Recently at the AHRI National Convention, I told you that I was fortunate enough to hear Dr Adam Fraser speak. You may have listened to my last post with a short burst of the hilariousness that is his method of story telling. Anyway, at the convention Dr Adam Fraser was talking about the multiple transitions (and actually micro-transitions) that we make in our day.

For example, as HR professionals we transition between solving conflict and mediation to more strategic work to investigations and facilitation. This is before we get home to act as a partner, parent, pet owner etc. However, his research suggests that we are struggling with these transitions. We struggle to successfully move from one situation to another without carrying our baggage around. You know the deal- had a bad day at work and just can’t shake the grumps when you walk in the door. Mothers who feel guilty at work for not being at home with their kids, and when they are at home with their kids they feel guilty for not working late. The guilt follows you around impacting on your performance and behaviour.

Dr Fraser says “You show up to each environment and react to it rather than control it. We take stress from one area of our life to the other. At the end of the day, we have a little bag that we pack, putting all the stuff that’s happened to us in the day. The fact we’ve been taken for granted or that we are frustrated, the lack of resources, and the manager’s a jerk. We put it in the bag and we drive that bag home with us. And then we walk in the door and the family goes, ‘How’s your day?’ You go ‘How’s my day? There’s my day. How would you like that day? How would you feel after that day?’

Your significant other says, ‘Why, what happened?’ You say ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Now, the problem is, that because you’re being an ass, at home you get more stuff to put in the bag, which you then say, ‘I’m going to work.’ And you take that to work with you. And we carry this little bag with us. And the key is the ability to let go, take all that stuff in the work day, put it in the bag, but the key step is to be able to go ‘YOU STAY. And you walk away from it.”

The key is the ability to have a circuit breaker, and Dr Adam Fraser believes that the circuit breaker is this gap, and this is indeed what he calls “The third space”.

Some examples he mentioned included a CEO who was struggling with his transition home. So he build a new entrance to his house. He goes home, takes off his suit, showers, does 3 min relaxation exercise and then sees family.

Another GM stops phone calls 10 minutes before arriving home. He visualizes what sort of father he wants to be, what sort of partner he want to be and how he wants to behave.

So what’s your third space?

If you haven’t heard Dr. Adam Frazer speak, you really should. I actually met him a few years ago when he facilitated a session as part of a resilience program that I attended while I was at Vodafone. He is so exciting and engaging to listen to.

Dr. Adam Frazer is one of Australia’s leading educators, researchers, and thought leaders in the area of Human Performance. Combining years of work with elite level athletes, with the armed forces, and of course, with business professionals, Dr. Frazer has perfected what he calls The Art of Flow. At the heart of flow, Adam says that we find the key to getting more done for longer periods of time, whilst reducing stress levels, preventing burnout and keeping our teams engaged. Something we are always looking at!

So this post is just a teaser to give you some insight into how hilarious and engaging he is and also “The Third Space”.

Click below to hear a funny moment I wanted to share with you from Adam’s Speech:

Dr Adam Fraser

At the AHRI National Convention this year I had a pretty awesome time because I got to hear Dave and Wendy Ulrich speak. I also got them to sign my book and have a photo with me! Yep, I am a nerd.

Anyways, people have been asking me about what I’ve learned and what I thought was good so I got my butt into gear and started writing up some of my notes to share with you all. First cab off the rank is of course, Dave and Wendy Ulrich.

I’m sure you’ve heard of him before but Dave has been named the number one management educator and guru by Business Week, selected by Fast Company as one of the 10 most innovative and creative leaders and he is consistently named as the most influential person in HR in publications across the globe. Wendy Ulrich has been a practicing psychologist for 20 years exploring the personal dynamics of corporate complexities. Wendy helps organizations build people’s skills and personal strengths to succeed. Some of the areas she focuses on include communication, relationships, trained creativity resilience and happiness.

The first thing I’ll share is that they make a great team who are actually pretty warm, genuine and funny to listen to. It’s easy to be engaged by them and not notice how much time is passing. Very important to be engaged on day two of an AHRI Conference after the Gala Dinner!

