Liane Davey's Blog, page 7

How to Help Someone in a Bad Mood

Negative emotions are swirling around the workplace these days: overwhelm at the endless workload (and thoughtload), friction among coworkers, and stress from financial pressures. When negative emotions start swirling, it’s easy to get caught up in the emotional storm. I’ve shared the techniques you can use to prevent, limit, and recover from emotional contagion, but how can you help your colleagues work through their bad moods?

How NOT to Help Someone Who’s in a Bad Mood

Let’s start with what not to do because I see plenty of unhelpful help. Rather than improving your teammate’s spirits, these faux pas are more likely to intensify and lengthen a bad mood. Also, when you make these mistakes, you risk eroding your connection and trust.

Trying to Downplay the Negative Feelings

If you try to minimize the person’s negative feelings, you inadvertently tell them they’re overreacting. Even if you’re trying to be nice by saying something like, “It’ll be okay,” you’re shutting down the conversation and signaling that you’re not safe to talk to when they aren’t feeling their best. Don’t downplay it.

Rushing the Person Through Their Feelings

I know you’ve got a lot going on, and who has time to listen to a teammate complaining or fretting, right? But I promise you that rushing someone or pushing them to feel better quickly will only prolong the agony. If they don’t have time to unpack their feelings with you, they’ll find another outlet that might be more passive-aggressive and ultimately more destructive. Don’t rush it.

Attempting to Solve Their Problems

Nice people (and also pragmatic people) often try to remove people’s discomfort by solving the underlying problem for them. While that sounds helpful, your teammate might interpret it as your lack of confidence in them. It might feel condescending or like you’ve overstepped. Unless they ask for your assistance, stay passive. Don’t fix it.

Giving Advice

You might not try to fix the underlying cause of your teammate’s bad mood, but giving advice can be just as problematic. Often, advice misses the mark because you’re not an expert in their area, you lack context about the situation and the stakeholders, or your solutions work for you but not necessarily for someone else. Don’t own it.

How to Help Someone Cure Their Bad Mood

While many things you do (with the best of intentions) will exacerbate your colleague’s bad mood, there are ways to assist them as they work their way through their funk.

Each of these ideas follows this set of guiding principles:

Emotions contain valuable information, and as Nick Wignall suggests, it helps to address them as a puzzle rather than a problem.Suppressing emotions leads to more issues, whereas reappraising or reframing them creates positive outcomes.The thoughts and stories people wrap around their emotions matter most. Change the story, but don’t invalidate the emotion itself.It is overstepping to try to fix or solve someone else’s problems.

With that said, let’s jump into what you can do to assist.

Make the Space

If your colleague appears to be in a bad mood, carve out the time and find a safe space to help them reflect on what’s happening. Stick to describing what you see rather than making assumptions about their thoughts or feelings. For example, you might say, “I noticed you looked down a lot during that meeting. How were you processing the conversation?”

Question the Story

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, emotions themselves aren’t usually problematic; it’s the stories we attach to them that can cause a concern to escalate. You can help a colleague disentangle the emotion from their feelings by asking questions to get to the root of the issue and then encouraging them to try other interpretations.

For example, if they tell you they felt belittled in the meeting because the boss shut down their idea, you might say, “You’re concluding that Stewart doesn’t think you’re smart. What other explanations exist for why he didn’t take your idea?”

Alternatively, you can share your interpretation. “I sense that Stewart didn’t pick up on your idea because he was surprised by it. How could you revisit it with him once he’s had a chance to think about it more?”

Move them Forward

When your colleague is experiencing negative emotions, they might need a little help getting unstuck. My favorite questions provide gentle guidance forward. When the person is focused on what’s wrong, ask them to consider what might make things better. “What do you need?”

If they are circling the problem without lifting their eyes to the horizon, ask them what might be a first step in the right direction. “Where from here?” Using questions rather than offering up your answers or advice is a way of helping them process their emotional reaction without invalidating how they feel or taking ownership of their issue.

Model more Optimism

Once you have met your colleague where they’re at, you can lead them away from their negative feelings toward more constructive, positive, and even optimistic emotions. That’s because emotional contagion can reverse direction and you can begin to influence your teammate.

As your conversation progresses, shift your facial expressions and body language to be more positive. Sit up a little bit straighter, raise your brow, and smile. This pivot will be particularly effective if you pair the subtle changes in your body language with more positive, forward-looking things they say. You can reverse the polarity of the emotional contagion and share your good mood with them.

Conclusion

Sometimes, you might wish you had a magic wand to transform someone’s negative mood into a positive one immediately. Sadly, no such tool exists. But what you do have at your disposal is a magic mirror—a way to change a person’s mood by projecting a face you want them to reflect.

Additional Resources

10 Helpful Things To Do When You’re Overwhelmed

Getting Emotional in a Difficult Conversation

How to work with emotional data

 

The post How to Help Someone in a Bad Mood appeared first on Liane Davey.

Reduce the Impact of Emotional Contagion

There has been a rising emotional buzz in the workplace lately, for good reason. While it’s understandable that your colleagues might be angry, frustrated, sad, or anxious, how do you deal with it so your teammates’ stresses don’t become your own? How do you reduce the impact of emotional contagion?

If you haven’t read my previous post, here’s a quick refresher: Emotional contagion is the unconscious spread of emotions from one person to another. It’s not the same as empathy, where you understand someone’s feelings without experiencing them. Emotional contagion is the process of being infected by someone’s emotional state without knowing.

If that emotional virus you’re catching is positive, you might be happy to breathe it in, but what can you do if you’re exposed to a colleague’s negative feelings? There are a variety of techniques you can use to inoculate yourself from emotional contagion.

