As 2007 nears its end, I had the opportunity to be grateful in the midst of hardship. How appropriate for the season!
I invite you to read the following and consider: how would you classify the behaviours of the people I encountered in the following story?
Last week I was involved in a car accident. My car slammed into the unexpectedly-halted car before me. No one was seriously hurt (some pains appeared for me later). My less-than-one-year-old car was a write-off.
In the three hours immediately following the accident, I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude for:
• Ruby, whose car I hit, who was nothing short of gracious and who, being an insurance broker herself, provided me with on-the-spot priceless advice.
• Police Officer Michael, who, without me even asking, gave me a ticket for the very minimum possible offence and then showed me how I could go about reducing it later.
• Fadi (Frank) the Lebanese tow-guy, who oriented me to how the towing and insurance system works, then found me a replacement rental car and drove me there as together we weaved dreams for peace in the middle east. Fadi then assisted with transferring all my many belongings from the wrecked vehicle to the rental car.
• Mike from Zoom Car Rental who explained to me in great detail, formulas included, how I can make sure that I am fairly treated by my insurers.
• Andrew from the Bell Telephone booth at The Mall, where I went to purchase a replacement battery for my blackberry, which had gone missing during the accident. Even though I am a not a Bell customer, Andrew, upon hearing that I had just emerged from an accident, proceeded to walk me to the competitors’ booth at the other end of the mall, waited while they tried finding me a battery and finally took me back to his Bell booth where he gave me a FREE battery (value – $65) from one of the Blackberries he had on hand.

What is the common theme running through these behaviours? Some of you might say that all that these people did was provide superior customer service. And you’re right, they did.

But here’s the thing: for me, these people’s actions were nothing short of small miracles amidst a very difficult situation. Their `customer service’ acts were experienced by me, the customer who will likely never need them again, as total and blessed acts of generosity and flowing kindness.

And maybe that is what superb customer service is all about.

Happy holidays!

As humans working together, no matter how hard we try, we will inadvetently end up doing something that will upset someone else, offend them or otherwise interfere with their work. That’s when an apology is in order.

The problem is, most people do a really lousy job at apologizing and often create more damage than good.

Here are some guidelines for apologizing successfully:

• Be specific. Say exactly what it is that you are apologizing for. “I’m sorry for any trouble my actions may have caused” isn’t good enough. Instead say: “I’m sorry that my delay in submitting the data to you caused you to miss the client’s deadline.”
• Provide a short explanation. Be concise and specific about the events and thought processes that led you to the action for which you are now apologizing.
• Avoid excuses. Tell it like it is and don’t make false excuses. You’ll gain more respect and build trust.
• Show your vulnerability, show your inner power. Make sure that you demonstrate both these qualities as you apologize.
• Express regret. Use specific words such as sorry, apologize, regret. People want to hear that.
• Suggest corrective action. If corrective action is required, let them know what you’re planning to do, by when and the reasoning behind the action you plan to take. Then check whether this plan makes sense from their perspective.
• Let them talk. Allow them to talk, earlier rather than later in the process. Let them tell you how they feel about what happened and what will make it better.
• Be prepared to hear things you may not want to hear. The other person may give you feedback about your own behaviour that you may not have been aware of, or that may be difficult to hear. Remain open!

Is there someone to whom you own an apology? Don’t wait, go out there and do it!

Looking for opportunities to make a real difference?
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center studied data collected from more than 24,000 Canadian workers in 2002. Predictably, they found that 5% of the workers suffered from serious bouts of depression. More interestingly, the study detected a surprising trend: men and women who felt little social support at work were 2-3 times more likely to suffer major bouts of depression! In other words, colleagues’ support served as a significant depression-buffer.
What do we learn from this?
First, as a manager, you’d be well advised to support fraternize by colleagues – – it boosts productivity rather than hinder it.
Second, for just about anyone: despite hectic deadlines and increasing demands, do take those few minutes to listen to your colleague, provide him or her with a helpful perspective or a solid sympathetic ear. In doing so, you are actually serving as a natural healer, helping that person reduce the chances of getting hit by depression.
Small acts of kindness that can make a huge difference to another person and their family. Does it get any better than that?

