Tag: Work

Fast, Intentional, and Grounded

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I keep on thinking about the question Abby posed last week: how do we move quickly without rushing?

The dilemma, and the assumptions behind it, can be illustrated like this:

We all know the Fast and Rushing quadrant well.

It’s a version of “OMG I have SO much homework…” “No I have SO MUCH HOMEWORK!” that surfaced sometime in school. Busy becomes a way of life, and we get hooked on the buzzing tension. That rushing, frantic feeling can accompany getting a lot done. But often, we start to unconsciously equate fast with frenzy, and it’s no surprise that we often end up at a breaking point.

Ironically, it’s also possible to take that same energy into the “slow” quadrant: fear takes hold of us, and we cannot face reality. The tasks we are able to  accomplish pale in comparison to everything that needs to be done, so we do less. Yet we still find ourselves expending a tremendous amount of energy on worry and fear. We are paralyzed.

That, to me, is the main difference between the top and bottom half of this graph: not the amount we get done, but the amount of mental energy we spend cycling through worry.

We know how it feels to end up in this place: no matter how much we accomplished, it’s feels impossible to truly stop at the end of the day.

We can’t stop our minds from churning even when we’ve closed the laptop.

We’ve gotten on such a stimulation high—maybe, even, from crushing it all day—that we spend the rest of the night stimulating ourselves more, scrolling or finding other ways to get a dopamine hit.

As our brains gets used to this pattern, the pattern itself strengthens. We get to a point where, thanks to long stretches (months, years) of both moving fast and being frenzied, we assume that “fast” and “frenzied” are inseparable.

Think, for a moment, what fast and intentional looks like: maybe a professional athlete, or an animal in the wild that knows exactly where it’s heading.

There’s an efficiency of movement, a calm focus, no wasted energy, and a power that comes from a lethal combination of relaxation, clarity, and aggression.

“How much we do” and “how we do what we do” move on independent axes.

To be clear, I’m as likely as the next person to get caught up in worry, in unproductive cycling through “what if’s,” of a sense that if I slow down for even 20 minutes to sit and really think about something that I’ll have fallen behind.

But that mode makes me neither more effective nor happier, so I’m trying to observe it to see if I can let it go.

When I come up short, bouts of intense exercise and moments of unbridled laughter and joy with loved ones are a great way to reset.

On Interviewing Well: Intention

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Why are you here?

In this interview, I mean, on this day, talking to these people?

If you have taken the time to apply for a job, to get invited for these interviews, to prepare, to spend your time in these conversations, then you must carry a singular purpose: to get this job.

That may seem obvious.

The reality is, it’s easy to lose track of your purpose in the artificial setting that an interview creates. The questions you’re being asked are all over the place. There’s a mutual dance going on of we-are-being-totally-genuine-with-each-other but also…not.

Nearly 30 years ago, in one of my early job interviews to be an Analyst at an investment bank, I was asked what would motivate me to stay past midnight night after night in the midst of a big deal. In a moment of regretful honesty, I replied, “I’m not sure, actually. Can you tell me what motivated you to do that?” Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

While I don’t think you’ll make this kind of novice mistake, there are lots of smaller ways that you can express doubt and, inadvertently, undermine your candidacy.

Hence the importance of anchoring your intention.

For example, the best public talks I’ve given are the ones where I know who I’m speaking to. Not in a generalized way—I think of an actual person who I’m hoping to connect with or persuade.

Even if I’m extremely well-prepared and I’ve learned (most of) my talk by heart (aside: I never memorize the whole thing), my inflection, the bits that I improvise, my cadence, my presence…it is all impacted by who I’m imagining I’m speaking to.

The cumulative effect of each of these moments being tailored to the right person is a much more effective talk. Everything lands more, and the result is a more powerful, more persuasive story.

It’s the same when you sit down to interview: clarity of intention.

“I am here to get this job. To do that I will convey my strengths as a professional, my maturity, why I am a great colleague, and how I can fit into this team to help it play at a high level.”

Our job is to hold that intention strongly, while also being nimble enough to incorporate the new information that comes at us over the course of the day.

It’s a subtle shift, but it’s one that makes all the difference.

