Working On Me

When people tell us that they appreciate the way we look or have acted, it generally creates a feeling of considerable wellbeing. You will probably be able to recall times when people have complimented you, although your memories of what prompted the compliments might be less clear. This is a measure of the impact compliments can have. Generally, however, compliments are rarely made or received skilfully and getting better can make a big difference to ho people perceive you.

People are rather poor at receiving compliments. Here are some typically dreadful ways to respond to a compliment:

• “No, not me. You’re thinking of someone else.”
• “Oh, it was nothing.”
• “What are you after?”
• “I thought you were wonderful too.”

When you respond to a compliment with self-denigration, it is as much of a rebuff to the person giving the compliment as it is to yourself. When you respond with evident suspicion, you are not only rejecting the compliment, but also insulting the person making it. When you respond with a compliment in return, even if it is sincere there is a risk that it will not be seen as such. It is not clear that you felt strongly enough to have spoken had you not been prompted to by the person complimenting you. In any event, by immediately focusing elsewhere, you are devaluing the compliment and risk offending the person giving it. Each of these responses makes it harder for the person to compliment you on something else at another time and may cause resentment. If you genuinely do need to compliment them as well, save it for another day.

Receiving a compliment can feel awkward. You have to say something, and in our culture we see it as important not to appear conceited. The best way to receive a compliment is simply by thanking the person giving it. You can elaborate by sharing your feelings at receiving it if you like. So, if a co-worker compliments you on a presentation you made, here are some ways to acknowledge it:

• “Thank you.”
• “Thank you. I worked very hard on it and I am delighted you liked it.”
• “Thank you. That has made my day!”

When a compliment is badly made, it is usually because the intentions of the person giving it are wrong. To give a compliment well, you need to genuinely appreciate the quality, actions or behaviour in question. If you don’t, the compliment is insincere, and few people are able convincingly to fake sincerity. Even if you are sincere in your appreciation, the person you are complimenting may have become jaded from too many insincere compliments in the past, so you’ll need to be very clear.

I suggest a structure to your compliments that has three parts:

1. An expression of appreciation
2. A reason for it
3. A question about it

Here’s how that would look if you are complimenting someone on a new coat:

1. “I love your new coat…”
2. “…because it fits you beautifully and gives you a really elegant look…”
3. “…where did you get it?”

And if you were praising someone’s work, it might look like this:

1. “The work you did on the marketing campaign was great…”
2. “…because it really helped me see why the main messages were important…”
3. “…what is the next stage of the campaign?”

It can be seen that the expression of appreciation – usually all you get in a compliment – is really only an introduction to the compliment. When you add a reason, you are justifying your comment with evidence, establishing sincerity. The role of the question at the end is to save the embarrassment of the person you are complimenting who may not know how to receive a compliment properly. It should save them from falling into the various traps we covered earlier.

When you become good at giving compliments, people begin to appreciate you more, and look for reasons to compliment you back. When you become good at receiving compliments, people want to give you more too because you seem to genuinely appreciate them. And the best part of this is that compliments cost nothing at all, and there’s an unlimited supply of them. Catch someone doing something good whenever you can.

For the first time on this blog, I present some fiction. Dear Santa is a seasonal but satirical story. One evening, I had been watching the television news, which made me rather angry. I turned off the TV and started writing, and this story is what emerged.

Every blogger with an interest in goal setting will at some point write a post on the SMART principle. You’ll see differing versions of what this acronym stands for. Here is mine:

S = specific
M = measurable
A = achievable
R = relevant
T = time-bound

Most people’s versions have A as achievable with R as realistic, which I’ve always thought simply says the same thing twice.

My vote for the most important feature of goals is R for relevant. Unless you can establish your goal’s relevance, however carefully you make it specific, measurable and time-bound and however achievable it seems, you are unlikely to actually get there.

Why not? Well, because it’s not relevant to you. It doesn’t fit in with your purpose, or perhaps your values; it’s not compatible with who you are.

So when you are putting together your goals, first establish their relevance.

In my last post, I looked at measuring your management worth. Once the people you manage are used to answering the question I proposed in that article, you can introduce two more. Here is the first:

What else could I be doing that would help you get a better result?

This will let you identify further management wins, but you'll have to make sure you agree that what your people are suggesting would be worthwhile.

Here is the next question:

What have I done that has hampered your ability or the team's ability to get the best result?

If you are a manager, it is often difficult to measure your contribution to the team's results in a meaningful way. You have to try, of course, because at evaluation time, or when the company decides to restructure, such data could be vital.

They key to the whole business is asking one question to people in your team regularly and consistently. It is this:

Can  you give me some examples of actions I have taken that have allowed you or the team to get a better result?

The part about getting people to give examples is really important. Leave it out and you'll get generalisations that you can't quantify at all. Actual examples let you follow up on exatly what difference resulted and it should be easy to assign this a cash value.

Zig Ziglar said, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” He knows the power of WIFFM. Pronounced ‘wiffum’, this is an acronym that stands for “What’s In It For Me?”

