Halelly Azulay

“Doing more with less” has become a common phrase in the workplace and often has a negative connotation… but it doesn’t have to. Working within constraints nudges people to look for creative solutions, and thus is the focus of Positive Business DC’s February 11 Meetup featuring Halelly Azulay, author of Employee Development on A Shoestring.

While classroom and online training are popular and first-in-mind development methods, they can be costly and complex. In addition to possibly being out of reach for budgetary and cost-to-productivity reasons, classroom and online training may not be the only or the best way to address learning needs even when they are available.

Employee Development on A Shoestring explores other, non-training ways to develop employees on a tight budget. During the Meetup, Azulay will share the pros and cons of various non-training development methods, consider the requirements of three specific employee development ideas, and set a framework that enables attendees to develop a strategy for implementing employee development methods that result in motivated, engaged employees without breaking the bank. Attendees will learn how to:

1. Identify and assess various employee development methods that can be applied outside the classroom and on a tight budget.
2. Analyze three specific examples of non-training employee development methods.
3. Develop a strategy for incorporating new development methods for your employees.

 
The February 11 Meetup will run from 6:30 to 8:30 pm and will be held at the Shirlington Library located at 4200 Campbell Avenue in Arlington, VA. Registration is free. If you have specific questions you would like addressed during the Meetup, you can submit them on the Positive Business DC Meetup site.

In addition to authoring Employee Development on A Shoestring, Azulay is a consultant, facilitator, and speaker with over 20 years of professional experience in the fields of workplace learning and communication in corporate, government, regulatory, nonprofit and academic organizations. She is the president of TalentGrow LLC, a consulting company focused on developing leaders and teams to improve the human side of work. TalentGrow specializes in leadership, communication skills, team building, facilitation, coaching, and emotional intelligence.

We wanted to give you something that would help make your life a little better next year.   Keep these things in mind when you are crafting your New Year’s Resolutions.

1. Give something away.  It makes you happier than buying something for yourself.  College students were given money to either give away or spend on themselves.  Guess which group was happier.  When we buy stuff, we always think it will make us happier, for a longer period of time, than it actually does.  Think – what did you give for the holidays versus what did you get?
2. Give an experience.  If you are going to give something away, research shows that giving someone an experience versus a thing you can hold, makes people happier.  It also makes people happier to be with others (even if you are an introvert).  For example I gave my husband a trip around a racetrack for his birthday one year.  He’s still talking about it.
3. Stop watching the news.  It’s depressing.  There is a ratio of 27:1 negative to positive news.  So no wonder you’re depressed watching it or reading about it.  You’ll find out about the important things eventually.  And with all that free time you could do something that actually makes you happier.
4. Spice Up That Date Night.  Don’t do the thing you always do – dinner and a movie.  Do something new.  Do something active.  Research shows that couples are happier when they do something novel together.
5. Fight Your Confirmation Bias.  What is that, you ask?  It’s your tendency to always confirm your own beliefs and ignore facts that don’t fit your beliefs.  For example, I will get an email and KNOW someone is upset with something.  When I consult my husband he invariably asks, “What did the email actually say?”  And he’s usually right.  Play the ‘devil’s advocate’ when there is a situation in which the facts are a bit fuzzy.
6. Manage Up.  It’s gotta be done so don’t wimp out on that conversation.  But be saavy.  Learn what makes your boss tick before you do.  Is there a way this person likes to communicate?  Phone/email/instant message?  What are this person’s strengths?  And what is the specific thing you are asking for (within reason)?  Then start with asking their perspective.  Because it’s not a conversation until you ask a question.
7. Sleep More.  This is a ‘duh’ research finding.  But Tom Rath encapsulates loads of research in his book Eat Sleep Move that you are warding off depression, processing things you’ve learned, performing better at work and at home with just a few extra Z’s.
8. Move more.  Like the above, we all know we should get more movement in our day, but did you know you can actually fight off cancer by vigorously exercising 30 minutes/day?  Not to mention people who exercise do better on academic tests.  (Read:  You’re smarter than a couch potato.)  Better than a pill, that exercising thing.
9. Plan Your Meetings Ahead of Time.  A lot of your day is spent in meetings.  We get it.  You barely have time to breathe, nonetheless have time to Google the person you are meeting with.  But in order to make your life more productive, you’ll need to plan ahead.  What topics are you going to cover?  How much time will they take?  Who is speaking to them?  Who is taking notes? Facilitating? Keeping time?  (Hint:  These last three should not all be the same person.)
10. Create a “Grati-do” list – I get stressed out just looking at all the of the things that I need to get done.  Even crossing them off doesn’t make me feel better.  I just replace that item with something else.  So in my phone, I’ve created a list that I add to with all the things I’m grateful for.  And looking back on the list when I open it makes me happy all over again.  Oh, yes, I remember when my daughter first said ‘Mama’.  It’s one list that you can add to forever.  And it helps you know what makes you happy, so you can do more of those things (i.e. being in nature, being with family, etc.)
11. Create your “To NOT do” list – I am very good at putting things on my list.  But not very good at taking them off.  And the more I add, the most stressed I get.  As the old adage goes, “Less is more.”  So go through your list and see (as Julie Morgenstern says) what you can ‘Delete, Delay, Delegate, or Diminsh.’  You’ll never be happier underachieving.
12. Vision Your Future.   Imagine yourself 5 years from now and everything is going just as you wanted it to.  Even better, actually, at work and at home.  What does it look like?  Who is with you?  Take 15 minutes to write that down and be as specific as possible.
13. Ask yourself provocative questions.  Before crafting your New Years Resolutions, try asking yourself this:  What is the smallest change you could make to your life next year (work or home) that would have the biggest impact?
14. If there is one thing you do next year to make yourself happier and more productive, it is MEDITATE.  I spoke with meditation expert Sharon Salzberg and she said the latest neuroscience research shows that all you need to change your brain is 30 minutes/week and it doesn’t have to be all at once.  “Short moments, many times.”  And check out her new book called Real Happiness at Work.