Let’s consider the strategies in order, from preventative medicine to in-the-moment protection to post-infection treatments.

Innoculate Yourself from Emotional Contagion

As an ongoing investment in emotional immunity, try the following:

Invest in your Resilience

When you are well-rested, energized, and in control of your emotional state, you’re less likely to be susceptible to the negative emotions of others. I notice this in myself. When I’m in a good phase, sleeping eight hours, on my exercise routine, I’m more aware of my emotional state and the impact others are having on me. I’m also better able to modulate my response.

Practice Mindfulness or Meditation

Emotional contagion seems to work through an intermediate mechanism of mirrored body language. When someone is sad, their brows furrow, their mouth sags, and their shoulders slump. You unconsciously mirror those expressions and postures, and your brain interprets that as your sadness.

If you are good at sensing what’s happening in your body, you can interrupt the progression from body language to emotions. Noticing your slumping shoulders (or angry, pinched face, etc.) can give you the opportunity to attribute your response to something other than your mood. But it takes practice to get in touch with your body; adding some form of mindfulness or meditation can help.

Protect Yourself from Negative Emotions

When you’re in the moment interacting with someone who is expressing negative emotions (either overtly or more subtly), these strategies will limit your exposure to their emotional state.

Acknowledge What You’re Seeing

Because emotional contagion happens without your realizing it, the faster you can label the negative emotion you’re seeing, the less likely it will spread to you. Rather than trying to attribute their behavior to a given emotion, they just zero in on what is directly observable. Are their pupils dilating, feet tapping, or eyes darting? Is their volume rising, fists clenching, or face reddening?

As you acknowledge the gestures, posture, and body language of their emotions, you can choose not to mirror them. (In the next post, I’ll discuss how you can reverse the direction and get them to follow your body language.)

Get Curious, Go Intellectual

Curiosity is a powerful antidote to almost any negative emotion, and this is a great time to deploy it. If you find the person’s behavior fascinating and start searching for its roots, you’ll be more cognitively engaged but less emotionally involved. Try asking yourself questions like, “What am I seeing here?” “Where might this be coming from?” “How are they interpreting this situation?”

Pay Attention to What’s Different

I’ll talk in another post about the factors that make you more or less susceptible to contracting someone else’s emotions. Let’s simplify it by saying that the more you relate to the person or identify with them, the stronger the emotional contagion. That gives rise to another strategy you can use in the moment: focus on what’s different between you.

When someone is feeling poorly, consider what allows you to feel good. It can be as simple as “She has young kids. I’ve had way more sleep than she has.” It can be, “I’ve got a stronger relationship with the boss, so I feel more confident.” To be clear, these are coping strategies you can use that will protect you from taking on the other person’s negative feelings. You are getting on top of your emotions so you can help the other person start to feel better. It’s not about saying, “Woah, sucks to be you!”

Recover from Emotional Contagion

Sometimes, you’ll notice that you feel bad without realizing it is happening. That’s when you need to be deliberate about managing your mood. Try

Interrupt the Emotion

You might use terms like emotions and feelings synonymously, but there’s a difference between the raw data your brain gets subconsciously as it scans your body (emotions) and the story you consciously create as you process emotions in the context of all of your past experiences (feelings). Our language is clumsy and crude and does you a disservice because it might lead you to believe that certain feelings are inevitable when they aren’t.

Once you separate the idea of an emotion and a feeling, even if you have taken on another person’s emotional state, you do not have to create the same narrative. When you interrupt the transfer from negative emotions to negative feelings and attributions, you can choose to behave in a way that helps you restore a positive mood.

Sync with Someone Else

If you’ve just been exposed to someone in a negative mood, seek out someone (or something) who will help you neutralize the effect. You could connect with a colleague or friend who buoys your spirits or go for a walk and listen to music that pumps you up.

Limit Your Exposure

Another choice you can make is to limit your exposure to a person who is continually passing on their negative mood. Even if you can recognize and reverse the effects of the emotional contagion, that process can be exhausting. Find a way to limit your interactions with the person, especially when your resilience might be low and your ability to ward off their negative emotional contagion compromised.

Conclusion

Preventing, mitigating, and recovering from emotional contagion takes effort and will likely require new skills. You can make a few better investments in your health, happiness, and productivity. Building your emotional intelligence to cope with emotional contagion will serve you well in all domains of your life.

Additional Resources

Managing Your Emotions at Work

Dealing with negative emotions

Dr. Tod Grande What are Emotions, Feeling, Affect, and Mood?

The post Reduce the Impact of Emotional Contagion appeared first on Liane Davey.

4 Tips for Managing Your Emotions at Work

 

Being emotional at work just means that you’re human. It’s not a bad thing. It’s not a problem. But if your emotions become so big or disruptive that they affect your productivity, reputation, or relationships, then you probably need to pay attention. Let’s go through the steps for how to manage your emotions maturely and constructively.

Before we get to this, it’s important to say that research shows that our old-fashioned version of what to do with emotions at work, which is to repress them, leads to negative health outcomes and all sorts of negative relationships with your team. In other words, don’t pretend you don’t have emotions. The research says what you want to do is reassess, work with, and work through your emotions, not pretend you don’t have them.

Focus on Breathing

You’ve heard this a million times, but our breathing is essential to our ability to kick into a more mature, grownup way of dealing with an emotion. You have to start with that. The only thing I can give you as a different tip from what you’ve read everywhere else is that when you’re triggered and emotional, you can often breathe very shallowly. You can’t get any air in when you try to take a deep breath. If you feel this way, focus instead on exhaling as hard as possible. After a big breath out, your body will naturally take in a nice, juicy breath of oxygen. So breathe first, but don’t try to take a deep breath; that will backfire. Go the other way and breathe out.

