Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Working Matters

  • Listen In -> Lies and Myths We Believe About Work #1: How We Cooperate In Our Own Diminishment

    More frustrating than almost any other professional obstacle are the obstacles we create for ourselves. This week Claudia and I begin a new podcast discussion series looking at several common “truths” of working life and discuss how they are, in fact, LIES.

    Not only are they lies, but we end up sabotaging our own professional well-being by acting as if they were true.

    I wrote about these lies in a recent Loving Monday column. (Read “Empowered by Identifying the Lies” here.) So insidious and persistent is the extent to which we have bought into these lies that we thought it warranted a full discussion series.

    What is most troubling about these lies is that we participate in our own diminishment by believing them. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

    We obey an entire set of unspoken rules without anyone asking us to, without any job description delineating them, and without any policy demanding that we do.

    Lies and Myths We Believe About Work

    Week #1: How We Cooperate In Our Own Diminishment
    Week #2: You Don’t Have What It Takes
    Week #3: You Have to Prove Yourself First
    Week #4: Hard Work Will Be Rewarded
    Week #5: Making Waves is Making Trouble

    Which of these lies do you find most persuasive? Join the conversation.

    Listen in.

  • New Column on Working Matters Blog: Six Word Stories


    Briefly noting deeper truths to share.


    Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: You Are a Gift

    loving_mondayYou are a gift.

    This is one of the most important truths of work and life.

    If you don’t believe this one simple fact, you’re swimming upstream when there’s a current available to carry you.

    There is no one quite like you, and we need you.

    Do you believe that? Do you believe that this morning?

    You bring the gift of who you are to the workplace today. Your character, your skills, your cleverness, your passion, your insights, your experience, and the list goes on.

    This is no superficial pep talk. This belief (or disbelief) is a game changer.

    It can’t be faked. It can’t be bought. It can’t be wished into being.

    People who believe they are a gift behave differently. Their confidence is not a performance. Their confidence is a reflection of their inner calm.

    When you already believe at a deep level in the value you bring to the table, then you don’t have to expend any effort to prove it. You are freed up to be present in the moment with the people and issues at hand.

    You are not wondering if you should speak up in order to be seen as an active participant. You are not deciding how to modulate your voice in order to sound knowledgeable. You are not jockeying for a seat next to the manager. You are not interrupting others, criticizing others, or belittling others in order to appear powerful.

    You are free. Free to pay attention to the matters at hand. Free from having to establish to yourself what you already know at a deep deep level.

    To be a gift does not mean that you are everything. To be a gift does not mean you are perfect or the best.

    Because the gift is you. To be a gift is to be yourself. To believe you are a gift is to believe that you need to show up at work today. The real you. All of you. Nothing held back.

    I wish I worked with you. Because I know a real gift will be present and I want to be a part of the experience. The gift of you.

    You are a gift.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Quote to Consider: Reality’s Sharp Edges

    quote-to-consider“Nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee.”

    C. S. Lewis

  • Clippings from Don: The Many Powers of Maybe

    Elizabeth Bernstein in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal offers a pithy and insightful look at the growing practice of answering “yes-or-no” questions with a “maybe.”

    I‘ve long interpreted “maybe” as a polite “no.” My experience in my circles has been there are only two answers people give, “yes” and “maybe.” But evidently there are as many definitions and uses of the word as there are socially indirect communicators.

    After offering a variety of reasons why a person might respond to a question with an answer that is not an answer at all, Bernstein does a nice job of alerting us to awkward, insensitive and unhelpful impact our “maybe” has on the questioner.

    While interesting to read the reasons (excuses?) people opt for the non-response of “maybe,”  the insight is small consolation. That’s like asking an abused spouse to be more understanding of why her or his spouse is so violent.

    The person needing the counseling is the perpetrator not the victim.

    This is where Bernstein’s insights about the negative impact of a “maybe” response are worth their weight in gold to the discerning reader. If a few more of us find more direct ways to communicate our situations, then the word, “maybe” wouldn’t have to do so much more work than it really can.

    Take a look at the article here. How often do you find yourself using “maybe” as a response? How do you feel when you receive “maybe” as a response to your invitations?

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Voracious reader friend Don Silver always has an eye out for what interests me. Clippings from Don is a column where I pass on some of these articles, stories and resources to you.

  • You Already Know How to Be Great by Alan Fine with Rebecca Merrill

    I do?

    The assumption Alan Fine’s title makes, You Already Know How to be Great, catches me off guard. And again I ask, “I do?” Because right now there’s a big disconnect between what I’m being told I know and what is actually true of my experience.

    Then comes the subtitle, “A Simple Way to Remove Interference and Unlock Your Greatest Potential.” Ah, so there is something blocking the way that needs removing, and there’s something locked away that needs releasing. Now I’m interested.

    Thus we find our way into a wonderful new resource by Alan Fine and Rebecca Merrill.