 

 

Other posts in this Series:

On Interviewing Well: Introduction

On Interviewing Well: Convey Deep Self-Knowledge (3-3-2)

On Interviewing Well: Owning Your Agenda

On Interviewing Well: Owning Your Agenda

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

We are at our most effective when we have a clear sense of purpose.

Heading into a job interview, that sense of purpose is captured in three sentences:

This is what I want them to know about me.

This is the work I’ve done that will convey why I’ll be a great member of their team.

This is what I want to learn about them.

It’s easy to get unmoored in interviews: it’s an artificial situation and we can revert to the person we were years or decades ago—when we had our first interviews—instead of the more intentional, confident person we are today.

The most important thing to remember is: the dutiful question-answerer is not the person who gets the job.

The person who gets the job is someone who comes in with executive presence that is communicated through a clear sense of purpose. That purpose is manifested by conveying a clear body of work that shows why you’re the right person for this job.

This is a delicate rebalance of the power dynamic that typically prevails.

As you walk into the room, the interviewer has all the power: you’re one of hundreds of candidates aiming to “win the bake-off.”

But if you enter with strong presence and clear intent, and you focus on communicating your relevant body of work, that balance starts to shift towards one in which two people are having a conversation to discover if working together will meet both of your goals.

Of course, you’re walking a fine line here. While you want to come in with a clear purpose, you can also push too far. If you communicate that all that’s going on for you is evaluating them, you’ll probably come across as arrogant and get passed over.

But clarity about why you are here and fidelity to those goals will infuse all your responses with additional crispness. You will convey the points you need to get across even in the face of a barrage of surprising questions. And you’ll be more likely to stay grounded throughout this grueling process.

In summary:

Their agenda is: to assess me and find the best candidate for the job.

My agenda is: to clearly convey who I am, why I’m here, and what I bring to the table; to understand who they are and whether they’re the right place for me.

Attitude matters as much as what you say in any job interview.

 

Other posts in this Series:

On Interviewing Well: Introduction

On Interviewing Well: Convey Deep Self-Knowledge (3-3-2)

Self and Role

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There’s a tightrope we all need to walk in our professional relationships, the balance between self and role.

One of the greatest joys of my professional life is that I’ve found a career that allows me to work with so many great people. Folks who are committed to social change are, in my experience, more likely to be their whole selves in a professional environment, and this makes it more common to develop strong relationships with our colleagues.

This is a plus, but it creates something delicate: learning to be in relationship both as our selves and as our roles.

Because sometimes there is a virtuous, reinforcing loop between our strong personal and professional relationships: great friends find it easy to fill in the blanks for each other and have each others’ backs. We have a deep foundation of trust to draw upon, one that gives us more latitude and more leeway.

But sometimes these forces pull in opposite directions. We disagree about something, or one person has to make a tough call that affects the other. Or, harder still, we need to have a difficult professional conversation that could create strain in our personal relationship.

What we must remember is that it’s our obligation to push to this uncomfortable place—especially if our shared work is in service of others. We must be willing to take on relational risk, to prioritize the conversations we need to have as professionals even if this might weaken our personal relationship for a period of time.

To make this possible, both people need to be committed to, and adept at, switching hats—to know that sometimes we’re talking as friends, and sometimes we’re talking as colleagues, and there are days when these cannot be the same things.

And, the hard fact is that, the more senior you get, the harder it gets to take “role” hat off, even if you’d like to.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t have strong friendships and relationships at work, it just means that your role has become important enough in your organization that you occupy it for others no matter what.

 

At the Beginning

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At the outset of any professional relationship, there’s a period of definition. A time when both parties are figuring out “how this is going to work.”

Each person goes in with their own set point and expectations, based on their preferences and experience.

Their behaviors at the outset communicate how much this relationship will be similar to / different from those expectations. Things like:

  • Content: what topics are in or out
  • Tone: how formal or informal
  • Communication style: pithy to verbose
  • Pace: how quickly we respond (communicates: how important are these things versus all my other things)
  • Energy: high or low
  • Structure: high or low
  • Deadlines: are hit early / always / sometimes / never
  • Follow up: airtight / pretty good / loose / terrible

Especially with remote working relationships, our first few interactions are amplified.

They communicate what sort of path we are both on.

So it might be worth thinking twice: what are you communicating with that second email, that third Slack message, the time you propose for a first call, or how good your first deliverable is to someone new?