Check in With Yourself

You need to tune into what’s happening in your body and brain. Literally, where are you and what are you feeling? Are your palms sweating? Is your stomach feeling sick? Is your heart racing? And what are you thinking? What words are you mulling over? What loop is running through your mind? Tune into it. Don’t judge it and don’t be upset by it, just be fascinated by it; almost as if you were your own psychologist sitting on the couch watching yourself.

Come Up With Better Alternatives

The next question to ask is what do you feel like doing? What is your primal, immature brain telling you to do in this situation? Now, to be fair, we should give it some credit. It’s trying to protect you. Whether thinking about fighting, making yourself bigger, blowing yourself up to scare away whatever you’re emotional about, making yourself smaller, running away, or getting clear, it’s trying to keep you safe. It’s just not very sophisticated, and we want to know the urges so we can move to the next step, which is to develop better alternatives.

In other words, understand what your default is. What do you really want to do in that moment? It could be running away, screaming, or contradicting, but understanding your urges allows you to say, “Or, I could do this or this or that instead.”

What’s interesting about alternatives is research shows that if you deal with an emotional reaction and think of it as a challenge, you can overcome it. Instead of it being a threat you need to protect yourself from, much better things happen. Still, that is the challenge. For instance, what can you do if someone says something that feels critical, condescending, and embarrassing to you? Maybe your urge at that moment is to run away or to say nothing, or maybe back down. But what are your alternatives?

Let them know, “Hey, I don’t think the way you just said that is an accurate representation of my work.”Ask a question. “Alright, if you want my product to be better, what do you think I need to pay more attention to?”

There are a couple of alternatives.

Take Action

The final thing to do is do something. When we get anxious and our emotions take over, the worst thing we can do is sit still and ruminate and get stuck in it. We want to do something to move forward. So what is it? What action are you going to take? What’s the best thing you can do? And try to do something. To be fair, that doesn’t mean you have to do something with the person or a colleague at work. It may be that doing something is going for a quick walk. So you can act, you can act with that person, or you can act on your own; but do something to process that emotion, let it move through you.

If you have a big emotional reaction in front of your peers or in response to your boss or something like that, don’t apologize. Instead, thank the person for sticking with you or for something you can genuinely and legitimately thank them for. Try to do that. It’s just a way to end the conversation on a nice note. If you’re too emotional to do it in the moment, do it the next day. For example, send a note and say, “I want to thank you. I was working through a lot of really big emotions. I’m really grateful that you gave me a forum to share that.” Whatever it is, try to create a nice closure.

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We have big emotions, that’s a given, and not something that we want to try and repress because that makes things a lot worse. Instead, we want to breathe through it, determine where we’re feeling it or what we’re feeling, what we’re thinking, and figure out the difference between those urges, those things our primal brain is telling us to do, and the alternatives we have that offer much better ways of dealing with the situation. Managing emotions, no matter what, even if you learn how to do it well, still takes a lot of energy.

In my next post, I’ll discuss how to lower our emotional response and be less triggered. Check out managing your emotions at work for advice on how to do that.

More On This

Reduce the Impact of Emotional Contagion

Dealing with negative emotions

3 Benefits of dealing with emotions on your team

Video: How to Ask For Help at Work

The post 4 Tips for Managing Your Emotions at Work appeared first on Liane Davey.

Rising Emotions and the Risk of Emotional Contagion on Teams

“Have you noticed that teams are more emotional lately?” Craig asked at the dinner table recently. (Such conversations are common when you work with your spouse.) I hadn’t put words to it yet, but his question helped me acknowledge the weight I’d been feeling from facilitating conversations with a stronger emotional undertone than normal. Have you noticed it? Are the stakes feeling higher, fuses getting shorter, and skins thinner? How is the emotional tenor of your team affecting you?

Why Are People So Emotional at Work?

I’m not sure what dynamics are at play, but I suspect some combination of the following is what’s manifesting in more emotional individuals and teams:

People are increasingly overwhelmed by the amount of information they need to process and without the sense of accomplishment of feeling “done.”Our society and norms make it difficult to behave in a way that supports emotional self-regulation (too much distraction, sedentary lifestyles, poor quality food, sleep debt, and disruption)Those who work remotely experience persistent blurred lines between home and work, clouding the workday’s emotional tenor.Many workers are parenting children with anxiety or mood disorders and carrying the stress and emotional burden of their children’s struggles throughout their day.Individuals are bombarded by heightened emotions broadcast by media (and social media) algorithms that capitalize on the captivating effects of emotions.The movement to improve psychological safety in the workplace has helped normalize the expression of emotions that previously would have been stifled or masked.

On aggregate, the current emotional zeitgeist seems to combine increasing expectations, poor self-regulation, and greater tolerance for emotional expression. (I’d love to hear your observations and hypotheses in the comments.)

Regardless of the exact causes, I’m worried about the increase in the expression of negative emotions because emotions are contagious. The emotional state of one member can affect an entire team, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion.

What is Emotional Contagion?

Emotion contagion, first hypothesized by Hatfield (1993), occurs when one person’s observed behavior (expressions, vocalization, postures) leads first to the reflexive production of the same behaviors in another person and second to a shift in the second person’s mood shifts to match their own behaviors. Ultimately, the two people’s emotions converge.

