Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

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  • Listen In -> Why We Hate Meetings #4: Not Resourced by Participation

    There is a lot of knowledge, experience and skills in the room when you gather the team for a meeting.

    Why then do so many of us leave it all untapped by doing all the talking ourselves?

    In this week’s show, Claudia and I discuss the most valuable resource a leader has… their staff.

    Oddly enough our silly leadership paradigms lead us to believe that we must know more than everyone on the team if we have the position of leader. Therefore, a meeting must where I gather the team to listen to me.

    FAIL.

    Meetings take off, go somewhere, get things done, discover new opportunities, solve intractable problems, and build passionate cohesiveness when everyone on the team participates.

    An important mentor of mine kept a plaque on his desk that read, “On this team everyone plays.”

    Find out what participation can do for your meeting.

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> Clutch #7: A Leader’s Responsibility

    thought-leadersA leader’s responsibility is to assume responsibility.

    Unfortunately, like a fair-weather friend, many leaders—while more than ready to publicly accept responsibility for positive results—quickly shift responsibility elsewhere when outcomes are not as expected.

    In this week’s chapter of Clutch, Paul Sullivan demonstrates that such a blaming tendency is linked more to failure than to success.

    “Clutch” leadership, the ability to perform under pressure with the effectiveness that you would normally exhibit, is not characteristic of the blame-shifter. In fact, crucial to clutch performance is the

    If you or I have a tendency to explain away our part in negative, difficult, or broken situations, we can pretty much count on choking. Instead of poised to face and work through the complexities that bedevil us, we will be presiding over our own unfolding ruin.

    That’s enough of the abstract principles.

    What about me? What about you? Do we dare hold up the spotlight of responsibility ownership to our own leadership practices? Our own choices, (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Is Happiness on the Menu Today?

    loving_mondayIf only choosing one’s attitude were as simple as selecting from a restaurant menu.

    “Let’s see… I think I’ll have an appetizer of peaceful contentedness, a main course of focused determination and for dessert, some joyful spontaneity.”

    Yes, we choose our attitude. Theoretically, then, any attitude is available to choose any time.

    But no, that choice does not take place in a vacuum. Theory goes out the window, and the choice to work with focused determination right after your boss humiliated you in front of your co-workers becomes almost impossible.

    All the coaching or coaxing in the world couldn’t convince you that a constructive attitude is still on the menu. In fact, to suggest so feels insulting and insensitive.

    What to do then with the choice we need to make next? The choice about going forward. How we go forward. The choice of attitude.

    This is the problem with the menu analogy for accepting responsibility for one’s choices. It’s not as simple as choosing chicken instead of beef, or wine instead of beer.

    As much as many leaders might prefer otherwise, human beings are not robots governed solely by their logical inputs. Human beings are multi-faceted, (more…)

  • Quote to Consider: Being Shown Up

    quote-to-consider“Fewer things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”

    Mark Twain

  • Karl Shares Six Words… #16


    The practical joke backfired for shame.


    Karl Edwards

  • Listen In -> Why We Hate Meetings #3: Not Focused toward Outcomes

    Some issues come up in meetings week after week. The discussion picks up where it left off and no resolution or decision ever gets made.

    And again you want to kill yourself (or at least the leader). Because again you are not busy doing the many important tasks waiting for you at your desk in order to be at this meeting. This meeting that is rehashing and rethinking and repeating what has been discussed on many previous occasions.

    Open discussions are a good thing. Hearing all sides to a complex issue is a good thing. Playing out various scenarios is, yes, a good thing.

    But when these thinking exercises have served their purpose, there needs to be movement toward a decision, toward a plan, or toward an clearly identified outcome.

    We waste our own and everyone else’s time when we discuss for discussion’s sake. We must discuss for the sake of making the best possible decision. We must think together for the sake of achieving the optimum plan of action.

    We hate meetings when they are missing a clear trajectory toward particular decisions and concrete action.

    Find out what a simple set of expected outcomes can do for your meeting.

    Listen in.

    We have a tool that can help. Check out our Meeting Planner, a simple, professional workbook for planning meetings that focus discussions, increase team buy-in, and get things done. (Click here for more information.)
    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Loving Monday: Facing Distasteful Realities

    loving_mondayTaxes are due today. Los Angeles City business taxes. While the procrastinator in me wants to postpone the unpleasant task until April 15th when the Federal and State personal income taxes are due, such is not the reality I face.

    In principle I can say that it is easier to face reality than to avoid it. I can also say that the earlier one can face any given reality, however distasteful, the better off one will be on a number of emotional and practical fronts.

    In practice, though…

    Let’s just say it’s easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk.

    Distasteful realities are just that… distasteful. We want to complain about the unfairness of it all, the wastefulness, the extra work, the boring work, or the awful people involved. We want the situation to be other than it is. (At least I do.)

    There is no other way to cut it. No way to make some tasks pleasant. No way to add sugar to the bitterness. No way to remove the sliver.

    The key, I have found, is in learning to receive and accept reality, however (more…)

  • Quote to Consider: Fighting to be Yourself

    quote-to-consider“to be nobody but yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.”

    e. e. cummings

  • Karl Shares Six Words… #15


    Cubicle transformed by posting ultrasound photo.


    Karl Edwards

  • Listen In -> Why We Hate Meetings #2: Not Guided by an Agenda

    Don’t do it! Come back in off the ledge! Think of the kids. It’s not worth jumping.

    Leader monologues, dominating whiners, lost time to secondary issues, and meetings that go on forever make us want to kill ourselves sometimes.

    In this week’s discussion, Claudia and I look at what a waste of time most people feel meetings are.

    We’ve got a lot to do, and meetings feel like a mind-numbing and meaningless interruption. We are somehow responsible for indulging our leader’s sense of self-importance by listening to them ramble on and on.

    Or what about the complainers who take up half the meeting whining about their unfair parking spot, the stench of burnt popcorn in the lunch room, or the poor attitude in the mail room?!

    It doesn’t need to be this way. Find out what a simple agenda can do for your meeting.

    Listen in.

    Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.