Sense of Humor at Work

Having a sense of humor at our workplace is not only appropriate but also essential.  Most of us spend more than half of our waking hours at work, dealing with many kinds of stress. A little sense of humor goes a long way to look at these stressful situations in a different light, and helps maintain a fun environment at work.

Having a sense of humor isn't necessarily the same as being able to tell jokes. It is the ability to see humor in day-to-day situations and appreciate jokes. Some people have the knack of putting others at ease instantly with their sense of humor, which can be particularly helpful in conflict or icebreaking situations when meeting with new people.

The benefits of humor go beyond helping with stress at work. Humor and laughter can bring people together and develop very strong bonds. Robert Provine, author of 'Laughter: A Scientific Investigation', conducted research that says 90 percent of the things we laugh at aren't even remotely funny, and most laughter is not about jokes, but rather, about relationships between people. Many of you may have experienced this phenomenon, where you and a very close friend may find simple banter very funny and have a laugh whereas others may not think it is funny at all. So, a laughter filled work environment might be a good indication that people are comfortable with each other and that they share a very positive and healthy working relationship.

Given these many benefits of humor and fun at work, how do you promote these in your teams? It starts by having a sense of humor yourself, taking some risks and leading by example. When you are in the middle of a serious discussion, make an offhand remark or a joke that might surprise people and bring on a smile. Stick to simple and generic lines and make sure not to offend any one. As long as you pay attention to people's sentiments and don't overdo it, most people enjoy a good laugh. Think and create situational humor that the whole group can relate to. You will be surprised to see the group really stays connected through that shared situational humor for a long time after. If you know someone on your team that has a particularly good sense of humor, provide them the opportunity to show it off.  It only takes a few people start and create a fun environment, as laughter is very contagious. Before you know it, it will rub off on others.

Is 'sense of humor' inherent or can it be developed? The answer is yes to both. Almost everyone has some sense of humor inherently, but everyone can develop it further, by watching others who are good at it, exploring, and experimenting on their own in different situations.

If you have a serious work environment today, try some of these ideas, and soon you may find yourself where "work" and "fun" become synonymous.

Talent Strategy

Business results depend on talent strategy as much as on business strategy. Products and technology can be commoditized, and it is easy to lose the competitive edge sooner or later. However, talent can truly set a company apart from its competition on a longer term basis. While business strategy may change or evolve, having a well thought out talent strategy will help adapt to these changing business needs and priorities effectively.

While I share a few of my current talent strategies below, this is an area that will continue to evolve through continual experimentation and improvements over time.

Acquiring Talent:

When it comes to acquiring and finding the right talent for the organization, it makes sense to start with the leadership team. Once you have the right leaders in place, it is easier to drive the right talent strategy throughout the organization, and develop the right technical talent. Focus on quality over quantity, with emphasis on having strong leaders that can drive the right culture and behaviors.

• Start with assessing the needs and gaps of talent in the organization. Do we have the right leaders in critical roles? Is some good talent being under utilized and/or in the wrong role?
• Have a plan to fill the gaps - Do you want new, existing, or a combination of talent? Do you want to hire internally or go external?
• Find the right talent. Think about what "right" means to you and your organization. For example, most leaders I talked to and I myself look for some form of the "Three A's" in leaders:
• Ability - Competence, skills, and experience
• Attitude - Positive, open and flexible, team player
• Aspiration - Hunger, aggressiveness, drive to succeed
• Build the organization around the right talent

Understanding talent:

Spend the time and energy to get to know your team deeply, either through direct interaction or indirectly through your leaders

• Gather as many viewpoints as possible, reserve your judgment, and be open to changing your opinion and first impressions about people.
• Hold talent calibration discussions on a regular basis. Create an open and safe environment to bring out both the good and the bad in every employee.
• Establish objective ways of measuring employee performance through very specific and granular success criterion order to minimize subjective biases.
• Use consistent methods that can be trickled down throughout the organization to set the right culture and behaviors.