Think of it this way: your teammate is experiencing strong emotions, which are manifest in their facial expressions, tone, and body language. You see these actions and, without knowing it, begin to mimic them. As your body language, tone, and expressions turn negative (furrowed brow, slumped shoulders), your brain interprets it as you feeling poorly. It’s a mood sandwich. (Mood burger?)

Behavior > Mood > Mood > Behavior

To be fair, emotional contagion works for negative and positive emotions, but the effect is more problematic for feelings with a negative valence.

Another important distinction is that emotional contagion is not the same as empathy. In emotional contagion, the observer begins to feel the same emotions as the target, often without conscious awareness of the convergence. On the other hand, empathy is when the observer can sense and understand the target’s feelings without experiencing them.  Cox et al. describe emotional contagion as “feeling with” and empathy as “feeling for” another person.

Why Does Emotional Contagion Matter?

You spend much of your life working, so if your colleagues bring you down, that’s a problem. That said, it’s not just a matter of morale. Multiple studies have shown that emotional contagion influences how you feel and what you subsequently think and do.

Suppose you’re working on a challenging project, and one of your colleagues stops by to unload their stress on you. In that case, the risk is that you not only start feeling stressed yourself but also that you stop working quite as hard, lose your creative spark, or abandon strategies before they’ve had a chance to work.

That can create a doom loop in your team where negative feelings lead to reduced productivity, which further depresses your mood.

The First Step in Managing Emotional Contagion

Pay attention to your colleagues’ emotional states for the next few days. Notice how your teammates’ moods, tones, and body language affect one another. Consider how your team leader’s moods and emotions affect you.

In the next post, I’ll share some techniques for managing your mood and keeping your team on a positive track.

Additional Resources

Dealing with negative emotions

3 Benefits of dealing with emotions on your team

Everybody Hurts

 

The post Rising Emotions and the Risk of Emotional Contagion on Teams appeared first on Liane Davey.

Dealing With Frustration at Work

 

Do you get frustrated at work? Do you experience that hot, horrible feeling of being blocked from achieving something you care about? Research says it’s the most common negative emotion that we feel in the workplace, so you probably do get frustrated from time to time. But how do you handle it professionally, like a grown-up? Because grown-ups do get frustrated: it’s how we deal with it that makes all the difference.

6 Tips for Dealing with Frustration at Work

I’m going to take you through a few tips, and then share three derailers—things that you might be tempted to do but are a bad idea.

Let’s start with what you should do.

1. Vent Out Energy

Don’t try to deal with the core issue that you’re frustrated about before you vent out some of that built-up energy. If you think about where the word ‘venting’ comes from—venting steam to prevent a dangerous explosion—you instead let out some of that steam in a way that’s safe and managed. That’s exactly what you want to do here, and how you vent depends on the kind of person you are:

Write it out. Open up a blank email with no name in the “to” line, and just let it fly. It’s not being sent to anyone, so write a scathing email with all the things you’re thinking about.If you’re an orderly person, use a blank piece of paper and organize a mind map linking your frustrations. This can really help.If you’re a social person, find somebody outside the team, preferably outside the organization, and let it rip. This is a safe place for you to vent.If you’re the type of person who needs to just walk it off, then take that brisk walk, or go to a kickboxing class at lunch.

Any of these things is a great way to get rid of 80% of what you’re feeling by venting it in a safe place. Now we’ve got 20% left.

2. Separate Fact from Fiction

The next step is to separate fact from fiction. Some of what you’re thinking about and feeling is probably based on true things. But some of it is the story you’re telling yourself and how you’ve made sense of the situation. If you can be honest with yourself, what you want to get to is which of those things are fact and which are fiction.

Here’s a secret: When you catch yourself using adjectives, like “You really rushed me, you were so rude,” these are fiction, story, and subjective. If you can get to “You only gave me 24 hours to turn that around,” then that’s a fact.

When you separate out a good chunk of the fiction or story you’re telling yourself, you get to the heart of the issue that was making you frustrated.

3. Frame the Problem

The third step is to frame the problem. In that earlier example, you started with “I was too rushed,” “I did bad quality work,” “It was embarrassing.” Then you went from “You rushed me” to “You only gave me a 24-hour turnaround time.”

Now you’re ready to articulate what the actual problem was: “I didn’t have sufficient time to feel proud of the work I did or to plan that work in a way that allowed me to deal with my other priorities.” You’ve framed the problem.

4. Figure Out Where Things Are Working

You may think the fourth step is to deal with the problem, but let me give you a fourth step to stick in the middle before that one, which is to figure out where things are working.

Once again, this step serves as another method to let off some of that emotional steam. It’s a kind of rebalancing because your focus is currently fixated on what isn’t working well. Take a moment to reflect on areas where things are working smoothly. For instance, in the 24-hour turnaround scenario, you might realize, “When given two days, I felt much better about my work. I could draft it one day, sleep on it, and make revisions. This approach made me feel better, alleviated stress, and allowed me to manage my other priorities effectively.”

5. Ask for Help

When you balance what’s not working, as framed in the problem, with what is working, where you’ve figured out a positive scenario, by the time you reach the fifth step—where you seek help, remedies, advice, or alternatives—you’ll feel more prepared and constructive.

This approach allows you to deliver the feedback more effectively. For example, “I noticed that when you gave me a 24-hour turnaround, I didn’t have the opportunity to sleep on it. I had a lot of other priorities to juggle or let people down, I wasn’t proud of the work I did. However, a couple of weeks ago, when I had 48 hours, the outcome was significantly better. Can I ask you to give me a 48-hour timeframe for future tasks?”

