Working for a Younger Boss: Changing Your Mindset

“Are you the new intern?”

- Twelve Things to Never Say to Older or Younger Co-Workers
 
The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 resulted in a historical event in our country, and created a new reality for me.  For the first time in my life the President of the United States was younger than me!  The same generational dynamic is true in the workplace – more and more of the aging workforce will soon be reporting to younger bosses.
 
We often hear the term “older and wiser” to describe experienced leaders, but leadership effectiveness is not always connected to seniority.  I have observed, and worked for, leaders who were long in tenure but short in leadership mastery. 
 
I have been fortunate to work for younger bosses who challenged and encouraged my professional growth.  My personal challenge was to embrace a new mindset regarding age and effectiveness – in other words, to not judge a book by its cover when it comes to younger leaders.
 
It's a changing dynamic for a lot of us. Nearly 70 percent of workers over age 55 have a younger boss, and a third of our entire workforce works for someone younger than they are, according to a recent CareerBuilder study. These generation gaps require younger bosses and older workers to resist stereotypes, and to gain understanding of their similarities and differences to become effective partners.
 
For the younger boss, a first step is to understand the biases frequently associated with older workers.  "Why is this guy not further along in his career?"  “This job involves a lot of travel - I’m not sure she has the energy.”  The reality is that senior workers frequently have great knowledge, loyalty, and networks to provide great value.

The older worker may perceive inadequacy in their younger boss, such as lack of experience or maturity.  Envy can be a driver as well – “She was promoted after three years - I had to wait ten years.”  Older workers who move past these negative perceptions realize younger leaders can offer new perspectives to drive their growth in a positive direction. 
 
This is not a phase – the new workplace reality is that workers today plan to work well beyond their traditional retirement date.   A 2014 Transamerica study found 65% of workers plan to work past 65 or don’t plan to ever retire.  This trend toward eternal employment will create more age gaps and require greater understanding by both young and old to reframe this reality from challenge to opportunity. 
 
My first experience with a younger boss was positive and exceeded my expectations.  However, I was skeptical at first.  My initial reaction was - what could I possibly learn from this younger leader?  During our first meeting she shared her respect for my career success, and challenged me to learn all I could about technology.  She also revealed her vulnerability, as her developmental needs were business acumen and leadership skills – she asked for my help.  In return, I committed to get out of my generalist comfort zone and let her teach me the technical side of the business.  We became partners in growth and results. 

Three keys to working effectively with a younger boss:

Park your Resentment
Envy can drive a wedge between an older worker and a younger manager.  Acknowledge their leadership role and move on.  Remember, leaders above your boss are watching your behavior in accepting and supporting their new leader. 

Clarify Expectations
A younger boss may initially be reluctant to share expectations with you, out of respect for your experience.  Be proactive and collaborate with your new boss to understand their needs.  For example, you may need to adapt to a new communication style - face to face meetings may become emails, phone calls, or texts.    

Earn their Respect 
Don’t expect your younger boss to automatically revere your many past accomplishments.  All leaders wonder “what has this person done for me lately?”  Your credibility will be tested, not assumed, and seize this opportunity to demonstrate how you add value.  Adopt a reverse mentoring position – help your new boss understand the history, technical aspects, and political challenges of your organization.

The path to professional growth relies on continuous learning and adaptability.  Embrace your new leader by honoring their expertise, building mutual expectations, and earning respect through current value rather than past accomplishments.  Open your mind and close the gap.

Reset Your Attention: Moving from ON to OFF

“If I have to chase and fight for your attention, eventually I won’t want it anymore”.
- Will Smith

Ping!  Latin Salsa Ringtone!  The competing forces of email, phone calls, Twitter, Facebook, text messages, and so much more – all commanding you to immediately stop what you are doing.  Your eyes wander from the Word document you are working on to “new message”.  Do I sneak a quick peak?  Someone must need me!

When I ask colleagues about their alert-driven workday the typical answer is “I need to stay connected”.  Is staying tethered to breaking news really necessary?  Is reducing your attention span to micro moments really effective?