Dave started out by saying that they wanted to talk to us about something a little more personal than how to structure a HR department; they wanted to talk to us about how to create meaning and purpose, not only in our lives but in the lives of the employees where we work. He said “If you create more meaning in a company- good things will happen. It’s simple”.

*MAKE MEANING in the workplace—to bring out the best in everyone.
*CREATE VALUE for your employees, your customers, your company, and yourself.
*BUILD HOPE for the future by building “the abundant organization.”

The Abundant Organization Flower

When we think about what gives us a sense of meaning, we often think about things like having children, travel, our faith or relationships. What do these things have in common? They have nothing to do with work. We don’t necessary find meaning in work. This is a problem because we spend most of our time at work but we aren’t finding same sense of purpose and meaning at work. We are finding it outside of work. It’s a tragedy.

The ultimate source of happiness is not pleasure or engagement; it’s meaning. Are you connected to your deepest values?

In HR we want to shift away from measuring from job satisfaction, away from engagement (i.e. does your job give you discretionary energy?) to does my job give me meaning. We want to ask, does my job allow me to find purpose?

Before talking about their new book “The Why of Work” and introducing the 7 things that Leaders can do to become meaning makers, they revealed that the title of the their book actually came from this quote from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s search for Meaning”.

“He who has a WHY to live can bear with almost any HOW” – Nietzsche

Some further resources to check out when you have the time or the inclination!

So what are the 7 things that Leaders can do to become meaning makers (Key Questions for abundant thinking)?

1) Identity- What am I known for? Think Gallop Strength finding attributes. It’s about help people match their personal strengths with the organisation identity (brand/culture).
2) Purpose and Motivation- Where am I going? What are your passions and the passions of your employees? In your development discussions with your employees, do you ask about their passions? Are you able to not impose your passions on them?
3) Relationships and Teamwork- Whom do I travel with? Gallop 12 questions- having a best friend at work produces those kind of outcomes. How do you control/facilitate this?
4) Positive work environment- How do I build a positive work environment?
5) Engagement/Challenge- What challenges interest me? Is there a line of sight between what I love and what I do?
6) Resilience and Learning- How do I learn from setbacks? If it’s worth doing- it’s worth doing badly i.e. failure is important.
7) Civility and Delight-What delights me? Even though they seem small, they can make a difference in how someone feels about their work.

Well these are just my back of the napkin notes but for all the details on this, please visit their website where all seven steps are discussed and explained in detail.

I’m pretty excited about this as it builds upon a lot of stuff I’ve been working on already. Does anyone else think they could incorporate this into their work?

So last week was a busy one with the AHRI National Convention on, and with my last post being about making some time for networking you might be wondering how I went. Even though I could only pop along to one of the convention days, I met so many other people along the way- it was great!

At the Welcome Reception I caught up with Damon Klotz where we met up with some young professionals in the AHRI networking hub. Young professionals like Theo Winter, Ruth Carey and Sarah Nguyen. I also met Larna Warren for the first time and funnily enough- the ‘how-to’s’ of networking in Human Resources was a hot topic in the hub.

The next evening was the Gala Dinner and as always it was loads of fun. I wasn’t assigned a table so I just wondered on in and made friends with some of the NSW AHRI Councillors which was fantastic. I sat next to Noel Pearse who is the NSW AHRI State President and also Paul Whalen who is a Councillor. You can find out more about who is on the Council in NSW here. There were belly dancers, a band and plenty of food and wine to ensure the dancefloor got started.

While disappointed that none of the exhibitors were supplying berocca and cuddles after getting home from the Gala Dinner at about 1am, I rocked up the next day pretty excited for the speakers that were to come. I’ll be posting about them over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

If you follow me on the twitter machine, or even my posts on LinkedIn you may have noticed that I am gearing up with Damon Klotz (AKA The HRockstar) to host the AHRI Students & Young Professionals Meet up at the Welcome Reception for the National Conference on Monday 6th June (you can meet us at the Networking Hub- stand 41- at 6:30pm but be sure to register here).

With that I mind, I thought it might be appropriate to reminisce about last year’s convention. Well to start with, at the Welcome Reception I bought Marshall Goldsmith’s book and he was so delightful to meet- he signed my book for me!