In recent conversations, two people used the term `psycho’ to describe a CEO they’ve worked with in two separate organizations. Strong word, don’t you think?
In both cases, the term referred to the following behaviours that were demonstrated both in public and private: yelling, belittling, emotional outbursts, overt mood swings and overall unpredictability.
In the `old days’ (even as late as 5-10 years ago), such behaviours would be viewed as acceptable – albeit undesirable – conduct of someone in power. Especially if that someone brought in good business results.
The landscape has changed dramatically in recent years and organizations are expected to uphold a much higher `duty of care’. The Psycho CEO’s patterns of behaviour qualify as `psychological harassment’, a term now specifically prohibited under new legislation in the provinces of Quebec and Saskatchewan (and coming soon, I’m sure, to a province near you!).
One of the two people who were sharing this with me, a vice-president who was hand-picked for the role a mere six months earlier, was actively seeking another job. The other had left the organization where the `psycho CEO’ reigned and found a calmer and emotionally healthier job in an organization led by a consensus-builder CEO.
When people experience their CEO to be `psycho’ the effects ripple throughout the organization. No one feels safe or protected. The terrain is a free-for-all, anywhere, anytime. Many leave. Especially the best and brightest.
And those who stay? They remain at work, but their bodies continuously release excessive amounts of adrenaline and cortisol into their blood stream. These high and sustained levels of hormones expose them to many risks, amongst which are increased chance of disease, bad judgement calls, mistakes and mood disorders such as depression.

I’ve come to classify our responses to stress as falling within one of the following categories:

Reactive Strategies…… not recommended! These are the unhealthy, boomerang type of behaviours that we engage in as a means of dealing with stress. And they always backfire! Classic examples include excessive drinking, gambling, self-medicating or over-eating. So beware, no `Reactive Strategies’ please!

Proactive Strategies are comprised of the preventative behaviours and mental practices that fortify our resiliency baseline. Practicing these creates an invisible `immunization’, thereby decreasing the chance of us experiencing events as `stressful’ to begin with. Typical examples are: sleeping at least 8 hours a night, viewing events with a `cup half full’ approach, practicing yoga/meditation/exercise regularly and having a strong, supportive social network.

Responsive Strategies are the strategies that we use when responding to a specific stressor (or multiple ones) in our lives. The `Count to 10 Before Speaking’ advice is a classic Responsive Strategy. Other examples of healthy Responsive Strategies include consciously challenging/replacing our negative thinking habits about the stressor, taking time to engage in deep diaphragmatic breathing, seeking support or simply saying `no’.

Would your answer regarding a raffled sex-shop gift certificate change depending on the organization you’re in? Would you come to a different conclusion if you were dealing with a prim and proper Bay Street law firm vs. an organization where the culture is rougher and sexual innuendo is considered to be a precious team-building asset?

Here’s the scoop: on the one hand, a court of law would assert that a company has a duty of care toward its employees. Specifically, if something is known to be potentially offensive, it needs to be removed, no matter where you go.

My experience with `rougher’ environments has taught me that sometimes management would be well advised to pick and choose its battles. In real life, if you try hitting hard on the non-crucial matters, you may encounter a tsunami of resistance, which may fatally harm your larger attempts to turn things around on the more important respect-related issues. Like with adolescents, at times it is more prudent to opt for the salami approach: tackle one thing at a time, with the most important challenges dealt with first.

However, even in the toughest of environments, you still need to take a position and you can do so without creating a big backlash. In the sex certificate instance, it’s perfectly legitimate to say, in good spirit: “Guys, as much as we know that this would bring great pleasure to someone (!), this certificate is unprofessional. We simply can’t afford to hand it out. Now, how are those Blue Jays doing?”

Okay, so the Social Committee wants to include in a raffled gift basket a gift certificate to the local sex shop. When you express your discomfort to your fellow supervisors, they say that natural checks and balances will ensure that no one is offended: first, people are free to refrain from purchasing tickets in the first place and second, the winner is totally free to discard of the certificate or give it to another team member who may enjoy it.

Are the supervisors right?

Well, not really. The workplace is required to uphold standards of conduct that allow all employees to feel comfortable. When a situation can reasonably be pre-assessed as potentially excluding, offensive or humiliating, it is the employer’s responsibility to remove that obstacle. It is not up to the employee to do that! The employee should be expected to take personal action to stop problematic behaviour only in those instances where the employer (i.e. management) did not anticipate the sticky situation or was not physically there when it happened.