Developing talent:

Developing and nurturing your talent can work wonders and pay dividends in many ways.  Besides the obvious positive impact on business results, seeing someone grow and do great things gives a lot of personal fulfillment and satisfaction. I find that I also grow as a leader along the way.

• Have frequent discussions with your top talent and provide constructive and actionable feedback in real time.
• Map the right talent to the right roles. There is nothing worse than wasting good talent.
• Understand the goals of your people. Find creative ways to keep them challenged, engaged and excited.
• Open doors for new opportunities and experiences. 

A good talent strategy will help acquire, recognize, and develop talent for sustainable competitive advantage and long term results. Given that, it makes sense for leaders to spend quality time thinking through and developing a talent strategy that works for them and their organizations.

Feedback - A gift or a curse?

Giving and receiving feedback is tricky business and an art. It is probably one of the most important leadership traits, and can take a lifetime to learn. It can differentiate good leaders from mediocre ones by  demonstrating several important leadership characteristics - good judgment, clarity and organization of thought, courage, maturity, sense of humor, crispness of communication, sensitivity, caring, coaching abilities, humility, and emotional intelligence all in one.

We all hear about feedback being a gift. It can be, if done well. We need to take several factors into consideration and do some pre-work and thinking to do both giving and receiving fedback well. Here are some things to think about:

 

Giving feedback:

• When is the right time to give feedback?
• Is the person ready to receive it?
• How do you prepare the person to receive the feedback as you intend?
• What is the best way to deliver it?
• How frequent is frequent enough?
• Who do you give unsolicited feedback to and why?

Receiving feedback:

• Who do you ask for feedback?
• How often do you ask?
• How do you react to the feedback?
• What aspects of the feedback do you choose to act upon and what do you choose to ignore and why?
• How will you deal with unsolicited feedback?

As with most things in life, the answer for most of these questions is, "It depends" (on the people involved, their situation, and the need) and is very personal. But the better prepared we are with answers to these questions before attempting to give/receive feedback, the better results we will get. 

As a giver of feedback, there are a few things to keep in mind. Most people take feedback very seriously and try to act on it. So, if your assessment is based on a short interaction with the person you are giving feedback to and you are not sure your assessment is complete or accurate, it will be better to say that upfront. Otherwise your feedback may have unintended results such as lowering someone's confidence, demoralizing them, or changing their behavior for the worse. Also, if you are simply passing on someone else's comments rather than giving feedback based on your own observations, you should clarify that as well. In addition,it is almost always better to keep the feedback as real time and on-the-spot as possible rather than holding any thing back for a later time.

As a receiver of the feedback, the most important thing is to focus on the intent of the feedback. As stated above, giving feedback is an art that takes a lifetime to learn and even the most seasoned leaders sometimes struggle to do it properly. It is just as difficult to the person giving the feedback as to you as the receiver. Assuming you trust the feedback giver, both in intent and ability, help him/her out by focusing on the message rather than the specific words used or how it was delivered. On the other hand, if you don't fully trust the person giving the feedback because they don't  know you very well, or for any other reason, try to validate the feedback with another trusted adviser before acting on it.

If we keep these simple things in mind and prepare well, feedback - both giving and receiving - can be a gift rather than a curse!

The Happiness Theory

Why are some people happier than others? Why are we happy some times and not at other times?

These are age old questions. In spite of the millions of dollars spent on research in finding the answers to this, we still don't have any satisfactory conclusions.

It is clearly not money that makes this difference. We all know people that have far less money and resources but are still happier than some ultra rich people. Even in our own lives we may have experienced the phenomenon that our happiness doesn’t increase proportional to the money we make.

Is it friends, families and communities that make the difference? Perhaps. Those factors certainly seem to play a bigger role than money does. Support from friends and family are certainly key in recovering quickly from tough and unhappy situations. Being around friends and family also brings joy (in most cases any way!).

But what causes happiness or unhappiness inherently at a very personal level in the first place?