Human beings are hard-wired to fill in the blanks.

You can use that to your advantage.

A Place to Do Your Work

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The perfect pencil, or chair, or lighting aren’t required.

But we all need a place to do our work.

A place that says to our unconscious mind: this is where I get it done.

Our tools are close at hand.

Our mind clicks into gear.

And, because we are here, we get to skip the discussion with ourselves about whether we feel up for it today, whether we are inspired, energetic or motivated.

This is our workplace, here we are, so we work.

None of this guarantees an outcome—having the right place is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition.

Meaning that if we don’t have a place we do our work, our job is infinitely harder.

Here’s hoping that you had your place in place in 2023, and that it was a productive year for you.

And here’s wishing that you create that place for yourself in 2024 if you haven’t yet.

The world needs the best from you, the things that only you can produce.

So do us all the favor of giving yourself your best chance to produce your best.

The simplest way to establish connection

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

We fumble through so many workplace conversations, especially the meaty ones that make our blood pressure rise.

The easiest way to stay grounded and strengthen your connection with a colleague? Actively describe what is going on for you emotionally. This means getting above the feelings with enough perspective so you can describe them to another person.

“I’m happy you said that…”

“Thank you. I find what you’re saying really helpful.”

“Hearing this helps me see the situation in a new light…”

“It’s scary to be confronted with this, so I’m feeling that right now…”

“What you’re saying is really causing me to reflect, and I’d like some more time to do that.”

The volume of our own thoughts and feelings is often so high, we can easily assume that what we are thinking and feeling is obvious to everyone around us.

It isn’t until you describe it to them.

Daring to Care

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

One of our professional values at 60 Decibels is to “take the work personally.”

We define that as “We take pride in the work and deliver work that hits the highest standards. Anything we do reflects the best we can do.”

Because we’re a mission-driven organization, I think it’s easier for folks to take the work personally. Most of our team is here because the mission speaks to them. And, if we achieve our ambitions, the world will have changed: we will center the people who are the “beneficiaries” of social change work—whether done by nonprofits or companies, whether as customers, employees or suppliers—in the conversation about whether social change is happening. It’s rare to get the chance to be a part of something with this type of ambition.

But the idea of taking the work personally is bigger and more fundamental than any organization’s mission.

It’s a stance that we take.

A daily choice to care.

A daily choice to show up as a professional.

Which means deciding on living our own version of the U.S. Postal Services Creed, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”  Lots of things we don’t control will go wrong. Nevertheless, we will do our jobs.

A daily choice to honor the accountability we have to our colleagues.

Because we respect them and want to see them succeed. We do our work in partnership, as part of a collective.  The work I do will either lift others up or pull them down. And this ripple effect plays out across our organizations, our clients, and the world.

Of course, this is all a lot easier to see when the people in charge remind us, when they connect the dots for us, when they help us draw a line between our role and organization’s mission and strategy.

But the connection exists either way, a direct line between:

Daring to give a damn.

The quality of what we produce.

How others feel when they interact with us.

And whether we are strengthening our culture and organization.

Every group is just a collection of its people, the stories they tell themselves and each other, and how they choose to act.

What choice will you make today?

Open Mondays, Open Fridays

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

18 months ago, I made a structural change to my calendar that I love: leaving Mondays and Fridays (nearly) free of meetings, so that each week has a No Meeting Monday and a No Meeting Friday.

These days are dedicated to ‘doing’ rather than to talking or reacting. What’s valuable is not simply the number of hours available, it’s the large blocks of time every week: enough time to create, and the requirement to face a blank page.

How to Make it Happen

Most of my meetings are external, so I’ve set up my Calendly to only show free time on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Beyond that, it’s up to me to stay disciplined when someone asks me if I can meet on Monday at noon. (“No!”)

(Though, in truth, a short meeting here or there doesn’t materially impact my flow, since I do need some breaks.)

The Flow of the Week

On Mondays, I’m setting up for the week and laying the foundation for things that I need to move forward. This allows me to maintain some control over my (and the company’s) direction of travel rather than constantly being in responsive/reactive mode.

