Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: learning

  • 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

  • Question of the Week #22

    How might you transform your performance reviews from dreaded evaluations into welcomed learning opportunities?

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

  • Keeping It Real: Dying to Live Up to Expectations

    Up to whose expectations am I trying to live?

    The too-easy answer for a person with a Christian spirituality like myself is God’s.

    That’s the “right” answer. The textbook answer. In light of the goodness and power and perfection of God, how could any other set of expectations be considered?

    image credit to Unnikrishna Menon DamodaranThe problem with the “right” answer is that truncates our thinking about the issue before it even begins. We know that God never expects humans to be less than human. So free and responsible thinkers we must continue to be.

    The “good boy/good girl” answer is to cooperate with those under whose authority we work. Our job is to meet the expectations of our boss. This option seems reasonable at first blush… that is until we experience our first supervisor whose expectations are not so reasonable.

    The problem with the “good boy/good girl” answer is that, again, we find ourselves checking our brains, our skills and our experience at the door in deference, in this case, to the brain, skills and experience sitting higher on the organizational chart.

    This is a child’s response to expectations. “You’ll do it because I said so.” The rationale is simply a passive submission to authority. No (more…)

  • Shooting Oneself in the Foot… Again?

    Most of us can relate to the idiom about “shooting oneself in the foot.”

    We are painfully aware of those times when our efforts work against us instead of for us. Or we watch others in disbelief as they sabotage their own best plans and intentions.

    Ideally we would serve as our own best friend. We naturally feel regret, embarrassment, and confusion when we find ourselves to be our own worst enemy.

    Imagine being betrayed by the one who should be our most trusted advocate. How do we build trust with ourselves again? Or do we slowly spiral downward in a cycle of mistakes, eroding self-confidence and further mistakes?

    Instead of focusing on eliminating mistakes (an unrealistic and futile goal), what if we worked on becoming better advocates for ourselves?

    What if, instead of interpreting errors as failure events, we viewed them as learning processes?

    1. What if you viewed your mistakes as the beginning of something constructive instead of the end of something disastrous? What might you learn from the situation? What might you do differently going forward? What needs to improve in your own thinking, your team’s communication, or your organization’s processes? What benefit going forward can you construct from this unfortunate situation?

    Mistakes can become new beginnings.

    2. What if you viewed errors as learning in motion instead of static grades on a report card. It’s the difference between a motion picture and a photograph. If you take an uncomplimentary driver’s license photo, that’s the image (more…)

  • Loving Monday: Exploring New Territory

    loving_mondayTraveling in a strange place can feel either like an exciting adventure or a nerve-wracking nightmare.

    So much newness can arouse our curiosity, excite our senses and expose us to fresh perspectives. On the other hand, so much newness can disorient us, make us feel lost, and scare us into extreme cautiousness.

    Some of us love to travel to new places. Some of us prefer the routine of the familiar.

    At work we experience a similar tension between the need to explore the new and the need to respect the reliable.

    The great thing about Monday morning is that it comes around only once a week, but it keeps coming around.

    We don’t have to operate at either extreme of always exploring what is new and different or remaining fixed securely in the confines of what we know works.

    What if, once a week, we gave ourselves permission (or challenged ourselves, as the case may be) to seek out fresh perspectives and explore new ideas, methods and relationships?!

    The adventure (or nightmare) would only come around once a week, but it would keep coming around.

    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.

  • Keeping It Real: Hearing an Unexpected Truth #1

    Have you ever had someone make an observation that strikes you—however unexpected or novel—as absolutely true?

    Has that observation ever been something about you?

    It can be difficult to hear information about ourselves that does not jive with our self-perception. Whether positive or negative, such new data can catch us off guard. So off guard, in fact, that we either simply do not hear anything or quickly dismiss everything.

    It can also be difficult because many observations are, in fact, inaccurate. They may arise out of the other person’s unmet needs, skewed perspective, and/or unrelated frame of reference. We need to be discerning about how much weight we give to the voices that would seek to influence us.

    Every once in a while, though… On the rare and exceptional day… will intrude a word of truth so profoundly insightful that it slips past our defenses… overcomes our deeply entrenched self-perceptions… and outmaneuvers our ever-shifting and ever-shortening attention spans.

    And we pause.

    We stop dead in our tracks as I did the other day and exclaim to ourselves, “Oh my God.”

    Helpful insights don’t spell out for you what you need to do with the information. They simply share the information.

    That leaves us (me) with the task of personal reflection, discerning research and creative experimentation. A task I welcome even as I welcome—however tentatively—this unexpected new information about myself.

    Check back here for updates on my process and what I mean by personal reflection, discerning research and creative experimentation.