6. Take Control of One Thing

You may feel like this is the end. However, simply stating what needs to change isn’t as constructive as we’d like. Therefore, the sixth and final step involves doing one thing you can control. For example, you could decide to proactively check in two days before the deadline to ensure ample time for completion. Ending with a clear action plan helps to take ownership of the situation, shifting from frustration to productive grownup action.

Three Derailers

Now let’s look at those derailers that I promised at the beginning:

1. Pretending You Aren’t Frustrated

The first derailer I notice, and I know it stems from a good place, is when you attempt to pretend you’re not frustrated. You try to suck it up or wear a mask, and when people ask, “Are you okay?” you respond, “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” But you know what? It doesn’t work. People can tell you’re frustrated. There are many subtle and not-so-subtle cues. When we pretend everything’s fine, people invent their own narratives, which may be even less flattering than the truth. So don’t mask it.

2. Jumping Right into the Problem

Don’t jump straight into trying to solve the problem because, in that early stage of frustration, you probably don’t have a good sense of what the problem is. You’re basing it on that very emotional reaction and the story you’re telling yourself. The solutions you come up with in that moment probably won’t fit well with the actual problem. So get curious. And yes, “WTF?” counts as curious if you honestly want to know what the “F” is going on here. Not trying to solve the problem right away is an important step.

3. Moving on Without Learning

The last thing I see happening that’s unfortunate is that you survive this frustrating incident, you go home, you have a glass of wine, and you try to move on without learning from the situation. So take a minute to think about, “What got me frustrated there? What are my triggers? What are some things I can do to either make it less likely I’m going to be in that situation again, or to just know that that does happen?” Be prepared, set expectations so that you’re not as likely to be hijacked by those emotions.

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Dealing with frustration is something we probably all have to deal with more often than we’d like. First, vent, separate fact from fiction, frame up the problem, but also find situations and examples where things are working, and then go engage with the person. But make sure you walk away with one thing that you can do differently to make yourself feel better and don’t do those things that are going to derail you like pretending everything’s fine.

Got other messy emotional stuff you’re dealing with at work? Check out this post, how to handle feeling defensive.

More On This

How to respond to someone venting

What To Say to a Passive-aggressive Coworker

To Foster Trust, Ask for Help

Video: Managing Your Emotions at Work

The post Dealing With Frustration at Work appeared first on Liane Davey.

Outputs vs. Outcomes

 

Are you looking to accelerate your career? Do you want to get a raise, a promotion, or show that you’re moving up in an organization? Here’s something to think about: Most people starting their careers focus on getting things done.

Getting things done is important, but if you want to become highly valuable in your organization, worth more money, bonuses, and higher roles, then it’s not just about productivity. It’s about effectiveness. Both are important, but there’s a big difference between the two. You can’t be effective if you aren’t productive, but don’t stop by only focusing on productivity. You also need to consider what it takes to be effective.

Let’s talk about the difference, which I refer to as the difference between outputs and outcomes.

What are Outputs?

Outputs are the things that you control. They’re the results of your hard work, smarts, ingenuity, resourcefulness, and hustle. They’re things you can control, and if you create a lot of outputs, you’ll get lots of check marks from the boss too. But in some ways, by excelling at creating outputs, you’re making the team dependent on having you in that role. This makes it really hard if you want to be promoted out of that role. What you also need to think about is not just being productive, but being effective, and that’s about outcomes, not outputs.

What are Outcomes?

An outcome is something that happens after your output. You aren’t in control of outcomes. For instance, imagine you’re a salesperson and your output is that you made several outbound calls, booked client meetings, and gave presentations. All of these things are productive, but did any of them lead to a signed contract? This is the outcome.

You don’t have to jump all the way to a signed contract, either. For example, did any of the meetings lead to a sales-qualified lead or a proposal? We can look at leading indicators, outcomes, but the key thing is that you don’t control those things. You don’t get to sign the contract on behalf of the client. You don’t get to take the next meeting, which are outcomes that happen as a result of your work.

How to Balance Outputs and Outcomes

If you want your star to rise in an organization, you need to balance your focus on outputs and outcomes. And if at any point all of your hard work and all of those outputs aren’t leading to outcomes, then you need to reassess.

Think about what you focus on all week. Are you focused on outputs, and have you connected those to the outcomes you need? Talk to your manager to find out what outcomes you should prioritize. One of the best ways to know that is to understand how your manager is being measured. The ways that your manager is being evaluated likely create some of the key outcomes that you need to think about. Also, talk to your manager about what’s working and what’s not working. If, over time, you’re not seeing a connection between more output and the outcomes you’re looking for, then ask what you need to change. What’s a new approach?

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Balance what you pay attention to, what you measure, what you manage, where your energy goes between outputs, and being productive. Consistently ask if your productivity is leading to the things that are most important for your team and your business. That’s what’s going to set you apart as somebody who’s more strategic and more business-oriented, and that’s where career growth is going to come from.

Check out my next post to find out how to influence when you have no credibility.

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The post Outputs vs. Outcomes appeared first on Liane Davey.

Use Your Network to Boost Your Credibility

If you’re trying to be more influential, there are many things you can do to improve your credibility, enhance your logical arguments, and leverage emotions to make your ideas more compelling. But influence isn’t something you develop in isolation. There are ways to use your personal and professional network to boost your credibility and the persuasiveness of your argument.

When I use the term “network,” I’m referring to people you know or have contact with, including everyone from current managers and colleagues to high school friends on Facebook. Your network includes strong connections to people you know and trust and weaker ties to people you might only know through a mutual associate. You can benefit from any of those relationships when it comes to being more influential.

How to Build a Useful Network

Before we discuss how to leverage your network to be more influential, we should first discuss how to build the best possible network. Like most things in life, what you can get out of your network depends on what you put in. Use these approaches to build a network that will be valuable when you need it.