You might like to check out a few of my posts from last year “Top Tips from Marshall Goldsmith” or “Adding Too Much Value? A problem for smart successful Leaders” or “Rich Old Men hate losing money. A fantastic idea” (all about Marshall’s talk).

Another gem is from Barry Schwartz from the AHRI National Convention on “The Loss of Wisdom“. This one has a link to his TED video on the subject as well.

So I guess I’m wondering who is going along this year and what are you most looking forward to?

Well hi there. Yes it’s been a while… one of my longest breaks yet. I like blogging, but I never blog because I feel I have to. I only write when I’m up for it and sometimes, other things take priority. So what’s been happening in my patch in the last few weeks?

For those who attended the last HR Club Sydney Event- thank you. Again, it is just fantastic to get to meet so many of you and think about some of the different challenges we face at work. It was a great opportunity to hear Michael McQueen speak, and thank you to Rookie Recruits for helping me organise for Michael to attend. Here are some photos from the evening so you can get an idea of what the HR Club Sydney events are like.

I’ve been learning heaps at work and getting some great experience in things I have not managed before. While challenging, there’s so much satisfaction at the same time. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things and share some of this with you over the next few weeks.

I’m also very excited to have jumped in as the Group Convener for the AHRI NSW Young Professionals Group. My mind is racing with all the different things we can do for young HR Pros in NSW so please stay tuned and let me know if you have any ideas you’d like to share.

I’ll be at the Welcome Reception and Exhibition Launch for the AHRI National Convention on Monday 6th June at the Young Professionals meet up. It’s free to attend but you must register so please visit the AHRI website for details.

I’ve finally gotten around to reading “What got you here won’t get you there” by Marshall Goldsmith that I picked up at the AHRI Convention. Can I say that I loved every moment of it and after seeing him speak, I was reading it and in my head I could totally hear him saying every word.

The best thing about this book is that it can apply to everyone, and that you can take things out of it for your work life and your personal life. The book talks about challenges in interpersonal behaviour and focuses on twenty bad habits that we need to stop doing rather than typical leadership traits that we need to start doing.

The twenty bad habits are:

1. Winning too much
2. Adding too much value
3. Passing judgement
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with “no”, “but” or “however”
6. Telling the world how smart we are
7. Speaking when angry
8. Negativity, or “Let me explain why that won’t work”
9. Withholding information
10. Failing to give proper recognition
11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve
12. Making excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Playing favourites
15. Refusing to express regret
16. Not listening
17. Failing to express gratitude
18. Punishing the messenger
19. Passing the buck
20. An excessive need to be “me”

Now when I first heard Marshall speak at the convention I saw a lot of these bad habits in myself, particularly in my personal life. After doing the LSI a couple of years ago in my second job out of uni I think I have really valued feedback and knowing how I come across to other people in the workplace. However, not so much in my personal life. When I heard Marshall speak a few months back, I vowed to make some changes and I have made some ground. Reading the book again was a refresher that there’s still a way to go.

In any case, in reading this book I was reminded of a person that I used to work for and report into. Let’s call him Jake. Now Jake was a bit of a jerk, and I’d like to talk about some of the things that he used to do and hear about times when you’ve had to work with Jake the jerk yourself.

Here are a few examples from Marshall’s list.

No. 8- Negativity or “Let me explain why that won’t work”

Marshall defines these people as those that are “constitutionally incapable of saying positive or complimentary to any of your suggestions. Negativity is their default response. You could walk into their office with a cure for cancer and the first words out of their mouth would be ‘Let me explain why that won’t work’”. People in senior positions often do this to insert themselves as the senior critic.

Well this guy was a Negative Nancy, Debbie Downer, a perfectionistic and a control freak all wrapped into one. I tried to remain positive and respectfully challenge his way of thinking on a number of occasions. Crunch time came when he wanted me to implement a plan that he had written and distributed without me even seeing. I’d done my homework and had my plan written for the year ahead and put it to him for his input (being the bigger person I thought). He essentially dismissed it, saying that it wouldn’t work and it couldn’t be put to the senior staff. He then said to me “now here is a perfect example of what I was talking about the other day. You just don’t listen. You need to do what you’re told and implement this plan”. It was an a-ha moment for me.