Maybe, it has been so difficult to find an answer to this quest because there is no single answer. Maybe, it is so personal to each of us that we can't generalize it. That is a possibility.

But then, that doesn't explain why we can’t stay happy forever, once we figure out what makes us happy at a very personal level and actually achieve that.

No. Happiness appears to be a dynamic and living thing rather than in a static state. That is why there doesn't seem to be a such a thing as "achieving happiness".

As I look into my own life and examine my happiness patterns on a day to day basis, I happened upon a rather simple explanation, one that both satisfies my curiosity and seems to fit and explain the reasons for my own happiness and unhappiness. It may seem too simplistic at first, but think about it and apply it to your own situations and see if it works for you.

Simply put, happiness in any given moment seems to be inversely proportional to our own expectations and nothing more. That is, the lower our own expectations are in any given situation, the higher our happiness quotient will be, and vice versa. In that sense, it is a continuum rather than being binary.

We have all probably experienced this phenomenon in some simple situations. For example, when we go to watch a very popular movie, we sometimes notice that we don't enjoy or derive as much happiness as  we expected too much, based on what we heard about the movie.

This same concept can be applied to everything. If you get a pay increase higher than what you expected you are happier, if you got less than what you expected, you are less happy.

Like I said, it seems to explain the mystery behind my own happiness and unhappiness in almost all cases that I tested.

In the end, it is all about how we manage our own expectations. Easy, right? So, how do we do that?

Well, I "expect" that I will crack that code in the remainder of my lifetime :-).

Organizational Politics

Politics may have many meanings and implications. I define organizational politics as the art of influencing the actions and policies of an organization. Organizational politics is inevitable and an essential part of every organization. If so, why do people shy away from it? Why does it have such a bad negative connotation? What is the good, bad, and ugly about it? When do we need to participate and when do we need to step away? Here is a double click view into each of these aspects.

The Good:

Typical goals and outcomes: Form alliances to influence key decisions, secure resources for important projects, and promote people or agendas for the greater good.

In a good political environment, you can expect the following:

• Respect and trust for people at a personal level, albeit with some difference of opinions on specific issues
• Acknowledgement by all parties that power and influence are necessary to steer things in the right direction
• Multiple business agendas and points of view, resulting in heated, but productive and healthy debates.
• Negotiations and some level of give and take are expected and allowed for the greater good of the organization
• Disappointments for some parties on short term results, but no long term hurt feelings or petty rivalries
• No stealing of others credit

The Bad:

Typical goals and outcomes: Personal agenda and empire building first priority, business agenda on the list, but secondary

What to expect:

• Personal agendas start driving business decisions
• Influencing becomes counter productive, and takes away too much time from other valuable activities. People start fearing politics.
• The time spent in making a policy outweighs the benefit of the policy itself
• Key decisions don't make sense to most people in the organization, as they are not made based on merit, but based on who has the most power.

The Ugly:

Typical goals and outcomes: Personal agenda is the only concern, at the cost of business success.   

The indications of such an environment should be fairly obvious, but here is what to expect:

• No trust or respect for people, talking behind people's back is prevalent at all levels
• Alliances formed with the sole purpose of personal growth
• Every move has to be measured carefully, everyone has to constantly watch their back
• Turf wars at a personal level with egos playing a big role
• No integrity in decisions, people thrown under the bus freely

In short, if you are not in a position to change such an environment, run away as far away and fast as you can!

All this said, as long as we don't go to the dark side of politics, it is critical that we practice the art of politics to influence and drive critical business results. Organizational politics is a leadership skill and can be learned, like many other leadership skills. Be open-minded and start looking for the signs described above to see what type of an organization you are currently a part of, what role politics plays in it and learn to play for the good.

Got POISE?

One of the questions I often get asked from new managers and leaders on my team is "what are my expectations for them, and how can they be successful in the team?". There are certainly many aspects of leadership that can be critical for success in any organization and especially in engineering organizations - communication, accountability, planning, team work, collaboration, and so on. But as I thought about this more, there are some foundational behavioral traits that cut across a lot of these areas and are essential ingredients for success.