Connect

The biggest mistake you make is not solidifying a connection when you make it. For example, you meet someone at a conference, chat briefly, and then go your way without exchanging contacts. A year later, when you realize they were the person who told you about a vendor who would be helpful right now, you have no link back to them. (I have hundreds of people in this category who I wish I’d connected to on LinkedIn at the time.)

Search

Suppose your network has gaps relative to the work you’re doing or the career goals you have. In that case, you can seek out valuable connections through professional associations, chamber of commerce events, and, of course, LinkedIn. If you’re using LinkedIn, don’t send connection requests right away. Instead, follow the person’s posts for a while, comment, and contribute; once your name is familiar to them, customize an invite telling them why you’d value the connection. Make it specific, such as, “I’ve been reading your posts for a while, and I value your insights into the SaaS industry. I’m researching SaaS models in healthcare for my company and would love to connect.”

Document

When you make a connection, take a moment to note when, where, and why you interacted with the person. Jot down anything that will help you remember how they might be relevant to you (and how you might be of value to them). With these notes, finding opportunities to strengthen your connection will be easier.

How to Use Your Network to Be More Influential

No matter how impressive or sparse your network is, it can help you when you need to increase your clout. You can use it for any of the following:

Positioning

Positioning is about demonstrating credibility by association. You have a certain amount of credibility if you hold a CPA designation. You might have more credibility if you share that you completed your CPA training with Mandy Piper, the CFO of a critical customer your company is trying to win.

One caveat: Be careful with positioning. Irrelevant connections can feel like gratuitous name-dropping and cause resentment. Only name people for whom your association is legitimately relevant.

Sourcing

Sourcing is when you get information to boost the credibility of your argument. This might be facts and figures that strengthen your logical case or novel insights about the emotional components of the issue. As you’re presenting your case, specify where your insights came from by saying something like, “I wasn’t sure how to estimate the potential market size, so I reached out to Satnam at McKinsey, and he gave me these projections for the next five years.” Now, the decision-makers aren’t just relying on your credibility; they’re also factoring in Satnam’s.

Validating

Validating solicits your network’s help to stress-test your ideas and ensure they’ll hold up. You can look for generic reactions to the quality of your work or be specific about a stakeholder or an audience that might know better than you. To do that, you might say to the decision-makers, “I asked Bob in Finance to run through my budget, and he was confident that it would incorporate the appropriate amount of cushion.” Bob’s credibility with the decision-makers bolsters your own.

Assisting

The first three techniques involve the members of your network indirectly. Assisting is when a network member gets directly involved to help you persuade your audience. One typical example of this is when a salesperson asks for the support of a happy client to help convince a prospect to choose their solution over the competition.

When you ask a member of your network to get involved on your behalf, it can be a significant imposition, so use this approach sparingly. But when you’re negotiating on something critical and your own credibility is not going to get it over the line, having someone who can add a little extra oomph is very helpful.

How to Give Back to Your Network

If all you do is lean on your network for advice and favors, you’re likely to be perceived as self-centered and more of a taker than a giver. That’s a bad strategy. Instead, actively seek opportunities to loan your credibility to people in your sphere.

Say Nice Things

Take opportunities to share detailed positive feedback about people in your network. This kind of good news often travels fast and gets back to the person in a way that makes them feel good about themselves and you.

Share Relevant Information

When you see an interesting news article that might be relevant to an associate’s work, send it along. Add a quick note such as, “Saw this and thought of the work you’re doing on Indigenous partnerships. I thought it might be good support for your approach. All the best!”

Offer Help

When you connect with members of your network, be sure to offer your support and ask for specific ways that you might be of assistance.

Pay it Forward

It’s important to keep the virtuous cycle going by loaning your credibility to people who might benefit from your experience, relationships, or expertise.

When trying to convince an audience of the merits of your approach, it’s easy to make the mistake of going it alone. But when your standing isn’t sufficient to persuade the decision-makers, calling on your network can help you boost your credibility enough to get to “yes.”

Additional Resources

How Can I Be More Trustworthy?

How to Sell Your Strategic Idea

How to Influence Without Credibility

 

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How to Earn Respect at Work

So, you’re not getting enough respect from your manager? Don’t get me wrong; everyone deserves basic civility from their boss and coworkers, regardless of what they achieve. But if you want to be respected, that takes effort. And more than effort, it takes results. Here’s how to earn respect from your manager and your peers.

Levels of Respect from Your Manager

Consider different levels of respect you can earn—like levels you need to unlock in a game or rungs on a ladder you need to climb. Start with the first rung and constantly challenge yourself to move to the next.

Level 1: Are You Busy?

The most obvious (i.e., superficial) way to measure your worth is to track your activity. Are you busy? Are you showing up? Working long hours? Responding to emails in the evening and on weekends? Attending lots of meetings? Making many calls? Collecting reams of evidence? Writing many drafts?

Your manager will probably give you credit for your hustle.

Sure, you earn some respect for being active and for working hard. You can get an A for effort. But you might be trying to convince your manager that you’re “getting sh!t done” when really you’re just doing a lot of sh!t.

There’s a better measure.

Level 2: Are You Productive?

A more critical question is, are you turning activities into outputs?

Did you make the decision? Did you finish the report? Send the contract? Ship the code? Send the press release? Deliver the training? Flesh out the plan.

Your manager will likely give you even more credit for your accomplishments.

Getting things done deserves respect, but there’s more. As Stephen Covey said, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

Level 3: Are You Effective?

