Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Author: Karl Edwards

  • Listen In -> Making Peace with Work #1: Reality Can Be Difficult

    We talk a lot here about finding work that we love.

    But reality intrudes and we more often than not find ourselves in complex, imperfect, difficult work situations. It’s not helpful to be encouraged to thrive when we’re doing all we can merely to survive.

    We begin a new audio discussion series this week titled, “Making Peace with Work.”

    Join us as we take a look at four difficult work realities and suggest healthier alternatives:

    Making Peace with Work

    Week #1: Reality Can Be Difficult

    Week #2: Replacing Busyness with Rhythm

    Week #3: Replacing Isolation with Collaboration

    Week #4: Replacing Excuses with Intention

    Week #5: Replacing Resentment with Engagement

    Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: Bouncing Back Stronger

    The unexpected can knock us for a loop. We’re ready to make a great week for ourselves, and then, Wham!… out of nowhere and before we know what happened we find ourselves reeling.

    A deadline change, additional workload, a missing co-worker, technology down, office politics. The unexpected can take many forms.

    How do we bounce back when we get the wind knocked out of us?

    As important as it is to your busy schedule to get moving as soon as possible, to jump right back into your original plans as if nothing had happened would actually result in a bigger setback.

    Your best bet is to give yourself some space. Some space simply to acknowledge that you’ve been thrown for a loop. Take a walk. Get some air. Kick the tires of your car. Express the maddening frustration of going from the gravity-defying launch of a great week to the quicksand engulfing suffocation of yet another setback.

    Validating and venting the emotion will enable you to more quickly release it. Instead of squashing the feelings that are about to sabotage your week, you find a safe way to express them. (Who cares what the passing motorists think as they pass you waving your arms wildly and ranting to the air on your walk around the block.)

    Take a few deep breaths as you return to your office, and you’ll be in a much stronger position to make the necessary adjustments occasioned by whatever unexpected event interrupted your morning.

    You’ve got an important contribution to make this week. We need you to show up fully engaged. For your sake and ours, let’s find ways to build your repertoire of tools for bouncing back stronger.

    On  your side,

    – Karl

  • Question of the Week

    What working relationship of yours most needs a change of tone, attitude, approach or dynamic? Resolve to try something new today.

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

  • Loving Monday: Try Another Perspective

    The best way to survive a baffling co-worker is to spend a day in their shoes.

    You may come out of the experience positively appreciating them!

    Okay, let’s not get carried away. Difficult people can make work a nightmare. Instead of dreading them, avoiding them or continuing to battle them, what if you tried to see the world through their eyes?

    We’re not saying, excuse their rudeness, laziness, or politicking. We’re suggesting that by understanding someone else’s perspective, you will better be able to engage them creatively and constructively, if not even collaboratively.

    You create for yourself the opportunity to become an expert in what makes someone else tick.

    Since it’s you who wants to “love Mondays,” so to speak, it’s you who needs alternatives to the status quo. Alternatives that you can implement whether or not others participate or respond as you might prefer.

    So try a day in someone else’s shoes and let me know how it goes.

    On your side,

    – Karl

  • Question of the Week

    Why does the magnitude of his or her reaction seem so out of proportion to the circumstance? (Important clues to your response lie here.)

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

  • 10 Tasks You Can Complete During An American Idol Commercial Break

    IdolI love American Idol, but its commercial breaks are longer than the show itself. If you add the previews (which duplicate most of the content,) there’s time to accomplish quite a bit between segments.

    How do you use all that time?!

    Here’s my list of 10 tasks you can complete during an American Idol commercial break:

    1. Pay the bills.
    2. Give the dog a bath.
    3. Clean out the garage.
    4. Make popcorn… for the neighborhood.
    5. Repair a popped balloon.
    6. Install software on Windows.
    7. Navigate the menu of telephone prompts to get a live person at the phone company.
    8. Replay Obama’s inaugural address.
    9. Explain Twitter to your grandmother.
    10. Delouse a screaming child.

    Those commercials make up a good part of one’s evening. Why just sit there?

    What else belongs on this list?

  • Listen In -> Resume Branding #4: Formatting Your Resume

    Now the time has come to give form to this piece of communication about ourselves we call a resume.

    Do we simply toss together our list of past employment experiences?

    Of course not. We need to use this piece of paper to organize our past experiences in such a way to demonstrate that we’re ready for our next experience.

    We want the past we are moving away from to make a case for the future we want to move toward.

    Can it be done?

    Listen in.

    Don’t miss our Resume Workshop coming up on February 7th in Los Angeles! Register now.
    Catch up on past episodes of Resume Branding here.

  • Utopia or Hell… or just a bit of fun

    insightful-linkHad to pass on this link to 31 Laws of Fun on the Overcoming Bias blog.

    It’s for the quirky lovers of the esoteric among us for whom “fun” and a life worth living are connected at a deeper level than simply having a good time.

    On your side (or you might now wonder),

    – Karl

  • Loving Monday: Duty is Not a Four-Letter Word

    Somewhere along the line, “duty” became a four-letter word. A “bad” word. A negative word.

    Somewhere along the line we associated duty with responsibilities that no one would take on unless forced.

    I‘d like to suggest that “duty” and “privilege” are two sides of the same coin. I’d go so far as to promise that an attitude revolution is waiting for you if you can see your obligations as gifts. Gifts for which the most appropriate response is dedicated engagement.

    To commit to a duty is a promise to complete something out of dedicated engagement.

    Somewhere along the line, though, we lose the “dedicated engagement” part of the equation and end up with only the dry “promise.”

    “I get to” gets reduced to “I have to.” And so our experience is diminished into something no better than a coerced chore.

    In fact, though, we commit to tasks of value. We need a way to remind ourselves of the gift, the privilege, and the value underlying our promise to fulfill a particular duty.

    We need a way to engage with complicated, difficult or nasty components of our commitments that draws on our original rationale for making the commitment in the first place.

    An attitude revolution is waiting for you. Duty may be a four-letter word after all. G – I – F – T.

  • Question of the Week

    How do you identify how well you performed today?

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