Drive the Car You Have: Dealing with Ambivalence in a Life Filled with Choices

Our lives today are filled with more choices than ever. Personal and professional development opportunities, continuing education, work, marriage and children - all are options to consider, and each comes with a variety of alternatives and combinations. Yet, after we make our choice, often with great anxiety and concern, we spend a great deal of time wondering about the path not taken, second-guessing ourselves, worrying about missed chances and dealing with guilt and regret over the options we didn’t choose.

While I facilitated a discussion group entitled “Doing Less, Having More” with a group of professionals, the recurring theme was one of ambivalence about the choices made: the working parent regretted not traveling more for work, thinking that it would have put her in line for a promotion faster; a professional who had been promoted to CFO wondered if there would ever be a good time to start a family; the single manager felt that the likelihood of creating a personal life was remote since the company saw him as always available; and a stay-at-home parent wondered if the MBA she had worked so hard for was now just useless paper. It sounded to me like an epidemic of “buyer’s remorse.”

It called to mind the story of a car purchase I had made. My son had grown to an age where his legs were long, his friends were tall, his band practiced at a variety of homes requiring the frequent transportation of instruments and equipment and my sweet, sexy little car no longer made sense. I did the research, checked out the choices that fit the needs of my checkbook and our garage.

The car I purchased wasn’t all that small or sexy. It didn’t have a leather interior and it wasn't a stick shift. It was, however, practical, affordable, had a good sized trunk and an ample back seat for long-legged teens. As I drove around, I found myself looking at all the other cars I hadn’t purchased with longing. While I could console myself that I wasn’t driving a decidedly parental vehicle like a van or an SUV, the ambivalence of my choice weighed on my mind.

I realized that I needed to just drive the car I bought. Spending my time in regret, wondering if it had been the right decision was a waste of energy and emotion. The choice had been made. I had done a pretty good job of weighing the pros and cons. I needed to live with the choice I made and move forward.

And so did these folks. How could I help them focus on getting the most out of what they decided to do, rather than spend their time wondering if they should be doing it?

There are things we all can do to focus on enjoying the choices made and enhance the selection process for the future:

Sports Car vs. Van – When the dream competes with the practical, create a list of objectives you are trying to accomplish with this choice. Rank your objectives and figure out how many of the highest ranking ones will be met with each choice.

Resist Back Seat Drivers - Everyone has an opinion but you need to silence the voices of others so you can know your own. Don’t take a referendum. Select one or two people who know you well and can provide objective and truthful advice. Ask them what they think the best choice would be and why, and then weigh that against your own thoughts.

Have a Map/GPS - It’s important to know where you are going, and more important to make sure that detours don’t take you too far off course. While the most direct route may not always be possible, you don’t want to travel too far away from where you hope eventually to end up.

Keep Your Eyes on the Road - Once you’ve made the choice, make the commitment to close the book on that particular decision. Enjoy the choice you made, and remember the reasons that made it the right choice now.

Know When to Trade In - Not all choices last forever. You can buy a different car; leave a job that is no longer challenging or return to school. When the criteria for your choice have changed, it may be time to change the solution.
It’s hard not to have some regrets when you have to make a choice:

• You are eager to start your own company, but are thisclose to being vested with your firm;

• You want to apply for the Director’s position, but the extra travel would create havoc with your family right now;

• Additional education will take time and money away from the annual family vacation;

• The position you are being offered seems like a dream come true, but the commute will be lengthy and stressful.

Whatever choice you make, if you think carefully about what is important to you, there will be good reasons for it. Focus on all the reasons it is the right choice for you today. The goal is to take the option that fits best and creates the least amount of regret for as long as you will be living with it.


NOTE: Once my son was off to college, I drove a sweet, sexy, high performance car again. It was fun to dirve, allowed only one other full sized adult to join me, and was terrible in bad weather. Once we moved into the city, I traded it in for a used, reliable, heavier car with seat warmers, and room for more than two adults.  No regrets - there will be other cars in my future.

What are you Doing When You Interview?

An interview is a conversation with three purposes:

• Gather Information

• Persuasively Give Information

• Public Relations

With light-speed changes in the workplace and the marketplace, the skills and techniques used to bring in and keep qualified employees need to change too. Both internal candidates and external applicants may want the open position a manager is trying to fill. The challenge is to know exactly what you are looking for, who is available and how to sell the position and your company to them.