So what does this mean vis-à-vis the sex-shop gift certificate? Well, it’s quite simple. Since the supervisory team reasonably anticipates that someone may feel uncomfortable or even offended by this certificate, it is their job to ensure that no employee is put in that position. Anything less that that means that management had abdicated its responsibility and left employees to fend for themselves in a situation where the organization was obligated to protect them.

Next time we’ll examine a controversial question: would any of our answers to the sex-store dilemma change depending on the type of organization and culture?

In part 1 of this series I invited you to consider how you as a supervisor would handle a situation where your team’s Social Committee decided to include a gift certificate to a nearby sex store in a basket that was to be raffled amongst team members (the proceeds of which would support community causes).

I try to keep these blog entries as short as I can. Therefore, I’ll answer each of the questions I posed last time separately. Here’s the first one:

Is there anything wrong with including the gift certificate in the package?

One great way for analyzing any sticky respect-related situation is to ask the following: “Can we post a banner quoting the comment or run a video of the action in question above our main entrance”? If yes, no problem. If not, sorry, it’s gotta go.

The raffling of a sex-store gift is not congruent with current notions of what constitutes `professionalism’ in the workplace. It is unprofessional. To take it a step further, in some organizations (particularly in those with significant ethnic and religious diversity) there’s a high likelihood that someone would sincerely experience this gift-basket as `offensive’; it would then readily qualify as harassment.

My position? let’s not get caught up in hairsplitting definitions. The bottom line is this: can you or can you not post a copy of the sex-certificate above your main entrance?

Well, if you’re running a strip-club, you can probably safely post it right above the entrance. If your establishment is not part of the sex industry, you probably can’t.

Therefore, sorry, the gift certificate’s gotta go.

Stay tuned for the next answer!

Here is a real life situation I recently encountered in an organization.

You’re one of the supervisors on a large team. The team’s Social Committee decides to organize a raffle to benefit one of the community causes that the team supports. In the gift basket that will be raffled out within the team, the Committee includes a gift certificate for a nearby adult sex store.

Something doesn’t feel right to you about this and you take your reservations to the other three supervisors.

To your surprise, your colleagues see no problem. They say that whatever discomfort you may feel is ameliorated by two counterpoints: first, anyone who’s uncomfortable with the gift included in the raffle is totally free to refrain from purchasing tickets. Second, anyone who wins the basket and is uncomfortable with the sex-store certificate is totally free to throw it out or, even better, give it to another team member who may enjoy it. They also tell you to `lighten up’ and to `get a better sense of humour’.

How would you analyze this situation?

Here are some questions for your consideration.

• Is there anything wrong with including the gift certificate in the package? If so, what?
• Are the other supervisors right in concluding that natural checks and balances will ensure that no one is offended?
• Would your answer change depending on the type of organization and the makeup of the employees?

Stay tuned for part 2 for an examination of these questions!

I am just now emerging from a very painful, protracted technology meltdown. Despite having taken care of full-proof double backup, problems occurred which erased large amounts of important data.
What struck me is the number of sympathisers who used exceptionally loaded words to describe how they had reacted under similar circumstances: `I went crazy’, `I really lost it’, `I felt like jumping off a cliff’ were some of the colourful phrases I encountered. What words would you have used?
We each have our own, unique `resilience map’ which defines the areas of lesser or greater resilience we may possess. Sanjay may be able to take in stride talk of potential layoff in his workplace, whereas Rebecca may turn into an anxious wreck with even the slightest hint of such organizational changes. Conversely, Sanjay may be rendered completely helpless when rushing his kid to the hospital’s Emergency Ward, whereas Rebecca might demonstrate exemplary resilience and presence of mind under the same set of circumstances.
Here’s an important survival skill. Now that so many of us are so highly technology reliant, it is crucial to develop a very specific, new brand of resilience: the `high-tech resilience’. The hi-tech systems we have come to rely upon for both our professional and personal lives are bound to suffer from occasional hiccups, moodiness or overall collapse. And we humans need to learn to maintain our resilience as we encounter these technological challenges. We need to learn to handle these situations with calm, perspective, patience, flexibility and yes, sometimes humour. It isn’t always easy, but it’s becoming an ever more important part of keeping sane and healthy in the new technological landscape of our lives.
And me? Well, I am pleased to say that I was able to maintain my equanimity throughout this ordeal, and certainly I responded much better this time than the last time my technology let me down. Here’s to building more high tech resilience… for the next time!