Our attention span is challenged constantly, and the causes are inflicted by others as well as self-inflicted.  Call it professional ADD.  Technology enables us to instant access to information, and is certainly is a driver of inattention.  The real truth is our incredible brain simply cannot process this much information effectively.

Brain overload is real.  A 2011 study revealed workers on a typical day take in 174 newspapers worth of information – five times what we did in 1986.  All the information and switching between subjects causes us to feel tired and stressed.  We are no longer at our best and our relationships pay the price.

So what about the pings?  A 2014 survey found working adults who checked their email only three times a day while keeping their mailboxes closed and no alerts on were less stressed.  They did not have to switch between tasks – less becomes more.  The same survey found that 55 percent of workers reported checking their email after 11 pm – 6 percent accessed email while they or their spouse was in labor.  Where does work stop and your life begin – who is paying the cost of that blurred line?

My example of the blurred line and always being “ON” comes from personal experience.  In the past, I have not managed incoming information well.  I would work email constantly and engage in constant back and forth emails.  Meanwhile, my important work and relationships were put to the side.  Today I respond to emails in one hour segments - early morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon.  When email ping-pong begins, I understand the need to pick up the phone and verbally engage toward a solution.  This new process clears my mind for project work, phone calls, and personal space.  I have unplugged and became more effective.

Three keys to effectively managing technology to focus your attention to what matters most:

Reset from Compulsion to Necessity
Compulsion is an irresistible urge to do something.  For example, you are working on a big project and your mind is quickly distracted.  Ask yourself - what is my top priority?  Falling victim to compulsion often results in a substandard result and great personal costs – long hours and high stress.

Alerts are a Ball and Chain
When you organize your life exclusively around phone, text, and email alerts you are transferring control of your life to others.  While alerts may appear to be your friend, they often are a foe.  Better to leave your alerts off than to hear constant pings and know you are ignoring messages.  Boundaries are a good thing and the message sender expects and deserves a thoughtful response.

Segment Your Day
To be more effective I encourage you to segment your day.  For example, check your social media sites at a certain time of the day.  Project work requires sustained attention – block it out on your calendar.  Email – check it several set times a day.  Finally, don’t underestimate the need for personal recovery time.  After a workout we need rest – the same applies to your brain.  Get up, get away, and get recharged.

We all remember our early experiences from parents, teachers, and others to “pay attention”.  These orders were from others who were in control, and our distractions years ago pale in comparison to what they are today.  Reset your attention span by focusing on what is necessary, protecting your boundaries, and controlling your day.  Turn off to turn on what is most important. 

Relationship IOUs: Keeping Your Promises

 

“A promise made is a debt unpaid”
-  Robert W. Service

“I read the greatest article on that topic — I’ll make sure to send you a copy.”
“I have a friend who would be a great client for you – I will touch base with her.”
“I see you are up for a promotion – I’ll put in a good word for you.” 

Do any of these offers sound familiar?  These are examples of relationship “I Owe Yous.” debts to be paid, and each one is a test for your dependability as a leader.

Traditionally IOU’s were written instruments to recognize a debt exists.  Today they are favors promised, not contracts.  Not all of these promises have equal impact – a small favor certainly differs from a career-changing request.

Broken promises damage individual relationships as well as organizations.  A recent study by Accenture found 40 percent of consumers experience a broken promise from a business (example - on time delivery).​  In fact, two out of three respondents say the same company broke their promise two times or more.  Another study in Switzerland determined through brain activity studies that when individuals make promises they actually know whether or not they intend to complete or break their promise.  

 

So the next time you say "I will call you" take a moment and ask yourself if you really mean it, and understand broken promises can become a very difficult habit to correct.  

 

One unpaid debt I observed involved a missed promotional opportunity for a friend.  She was qualified for a promotional opportunity and her manager promised she would get an interview, as he knew the interviewing manager.  Unfortunately, the call was not made and she was not interviewed.  The result: a demotivated top performer, a manager who overpromised and has an outstanding IOU, and a working relationship reeling from broken trust.  

