How To Deal With Disappointment

Everyone gets disappointed at some point. Moms express their disappointment at the actions of their 6 year-old when they hit another boy. Fathers express their disappointment to teenage daughters in the hopes that the outward expression becomes a lesson to make better choices. Bosses express their disappointment on performance reviews in the hopes of motivating the affected employee. Teachers express their diappointment because they know the student isn't applying him or herself.

These are all expressions of outward disappointment in someone else. But what happens when disappointment is focused inward - when things don't turn out the way we had hoped?

There are some things in life that you just don't have any control over and there are other things that are within your control. Understanding which is which will help you to bounce back quicker from disappointment - to develop a resilience attitude.

Planning for months to visit the Grand Canyon only to be turned back by a snowstorm, a rained out family picnic, a power outage during your wedding reception or a cancelled flight to an important meeting are all things out of your control. You have no control over the weather, the electric company or the airlines. It's fine to feel disappointed for a short while but it isn't the end of your life. You can try again tomorrow.

However, disappointment about how much you get paid, your job-performance review, your golf score, that promotion you really want, your relationships at home and how your money is budgeted are all within your control. Only you determine how valuable you are to the company, how well you do your job, how much you practice at golf, how you self-improve to be the logical choice to be promoted, how hard you work at your relationship and how you spend your money. No one else is to blame for your results.

You have no control over other people, things or events outside of yourself. But you have complete control over your reaction to those things. You also have ALL of the control over every part of your life that involves YOU and your results.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE by Kevin Burns - Corporate Attitude/Culture Strategist

Creator of the 90-Day Strategy to Greatness Culture


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Death To Funerals

A wedding is NOT something you HAVE to do which is why some spend tens of thousands of dollars (and go into deep debt to start their new lives together) on lavish events - because they WANT to. Whereas, a funeral is seen as something not done by choice but by necessity which is why if forced to do it, most will skimp and spend as little money as possible getting it done. Just get it done and forget about it.

How much can people skimp? Costco USA is selling caskets and has been doing so for the past few years. Can you see where the trouble might be for Funeral Directors?

While funeral service market share is shrinking, weddings are becoming more lavish, more expensive and more garish - over the top. Dresses worth thousands, limos, chocolate fountains, decorations, flowers, extended trips, money in envelopes, exotic locations, me, me, me, me, me. Funerals? More "eeeww" than "wheee."

If Funeral Directors want to rebuild their industry, they had better start thinking like Wedding Planners and make the event more of a Celebration of Life than a mourning of death. Funerals need to get to that place where if you buy a Costco casket and spend no time, money or effort on your departed, you should be shamed. Funeral Directors need to shame people for treating their departed loved ones like last week's trash. People who cut corners to keep the balance of money for themselves should be shamed. How we treat people in death is a perfect illustration of how much we cherished them in life. Allowing some distant clergy member to say a few words about someone he didn't know is shameful too. Could you make the whole funeral thing even more impersonal? Not likely.

Weddings you get invitations for. Funerals you read about in the paper. Something as simple as mining the departed's email addresses and sending an invitation to a celebration and memorial event seems so much more appealing than reading about a funeral at a church that the departed never went to, officiated by a clergy member he never met who takes to opportunity of a half-full church to try to convert or save some souls and you have a funeral attended by a fraction of friends because they didn't read the newspaper this week.

No, if the funeral service of today is the best you can do as a Funeral Director, then your industry deserves to be shrinking. Complaining about it won't change that. Doing something about it will. Change your Attitude. Make people see the value. Markets change. You had better be able to respond to it or we're all about to attend the funeral for funerals.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE by Kevin Burns - Corporate Attitude/Culture Strategist

Creator of the 90-Day Strategy to Greatness Culture


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When Middle Managers Blame Upper Management

Upper management isn't perfect. They are humans just like their middle-management counterparts. Just because upper management doesn't seem do the job as well as they could doesn't mean that middle managers can just give up, throw up their hands and blame upper management for their own sub-par performance. Where is accountability? In spite of what your organization does, if you have personal values and ethics, you're supposed to plow through the difficulties and model to your staff what resilience looks like.

C'mon folks, sure it's never perfect no matter where you work. And if it's so painful being in middle management, then get out of it and go do something else. This blame game does nothing but hurt corporate culture.

