As a child and young adult I was very independent. Regardless of the situation, if I was doing something I was determined to do it myself and not ask for anyone's help. In my eyes asking for someone's help was akin to admitting defeat or somehow showing others that I was weak or incompetent. My attitude was "If someone else can do it, I can do it". How Naive.
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What we learned was more than what we had anticipated; not necessarily about their purchases, but about how they worked and the importance of urgency versus importance in their jobs.
Recently I was asked by a journalist how I practiced public speaking. At this point in my life, getting up in front of an audience is pretty much second nature. However, it wasn't always so. I had to work hard at the skill and had to fail A LOT before I found my schtick and was able to get pretty OK at it.
Here are the highlights from the interview along with six take-aways to help you be a better public speaker.
Within a few months of my open door policy, I saw my own productivity drop and my frustration level rise because I kept getting interrupted by people taking me up on my open-door policy. My open-door policy soon turned into a series of random interruptions that caused me to not get my stuff done. I came to recognize that I needed to be accessible to people but that I could control the accessibility through scheduled time. Open-door means be accessible, not come in whenever you want.
So let's cut to the chase...
You may be a great consultant, one who effectively applies his or her wisdom and experience to help his or her client solve some tough business problem. That's all fine and well. When it comes to facilitation, though, it's a different ballgame and a very different approach to problem solving. I like to think of the difference as follows:
Jane was a group manager over a team of six buyers for a large department store chain. Her team specialized in buying house-wares, including linens, sheets, towels and small appliances. Her team met every week to discuss advertised specials for upcoming weeks and any supplier issues that the team needed to be aware of. There was one linens supplier, Patty’s Linens, that has had some difficulty with product quality and the department store was experiencing higher-than-normal returns on the product. Two weeks earlier, the supplier submitted a plan for how they were going to improve the quality of their product. The department store decided to keep the supplier on for three more months to evaluate their plan and give the supplier an opportunity to resolve the quality issues. With this as backdrop, we eavesdrop on Jane’s current team meeting:
Unless you excused yourself for whatever reason you were there for at least fifteen minutes listening to his philosophy. The problem was that Moe was friends with the person managing our contract so we had to put up with him.
So everything isn't always peachy keen when it comes to working together. At times co-workers are going to get in each others' face and have some conflict. As a bystander, there's some things you can do and not do to help put out the co-worker fire:
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