 

The three keys to keeping your IOU promises:

Confirm
Favors often appear in conversations as a brief “aha” – not premeditated thoughts.  Before you return to the original conversation topic, stop and confirm the specific details of what you are promising.  Delivering on the wrong promise is a result of inactive listening and can affect your credibility.

Archive
Once your favor is clear, record what needs to be done in a consistent location.  Trusting your memory is a risk - take the extra time to enter the right information in the right place.  Writing a note on the back of a handout or available piece of paper is also not the solution – trust me, this is a lesson from personal experience!

Deliver +1
Your number one priority is to pay your debt.  Why not provide additional value by delivering a related favor.  For example, “I thought you also might be interested in ….”  This represents the feature Amazon.com offers when you are searching for a product, and the concept certainly extends to our personal relationships.

I have failed to deliver on IOU's in the past and today have a greater appreciation for the value they create.  Build your dependability by confirming what you have promised, archiving the debt you owe, and delivering +1 to add value.   Keep your promises to build a relationship balance sheet that is debt-free.
 

Blind Spots: What You Might be Missing

 

“We are often more obvious to others than we are to ourselves”  — Albert Ellis

“I don’t really do that – do I?”

Have you ever had someone call you out for something you said or did, and it comes as a complete surprise?

These surprises are our blind spots – the areas we don't see, but others do. Author John C. Maxwell defines a blind spot as "an area in the lives of people in which they continually do not see themselves or their situation realistically."  Some blind spots can be deadly, draining our relationships and limiting our opportunities.

For example, you may think you are a great listener, yet others observe you cutting people off mid-sentence to sell your idea.  Other common examples of blind spots are deciding the rules don’t apply to you, valuing being right over being effective, and treating opinions as facts.

A common tool used to work with blind spots is the Johari Window – a communication model used to improve understanding between individuals and teams.  “Johari” is derived from the names Joseph Luft and Harrry Ingham who developed the model in 1955.  Luft and Ingham focused on the importance of self disclosure, realizing what others see in you that may be unknown to you, which resulted in two key findings:

• With feedback from others, you can learn about yourself and come to terms with your behavior.
• You can build trust with others by disclosing information about yourself.

But feedback is not enough.  The critical ingredient is to share enough information about ourselves so we can accept constructive feedback.

I formerly worked with a peer who was overly competitive.  Our company had an employee recognition day designed to reward our workers for all their hard work, including games and entertainment.  A volleyball game was underway and my peer and I were on opposite teams.  On my team, we had a young man with limited athletic ability who also worked in his department.  My peer was up to serve and placed every serve directly to this young man – you can imagine what ensued.  His team won the game yet a much bigger statement was made that day – winning at all costs is not in our company value system.  One of our executives was watching the game and his facial expression told the story.  I pulled him aside after the game and my feedback was dismissed – this individual and his blind spots eventually left the organization.

Three keys to managing your blind spots:

Awkward Feedback
Ask five people you really trust to share unconventional feedback through open-ended questions.  Rather than “have you ever seen me lose my temper?” (yes or no) - ask “what am I doing that makes me seem angry?”  Carefully develop the questions you want answers to, in order to hear what you need to hear.  My guess is these five individuals will ask you to return the favor.

Validate the Feedback
Identify one or two colleagues to confirm the feedback you have received - “have you seen me do this – in what type of situation?”  Again, ask for details.  The strongest leaders have a supporting cast willing to help them grow as a leader.

Call Yourself Out
A powerful key is to call yourself out – “I need to know if you feel I am not listening to your idea.”  This projects a transparent leader who is modeling the need for development.

Can I ask you a favor?  I always welcome newsletter feedback - any blind spots I should be aware of or topics you would recommend?  As a coach, I am also available to discuss the blind spots challenging your professional growth.
 

Sort of? Not Really. What Your Language Says About You

“Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.”
- Cesar Chavez

I sort of enjoy writing leadership newsletters.  What does this sentence tell you about me?  Does “sort of” decrease your interest in what I have to say?  Passive language threatens our credibility and fails to build trust.  As leaders, we have the opportunity to tell others what they need to know through active content and confident delivery.

