Here are some more photos of Ashley Bickford, Miss Rhode Island, who is competing later this month in the Miss America competition. You can vote for her once a day, no matter where you live, and those votes will help elect her as a finalist. Click on this link. We’re working together this week on interviewing skills.
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Does your boss demand that you fill in all free time on your calendar with business appointments? Is he or she tyrannical to the point of demanding excessive travel and incursions on your personal and family time? Does the boss make you travel coach and watch expenses like a hawk?
Why would you take the risks of independent consulting if all you have is a nine-to-five job with a surly and inconsiderate boss? My boss is wonderful. He allows me to schedule work around my personal life, family, and interests. He understands that it’s about quality, not quantity, and that I can be trusted to do the right thing. I come and go as I please and, as long as the results are there, he’s happy. In fact, he’s forgiving of failures and errors and treats them as unavoidable lessons on the road to success.
Many of you have bosses that would make Scrooge McDuck or Simon Legree seem worth seeking out for better working conditions. Why you take that kind of abuse and malice, I can’t imagine. It may be something in your need to prove yourself to the boss, or try to meet ridiculous expectations because you fear failing.
In any case, life’s too short to toil for lousy bosses. Confront your overly-controlling, overbearing, obnoxious, inconsiderate boss and tell him or her you’re moving on.
Do it now. Go look in the mirror.
© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.
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Members of SAC and the Mentor Roster and Blog visitors may be interested to know that APA Div 13, the Society of Consulting Psychology, has just extended the early-bird rate for the mid-winter conference to this Friday, 11 Jan 2008 at midnight EST. This is the conference where Alan Weiss was a keynote speaker on two occasions..
This year’s conference will take place from 8-10 February 2008 in Austin, Texas and the Theme is, “Leading Edge Consulting: New Ideas, Approaches, and Markets.” The Consulting Psychology Mid-Winter Conference is one of the best professional education events I attend every year. Most of all, the sessions provide practical tools and skills that can be implemented immediately.
Please inform the membership about this wonderful opportunity for anyone involved in organizational consulting. I am a member of the Consulting Psychology Board as Chair of the Media Relations Committee. I will also be speaking at the conference on a panel about “Gender Power, Dyads, and Triads.”
For more information about the conference please go to www.div13.org the Consulting Psychology web site. To sign-up, please contact Lorraine Reiff and Associates at 312-655-1150 or div13@lrieff.com. Their office is in Chicago.
Dr. Karen Y. Wilson-Starks
President and CEO
TRANSLEADERSHIP, INC.
PO Box 26534
Colorado Springs, CO 80936
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Who is more important, the one who acquire business or the one who delivers it? What is a corporate welfare state? Listen to Alan discuss these answers, the four characteristics of rainmakers and more.
Click on arrow below for podcast to start
Click Here for entire podcast series table of contents
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Well not really for me. But vote for Miss Rhode Island for Miss America. I’ve been coaching Ashley Bickford, whose picture appears elsewhere on this site, in interviewing skills. She won in that category (and virtually every other) to become Miss Rhode Island. Now she’s competing for the Miss America title on January 26, which is televised on TLC. (An installment is on every Friday at 10 Eastern leading up to the pageant.) I’ll be working with her twice this coming week to help her get ready.
So, please help out this wonderful young woman by going here to vote:
Thanks!
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Now here is an interesting agenda item from the conference noted:
1. Ethical and professionalism issues regarding the ever increasing the number of billable hours, including (a) the conflict of interest inherent in hourly billing; (b) the incentive for abuse caused by minimums and hours-based bonuses; (c) finding time for public obligations, such as pro bono and bar association activity; and (d) the importance of work/life balance.
ANNUAL MEETING PROGRAM
Sponsored by
The Committee on Attorney Professionalism THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2008
New York Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway, New York City
9:00 a.m.-12:35 p.m.
That was just one agenda item of several in a three-hour meeting!!
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The tribalism that we see racking Kenya—which was a stable, prosperous country two weeks ago, with a thriving tourism industry—we’ve seen in Rwanda, Iraq, Pakistan, Spain, the Balkans, and elsewhere, all over the world. This is what happens when ethnic allegiance is a stronger claim on one’s loyalty than national allegiance. It’s not hard to understand when many post-colonial geopolitical borders were arbitrarily drawn.
One of the strangest, most disingenuous presentations I’ve ever seen was when I was a keynoter at a national speakers’ convention in England where a speaker from Africa, complete with mood lighting and music, tried to convince the audience that we are better off with the values of tribes.
Say, what?
As consultants, we have to identify and eliminate the “tribalism” of our clients. Pogo would have made a great consultant, because many clients are their own worst enemies. But it takes a learned outsider to point that out. (Thank goodness!)
Here are some anti-tribalism techniques:
• Don’t allow people to talk about “accounting” or “sales” or “engineering.” Force them to use names, not labels. WHO in engineering is ignoring you? Surely the entire department isn’t conspiring against you, right?
• Senior managers have to accept their corporate accountability above any “silo” accountability. You can’t have a department getting a half-day off on the eve of a holiday while a department across the hall, watching them leave, is required to work a full day.
• Create and perpetuate cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams.
• Tell senior people to set the tone. Internecine bickering in pubic by executives immediately calcifies the tribalism. (I know of a company where the CEO and COO argued, with personal accusations, in front of the senior managers assembled.)
• Create incentive systems where everyone has a chance to win, not where I can only win if you lose. You don’t want “zero-sum” dynamics within the compensation system.
• Regularly and firmly rotate people among difference divisions. That should be a requirement for promotion in any case. NEVER let anyone make a career of human resources or any other staff position.
• Create meeting space, cafeteria space, and other public areas where people are forced to mix and mingle and there are no “elite” differentiators. Close the executive dining rooms.
Tribalism is the worst kind of corporate divisiveness. Most clients will readily agree to ending it, but they are unable to identify it. If your client succumbs to it, you can’t blame colonialism, but you can blame lousy leadership and shallow consulting.
© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.
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May the New Year:
• Bring you the confidence to know when you’re right and to admit when you’re wrong.
• Present more discretionary time than ever before.
• Provide insights that enable you to live a more productive life.
• Heal old wounds.
• Create a brand new, impassioned hobby.
• Take you to places you’ve never seen before.
• Return you to some of your favorite places.
• Sharpen your senses so that you have fewer unpleasant surprises.
• Allow deep passions to be justified and fulfilled.
• Play the songs that take you back to the happiest times of your life.
• Make you laugh out loud, no matter who is nearby.
• Deepen your friendships.
• Foster understanding and alleviate guilt.
• Deliver three fine options for every decision.
• Allow you to taste as much wine as you dare.
• Paint an occasional sunrise and sunset that you will never forget.
• Treat you to an accolade or award from those you respect the most.
• Challenge you, so that you thrive while succeeding and learn while failing.
• Tease you with hint of even better things to come next year.
• Enable you to love without limit or restraint.
Happy New Year, to this community of enlightenment.
== Alan
© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.
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