Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Tag: reactive

  • Loving Monday: Who’s Setting the Tone If You Aren’t?

    loving_mondayWho’s setting the tone at work today?

    Anyone?

    If someone isn’t setting the tone intentionally, then it is probably being set by the first three things that happen this morning.

    Should the first three things that happen be an unexpected deadline change, an angry client, and an assistant gone AWOL, you’re in for a rough day!

    What if, though, you set the tone for your day? What if you were to choose—before even arriving at work—what sort of attitude, perspective and demeanor with which you were going to approach your day?

    Instead of waiting to react to whatever might be going on at the office, you would be taking the initiative to be one of the actors that everyone else reacts to.

    You would be taking the initiative on your own behalf and also on the behalf of the entire office culture.

    In this scenario, when the unexpected deadline change gets announced, the angry client yells at you, or the assistant goes AWOL right when you needed their help, you will deal with these unfortunate and difficult experiences from the healthy, positive, and constructive frame of reference you chose earlier.

    It’s your choice either way you look at it.

    You can choose to let circumstances set the tone for you, or you can choose the tone from which you will set into the day’s circumstances.

    Which brings us back to the original question: Who’s setting the tone at work today if you aren’t?

    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.

  • Controlling or Cruising?

    Toward which extreme would your planning approach tend? Controlling or cruising?

    Do you try to control more than may be possible, humanly speaking? Stick to tight schedules even if it means working nights and weekends. Keep everyone on task even if it means writing standard operating procedures for sharpening pencils. Coordinate activities across departments even if it means nagging people several times a day.

    Or have you given up on planning? Circumstances change too quickly on the ground for any plan to stand a chance of being implemented. Technology will change, a competitor will undercut your break even price, a key supplier will go out of business, an important team member will go on maternity leave at a crucial juncture. So you cruise. Go with the flow. Use your intuition. Shoot from the hip. Respond to issues as they arise.

    (If you haven’t listened to this week’s podcast, take ten minutes now as Claudia and I take on strategic planning as the second segment of our coaching regimen No Excuses Leadership.)

    As you’ve probably guessed, both sets of skills are crucial for successful strategic planning. They each address a stark reality leaders face. They each fail when adopted exclusively and universally. There is a vital proactive, aggressive, intentional component to planning. There is also a vital reactive, responsive, perceptive, discerning component.

    Where do you fall on the controlling versus cruising spectrum? What have you learned from veering too closely to either extreme?

  • Listen In -> Strategic Planning #1: The Tennis Player’s Stance

    On the balls of your feet.

    Both ready to implement your own plan of attack and ready to respond to whatever comes at you.

    We begin a new series on strategic planning this week with the metaphor of the tennis player’s stance. We hope you will join the discussion. (This series is the second of three series that will make up our No Excuses Leadershipâ„¢ course. Watch for news about your opportunity to join this new online learning community!)

    After the specifics of decision-making, we are going to begin thinking more broadly about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. We want to develop both proactive and reactive planning skills.

    Proactively we want to be choosing ambitious outcomes, developing concrete goals, setting guiding priorities and making the specific plans that will achieve our outcomes.

    But we are naive to assume that we have as much control as we’d hope. We have to be ready to respond to what is happening around us. Technology changes, our competitors shift unexpectedly, the economy slows down while we’re expanding. The list could go on.

    How do you both maintain a determined, intentional, plan of our own and a stance of attentiveness, readiness and awareness of what is going on around you?

    The series will include:

    1. The Tennis Player’s Stance
    2. Shaping the Future
    3. Learning from the Past
    4. Focusing in the Present
    5. The Advantage Vantage Point

    Join the conversation. Begin by listening in.

    powered by ODEO

  • Question of the Week

    How might you better direct your anger at the unacceptable as a proactive leadership strategy rather than a reactive emotional explosion?