Dr. Gabriel Doyle, author of the blog “Motivated Grammar,” describes the phrase "sort of" as “don’t think of this as being overly accurate.”  In other words, it tells the other person you are not sure.  Uncertainty projects a lack of confidence, and your ability to influence others suffers. 

The word passive is often defined as allowing things to happen - and ceding control to someone else.  For example, if you are interviewing for an exciting job opportunity and consistently use passive language (sort of, kind of, maybe) your competitiveness for the job will be compromised.  Stay in control by crafting the right message to let your internal passion match your words.

While the focus of this newsletter is on the spoken word, the principles also apply to writing skills.  Successful leaders write confidently and concisely.  Take a moment to review a recent written communication you authored – look for passive words such as could or might.  You may not have all the information necessary to completely answer a challenge.  What you do have is a reader who deserves your best thoughts (or what I call completed staff work), and active language is what they expect and need.

I was recently coaching an individual who frequently used passive language, both informally and while giving presentations.  My feedback surprised him as he had never had this development need shared with him before.  His response was, “ I kind of understand what your are saying.”  We laughed and then focused on changing his language choices.  He learned to collect his thoughts by pausing before responding and moved from passive to active language.

Three keys to improving your leadership fluency:  
 

Objectivity

Projecting an open mind sets the stage for a mutually beneficial discussion.  Conversations have three stages: opening, body, and close.  Begin your conversation with positive energy that promotes a fair process - I will listen to your ideas and can suspend my judgment.  We all want our ideas to be heard, and when they are we pay greater attention to the content and delivery of the message seeking to influence us (body and close).  

Content
Keep your words focused on action leading to results.  For example, I recommend we implement this new software and I am confident we will reduce expenses by 20 percent within two years.  Anticipate and answer two critical questions - what is your solution and how will we measure success?
   
Delivery 
Along with strong content, you must deliver a compelling message.  Confidently express your message through eye contact, posture, and hand gestures.  Studies continuously demonstrate that body language is more powerful than words: step up and let others see — not just hear — your ideas and the leader you are.  

Keep an open mind, focus your content on the desired outcome, and deliver your message with confidence.  Tell people what they need to know –  fluency is your ticket to influence.

Why You and Not Me? The Envy Trap.

“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”
- Gore Vidal

It happens to all of us: a peer is selected for a job for which you interviewed; a co-worker is assigned an exciting new project while you're working on the same old thing. Inevitably, we fall directly into the envy trap.

Think about a person in your organization who was recently promoted or received a great work assignment - someone you often compare yourself against.  Ask yourself the following questions:

• Did you congratulate this person?
• How did the news of their achievement make you feel?
• If they fail in their new position is your first response “I knew it!”?

Your answers will tell you whether you were in the envy trap.  Research at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago reveals workplace envy is a critical issue for employers and employees.  They discovered that envious employees dismiss creative ideas, direct money and resources to others, and in some cases directly sabotage co-workers.  The costs are financial as well as cultural – envy can be a life-threatening disease in the organization.

So what is envy?  Envy is often defined as the feeling of I want what you have andpeople at all levels of an organization are vulnerable.  Our belief is that by having this thing we will be happier and respected - and that not having this thing diminishes us in some way.  The thing can be anything - position, relationship, and even time.  A current envy driver can be social media - we often make comparisons in a biased way as postings feature successes rather than failures.  (Thought for the day - are Facebook, Linked In™, and Twitter contributing to envy in your life?)

I recall a co-worker who was not selected for a position she desperately wanted.  She did not handle the announcement process very well, rationalizing away the positive traits of the selected individual.  Her answers to the three questions above were loaded with envy – attributing luck and political connections as the primary reason the other candidate was chosen.  The tragedy was that her envy assigned blame to external sources when the real issue was internal – she chose resentment over self-reflection.  Her envious behavior was noticed by others, including her superiors, and stalled her career. 
  