I had thought ‘this guy probably hasn’t managed people before’, I’ll be patient with him and he’ll warm to my positive responses and he’ll at least meet me halfway soon. After that comment to me all I could think of was that he was a massive egotistical jerk that was not going to listen to anything I had to say.

No. 15 Refusing to express regret

Marshall says that people often think apologising means we’ve lost, its a humiliating process and means we are giving up power or control, however that refusing to apologise causes about as much ill-will in the workplace as any other interpersonal flaw. He says that “People who can’t apologise at work may as well be wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I don’t care about you’”.

After this conversation with Jake, it made me think about all our interactions together. I knew that apologising was important and I thought back to times when I’d forgotten to tell him about something that was happening that he probably should have been across. It was unintentional, but nevertheless it was something that I apologised for. He had never apologised for anything he had ever done, even when he’d majorly stuffed things up.

Once he came in and barked at me that I needed to organise an interview with person X immediately. I did as he asked. Later right before the interview, we received some feedback on this person and the senior staff did not want to proceed with the interview on that basis. He then sent me an email CC’ing in senior staff saying that this is something that I really should have looked into before I organised the interview. There were major things like that, and minor things like constantly booking me into meetings without my knowledge (or even checking my calendar) and leaving me double booked. I was surprised when I reflected that he had never apologised for anything. This led me to my next point.

No. 17 Failing to express gratitude.

He had never said anything positive or even encouraging to me.

Marshall says that “Gratitude is a skill that we can never display too often. And yet for some reason, we are cheap and chary with gratitude- as if it were rare Bordeaux wine that we can only serve on special occasions. Gratitude is not a limited resource, nor is it costly. It is abundant as air. We breathe it in, but forget to exhale”.

I’m really big on this, particularly for staff in typical support or administrative roles in a business. They are often seen as dispensable resources , when in reality they are the engine room that keeps things going. They are often the staff that are not engaged, yet other parts of the business demand discretionary effort from.

It’s not hard to say thank you when someone has done a good job and should be a skill that every leader posses. At this point in time I was thinking ‘why am I putting in so many hours and so much effort when this guy just acts like a jerk and doesn’t appreciate anything I do?’

Which brings me to the question- what would you do in the same position and how have you conquered working with your very own ‘Jake the jerk?”

Marshall Goldsmith recently spoke about how most of his coaching classes over the years have been a bunch of rich, old men. With a laugh, he said that there is a common misconception that rich, old men don’t mind losing small amounts of money. Funnily enough, rich old men HATE losing money. Any money, even small amounts. They just hate losing and Marshall says it is shocking how well this works around the world.

Marshall’s quick lesson in how to use small amounts of money to create large changes of behaviour in a leader.
Destructive comments. In HR we often talk about breaking down silos, creating a one-(insert your company here) approach to the business and about working harmoniously across divisions and functions in the organisation. But what happens to all that fluffy HR talk when we go and stab another employee in the back? Destructive, negative comments have no positive impact whatsoever so how can you break the bad habits of destructive comments?

Marshall said that it was something that he wanted to work on himself, so he said to his staff “if you ever hear me say a destructive comment about someone, I want you to come to me and I will pay you ten US dollars”.
He gave them a pep talk about how important it was because he didn’t want them to feel uneasy about asking for the money. Turns out the speech was unnecessary as they even went as far as tricking him into saying nasty things to get the money!

In the first hour he’d lost about $50 so he locked himself in the office and refused to speak to anyone. Steep learning curve hey?

He then asked us if we had made any unnecessary, negative comments about anyone in the last month. If we had, we were asked to put $1 on the floor (which was then donated to the Breast Cancer Foundation).

Surprisingly, Marshall said that he has raised over $450,000 for charity over the years playing these games with clients.
I think I’m going to place a jar on my desk at work and/or start a tally with my partner. It’s something I’d like to work on myself. I’d like to think that I’m not a huge gossip in the workplace because quite frankly I just don’t care enough, but I do like to vent when I am cranky. That’s where I have to learn to settle a bit and consider exactly what my destructive comments will achieve. Although I am fairly reliant on my eftpos card so I’ll probably have to write a lot of I.O.U’s lol.