    Keeping It Real is a column where I put what I am learning out on the table. No faking. No posturing. No pretending. Just learning. Always learning. 
    Beware of the teacher or leader who is not always learning themselves.

  • Thought Leaders Unpacked -> What the Dog Saw #14: Late Bloomers

    thought-leadersJust call me, “Cézanne.”

    Having enjoyed a multi-faceted career, I could easily buy into any of the many interpretations others have provided to make sense of the diversity of roles I have held through the years. Interpretations, that is, that come from a particular frame of reference that Malcolm Gladwell explores in this week’s chapter on “Late Bloomers.”

    What-the-Dog-SawMultiple roles could be a symptom of being lost. Unable to find my way, my calling, my destiny, I could be moving from role to role in search of something that feels like home.

    I could be a loser of sorts. Kidding myself into believing that I am God’s gift to humanity. I don’t see that my personality grates, my skills are archaic, and my working style is neither productive nor helpful.

    I could have my priorities mixed up. Preferring to inaugurate entirely new visions of capitalism for the 21st century, I neglect being a stable, domestic provider who makes sure that each week’s expenses corresponds with a particular paycheck that covers them.

    What if, though, I were exactly where I belonged during each stage of my professional journey so far? What if the only way forward is to take another step? What about uncharted territory where the path only becomes visible when looking back at where we have been?

    When experience is one of life’s teachers, then the knowledge, experience and connections needed to see which path to take can only be found in actually proceeding down a path. In the doing is the learning, the adjusting, the maturing.

    Gladwell’s insight into our culture’s fallacious assumption that genius comes early and easily is a breath of fresh air to those of us who experience the world so startlingly different that we struggle to find vocabulary, context and/or means to communicate, persuade and create all that burns deep within.

    This week’s chapter seemed written especially for me. Give it a read. It might be especially for you too.

    You never know. You or I may be the next, “Cézanne.”

    Join the conversation. What was your main take-away from this chapter?

    Each week I post my reflections from one chapter of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. If you are just joining the discussion now, welcome! Catch up on the entire series here.

  • Quote to Consider: Always Learning

    quote-to-consider“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”

    Socrates

  • American Idol Savvy: Knowing Who You Are

    Idol“You don’t know who you are as an artist.” “You’ve lost your way.”

    Criticism, advice and other forms of feedback are received differently by those who “know who they are” and those who don’t.

    I’m not referring to those who blow off all feedback in order to prove that they are their own best judge. People who don’t listen to feedback are insecure fools merely masquerading as the confident and accomplished.

    Each Idol contestant receives a variety of feedback each week. Criticisms about what didn’t work. Suggestions for improvement. Challenges to stretch or try something new.

    Those who “don’t know who they are” put on the advice like trying on a new costume or mask. As a result their next performances don’t work either. You can tell the “costume” doesn’t fit, and that they clearly are not comfortable wearing it.

    Those who are more comfortable with who they are receive the advice and make it their own. In order to listen carefully these contestants don’t need to adopt indiscriminately.

    It’s the difference between squeezing into a mold, which assumes the mold is the standard and you are what doesn’t quite fit until you incorporate all the given advice, on the one hand. And enhancing your appearance with some make-up and fashion accessories, which assumes that you are the standard and the advice will help you become an even better you, on the other hand.

    How do you receive advice from your elders, mentors, supervisors and others who have words of wisdom they wish to give you? Do you tend toward the extremes: either rejecting all input or conforming to all input?

    How might you listen more carefully without needing to adopt indiscriminately?

  • American Idol Savvy: Coaching From The Sidelines

    IdolThey are known as the judges. Much of the time they evaluate as judges. More and more, though, Simon, Randy, Kara and Ellen are coaching the young singing contestants.

    Judge or coach. Or does it matter?

    Both roles provide good entertainment, which is what the show is about. (See our discussion last week.)

    But as coaching goes, they leave much to be desired. Their primary context for giving constructive feedback is once a week during the show itself. In other words, they are coaching from quite a distance.

    It’s the difference between a soccer coach taking a player aside in order to talk over his or her performance one-on-one, and yelling feedback from the sidelines during the game.

    It’s difficult to understand the long distance coaching in the midst of an intense game. The player’s focus needs to be on the game more than the coaching. The coaching tends to be extremely context-specific; that is, related to the particular moment, decision or action. Such advice can be difficult to integrate into one’s overall improvement strategy.

    Hence the confusion many contestants express about the seemingly contradictory advice they are receiving. They are thinking in terms of their overall strategy. (The big picture.) The judges are commenting on a specific performance. (A much smaller picture.) The two pictures relate intimately, but it can be confusing for a young contestant to sort how how.

    What about your coaching? How do you help people integrate context-specific feedback into their overall improvement strategy? Or do you?

    – Karl