Contrary to public opinion, upper management does not create the culture, the workers do. Culture is nothing more than a collection of attitudes. If everyone thinks the job sucks, the culture will suck. Add to that middle-managers who encourage blaming upper management - not by their words but by their actions - only makes the culture worse.

It's so easy to complain about how bad it is in middle management. And it is tiresome that people simply accept the attitude of blaming someone or something else for their own shortcomings. To blame is to choose to be a victim of your circumstances. You know for a fact that you're better than that. So be better. Take a stand. Set a standard. Ask for a heart-to-heart with a decision-maker but stop the blame. It's counter-productive and it is actually disengaging your employees.

Middle-managers are measured by their department's engagement and productivity. Productivity and engagement go up when blame goes down. You have no control over what upper management does so get over it and get on with the work you're here to do. 
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Fix Morale - Improve Culture

Workplace morale and productivity are very closely tied together. Low morale typically results in reduced productivity. Further, once morale has taken a downwards turn, turning things around can be a slow and expensive process. So, morale needs to be addressed right now.

You improve morale by working on the Attitude of Resilience of the employees - that ability to bounce back when things get tough. This is not just positive thinking stuff. This is deep-in-the-gut, true-belief perseverance that allows people to feel safe in knowing that they can handle whatever is in front of them today.

Because morale is created not by management, but by the reactions of the employees to the things that happen in their environment.  Management has little control over how people react to downsizing, threats of job-loss, stress and unease. In the same way that I can't control how you would feel at the prospect of having your car stolen, no one has control over the individual employees.

So, if you want to change morale (also known as one of the critical components to corporate culture) you have to change the prevailing attitudes within the building that are creating the morale (or lack thereof).

So, how does senior management help morale? By being open and honest with their people during this time of uncertainty, by providing support to those who are feeling overwhelmed and by not losing their heads and spending money on useless programs just for the optics of looking like they are doing something.

Don't offer team-building when you are downsizing members of your team. Sales training won't get your customers to let go of their money any faster. Don't start Corporate Social Responsibility programs as a distraction to what's really going on.

All you need to do right now is support your people in helping them take control of their own attitudes, fears and uncertainty. Help make things certain. Address their fears directly. Help them develop an Attitude of Resilience.

When this all shakes out, the people you showed your loyalty to will show their loyalty to you. When both sides have an attitude of loyalty to each other, morale jumps up and corporate culture improves dramatically. 
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Choice of Managers or Leaders - Pick Managers

"Leadership" is becoming an over-used and under-defined buzzword that has created more fly-by-night companies to come crawling out of the woodwork with promises of turning idiots into leaders. Don't buy it. The whole "Leadership" trend will only last another few years and then we're going to be looking to the rock-solid managers to manage us out of the implosion of the "leadership" industry.

Get ahead of the trend - become a good, competent and solid manager.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ilk892DBB4
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Time Management Is A Symptom

How long would you let a workmate pop headache pills for a recurring headache before you said something? Three days? A week? A month? How long would you let it go before you offered your opinion that there's a bigger underlying problem in which he or she should really see a doctor?

Treating a symptom with a few pills doesn't resolve a problem. But that's exactly how most organizations operate: they treat the symptom and not the root cause.

Time management is a symptom. It is not a strategy for addressing a root cause. When an employee is consistently late in meeting deadlines, seems to have a procrastination problem or doesn't seem very organized then the standard thinking is to enroll the employee in a time management program to solve their time management issue. But in actual fact, time management isn't the issue. Self-discipline and attitude are the issues and no amount of time management training will solve it. Why? Because the concept of time management is based on the premise that all people have good self-discipline and strong work-ethic. But if they don't, time management doesn't work.

What if the problem isn't time management, just poor personal management based on a poor self-image? Treating that with Time Management would be a monumental waste of time.

Time management is a symptom of a larger problem. If you want the symptom to go away you treat the root cause. The root cause is usually attitude. And here's how you overcome a time management symptom. You're going to need to address three specific attitudes: an attitude of leadership, an attitude of resilience and an attitude of money, security and safety.

Adopting an attitude of leadership doesn't mean that you have to be in management. It means that you simply have to have enough self-confidence to be able to take control of your own responsibilities. That's part of an attitude of leadership.