And once you get them, it's simply NOT ENOUGH. You have to retain them and develop and leverage their talent. The workforce continues to change:

• Up to 5 generations in the workplace

• More women

• More racial and ethnic deiversity

• People staying longer or returning

• Technological shifts and advances  

The Old Way Isn’t Good Enough

Traditional trial and error of staff selection is no longer effective. It may actually never have been as effective as we had hoped, but people seemed willing to give mistakes a home and a hope for improvment. Rather than viewing employee selection as a monumental task, the integration of effective hiring strategies into everyday duties is the only alternative for organizations that want to excel in the future

All of the employees who are charged with the responsibility of interviewing prospective employees should participate in training programs that prepare them for a strategic hiring focus. They should always be on the lookout for talent and enthusiasm, have a clear knowledge of the positions that are under their authority, and work to create the image that will attract and retain applicants.

Superior interviewing skills sharpen the ability to identify, hire, and promote the best in every field. If you suspect that there is room for improvement in interviewing and hiring skills in your organization, or that the employees who have the responsibility for interviewing are not getting the (guided) practice or feedback they need, don't cross your fingers and hope for the best or pray for magical pixie dust to rain down on them!  A well tailored training program can help your participants make better judgements about whom to hire and promote, obtain information about the job and the candidate that are critical to making good hiring decisions, and get educated on employment laws and recent changes in the law.

Organziations that have cut back on critical training programs may have put their future into the hands of well meaning managers who lack the skills to hire well. When you understand how talent comes through your door, you can create internal vehicles that exploit your talent management strategy.  

Get Out of Your Own Way!

Perhaps it's the spring season or simply people starting to think about summer vacation, but this week I have been in many conversations about how to define Work-Life Balance.

I am on record (if anyone keeps track of this sort of thing) as saying that I don’t think balance between these two aspects of our life really exists. I prefer the term integration to balance. Why?

It is unrealistic to think that you can schedule an equal amount of time for work activities and personal life activities. Life is more fluid than that. Work wants you 150%. Family would like you 150%. Where will you be getting 300% ?!

People change, work changes, and things change over time. What seems like a perfect blend of the activities you are spending your time on today will change tomorrow. Kids grow up and don’t need (want) a parent’s constant involvement. Age can refocus your attention, as can health.

I know from experience that one size does not fit all. What works for me isn’t going to work for you. Everyone has different lives, different goals and different priorities.

That said – if you can focus on what you are doing when you are doing it, you stand a better chance of enjoying what you are doing and achieving your goals in that specific area. And the daily (consistent) attention to finding enjoyment and achievement at work, in your community, with your family and with your friends – can provide you with satisfaction. That, in turn, can create a sense of well being that translates into living an integrated life.

Could it be as simple as that?!

Maybe!!

• Focus on what you are doing, where you are.
• Achieve the goal and then reflect on that achievement and enjoy it.
• Celebrate the big things (promotion, weight loss) and the little things (20 minutes of exercise, dinner with out rushing).
• Enjoy what you are doing when you are doing it.

You just might make yourself happy.

If You Have Too Much to Do - Make Sure You Are Doing the RIGHT Things

Time is a precious and finite commodity. You can't save it and you can’t manufacture more of it. You can only use it. The best use of this limited resource comes from mastering two keys tasks:

• Prioritizing the many demands on your time, and

 

• Using as many time management tools as you can.

 

It isn't always easy to get a handle on your time. And time is'nt really something you can manage. But activities can be managed.

How well do you use your time? You can inventory how you use your ‘non-productive time’ (driving, sleeping, eating, exercising, walking the dog, watching TV, surfing the Internet), and eliminate those things that are of no value. You can also inventory your use of productive time and figure out if you have the right priority assigned to things that you need to tackle (effectiveness) as well as review your skills in handling these items (efficiency).

 

With regard to accomplishing work objectives and increasing our productivity and effectiveness, it might be more appropriate to call Time Management, Work Management!

 

An easy way to get a handle on getting to the right things, is to try the following:

 

On a legal pad, list all of the things that you need to do. Keep an inch margin on the left hand side of the list. If you want to include personal items (send birthday card, pick out wallpaper), do so. If there are large tasks ahead of you, break them down into more manageable steps (rather than ‘design newsletter’, put down ‘select article topics for upcoming newsletter’).

