advanced training and coaching. However, as opposed to my critics, I have been inside hundreds and hundreds of organizations and worked with or spoken to many thousands of professionals. This includes front line leaders and experienced top executives. Guess what I’ve found? The very simple basics are ALWAYS the issues that need to be addressed, team after team, organization after organization. Most leadership books take one or two slices of the leadership pie and go into extraneous depth. None of them, outside of traditional textbooks, contain a broad take on the fundamental basics using a field guide approach. By design, the LBBL is a fast practical reference to keep on your shelf and use regularly. No entertaining stories (that’s what I do live…), just blog style bullets that might actually help you with the people-related issues you face.

There, I’m done crying in my beer. Go finish your last minute shopping and enjoy Christmas with your family and friends!!!

Renewal: the act or process of renewing; to make like new, to add freshness and vigor. How often do we make renewal a targeted goal? How often should we? There is no perfect answer, but I’ll challenge you to consider renewal at least once per year. I’ve never been terribly traditional, so I’ve been known to start my renewal before New Years or sometimes after New Years. The timing really doesn’t matter, but your process sure does. Let me help you increase the odds of success. Here are two great pieces of advice to kick-start your personal renewal.

First, if you have any trouble finding issues worth targeting, try the “start, stop, change” approach. I use this simple thinking prod in consulting and training environments to great effect all the time. To be more happy, productive, and healthy, think about one thing you should probably start doing, one thing you should stop doing, and one thing you should continue but change. If you think about your personal relationships, your professional relationships, your daily processes and habits, and your hobbies and leisure pursuits – it shouldn’t be too hard to identify your stop, start, and change targets. The real question is will you muster the intestinal fortitude to make one or two of them stick. Remember, the most successful people aren’t always the smartest. They are the best at creating personal discipline.

Here is the second piece of advice: after you identify your stop, start, and change targets consider “going public.” This is a goal setting trick of the highest quality. If you really want to take renewal seriously, you have to do two things. One, identify great targets, as noted above. Two, tell someone close to you what your new goals are and give them permission to check up on you periodically to understand your progress. You might be amazed how quickly you become motivated when you know others are watching.

I know what my new start, stop, and change goals are. I will start taking more of the chances I wish to take career-wise – thus will be launching two new businesses in 2012. I will stop avoiding exercise. That’s a promise! I will change my approach to food such that I eat out less and cook healthy meals instead. I love cooking, but have fallen out of practice as a busy single guy. And yes, I’ve told my best friend about these goals and asked her to bust my chops if she does not see progress soon. That’s my plan – what about you?

All for now, no doubt I’ll return with pithy but useful advice soon enough. In the mean time, enjoy the leftovers, parties, family get-togethers, parades, cheese balls, wassail, and snowy pursuits that define fun this time of year. See you next time.

There I sat looking at my spiffy certificate. I decided to take it to class. I brought it with me to one of my MBA classes and had a good chuckle with the students as we discussed how the certificate was not an ideal example of rewarding performance. Our discussion then turned to the routines that dominate our lives. They bring order and efficiency, yet they suck the creativity out of us and blind us to the rich details around us.

I decided to give my certificate to one of the students, a mid level IT pro for a large company. He works in cubeland. I asked him to take the certificate to work and hang it prominently in his cube to see how long it would take before anyone noticed he had a certificate of appreciation on his wall displaying the name Todd Dewett. Two weeks later in class he reported that on his wall it remains and that not one person had noticed the certificate or the fact that it displayed my name.

I submit to you that this myopic focus affects all of us! If you want to maximize your creative thinking ability and if you want to maximize the quality of the relationships around you, you have to break out of some of your daily routines – shake things up – and begin to see the often surprising things that are right in front of your eyes.

Quick, go hang something odd in another person’s cube and see how long it takes them to notice…

I am beginning a new business venture focused on a searchable web-based library of hundreds of short videos (most 5 minutes or less) of me colorfully discussing many leadership and soft-skills related topics (draft samples below).

The idea in a nutshell:  a company may or may not be able to spend thousands of dollars to have me on-site for a day to address a group of leaders and employees.  Nearly all, however, can afford a few hundred per month for a subscription to the site, allowing all of their employees 24/7 access to all of the content.

I believe the videos could serve many needs, by serving as:

Focused on demand coaching and motivation

An additional training aid to piggyback on existing training efforts

A supplement to ongoing leadership development efforts

Great discussion material for leadership events, meetings, and retreats

Watch the videos below and imagine a simple YouTube style site with hundreds of leadership and soft-side topics:  motivating employees, dealing with conflict, managing change, effective communication, how to run great meetings, leading innovation, etc.  I would love to hear your HONEST reaction to this idea.  Why is it good?  Why is it not so good?  Email me your feedback at todd@drdewett.com.  Thanks very kindly for your consideration!!!

The first 25 people who respond will receive a free pdf copy of my upcoming book The Little Black Book of Leadership Ideas – 365 quotes and ideas that serve as amazing conversation starters at work!

Todd

The videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKSJaQLU8wQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F1fJ2L97hI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qumhc_cPeAw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbezlpyKpFA

Why should you care about engaging the difficult process of conflict management? Quite simply, you must manage it, otherwise it will manage you.

An inability to effectively deal with conflict can derail your career.