An attitude of resilience says that whatever you're facing right now you are able to handle whatever is in front of you no matter what. It's an attitude of resilience that gets you through the tough times and allows you to feel more control and feel less overwhelmed.

An attitude of money, security and safety allows you to feel safe and secure in the performance of your duties. When you feel safe and secure in your abilities you feel less overwhelmed, less stressed and more in control.

Allow people to feel that they have control over a situation and they will rise to an occasion. Time management won't be necessary. Besides, if time management really worked, you would have solved all of your problems years ago.

Time management is a symptom -- attitude is the root cause. Work on attitude and time management solves itself.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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New Manager - Help!

Question: I recently became the Supervisor of the Internal Audits department of my company and I am facing challenges in supervising - specifically People Management and Time Management. What do I have to do to make my department really successful?

Answer: I'm guessing that this was a sudden and surprise promotion. So, first thing right out of the gate is to apologize to your staff for your lack of People and Time Management skills. Let them know that you realize you have shortcomings and that you're not trying to hide them in order to look like you're in control (people who do try to hide it can't and end up viewed as inept by their people). Ask for their patience and suggestions to help in the short-term while you deal with the long-term strategy. They will look up to you for having the courage to be honest.

Then, get yourself into a good management course. You're feeling like you have no Time-Management skills because you're overwhelmed by having to manage people - something you're not familiar with. (Remember this though, the higher-ups wouldn't have promoted you if they didn't think you could do it.) Once you get a good handle on the managing people part, many of the Time Management issues will start to sort themselves out.

Right now, you're too busy trying to figure out what to do next that it seems like you need to organize better because you don't want to miss anything. After all, it's in your genes - you're in Audits. Stressing the details is what you do. Get that Resilience Attitude working for you. Get up and get at it. There's a challenge here in front of you but it's not insurmountable.

The truth is, your organizational skills will improve the moment you improve your management skills and build your confidence in managing your people. Relax, you can do this.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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No Hope For Resilience

Since leadership is not exclusive to the workplace, let's remember that the concept of leadership starts long before anyone ever finds themselves in the workplace. If more leaders at home (parents) would inspire their followers (children) with useful life-skills instead of arming them with whining and blame (from their own example), then it wouldn't be such an onerous task for leaders to try to fix them all at work later in life.

So, what's the most important life-skill that parents can teach their kids? They can teach their kids how to be resilient. But most don't simply because they don't know how themselves. In fact, most people think that having "hope" will be enough to get them through the tough times. Sorry - wrong answer. Hope is a victim-based strategy. Hoping that something will turn out better doesn't get you off of your lazy butt to do anything about it. In fact, when you get to "hope," you've pretty much exhausted any of your other options and simply given in to your circumstances. Hoping is the same as wishing. You can cross your fingers, go to your happy-place, wave a magic wand and find a four-leafed clover and you will have accomplished as much as "hope" offers.

"I hope the economy gets better soon. I hope it's sunny tomorrow. I hope I get that promotion. I hope she likes me." Sound familiar? Nothing gets done when you "hope." Hope is for the lazy. You can't change the economy. You can't do anything about the weather. You will get the promotion only if you deserve it. You can't make anyone like you. Hoping doesn't change that. But resilience allows you to move forward in spite of these things.

Attitude Adjustment: People need to be unflappable in the face of adversity, change and upheaval. That is the single-most important thing a parent can bless a child with - resilience. Teach your little people how to be unflappable and they won't need "hope." They will realize that "hope" is the last thing you lean on when you run out of other things to do.

And don't think that "hope" is just another word for positive attitude. Hope is not a synonym for positive attitude. They are not interchangeable nor even closely related. You want to inspire people to have "resilience" - the ability to bounce back. "Resilient" people are more goal oriented, more adaptable in situations requiring change and have higher levels of energy to achieve their goals. People who rely on "hope" are not necessarily resilient. People who "hope" don't necessarily "do." Resilient people bounce back despite what has happened to them.

So if you are going to learn one skill that will get you further ahead in your life than any other, learn resilience. Resilience is what happens right after you ask yourself, "OK, now what?" Once you learn resilience, you can teach it to others. If the whole world better-understood resilience and accountability, we could do away with injury lawyers and Jerry Springer would be off of the air.