No shame in apologising
You can’t change the past
You can change the future
Ask, listen, think, thank!
I cannot get better at everything, but I can certainly get better at one thing
Positive, simple, focused and fast
Follow-up (consistent and periodic follow up will always lead to the most improvement)
If you get better, it has nothing to do with anyone else, it is do with you

In studies conducted with old people facing death, the 3 most important pieces of advice they gave were:

1. Be Happy Now! People spend too much time focusing on what they don’t have instead of what they have.
2. Friends and Family! On your deathbed, there will be no fellow employees, old bosses etc waving you goodbye.
3. If you have a dream, go for it! If you don’t go for it when you’re young, you may never go for it.

Do whatever you can to help people. (The 95 year old you will be proud of you if you did).
Go for it – you may not win, but it might be worth the risk.

Marshall Goldsmith is pretty awesome.

Barry Schwartz’s talk at the AHRI National Convention ‘The Loss of Wisdom’ is all about finding an anecdote to the excesses of bureaucracy amongst other things. Barry argues that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire and that real practical everyday wisdom will help you rebuild our world.

Barry Swartz is a Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. He is the author of “The paradox of choice: why more is less” which explains the risk that too many choices can essentially paralyse people into inaction.

He was a pretty cool speaker (also he had a tough gig being first cab off the rank on Day 2) and it was interesting to learn that he’s working on another book (due out later this year) on the topic. It does seem a bit out there and fluffy, but after I walked away I thought that it did make an awful lot of common sense.

Barry says that we as human resources professional have the opportunity to transform the workplace, so read on and hopefully I can do a good job explaining what he said.

Initially he started off talking about the recent troubled economic times the world has been experiencing, and how people have been collectively wringing their hands trying to figure out what went wrong and what do to so that it doesn’t happen again.

People are asking ‘how can we make better rules to control the bankers? How can we create smarter incentives so that bankers will do things that actually serve the common good? What Barry’s talk suggests is that although we need better rules and we need smarter incentives neither of these is enough. He says that what we need in addition to good rules and smart incentives, is virtue. We need character and we need a particular virtue one the Philosopher Aristotle called “practical wisdom”.

He argues that:

• Virtue is something we can’t do without
• The one virtue that is the key, is practical wisdom
• Despite our best intentions to make things better we are inadvertently collectively engaged in a war on wisdom; making it increasingly difficult for people to develop wisdom and to display it
• And that this is a problem that can in fact be solved, maybe even by people like us!

I’ll share a few stories that Barry spoke about with regards to practical wisdom.

The Hospital Janitor

Across the screen, Barry had a list of the job responsibilities of the hospital janitor at major teaching hospital in the United States. He wanted us to note two things: that there is a long list of duties and not enough people to do it, and also that not one of the items on the list involves another human being.

Basically, they are saying that hospital janitors may as well work in a morgue because there was nothing mentioned about the interactions they have with other people. However some psychologists have studied these janitors in the United States and come across people like Mike; who described how one day he stopped mopping the floor in the hallway because Mr Jones, a patient, was out of his bed getting a little much needed exercise post surgery walking slowly up and down the hall and Mike didn’t want Mr Jones to slip. Then there was Sharlene, who ignored her supervisors and did not vacuum the visitors lounge because there was some family members in the visitor’s lounge who were there all day everyday keeping a vigil for a sick relative. They were at that moment taking a moment to get some rest and she didn’t want to wake them. There was Luke who washed the floor in a comatose young man’s room twice because the man’s father who had himself been keeping a vigil for 6 months hadn’t seen Luke do it the first time and the boy’s father was angry.
Barry said that behaviour like this from hospital juniors, from technicians to nurses (and if we are extremely lucky once in a while even from doctors) doesn’t just make you feel good- it actually improves patient care and it enables hospitals to run better.

Not all hospital janitors are like this, but the ones who are think that these sorts of traits are an essential part of their job, even though their job description contains nothing about it. Barry argues that the janitors have the moral will to do the right thing, to do right by other people. Beyond this they have the moral skill to know what doing right means, moral will and moral skill together they are what Aristotle meant by practical wisdom.

You can check Barry’s TED Talk out below to hear the story for yourself.