Fridays are for closing everything that came up during the week, including ensuring I’ve properly followed up on the many (many) external conversations I had on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

In addition, to make things really hum I also:

  • Us the end of the day on Friday to make a short list of Monday morning priorities. This helps me ensure I don’t lose any threads from the previous week.
  • Find time on Sunday to clean out my Inbox / Slack from the weekend. This way I don’t lose my Monday morning to responding to inbound traffic (but this is a balancing act because it’s also important for me to keep my weekends free…).

The Great (and Hard) Parts

The obvious challenge of this schedule is the hyper-full Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday that can feel overwhelming.

I have pretty good endurance but there’s a limit to how many productive hours of conversations I can have (my max is 5). And even 3 or 4 hours of meetings is too much without great notes. I use Notion, with clear next steps documented at the end of every meeting. Otherwise, by 3pm I’ve forgotten what I agreed to do in my 9am meeting.

The more important, and subtle, challenge is starting the week off with blank space.

If I’ve caught up on Friday (and, when needed, over the weekend), then Monday morning is all mine. Forcing myself, nearly every week, to face that down and decide for myself what’s most important for me to do, feels a lot like staring at a blank page and needing to write a blog post: humbling, often intimidating, even spilling over into a bit of soul-searching….

What is my job when I’m not frantically responding to the things that everyone else needs me to do for them?

It’s a good question that we all need to ask ourselves regularly.

And I’ve found that without this sort of structure in my days, I can go weeks, and even months, without asking myself this question.

The fact is, it’s a question we all need to answer for ourselves, regardless of how ‘senior’ we are in the organization.

We all have unique talents and a unique perspective. We all, therefore, need to have our own agenda: the work we do when it’s our time and not someone else’s.

To Be More Productive, Limit Your Time

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

There’s a lot of talk about shorter work weeks. This is a natural outgrowth of the acceleration of remote work over the last two years.

The thesis, as I understand it, has two parts:

  1. Most/all employees can get the same amount done in 32 hours that they can get done in 40 hours.
  2. Doing so leads to an overall increase in well-being for everyone

I have no idea what the long-term data are/will be on the first point, but my first reactions are:

  • I’m sure most people waste a ton of time at most jobs. This  means there’s a lot of slack built in. So it’s believable that some people can work 20% fewer hours and get the same amount done.
  • I am curious about whether this impact is temporary or permanent.
  • And, more fundamentally, I wonder what happens in people’s heads when they feel they only have 4 days in which to get 5 days’ worth of work done.

Does our time being (or feeling) constrained lead us to be more productive?

I think this is entirely possible. When our boss, at 10am, tells us we’re working until 10pm today, most of us will find space for a longer lunch and a few other distractions.

Conversely, I’ve found (particularly during the pandemic) that knowing that I have a set of end-of-day obligations at home (driving the kids somewhere, cooking dinner) keeps me hyper-focused on getting everything I need to get done in the (shortened) available time and I am more productive.

You might experiment with juicing your output by, counterintuitively, constraining your time. Create your own strict deadlines for projects—“I’ll get this done by 5pm” rather than “by tomorrow”—and see if it creates a positive cascading effect in the hours leading up to that deadline.

The fact is, we all have moments when our energy lags throughout the day. The question is: what do we do in those moments, how do we manage them?

Do we consciously take productive breaks (getting some fresh air, walking around a bit, getting a glass of water and sitting quietly without our phones)?

Or do we dither and get pulled into (online) things that can spiral and that sap our energy?

For most of us, in the last 60 minutes before a deadline, we’re hyper-focused and spending 0% of our time doomscrolling.

The trick is to harness a sustainable version of this feeling over the course of a day, so we have a sustained sense of focus and urgency and, as a result, are much more efficient.

And, lest we forget, whenever we hit our own early deadline, we have to remember Jerry Seinfeld’s advice to give ourselves a (figurative) cookie. The reward for 4, 5 or 6 hours of super-productive, focused work has to be…rewarding! And that probably isn’t jumping immediately to the next task.

The bonus is that, not only does this behavior make us more productive, efficient and happier, it’s also an opportunity to practice being accountable to ourselves (and not just to other people).

The muscle of self-accountability is a blog post for another day, but the short version is this: the better we get good a keeping the promises we make to ourselves (along with, not instead of, the promises we make to others) the more chance that we’ll use our newly-found free time for projects that really matter.