Three keys to managing your workplace envy:

Self Affirmation
When we are tempted to compare ourselves to someone else, a good reminder is that we are already successful.  Research has proven envy can promote a victim mentality that causes people to discount their own accomplishments.  Think about your strengths and accomplishments – a good exercise is to review your resume.  Don’t dwell on the prize you missed – focus on the gaps in your experience and what you need to do to build upon your past accomplishments.  

Compete Against Yourself
Organizations with a culture built on competition can be fertile ground for envy - such as publicizing sales results or monthly productivity numbers.  These results promote accountability as well as competition.  Healthy competition is the key.  Compare your present self to your past self – the competition is all about you.  Are you growing professionally or are you stuck?  Understanding your own growth keeps envy in check.
   
Envy Source
Where is your envy coming from?  Envy can be a wake-up call that perhaps you have not been on top of your game, or the path to greater responsibilities has changed.  Reframe the situation to focus on a new path to success, not the individual selected.  For example, what background do they have and how can you gain similar experiences?

You will be surrounded by professional opportunities in your career, some you receive and some you watch awarded to others.  Manage your envy through self-affirmation, competing against yourself, and understanding the envy source.  Unlike Gore Vidal, every time someone else succeeds you will grow a little.

Quality Time — With Your Boss?

“You will always move toward anyone who increases you and away from anyone who makes you less.”
-  Mike Murdock

2015 begins and is already crowded with people and projects demanding our time and attention.  But what about our relationship with our supervisor – is this a duty or opportunity? And how much time should you be spending with him or her?

Six hours. That is the number derived by the consulting firm Leadership IQ, which found that individuals who averaged at least six hours a week with their boss felt more inspired, engaged, and motivated than their colleagues who spent less time.  

I was fortunate to have a long career in a great organization, including working for twenty-seven supervisors in thirty-two years.  OK, job stability was not my strength!  My worst relationship was with my first supervisor.  I was twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, and excited to begin my professional career after a great interview process.  My supervisor was an experienced technician but not a leader — I was neglected and seriously considered leaving the company.  Multiple studies show that the first 90 days in a new job significantly affect long-term satisfaction with the organization.  Why did I stay?  My peers stepped in for the vacant leader and showed me the way – a positive culture trumped a bad boss.

The best supervisory relationship I experienced was very different.  I knew what was expected, understood the personal side of my boss, and was encouraged to spend time with him.  Our personal conversations centered on many topics, occasionally work, and he inspired me to excel.  His gift to me was his time – my job was to make sure it was quality time.       

Three keys to building and sustaining a good relationship with your boss:

Manage Up
Understanding and meeting the needs of your boss is an art, often referred to as managing up.  This is not about schmoozing your way to the top – the corporate career graveyard is filled with self-promoting wannabes.  Leaders want to know what you are working on, what you have completed, and how you can help them.  Find out their preference for staying connected – personal visits, email, or phone calls.  Every boss wants to be successful – what are you contributing to meet that need?

Individual First/Boss Second 
Where was your boss born?  Does your boss have any brothers or sisters?  Learning the personal stories of our colleagues — particularly our supervisor — builds trust.  Get to know your supervisor by paying attention as they describe vacations or what they did over the weekend. Look for common ground between their interests and what you enjoy – concentrating on similarities versus differences generates the energy needed to deepen a relationship.

Dialogue 
A transactional relationship between two individuals is filled with yes/no answers, emails v. conversations, and focuses on short term results.  The alternative is a relationship grounded in dialogue – a partnership featuring open conversations designed to build understanding and collaboration.  Dialogue enables both parties to work together effectively based on mutual respect.  A few examples of what dialogue looks like: good questions, appreciation, and creative solutions.    

The new year offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at the individual who impacts your work assignments, financial rewards, and career opportunities.  Build a stronger relationship with your boss by effectively managing up, focusing on their personal side, and earning the privilege of open dialogue. 

Quality time with your boss?  Remove the question mark and embrace the opportunity.