In terms of dealing with conflict, there are generally three types of people.

The passives (70% of people). They habitually avoid conflict. Negative conflict that is avoided almost always resurfaces later – and it usually grows. When you avoid conflict, you tell others about your will and character. When positive conflict is avoided, improvement potential is lost – possibly forever.

The potentials (20% of people). They understand the potential of positive conflict. However, they fail to adequately check the emotions and they do not possess strong conflict-management skills. Best of intentions aside, they make things worse.

The professionals (10% of people). They understand the potential of positive conflict and they have at least decent emotional intelligence and strong conflict management skills. This is the small group of people whom you should aspire to join.

CHALLENGE:

Successful leadership teams are 10/20/70, not 70/20/10. What is your team?

Your career success depends on your joining the “professionals” group. Leaders are hired and promoted based on their ability to successfully engage in various types of growth through creativity and innovation. Inevitably, this involves dealing effectively with conflict.

If you believe in the 80/20 rule and the power of positive conflict, you have to consider the possibility of sometimes dealing with people whom you would rather avoid. If you cannot view the following in a positive light, you will not enjoy leadership roles:

You will always work with people whom you do not like. Unless you work in complete solitude, this is a simple fact of life. How you view it is up to you.

They know and do things you need. Not only do you not like them, but they have skills you need in order to be successful. Thus, your career growth requires them.

You must find a way to productively co-exist. In fact, you must move past mere tolerance towards genuine appreciation. How you feel about a professional colleague cannot be “all or nothing.”

Happy leading!

Months later, I arrived home from the office and Pax ran to meet me.  This time he was not holding a medal, but a gift card from Target.  He informed me that in class (he is in the 2^nd grade) they have several timed arithmetic tests each week to measure student performance over time.  That day he became the first and only student in his class to compete the test in less than three minutes.  It was well known that the teacher considered three minutes or under a difficult and laudable achievement.  Because this goal was so significant, the teacher announced that anyone beating three minutes would be honored with a reward – in this case a five-dollar Target gift card.

As we chatted about it, it was clear that seven year old Pax understood what six year old Pax did not – that rewards should be contingent on performance.  Great things you receive from authority figures should be genuinely earned.  Anything everyone has loses its value.  This is a profoundly important concept directly related to human motivation and productivity at work.  As a part of my work, I’ve learned that many (maybe most) organizations have forgotten this rule.  You can give positivity, challenge, support, and many other free gifts to everyone; but only give high praise and actual awards to the folks who truly deserve it.  Otherwise you do nothing but create problematic false expectations and erroneously inflated self-perceptions.  It tickles me to see that my seven year old now understands what so many adults at work often forget. 

Feedback incident #1 – I am in class, teaching a graduate course – a wonderful group.  At some point during our discussion I used the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid.”  As you know, this expression grew out of the horrific events perpetrated by Jim Jones, culminating in the death of many innocents.  Since that time, the expression has entered popular consciousness and is commonly use as a silly statement about whether or not someone likes something.  I honestly don’t know what I was referring to that evening when I used the phrase.  What I do know is the next day I received an email from a student who was quite offended by my callous use of such an inappropriate phrase.  He honestly felt that I could be somehow immortalizing what happened at Jonestown.  For the record, I respect all religions and abhor aberrant religious nightmares such as Jonestown.  Having said that, I’m not terribly politically correct and feel using the statement “drinking the Kool-Aid” is peachy keen.  The student is one of my favorites:  a mature accomplished professional who takes his studies seriously and who always makes positive contributions in class.  Whether I like it or not, this person had a visceral reaction to my choice of words.

Feedback incident #2 – I recently sent out a marketing promotion to a small group of executives at firms where I have yet to do business.  I sent a nicely printed note containing a message about what I do, along with a brief personal hand written note to each individual recipient, and one red rubber Danny the Devil Duck.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having Danny as my mascot and have received many positive comments about my use of Danny professionally.  That does not change the fact that when you craft a brand and it successfully appeals to one group, it will not necessarily appeal to another group.  In fact, it might offend them.  Just ask Hugh Hefner.  In this case, I received an email from one of the executives I targeted at a large well-known global company.  The executive congratulated me for crafting an attention getting marketing piece and then explained how, as a Christian, she was bothered by my use of Danny the Devil Duck.  She indicated that Satan was real, ruins lives, and that any representation of him is not to be taken lightly.  She suggested I use a fireman duck instead.  She indicated that even if she had a need for what I was selling, she would not have contacted me due to my use of the devil duck.  It was an honest and heartfelt note and I genuinely thanked her in my reply.

I am deeply intrigued by these issues, in particular because of my goal to educate, motivate, and entertain professionals – not to piss them off.  I am not yet ready to “reform” myself, begin changing the brand, or begin intentionally censoring myself in some calculated effort to avoid upsetting a few folks.  I do, however, love to learn and I am grateful for this type of feedback.  I also say to you, dear reader, that you face this same reality as well.  When you market your company or when you speak to literally anyone – you send a message.  Each message is not perfectly liked by each recipient.  Sometimes they plain can’t stand it.  Does this mean you’ve successfully mastered target marketing or that you’re simply insensitive?  I leave it for you to decide.  Me?  Well, I talked this over with Danny.  He’s agreed to try to look a little less devilish.