There are many lists for the new year….take a look at the ones on this list that resonate with you.  Choose one or two.  And commit to them.  Change takes about 21 days.  So try them out and let us know how it goes.

As an entrepreneur owner-manager, do you ever wonder, “Hmm…will I ever get this business to achieve a wealth creation event, someday? It sure would be nice to think that all of the passion, effort, and sweat, not to mention cash I have risked in this business, would result in a capital gain where I could get some serious chips off the table, and get out of my day-to-day responsibilities. Now that would be a great goal to achieve.” Wouldn’t it?

Or would it? For seasoned, successful owner-managers, does the fun and flourishing in life come from achieving goals or striving for goals? Can the entrepreneur’s life arc mature to the point that you achieve a wealth building transaction, and then possibly take another step forward into a whole new arc of achievement? We believe it can. Yet, virtually every friend/client of ours has underestimated just how much upheaval, sense of loss, change in role, potential loss of purpose, and confusion of identity can happen after an owner-manager achieves a successful wealth creation transaction. And the identity change isn’t usually merely the owner-manager—it is often an identity change for the entire family. An owner-manager’s whole community of relationships will change. These are issues to be taken seriously. It is hard work and it’s challenging but it’s worth it to be painfully honest with yourself now, to think through issues in advance that will so unmistakably affect the future quality of your long life.

What we are saying is this: since medical technology is changing at an exponential rate, it’s likely you will live a long time—much longer than you thought. If you are 45 or 50, you may just be reaching middle age. Literally. The old concept of freedom from work, having no work to do, has been a persistent ideal throughout human history. Yet Aristotle said the two most prevalent causes of human misery are these: one, not having the right sort of work to do that calls upon one’s abilities and develops oneself; and two, having time on one’s hands to kill or burn. The happy individual then, in the Aristotelian definition, is one who enjoys the work he is doing, and has no time to kill or burn. This is consistent with our experience—for an owner-manager to have a successful capital gain transaction, he must have clarity on what he will be striving for in the next chapter. Why? Because, if the capital gain is the “end of striving,” could that be the end of fun, the end of wellbeing? It has to be seen as the end of this chapter of striving and now the owner-manager’s attention and energy properly goes to the next chapter of striving for purpose and meaning.

In finance, the difference between the future value and the present value is known as “discount.” In psychology, the difference between where you ideally want to be in your life compared to where you are today is called “discrepancy.” Regardless of whether you think discount or discrepancy, do you have a plan for what the next chapter will look like for you personally and how it will advance you towards where you want to be? If so, great. But if not, it is essential to have one before embarking on an engagement to capture a capital gain. Experience shows if you are prepared for the “Simultaneity of the Personal Transition and the Professional Transaction”, your stress will decrease markedly and this clarity of insight will influence your decision making to an outcome that is ultimately in your best interest.

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Here is more info on Mr. Worrell’s new book:

If you want to have a capital gain and a positive legacy someday, what are the half dozen actions you should take right now?

So many of the people we meet are true experts in what they do.  But when the time comes to realize a capital gain, many entrepreneurs find themselves thrust out of their comfort zone into the realm of the private transaction market.  All the thoughtfulness, fearlessness and leadership they’ve exercised throughout the process of building a successful company does nothing to help lead them down this new path.  The business aspect of this kind of transaction is difficult enough to understand and navigate.  But then there is the psychology of it all.  How do you make the right decisions that not only provide the highest quality of wealth but also the right decision that leads to positive legacy, for both you and for those to whom you are handing your life’s work?