Is your ladder up against the right wall? That is, are your outputs creating the necessary outcomes?

Outcomes are the results of your efforts that are beyond your control. Because of that, I often hear people say, “Well, I can’t control that, so it’s unfair to evaluate me on it.”

An HR executive in a bank once argued to me that he couldn’t be responsible for whether managers improved the diversity of their hiring. He felt strongly that all he could do was provide the training and the rationale for more diversity because the decision was in their hands. I suggested that if that’s the case, we should stop measuring branch managers on how many mortgages and savings accounts they sell because they don’t have control over what the customers do. This was the same guy who complained that HR didn’t get the respect they deserved. Outputs aren’t outcomes.

When you show that your work drives desired outcomes, you earn the highest respect.

Balancing Activity, Outputs, and Outcomes

For your organization, outcomes are the most important thing to strive for. Suppose you can work two hours daily, send one proposal, and deliver a $10 million customer monthly. In that case, you are more valuable to the organization than someone who works ten hours a day, responds to five RFPs a week, and signs a $1 million customer each quarter.

In a perfect world, if you’ve found the magic formula to drive outcomes, you don’t need to prove yourself by delivering outputs or being overly active. The more outputs you deliver, the less people will monitor your activity. The more outcomes you deliver, the less they will track your outputs.

The sad thing is that it’s not a perfect world. Some managers only know how to track outputs and never stop to figure out whether the outputs are moving the needle on the outcomes that matter. Your peers might be getting kudos for climbing the ladder that leads nowhere.

Worse, some managers aren’t even focused on outputs because they’re so caught up in a traditional work ethic that they are more interested in activity than output. These are usually the managers who don’t have a clue about what they want other than they want to see you sweat. Those managers are just as besotted with the employees running in circles on the ground as those who’ve made meaningful progress up the steps.

If you have a manager who doesn’t know how to think about, let alone measure, the outcomes that prove your work is working, keep the faith. At some point, you’ll likely be rewarded with a better manager. In the meantime, be shrewd about highlighting your activity and outputs while you keep building a track record of delivering results.

Additional Resources

In the mirror: What does respect mean to me?

When Should I Manage Up

Nihar Chhaya wrote a really great article in HBR about earning respect from colleagues with more power than you.

 

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How to Be More Convincing

You’re leading an important project, and you’ve got one hour with the steering committee to get their approval for your plan. How should you maximize the time to increase the likelihood of getting the go-ahead? First, consider who’s in the room, what they pay attention to, and what they value. Then, pitch your plan in a way that makes you more convincing to them.

It sounds easy, but it’s more complicated than you think.

Most of us craft presentations with content and style that resonate with us but miss the mark with people in the audience. To make it worse, when it doesn’t land, we double down rather than adapt.

If you’re trying to influence multiple people simultaneously, anticipate how the audience is motivated differently than you and build something for everyone in your presentation.

Here’s how.

Individual Differences in What is Convincing

Before you walk into the room, consider who will be at the table and what matters most to them. If possible, talk with them in advance and get insight from others who know your decision-makers.

Form a hypothesis about which broad category each audience member fits into and build your approach accordingly. If you’re interested, here’s a quick overview of the tool I use to assess the thinking styles of people on the teams I work with.

Type 1: Big Thinkers

Who they are: Big thinkers are the folks in the room who live in the world of what could be. They embrace the art of the possible and are willing to dream beyond what is.

Key to your logical argument: Big thinkers must understand your picture of the future. Therefore, you want to include trends and scenarios to help them assess your idea’s potential. They will focus on why questions: Why is this the right idea? Why now?

Positive emotions to draw on: Paint a picture of how the world will be better with your plan in place. Connect to their optimism.

Negative emotions to manage: Big thinkers sometimes get stuck in their complex worldview. As a result, they might worry that there’s something your plan hasn’t considered or that it’s not yet as good as it could be. A big thinker will worry that it’s not enough or not ready.

Questions to ask: If a big thinker starts spinning their wheels, ask questions to help them set boundaries on what’s possible. “If we want to get this to 80%, what else do you think we need to include?” “What would be the most important risk we need to manage?” Pose these questions to the room so others can help you convince the big thinker that the plan is sufficient.

Managing the big thinkers in the room is all about managing their energy. When you have them onside, they will help convince the room that your plan is valuable. If you don’t manage their fears, then their anxiety about what has been missed can quickly suck the air out of the room.

Type 2: Organizers

Who they are: Organizers are the people who want the world to make sense. They like predictability, fairness, and detail and are focused on bringing order to chaos.

Key to your logical argument: Unlike the big thinkers, the organizers are less concerned with why your plan makes sense and more focused on what it will take to make it happen. Therefore, they will focus on how questions: How do you define that? How will this rollout? How will we get it done? Organizers benefit from having additional details in an appendix.

Positive emotions to draw on: Include information that shows the organizers that your plan is well thought out and that you’ve considered the essential details.

Negative emotions to manage: Sometimes, organizers get stuck in their need for predictability. That is, they might worry that there are risks you haven’t anticipated or mitigated. An organizer will worry that it’s uncertain or unfair.

Questions to ask: If an organizer digs in, ask questions to help them articulate the risks they feel. “Where do we need to get more specific?” “What scenarios have we not yet considered?” “What is the risk of not moving forward?” Again, pose these questions to the room so others can address the organizer’s concerns.

Managing the organizer is all about convincing them that you’ve gone through an adequate planning process to manage the risks of the situation. If you don’t manage their fears, they will become rigid and put the brakes on the process.

Type 3: Influencers

Who they are: Influencers are the people who want to change things for the better. They like variety, momentum, and attention and are focused on winning.

