Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Author: Karl Edwards

  • Listen In -> Self Care. A Smart Career Move #4: Challenging Yourself to Achieve

    Create your own stress!

    You’ve got to be kidding, right? Who would choose to create their own stress?

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss the importance of challenge to a successful career. In other words, we’ll be talking about a positive form of stress relating to getting something done or achieving something new.

    We all have a part of ourselves that wants to contribute and make a difference. To accomplish something.

    It’s not enough to simply get by. If you aren’t challenging yourself to achieve, then you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.

    Overstated? Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: Typical Monday Morning?

    loving_mondayTypical Monday morning.

    Feels like a fresh start, though nothing has changed.

    I‘ve changed.

    I’m rested. (This week.)

    I’m hopeful. (I’m more aware of my opportunities than my hurdles.)

    I’m in motion. (Out of bed, sitting at my computer.)

    Typical Monday morning. Or is it?

    Which is more significant? That the challenges around me remain or that I have changed?

    I suspect it is the change I observe in myself.

    Problems we will always have. Always. Some things never change.

    How we choose to engage them, though, holds no limit. Ever. Infinite variety of possibilities.

    So do you put your efforts into changing the circumstances of the day or the person experiencing those circumstances?

    Typical Monday morning?

    I think not.

  • Question of the Week

    How might you use the generous extension of trust to both achieve higher standards and foster more honest accountability?

    The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.

  • Listen In -> Self Care. A Smart Career Move #3: Learning and Developing Yourself

    We are changing, growing, developing beings.

    It’s a fact. It’s a fact we neglect at our own expense.

    To take care of ourselves, we need to keep growing. To stay interested, engaged and feeling alive in our careers we need to keep developing ourselves.

    There’s nothing worse than the suffocating feeling of being stuck, bored or overwhelmed day in and day out, year after year.

    What is the alternative? In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss becoming a lifelong learner as a smart career move.

    Where is there room to learn something new? You might be able to simplify a complicated procedure. You might work on improving your leadership effectiveness. You might offer to help a respected colleague in order to learn from them.

    Far from being purely self-serving, taking care of oneself by learning and developing benefits everyone.

    Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: Go With It

    loving_mondayI woke up before my alarm went off this morning. Must have been one of those sleep cycle things. I was wide awake and ready to go.

    I decided to go with it. (As much as part of me was grieving that lost half an hour.) I knew that to resist would make pushing myself out of bed nearly impossible later.

    I must say that I’m a bit pleased with myself. I’m enjoying the refreshed feeling that cooperating with my sleep cycle affords. Instead of battling with myself to get going, “we” are starting out on the same team and actually making some progress.

    I‘m wondering whether this experience applies to other venues. When the unexpected happens can I recognize whether any potential opportunity exists? If I identify potential for good, can I “go with it?”

    Or do instinctive resistances kick in? Do old battles resurface, and, in the name of avoiding a repeat of a previous danger, I, in fact, avoid the receiving the benefit of the current opportunity?

    So what if I don’t normally wake up this early. So what if I go about my day, my work, my conversations differently today or tomorrow or forever more.

    The key is whether I’m alert enough to sense the potential for something good to emerge. The key is whether I am free and flexible enough inside to “go with it.”

    What came up for you this morning that might be worth going with?

  • Question of the Week

    In policy disagreements, what is the difference between giving in and giving up?

    The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> Integrity #5: Building Trust Through Extending Favor

    thought-leadersHow many leaders do you know who take the initiative to watch out for their employees’ interests?

    Do you use your power to build trust or enforce compliance?

    Pause and reflect for a moment. I realize the first question is rhetorical and intended as an expression of my personal suspicion. The second question, though, is for you. I am assuming your answer is not a simple “yes” or “no,” but something more like, “hmmm, I never though about power that way before.”

    Integrity, by Henry Cloud“Extending favor.” Being the first to risk trust. I’ve long believed the person with more power must be the first to risk trust.

    The “risk,” while real, is far outweighed by the potential of what is possible to accomplish when people are not consumed with concern about what might happen to them if they let their guard down.

    Here is our challenge… To come up with concrete ways to empower, resource, and support those who work for us. How do you ensure that everyone on your team is successful in terms that both are meaningful to their personal goals and the company’s?

    Just as important, how genuinely do you feel toward wanting others’ best? I’m pretty sure (I know) that if extending favor is used as a technique in order to win the benefits of peoples’ loyalty on a short term basis, it will backfire. Trust is harder to earn than to destroy.

    What was your main take-away from this chapter?

    Each Friday I post my reflections from one chapter of Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality by Henry Cloud. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Listen In -> Self-Care. A Smart Career Move #2: Staying Inspired and Motivated

    Ever try sprinting when exhausted? Doing your best when you don’t care? Going the extra mile when brimming with resentment?

    Then you know the importance of staying motivated and inspired in your efforts.

    This week Claudia and I discuss the value of motivation to our ability to show up and perform on a consistent basis.

    These are stressful times. How do you keep your spirits up at work?

    Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: When the Dirty Dishes Stack Up

    loving_mondayI hate washing the dishes. The task. The chore. The never-ending reality that stares me in the face every evening.

    Of course letting dishes stack up doesn’t work very well either. Mounting clutter, odors, and ants… not to mention excavating for the occasional utensil missing in action.

    Some less-than-pleasant realities are better faced than avoided.

    I can’t believe I just said that. The man to whom Denial has been such a good friend all these years.

    Here it is Monday morning. The start of a new week. Is there one annoying, unpleasant but necessary task, chore or duty of yours that has the potential of haunting you all week if you don’t simply deal with it now?

    What neglected item on your to-do list could stack up slowly until, like a mountain of dirty dishes, it feels like an insurmountable obstacle that is impossible to face?

    What’s worse… facing the nasty task now or dealing with the repercussions of not having faced it later?

    There’s a certain freedom and lightness that comes from being freed of lingering duties. The haunting, taunting voices that cloud our focus, interrupt our concentration, and ultimately hold us back.

    So after considerable self-torment I get up and wash the dishes. While not overflowing with the joy of achievement, I must say it was nice not to spend the morning chasing ants!

  • Question of the Week

    Given that it’s Independence Day, what freedom, right, or opportunity of yours do you appreciate most? Why?

    The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.