These questions – along with a myriad of others entrepreneurs ask or need to ask as they consider a capital gain event – are reflected upon, and ultimately answered by author Pete Worrell in this book.  Worrell artfully illustrates the psychology involved in creating the legacy of a company and how best to handle the “passing of the torch”.

But it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble!

When you think about it, these outcomes make sense. It all has to do with setting expectations. A “C’mon, you can do it!” kind of coach frames the experience by counting down to an arbitrary end point. Their focus: Put in just enough time to ‘gut it out to the end.’ Silent trainers come from a completely different perspective. There is no stated end point. Instead, these trainers focus on the discipline needed to do your personal best. Thus, each style produces very different results.

You may want to consider how to best frame the experience next time you’re looking to improve outcomes for the people you’re leading. Those who try to perform their personal best day after day build the strongest companies. And, they don’t get in the habit of watching the clock.

Image courtesy of © michaeljung – Fotolia.com

For those of you dictionary lovers here is a recap of what the name means:

• Appreciate: Recognize the quality, significance or magnitude of; To be fully aware of or sensitive to; To raise in value or price
• Inquiry: The process of gathering information for the purpose of learning and changing; A close examination in a quest for truth

I’ve written before about the power of Appreciative Inquiry in the workplace.   When combined with a strengths assessment it can have an impact of creating new directions and engaging all employees. Peter Drucker famously said: “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths…making a system’s weaknesses irrelevant.”   That might be able to work for a division of an organization or for a small one, but changing an entire city?  I wasn’t quite convinced.

Appreciative Inquiry is a long process – three days and four steps.  Most organizations want a half day workshop to ‘fix’ their people.  I’ve written about the first half of the Cincinnati Summit here and the second half here.  If you want to get a good feeling for what a large scale AI summit is like without flying to the middle of the country, there’s your chance.  (Although it’s nice to actually get a chance to try the famous chili, if you get the opportunity.)

But why does AI work?  Perhaps it has something to do with Marcial Losada’s research on high performance teams.  He coded them on three factors of speech:  positive vs. negative; self vs. other and inquiry vs. advocacy.

“I showed unequivocally that a team interaction process is directly linked to performance data. I made sure that my performance data would get the attention of CEOs by using three performance criteria: profitability of the…team, customer satisfaction and 360 company evaluations.”

He found that the highest performing teams had a 6:1 ratio of positive–focused dialogue to negative (AI has questions that are unconditionally positive) and a 2:1 ratio of inquiry vs. advocacy conversation.  In fact, asking questions is the foundation of AI, rather than making statements.

What would it look like if we all asked more open-ended questions rather than making statements?  Could that happen on a city-wide scale?  During the summit I was inspired Cincinnati could actually be reformed as an entirely strengths-based city.  Cincinnati houses the world famous VIA Institute so the connection between the city and strengths is an obvious one.  In the final debrief, I actually grabbed a microphone and was inspired to sing “We are Cincinnati” to the tune of “We Are Family”.  Mercifully, there is no recording of that, although there is an article here.

So I ask you, dear reader, do you think it’s possible to create an entirely strengths-based city?  What would that look like?  We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Caroline Adams Miller is the expert on the intersection of goals and positive psychology and her book, Creating Your Best Life, is the only book in the field to be completely based in research.

Caroline spoke recently at Positive Business DC’s Well-being in the Workplace series.  She reminded us to focus on the three P’s: Preparation, Perseverance and Passion when setting and achieving goals.  We also learned that most people (80%) do not set high enough goals.  Recent research shows that people who set higher goals are happier than those who don’t.  People who set lower goals so that they can achieve them then compare their achievements to what they could have achieved.

Regret.  It isn’t pretty.  Isn’t there an old adage about how we don’t regret what we did do, we regret what we didn’t do?

It’s always great to hear a good speaker encapsulate some of these ideas.  Here is a great link to Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address that Caroline mentioned.   My favorite quote:  “Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

In recent research, it was discovered that the biggest wishes of the dying were:

1. I wish I hadn’t lived my life for others expectations
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
3. I wish I was able to express my feelings
4. I wish I had spent more time with friends
5. I wish I had let myself be happier

The research from positive psychology would say that #4 is particularly important.  It is impossible to get to the highest levels of happiness without close relationships.

I have some quibble with #5 and its wording.  “Letting” oneself be happier makes it sound like if we just gave ourselves permission, bliss would come to us.  It’s much more difficult than this.  We all have a negativity bias and it takes work to counter act that – to find the positive moments in your day.  Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and the new book, Love 2.0 says that increasing your well-being (happiness) is like ‘moving a river’.  It can be done.  It just takes work.  Daily.

Which one of these regrets most resonate with you?  Which ones could you remove from your ‘regret’ list if you set a goal that directly pertained to it?

So think about your New Year’s Resolutions.  And ask yourself this powerful question:  Is there any reason you can’t achieve this goal?