You are probably used to asking people to do things, whatever your role in work or at home. You either have co-workers, subordinates, bosses or family members who have it in their power to do something that would help you. For instance, if your boss were available at a set time each day for you to discuss problems or refer for help, it would let you organise your day better. If a teenage son would stop using his bedroom floor as a combined cupboard and bin, it would allow you to vacuum his room in half the time.

But here is the thing. Does your boss really care very much about making it easier for you to organise your day? Does your son really care about how long it takes you to vacuum his room? In the case of your son, you could probably try shouting a bit (you probably already have) and you may get some short term compliance, but it will be resentful and short-lived. You could probably shout at your boss, too, but this is not a recommended strategy.

Instead, both of these people need to know their WIIFM. If the boss makes a set time available, how will it help HER? If your son keeps his floor clear, how will it help HIM? They are far more likely to act to secure benefits for themselves than to secure benefits for you.

It is down to you to find that WIIFM and give it to them with your request. For example, you might suggest to your boss that if she were to set aside 30 minutes at the same time every day for queries from her team, she would have to put up with far fewer interruptions throughout the day and as a result be able to achieve more. For your son, how about suggesting that currently it takes too long for you to vacuum his floor because of all the things which are on it rather than stowed away, so from now on it is up to him to undertake the task every week? Alternatively, if he were to keep his floor clear of debris, you would be able to vacuum for him.

Bear in mind here that you are not pretending that all your actions are motivated by altruism. Don’t try to disguise the fact that these actions will benefit you as well. But by giving people a reason that benefits them you are far more likely to get what you want.

You can accomplish phenomenal amounts in a single day if you try to, and if you apply a simple method.

Take a plain sheet of paper write at the top of it:

“What are my goals for today?”

Let your mind range free and wander where it will as you read and reread that question and look at the empty page. Before very long, you will find yourself thinking of a whole stream of things you want to accomplish. Write them down as they occur to you, and keep going, even if you suspect you’ve gone beyond the achievable. When the stream dries up, stop; don’t force it.

Make sure what you are writing down are goals rather than simply tasks. For instance, “buy groceries” is a task, whereas “have food cupboards stocked” is a goal. “Tidy my desk” is a task, while “have a tidy desk” is a goal. It’s a subtle point, and it’s not something to beat yourself up over, but it can make a big difference to you psychologically. This is because when you make a list of tasks, you are focusing on the work you will have to do, but when you make a list of goals, your focus is on the outcome, the achievement. Which is the more motivational to a climber – the thought of the climb itself, or the image of attaining the peak?

Once you have your list of today’s goals, set about achieving them in whatever order you like, in whatever way seems best to you. And here is another benefit of listing outcomes rather than tasks. By writing “have food cupboards stocked” instead of “buy groceries”, it is more likely that it will occur to you to have this goal achieved in some other way, like getting your partner or children to do it for you.

You’ll be amazed at how much of the list you will achieve on that first day. You may have to do a second list, and if you do, head it:

“What are my goals for the rest of today?”

If you don’t finish your list, you’ve got the first few items for tomorrow’s list, but you’ll find over time that you’ll unconsciously limit yourself to what you know is achievable in a day.

Suddenly, you are achieving more in a day than you are used to achieving some weeks, and you may wonder why. Part of the answer lies in your focus on the outcome rather than the task, but there is another reason. Without this technique, every time you finish a task, you spend a certain amount of time casting around, looking for what you should be doing next, considering alternatives, and then when you decide on a task, getting into the right mental gear to perform it. This is the case even if you are operating a “to do” list. With this new system, you eliminate virtually all of that activity, which typically takes more time than the task itself.

As soon as you write down your list of daily goals, a small, hitherto underused part of your unconscious mind starts working and planning behind the scenes. Without consciously taking any time or effort, you’ll find yourself naturally doing things in a sensible order, and you’ll find that as you move on to a new goal, you are already mentally prepared to dive straight in.

Practice this for a few days, and you’ll find enormous benefits which will last you for a lifetime.

If you are working in a company, it is often hard to get your ideas adopted by those above you. Some years ago, I stumbled on a technique that helped me get far more of my ideas supported. Put simply, you have to be the second person advocating the idea, not the first.

Let's imagine that I have a coworker doing a similar job to me (let's call her Alice) and let's imagine that I have an idea that will have a big positive impact on me and my team, and a smaller - yet still positive - impact on Alice. In the old days, I would have marched up to the boss and outlined my idea. I'd have been enthusuastic and persuasive. But my boss didn't get to his position by acting on one person's opinion. He would have realised the idea would have an impact on Alice, too, and would have asked her how she felt about the idea. 

And here is the problem. Even if Alice thought it was a great idea, she wouldn't have spoken with the same passion and persuasiveness that I did. The boss would leave Alice having cooled off considerably, my idea consigned to his 'maybe one day' file.

What I learned to do was to share the idea with Alice first, and convince Alice to go and suggest it to the boss. That way, when the boss asked for my opinion, he got the full-on, passionate advocacy that ensured he would view the idea as an urgent opportunity.

When I started applying this regularly, I found that more of my ideas were put on the fast track and as a result my job became far easier. As counterintuitive as it may seem, sometimes second is best.