• If there are any items that are time sensitive, write down the due date so you have that in front of you.

• Put today’s date at the top of the list.

• If you have more that one sheet of paper when you are done, don’t panic.

 

 

THEN –

 

• Go through the list and write a M in the left hand column next to any and every item that MUST get done today (upon penalty of death). Try not to put down more than 5 M’s.

 

• Rank the M’s in order of importance. These are the things that absolutely MUST get down today.

 

• Then you start with number 1. When it’s completed, cross it off the list.

 

• Don’t look down the list to find easy things to do (call Mary, return Bill’s call). Do the right (most important) things first. When you have completed all of the M’s, you can then go down the list to see what else to tackle.

 

• As new items come up, add them to the list. Determine where they fit; Are the M’s, or can they wait?

 

• At the end of each day, write a new list with a new group of M’s. If you didn’t get to your last M today, that becomes your first M tomorrow. If something has been on your list for two weeks and you haven’t gotten to it, either make it an M 1 tomorrow, or eliminate it from the list. It’s only making you feel guilty! It isn’t getting done and it isn’t important enough to you to get down.

 

 

 Why a pad of a paper and not you PDA, Blackberry or Smartphone? Because you can see the paper easily, take it with you, keep it plain sight, have it available on your desk, and the act of writing your list keeps the items in your mind while the act of crossing off completed items can be very satisfying.

 

 Try this for at least a week before you decide whether it will work for you. It’s deceptively simple, but also highly effective. Getting the right things done requires keeping your focus on the right things. Even if you come into work and find that there are fires that need to be put out and emergencies that require your attention, this simple system allows you to return to your plan after any distraction.

 

 

 

Girls and Boys Grow Up and Become Women and Men

Success on the job and effective working relationships depend upon good communication – which means talking, listening and asking good questions. Easier said than done! When men and women communicate, it can be like trying to understand someone from another country (or planets like Mars and Venus). Effective communication depends on understanding the culture and customs of your gender as well as those of the opposite gender. The problem is that both men and women think that the customs of the culture they grew up in are the right customs to follow.

 

Many of these customs or rules are invisible to us as adults. What we learned as children (Boys: be aggressive, deal with conflict and competition in win and lose terms, be leaders, take risks. Girls: be nice, avoid conflicts, build and preserve relationships, avoid risks, be fair to all.) does nave an impact on the way we communicate as adults at work

 

Women tend to use a more indirect form of speaking (“Don’t you think it would be a good idea to…?”, “I may be wrong, but…”) and men use a more direct way of speaking (Less questions, more assertions, direct verb forms such as “Can” or “Will”). What happens is that men tend to view women who speak this way as unsure of themselves. Women perceive men who speak that way as aggressive or authoritarian.

 

There are also gender differences when it comes to how people listen. Women tend to be perceived as better listeners than men because they are pros at empathic listening. Women listen for two things: content and feeling. Men tend to listen for the verbal transcript and while they can repeat verbatim the primary points made by the speaker, they often miss the emotional part and are more goal-oriented. They want to hear the end result and they want to fix it for the person.

 

Flexibility is the key to effective communication in all companies. Both men and women must expand their communication strategies so that they can be effective under a wide range of circumstances.

 

Women can –

 

• Learn to incorporate a direct style into their speech, using words such as “I”, “I want,” “I  think,” “I believe”.

 

• Know how to get to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. Eliminate unnecessary details if you are interacting with a man.

 

• Eliminate wishy-washy forms of speech: “kind of,” “sort of,” “maybe”.

 

• State opinions and don’t express them in a question form.

 

• Continue to share feelings but also state the facts clearly.

 

Men can –

 

• Incorporate some indirect styles of speech when interacting with women. Rather than saying, “This is the way to handle the problem,” try, “One way we might handle this problem is…”

• Ask a woman her perspective or opinion.

• Make sure men and women equally share “air time.”

• Openly express feelings and/or reactions.

• Listen without feeling responsible for problem solving. Offer understanding and empathy. Offer solutions and fixes only when asked. Ask a woman if she seeking your advice in solving a problem.