Key to your logical argument: Influencers are much less interested in why or how and much more interested in how your plan will create an advantage—for your business or them personally. They will focus on the following questions: Who is the competition? Who benefits? Who would need to be involved? Components such as a competitive analysis or a stakeholder map can be very effective with influencers.

Positive emotions to draw on: The excitement for an influencer is tied to how your plan will change your standing. Include information demonstrating how your relative position on a given measure will change. If you can do this visually, with an “up and to the right” type of graph, all the better.

Negative emotions to manage: Sometimes, influencers get stuck in their need for bold moves. They might feel like the plans aren’t big enough to make an impact. An influencer will worry that it’s the same old, same old.

Questions to ask: If an influencer loses their mojo, ask questions to help them express their ideas for making the plan more compelling. “Who should we set our sights on?” “What is the opportunity you think we could capitalize on?” “What would be a good first step?” You might need the help of others in the room to convince the influencer that you don’t have to achieve everything with the first step.

Managing the influencer is about making them feel like the plan will make them (and the team) look good. If you don’t manage their fears, they might go rogue and squash your plan or launch a competing one.

Type 4: Expediters

Who they are: Expediters are the people who want to get going. They like practicality, action, and forward momentum.

Key to your logical argument: Expediters often don’t need as much convincing as others in the room. They need to know the next steps, and then they’re ready to go. They will focus on the what questions. “What does that look like? “What do I need to do?” “What is the priority?”

Positive emotions to draw on: Expediters naturally have high energy. Tap into that by giving them a logical, practical, no-BS plan that they can picture themselves implementing.

Negative emotions to manage: Sometimes, expediters get frustrated if others aren’t willing to act as quickly as they are. They might feel like others are overthinking things. An expediter will worry that it’s going too slowly or getting murky.

Questions to ask: If an expediter starts getting impatient, ask questions to help them clarify where things feel ambiguous or overly heavy. “Where is it not clear?” “How are we overcomplicating things?” “What risks might we need to understand better?” The other people in the room can help you manage an influencer who might be trying to move recklessly fast.

Managing the expediter is all about showing progress. If you don’t manage their energy, they might become frustrated with the process and derail a healthy decision-making process.

Conclusion

Don’t think that all decision-makers are equal. Ensure your presentation includes different components of your logical case, draws on various forms of emotional upside, and allows for other forms of risk. One thing I should have said earlier is to use an overview slide to describe each of the different components you’re going to cover so each person knows that the key information for them is coming. And don’t forget to go in with a list of questions to help you respond and keep the discussion moving forward. That way, you’ll have the best chance of convincing the audience to approve your plan.

Additional Resources

How to Sell Your Strategic Idea

Stop Trying to Sound Strategic!

How to Become More Self-aware

 

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Credibility Is the Key to Influence at Work

 

Do you need to be influential or persuasive? Are you striving to convince people at work, only to find it’s often an uphill battle? The problem might not lie in the quality of your argument but in something more fundamental: your credibility with those you’re trying to influence.

Building on Credibility

When we have to persuade someone, sell our idea, or get somebody to agree to go along with something, most of us focus heavily on the strength of our argument. We want it to be very logical. We want it to be supported by robust evidence and perhaps infused with an emotional story for why it’s the only way to go.

Logic and emotion are important parts of an effective influence strategy, but they’re things that we build on top of our foundation of credibility. If that foundation is shaky, our entire argument could crumble.

Assessing Your Credibility

I want you to reflect on your credibility with the stakeholders that you’re seeking to sway. What do you think it is? Do you ask this question often enough? While you might sense your credibility intuitively at times, have you thought about it more clinically, or from a more objective standpoint?

Understanding Credibility

Credibility is interesting. We talk about people having it or not, like a fixed trait—an inherent characteristic. For instance, I may have it or not as an expert with a YouTube channel. I may think that my PhD in Organizational Psychology makes me credible. And this is a great example because it makes me credible in certain circles, like with bankers and scientists who are quick to ensure that PhD is after my name. They value it. It means something to them. It gives me credibility. But this isn’t true in many audiences.

I recently spoke to a big organization from the trucking industry, for instance. Now, walking up onto the stage to address people who work in the fleet long-haul trucking industry and touting my PhD and a bunch of lab research I did 25 years ago doesn’t bolster my credibility. It actually erodes it, and that’s a painful, but important reminder that credibility is not a static, objective characteristic. It’s in the eye of the beholder. Your credibility is different in every relationship you have.

Evaluating Your Influence

I want you to do exactly what I just did, think about the key people that you need to influence, and ask two questions:

What gives me credibility with these people?What detracts from my credibility?

It can be hard to realize that something in the asset column with one stakeholder is in the liability column with another, but it’s important. It’s important to know what enhances and detracts from your credibility with each stakeholder, to understand which aspects of yourself to highlight and which to downplay, and what work you need to do to socialize your background and expertise beforehand so that it fits with the expectations of your audience.

Nurturing Credibility

Imagine credibility as the quality of soil for planting seeds of influence. Have you done what you need to do in advance to make sure when you plant that seed, it’s ready to grow? Some relationships may resemble planting the seed in clay. There’s nothing. They aren’t budging. There’s no support, no opportunity for that idea to sprout. This is what makes thinking about your credibility and how it varies among different people so important.

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In my next post, How to Ask For Help at Work, I dive into strategies for influencing when credibility is lacking.

More On This

How to Sell Your Strategic Idea

Everyone is Pitching Something. Including You.

Checklist for effective one-way communication

Video: 3 Ways to Prevent Coworkers Feeling Unheard at Work

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