    Those of you who know me know I have little patience for coaches and “experts” who claim to have the formula for success. The line of thinking goes something like this, “If only you were different than you are, then you would be successful. We can help you become this entirely other person than you actually are.”

    Even if no consultant is so crass to verbalize it that way, that is the message nonetheless. “You are not enough, and you need our help to become someone else.”

    Enter Fine and Merrill who assert that you are indeed enough. In fact, the way forward has nothing to do with learning to be other than you are, but to be more (more…)

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> The Soul of a Leader #9: Finding Spiritual Guidance

    thought-leadersIt’s always difficult to conclude a series. Especially a series as rich as this one. Margaret Benefiel has given us a great gift with her book, The Soul of a Leader.

    She concludes by addressing one of the primary dysfunctions of leadership in America. I call it the myth of the strong, competent, and isolated leader.

    Unlike athletes, for example, leaders seem to believe that their work must be done alone in order to qualify as legitimate leadership. An athlete surrounds her or himself with coaches, doctors, advice, and support of all sorts. Athletes know they cannot learn, succeed or even survive on their own.

    Leaders, on the other hand, seem possessed by a demon that is ever threatening to expose them for the frauds they are afraid they might be. Consequently they direct all their energies to proving that they are completely competent, sufficiently strong and absolutely independent in their role.

    When Benefiel asserts that spiritual guidance is a crucial form of support for leaders in today’s business world I have to cheer.

    We need another set of eyes and ears in our life. We cannot remain focused, keep things in perspective, plan for the future, address emergencies, build enterprising teams, and sustain the energy, enthusiasm and spirit required to lead an business on an on-going basis. And that’s only a partial list of a leader’s role!

    The key in considering spiritual direction is believing that having someone else watching and listening with you will be of value. The spiritual dimension of life in (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Not the “Yes” But the “No”

    loving_mondayWe come into work with a multitude of projects, deadlines, people and tasks competing for our attention. In order to say, “Yes” to the one thing we are going to tackle next, we need to be able to say, “No” to everything else.

    Therein lies the trouble for most of us.

    Not the “Yes,” but the “No.”

    The difficulty arises because all the “No’s” will eventually need to become “Yes’s.”

    It would be easy to say “No” to bad things, wasteful things, useless things, ineffective things, destructive things. The challenge, though, is that in order to focus on one good thing, we need to say “No” to many other good things. Things to which we eventually will need to say “Yes.”

    Once we succeed in selecting the priority that will receive our undivided attention, the battle does not stop there. We find our minds continually justifying our decision to the voices of the “rejected” (i.e. postponed) options.

    All this thinking and rethinking is enough to drive a person crazy.

    I am one of those people who tends to rethink and over-think decisions that I’ve made. Interestingly enough, all the extra processing is not doing me any good. Instead of resulting in better decisions or timely adjustments in my decisions, the extra thinking is merely a stress-inducing and time-consuming distraction.

    Focus is the skill by which we not only learn to concentrate on one thing, but learn to tune out everything else.

    The ability to set other important matters aside in order to give one’s full attention to the matter at hand is no mean achievement and does not come naturally to most of us.

    Helpful to me has been to remind myself that I am saying “No” to so many things in order to get to them sooner. But I will never get to them if I am battling myself all the time. Therefore I clear my desk of everything else in order to have a better chance of eventually addressing everything else.

    We need to stop battling ourselves. We need to learn how to focus and push.

    Try clearing your desk of everything except the one item on which you’ve decided to focus. Use the uncluttered space as a training tool to help you concentrate. One thing on your mind… one thing on the desk.

    When finished pull out the next thing.

    Watch as all those “No’s” transform into “Yes’s… one by one.

    How do you deal with the competing voices calling for your attention? Leave a comment. Give me a call.

    I’m on your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Quote to Consider: Your Will or Your Won’t?

    quote-to-consider“The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.”

    Henry Ward Beecher

  • New Leadership Blog from Bob Logan

    Bob Logan has been resourcing leaders in the Christian community for years. Hundreds of business executives, church planters, non-profit administrators, pastors, and university professors have benefitted from his teaching, resources and advice.

    I wanted to let you know that he’s blogging now, and you need to be taking advantage of this free access to this great guy.

    Logan Leadership is sure to become a valuable gathering place to discuss the state of the art in leadership practices, develop practical resources for enhancing personal effectiveness, and for thinking creatively and critically about the future of the Christian community.

    I have both worked alongside Bob in education and retained his coaching expertise for my own business. He is refreshingly direct, practical and fully focused on you and your pressing issues, concerns and directions.

    I‘m excited that of the many ways he is actively sharing his breadth of knowledge, he has added the social web as one of the places where we can easily find, learn and interact with him.

    Click on over to Logan Leadership and make Bob a regular part of your on-going leadership development efforts. You won’t be disappointed.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards