Better Life Habits

Misrepresenting oneself...and other bad habits

 

Virginia Thomas is in the news. Evidently she left a voice mail for Anita Hill asking her to apologize for testifying that Clarence Thomas, Virginia's husband, sexually harassed Hill. This blog is not a political forum and I'm not going to get into whether Thomas did what Hill said he did -- though of course I have an opinion. What I find interesting about the whole thing is how Virginia Thomas explained her reasons for asking for the apology. She said she was extending "an olive branch to [Hill] after all these years" and that "certainly no offense was ever intended."

Really?

Just to make certain, I looked up what "extending an olive branch" is supposed to mean. It is "making a peace offering" just as I thought. And so Virginia Thomas believes that asking Hill to apologize is a peace offering. In truth it is actually more akin to hitting Hill with a stick.

When something controversial, unkind, or potentially inflammatory is said -- one should be prepared to accept the consequences. Pretending that "no offense was intended" when that was precisely the intention is cowardly. Mrs. Thomas called Anita Hill a liar. That she continues to defend her husband is admirable if she truly believes his innocence. But she left a message that she knew would re-ignite a firestorm, and then tried to put herself above the fray by misrepresenting her intentions.

So what productivity-related habit does this relate to?

E-mail in the workplace is fraught with opportunities to spew thinly veiled venom and then plead ignorance when the recipient is offended. Whether the first e-mail begets a continuous thread of escalating bad behavior or causes trails of acid-fueled gossip around the water cooler -- productivity  and relationships suffer. Passive aggressive behaviors serve no one and hurt everyone.

What I see happening in the workplace is that we are hiding behind e-mail to say things we should be discussing face-to-face. And often e-mail gives us the courage to be ruthless. Rather than building closer connections, e-mail can erode our ability to relate to each other as people.

Being angry is OK. Having a strong opinion is OK ,too. Wanting someone to stop whatever annoying thing they are doing is entirely reasonable. But as grownups it's our responsibility to learn how to communicate like grownups. And when we willfully decide we're not going to, we need to admit it.

If you or someone you know needs to learn how to approach a challenging conversation, I can help.

Are you an escalator or an elevator?

Have you ever gotten an e-mail that reads rather nasty in tone? Of course you have. E-mail is modern day body armor. People will say stuff on e-mail they would never have the guts to say face-to-face. What do you do when you get one of those e-mails?

If you fire something back of equal or greater rudeness, you're an escalator. You take a bad situation and escalate it to new heights (or depths) of passive aggressiveness. It may feel good in the moment to "show them I won't be talked to that way" but we all know it's just going to get uglier and what does that accomplish other than providing evidence that two people can be unprofessional and childish? Bravo.

On the other hand, what if, upon receiving such an e-mail, you elevated the level of understanding and professionalism? You don't take the bait that nasty e-mail sender is dangling, ignore the veiled dig and respond in a way that reflects your values and maturity. I'm thinking that might be the better option.

We know in our gut when we are crafting an e-mail in such a way as to be able to twist the knife and deny our intention to do so at the same time. Think carefully about participating in this no-win battle of words. Certainly resist the temptation to start such an e-mail thread and most definitely refuse to participate in an ongoing one.

Track your time on Twitter

Yesterday's post offered a suggestion about how to handle the sheer volume of information that comes your way via Twitter. Today's post addresses how much time you spend on Twitter.

Have you ever sat down at the computer first thing in the morning, started handling e-mail and soon found yourself caught up in surfing the web? You're going along reading an e-mail and there's either a link in the e-mail or it spurs a thought that sends you out to Google or a particular site. If we're not focusing on what we're doing an hour or more can go by before we realize we should have spending time on other tasks.

Be careful of falling into the same time crunch with Twitter. Some posts are simply statements, comments on other Tweets or inspirational quotes. But many Tweets have a URL embedded in the message -- links that take you to helpful articles, funny or instructional videos, interesting or beautiful photographs. If you're interested in the Twitter-er, you stand a strong chance of being interested in the information provided in the link.

So it's important to be purposeful when you sit down to spend time on Twitter. Depending upon why you Twitter -- a subject that will be covered in tomorrow's post -- you need to plan how much time you'll be spending on it each day. Whether it's five minutes, 30 minutes or two hours, know what you have scheduled and stick to it as much as possible.

It's certainly OK to veer from your planned amount of Twitter time, the important thing is to make the choice to do so instead of getting distracted and inadvertently messing up the rest of your workday.

Twitter teaches unexpected lessons.

Twitter is a fascinating phenomenon and I'm on the bandwagon. I started once and soon quit because it seemed too overwhelming. A few months later I tried again and this time took careful notice of what was so daunting the first time.

For anyone who already feels overwhelmed by e-mail you've got to get your head in the right place before you getting into Twitter in a significant way. I don't know anyone who has every Twitter post come directly to their e-mail, so it won't increase the traffic in your regular in-box. Your Twitter homepage is essentially an entirely new, separate in-box where you see messages posted by people you follow.

Speaking of volume, think of it this way. Perhaps you're following 100 people, which is a conservative number based on what I have seen out there. Let's just say that each person you are following posts 3 Tweets a day (that's a 140-character message). Some folks post very little, but some people post a dozen or more each day, so 3 Tweets per day per person is another conservative estimate. That's 300 messages a day to read!

It's mind boggling that in this day of already being overcommitted and stressed -- and I hear almost daily that e-mail is one of the things that creates the most stress -- we would proactively take on another activity that could consume even more of our limited time. But before you throw your hands up and conclude that Twitter is not for you, there is a way to make it a very positive, worthwhile experience and not let it get out of hand. Each day this week I will post another tip here that will help you make your Twitter experience a positive one.

Tip #1

You're not going to be able to read every Tweet that is posted by the people you follow. Get over it. Do you make it habit of reading every page of every magazine or newspaper that you receive? Unlikely.

Yesterday was Father's Day so most of the day was spent with family. I checked Twitter a couple of times and read a few posts. There were some nice ones about expressing appreciation for the Dads in our lives and many unrelated to the holiday. For me, yesterday wasn't a day I wanted to spend a lot of time immersed in the internet. (Please note: I make absolutely no judgment about any folks who wanted to do so.) This means that if I wanted to read ever post I receive, I'd have 600 to read today. It's not going to happen.

Turns out today is pretty busy as well. So not only will I not read 600, I probably won't read all 300 new messages that come in. You might ask, "Why do you follow people if you're not going to read all the messages?"  Fair question.

In just a month or so I've learned about many extremely bright, interesting, funny, talented people that I never knew existed. By following them I get the opportunity to connect with them, learn about them and learn from them. And if they follow me, I have the chance to share ideas, opinions and messages with them that may bring something of value into their lives. And that's pretty cool.

So I won't be catching every interesting message but I know the ones I do catch are adding some real value to my life.

More tomorrow...

Get in the habit of setting expectations to help others plan

I was having breakfast with a colleague/friend the other day and we got to talking about how she doesn't use e-mail much. She checks it once, maybe twice a week. For someone who runs her own business that's admittedly not very often and she said she feels kind of bad about it and "knows she should get better".

But when she talked about why she doesn't use it she said it's because she likes the phone better and finds e-mail to be a distraction that reduces her productivity. Those seem like pretty good reasons to me. So we decided that she doesn't have to "get better" at all and in fact, shouldn't feel bad in the least about her limited use of e-mail. What she should do, is create an expectation. Make sure people know her e-mail habits so they don't expect a quick reply if they contact her that way.

I suggested that she might re-purpose the "out of office" e-mail message to tell people about her preference for the phone. She could even put a message on her phone that thanks people for calling instead of e-mailing. She could share her preference for phone calls vs e-mail on her company web site and let people know that e-mails are answered in a week or so unless you call to tell her you need her to review something sooner.

The point here is that we don't necessarily have to conform to some "standard" behavior, but we do have to let people know what to expect. I've been guilty of telling someone what I thought they wanted to hear in terms of getting something to them even though my schedule was going to make that almost impossible. And then failing to meet an expectation I created myself! That, my friend, is pretty dumb.

So whether it's setting an expectation about what you can deliver, when you can deliver it, or how you to choose to conduct business, you make the call and communicate it clearly to the people that matter in that situation. Setting expectations helps you and helps others too.

Do you complain about interruptions, yet look for them?

At a luncheon yesterday I was sitting next to a guy who admitted that although e-mail presents a challenge, it's primarily because he welcomes the interruption. I'm pretty sure he's not alone.

Lamenting about the endless dump of e-mail into our inboxes has taken over the weather as the  universal, always appropriate, topic of conversation. Everyone can relate.  Now instead of "Boy, how about all this rain?" it's, "Boy, I've got 637 e-mails in my inbox, and that's after I cleaned it out." The listener nods in an understanding, heck-yeah,-I'm-there-too kind of way.

E-mail can be an interrruption, but only if we look at it. If we only look at it three times a day then it only interrupts us three times a day. There's no hard and fast rule about how many times you should check it. But if you say it drives you crazy, you might want to examine whether you check it because you have to, or because you want to.