Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Author: Karl Edwards

  • Listen In -> Faking Authenticity #4: When Wanting to Perform

    Are you pretending to be competent?

    Where do you think you got the impression that you needed to appear to be more than you are in order to be effective?

    Could you be making assumptions about leadership, competence, respect and authority that may not be grounded in reality?

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss the temptation to fake authenticity in situations that require us to peform beyond our current skill or experience level.

    You won’t believe how much happier, energetic and effective you will be when you stop trying to be someone you aren’t.

    Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: Reinterpreting Random Circumstances

    As a Southern Californian I’ve never been particularly fond of rainstorms. Yes, like the one pouring unrelentingly outside my window right now.

    Dark, cold, wet and annoying. It’s not without effort that I let it bode ill for my day. Traffic will be horrible, my briefcase will prove less than waterproof, everything will be a hassle, and, to top it off, my vanity will take a sucker punch given it’s a guaranteed nasty hair day.

    Of course, circumstances, however irksome, don’t really bode anything at all. It is I who impute meaning to them.

    What if I chose to give the rain a positive meaning? Rain as life-giving sustenance for all that struggles to survive in this desert. Rain as scrubber of the skies washing away much that pollutes.

    There are many circumstance in our lives that affect our attitude, our mood, and our abilities to keep a healthy perspective. Can you tell the difference between those with no inherent value, either positive or negative, and those that do? Can you identify when you are the one imputing negative meaning?

    Try an experiment with me. The next time you encounter a random circumstance that you find yourself about to interpret negatively, try finding a positive interpretation and use that instead. It could make the difference in how you experience this week at work!

    On your side,

    – Karl

  • Question of the Week

    How might you be a part of that problem that won’t go away?

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

  • Quote to Consider: Attitude Choice

    Today will be a good day… Not because circumstances might go my way, but because I choose to make good of whatever comes my way.

  • Listen In -> Faking Authenticity #3: When Wanting to Confront

    I don’t know anyone who loves confrontation. Do you?

    Work life, though, is filled with situations where something or someone needs to be confronted.

    Confrontation is one of the most common situations where we feel we need to be someone we’re not.

    We put on a “fake nice” to head off a negative response, or we cop a “fake stern” to show we mean business.

    Could it be we don’t trust how we’ll show up in a complicated situation if we are simply ourselves?

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I look at faking authenticity in situations of confrontation.

    Listen in.

  • Loving Monday: Seize The Day!

    I am reminded of an old movie favorite, The Dead Poets Society, and its inspirational story of how a group of boys on the cusp of adulthood each came to grips differently with the challenging phrase, “Carpe diem.” Seize the day!

    So much of what we are building in our careers is for the future. Secure retirements, buying a home, starting our own business, working our way up the corporate ladder, building a family, etc.

    These goals are good things.

    Most of the time.

    Sometimes, though, we forget to live today in our quest to secure the future.

    We can overlook this moment for the sake of the next moment. We miss the flowers at our feet reaching for the stars.

    Now don’t get me wrong. I believe the capacity to plan ahead and work toward longer term goals is a necessary and valuable skill.

    But the “future” is nothing more than a “present” we hope to enjoy on some other day.

    That is unless we have lost our capacity to live in the present by that time. We risk not recognizing the fulfillment of the dream in our midst if our eyes are fixed so far out on the horizon.

    In the spirit of “carpe diem”, let’s seize this Monday for its own sake! Let’s seize the day for life. Let’s seize the day for hard work, meaningful work, collaborative work, productive work.

    Lend a helping hand, extend an overdue compliment, confront an unacceptable situation, rearrange an unworkable workspace, reconnect with an old associate, or simply go outside and get some fresh air.

    Seize the day!

    – Karl Edwards

  • Question of the Week

    How do you authorize and equip employees to be creative in their problem solving, product development, and approaches to their work?

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

  • Listen In -> Faking Authenticity #2: When Wanting to Impress

    There is no virtue in hiding one’s talent. Impressing people at work is a legitimate and necessary exercise in self-disclosure.

    There is a difference, though, between authentic self-disclosure that’s grounded in reality and flows from a place of personal security on the one hand, and what we are calling “faking it” in order to get the perception you want on the other.

    Join Claudia and I in this week’s podcast discussion on staying authentic when we want to impress.

    I’ll think you’ll come out pleasantly impressed with yourself!

    Listen in.

  • Are You a Cheap Prostitute at Work?

    It’s one thing to interact authentically. It’s another to feel that you have to prove your genuineness. (We have just started a new podcast series discussing “Faking Authenticity.”)

    This awkward feeling often rears its head when someone makes an unprovoked accusation about your “true” intentions or hints at possibly “mixed” motives. “Are you trying to undermine my authority?” “Look who’s going home early.” “You’re not doing anything, are you?”

    In response we rush to do something that will prove that the accusation has no merit.

    I suggest that this unsolicited extra effort on our part is the act of a cheap prostitute.

    A public confession of sorts that your value is open to negotiation and requires continual substantiation. “If I just show a little more flesh, they’ll choose me.”

    Accusations about the inner workings of your heart and mind are forms of baiting the “prostitute” in you. The part of you that might believe that the accusations could have merit and need to be disproved. The result is your own voluntary offering of “flesh.” Like the prostitute, no one is forcing you to do anything. You actually take it upon yourself to give away what is yours. You give away your power on the cheap by legitimating their original suggestion with your unsolicited “proof.”

    Are you sabotaging your own efforts by giving yourself away for cheap? Are you kept off balance by the felt need to make “flesh” offerings to those who don’t deserve them? When you work extra hard, do you end up feeling more valuable or less?

    If you’ve been feeling cheap, we need to talk. There are alternatives to the desperate tactics of the cheap prostitute.

  • “Strange” Insight from John Steinbeck

    “It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

    Doc from Cannery Row
    John Steinbeck