As such, I coined a simple and easy to remember acronym, "POISE" , to describe these:

Proactive

Open

Impact

Share

Execute

Proactive:

Being proactive means we are thinking ahead, taking action, and taking initiative, all of which are essential for success. It applies to planning, communication with our teams, peers and upper management, recognizing and rewarding our employees, reaching out and collaborating with our peers, and many other facets of our daily lives.

Open:

For us to continually learn and grow as individuals and leaders, openness is key. Change is the only constant in life. Being open to change and embracing it rather than resisting it can make or break our careers in many cases. Openness to receiving and giving feedback are also very important to grow ourselves and our teams.

Impact:

We should all strive to focus on the impact we are making on the organization, rather than the size of the team we lead or the management structures/hierarchies. Impact can be made and felt from many places, and virtually by anybody in the organization. Every organization has its share of problems to be solved. In many cases, top management doesn't necessarily even know some of these problems to the extent people closer to these know and understand them. With some focused thinking, proactiveness and openness, anyone can make an impact by being part of the solution for some of these problems. For people in the middle to higher levels of management, focusing on the impact of our communication on our teams is very important, as it sets the organizational culture.

Share:

Share your resources, knowledge and experience openly. Withholding information is an indication of insecurity. While being territorial about resources and teams can work in the short term, it will hold your success back in the long term from becoming a true leader.

Execute:

Ideas, vision and strategy are extremely important and nothing is possible without them. But, ideas are no good until they are implemented, and no vision and strategy can be successful without proper execution. Take action, execute, and get the most out of your ideas.

There you have it. Improve your POISE and success will follow!

Today’s strength = Tomorrow’s weakness?

Take something you are very good at. You know it, your boss knows it, and you get excellent feedback from everyone, and great recognition for it. It becomes your signature strength.You are rewarded for your performance and get a promotion, with more responsibilities. A couple of years pass by.

All of a sudden, you find that the same signature strength that you were well appreciated for so far is starting to cause you trouble in your new role. At first, you are in total denial, thinking how could that possibly be? After all, didn’t everyone seem to like it and appreciate it until now? However, the more feedback you hear, the more obvious it becomes to you that indeed this is becoming a real problem.

What could be wrong here? Perhaps you are applying the same skill or strength you acquired earlier in your professional life to your next job or role without realizing that maybe the new role has different demands and requires you to do things differently. This happens to all of us. All it takes is an open mind to recognize and acknowledge the problem and a conscious effort to fix it.

Thankfully, with a few simple but effective steps, you can be on your way to a successful role transition:

• Step 1 - Start from scratch
• Analyze the expectations of the new role, especially the ways in which it is different from your previous role
• Think about what are the key success factors for this new role, and how they are different from your old job

• Step 2 - Have a conversation with your boss
• Leave your assumptions behind. Have an open conversation with your boss about your new role. Even if the boss hasn’t changed, your role has. So don’t assume his expectations remain the same. Ask and listen. Validate your own understanding.

• Step 3 -Talk to peers who have been there
• Talk to your peers who have been in the same roles before. Find out what they had to do different. Ask about what worked and didn’t work for them.

• Step 4 - Learn and practice new skills
• Pick 2 to 3 key skills you need to acquire or behavior changes you need to make to be successful in your new role, based on steps 1 through 3. This is important. Focus on 2 to 3 changes at a time, and not a laundry list of 10 things you want to do better. Once you meet your objectives, you can pick the next set of changes.

• Set yourself a goal and a timeline for acquiring the new skills and practicing the new behaviors.

• Step 5 - Track your progress:
• Get regular feedback from as many sources as you can (preferably 360 degree feedback) to see how you are doing and to make adjustments if necessary.

Easy enough right?

By following these 5 simple steps, you can avoid having today’s strength become tomorrow’s weakness, and you can continue to evolve as a leader.