Meet Marley, the latest addition to our family

It has been over a year since we lost our thirteen year old dog, Cassie.  Yes, we missed having a dog around, but it’s been pretty nice without one, too.  No dogs to walk in bad weather.  No vet bills, arthritis meds, or visits to the kennel.  And the carpet stays so much cleaner!  So, logically, you would think that we wouldn’t be interested in getting a new one.  Dogs are great, sure- but even the good ones are a TON of work and why would I deliberately choose to complicate my life, right?  Right??

the nastsy control panel that disturbs my slumber

The window above our heads shook violently, startling my husband and I out of deep sleeps.  We sat up in bed and listened to the frightening wind storm blowing outside.  As our eyes adjusted to the light level in the room, we noticed that both alarm clocks were flashing.  Oops; we’d lost power.  Better re-set those clocks.  I grabbed my cell phone to check the actual time and realized that I had missed a phone call that had come in at 11:30pm, and that the caller had left a voice mail message.   Uh-oh. 

I’m the first phone call our security company makes when our office is shut down and the alarms go off.  Those alarms can go off for many different reasons, but the most common one is because the equipment is old and temperamental.  I know this because I had previously responded to several alarms that turned out to be nothing.  In this particular instance I was 99% sure that it wasn’t theft but a power outage that had caused the problem.  I seriously considered blowing the whole thing off- I told myself that I could go in to the office early in the morning and reset the alarm then. My company does not mandate security systems, so if it wasn’t set for a few hours I wouldn’t be in trouble.  But my conscience wouldn’t let me rest.  What if a burglar was making away with thousands of dollars worth of equipment?  What if the building was on fire?  I decided to get dressed and drive the fifty minutes out to Akron in the middle of the night (and in the storm), just to be sure.

The drive took over an hour.  The winds were gusting at fifty miles per hour and it was raining sideways.  There were sections of the highway where it was all I could do to keep the car in its lane.  The music on my radio was interrupted by an emergency broadcast announcing a severe storm warning in a four-county area.  Geez, you don’t say.

After arriving at the branch, I quickly determined that the issue was indeed that we had lost power.  The generator was running and all doors were secure.  I reset the alarm and headed back out to my car, which was still warm inside. 

Sure, the trip was a waste and I would have been fine waiting until the morning to take care of it.  But if I had ignored that alarm there would have been some permanent damage done- not to the building, but to my opinion of myself.  When you cut corners or shirk your duties, you can’t look yourself in the mirror and say that you give your job your best effort.  And in my opinion, being able to do that is more important than a few hours of lost sleep. 

I knew I should leave it alone, but I couldn’t help it.  I  also knew that if could somehow stop scratching, it might scab over before my important meeting the following morning. If it did scab over, then I could put some makeup on it and cover up the redness.  That would help my face look relatively normal.  I put my hands in my lap and visualized a successful meeting.  I pictured myself shaking hands, smiling, receiving a tour of the office, and making an overall good first impression.  But while I was visualizing, my hand had quietly crept up the side of my face and I was scratching again.  Damn.

 The previous Sunday, my family and I had hiked through our friends’ farm, looking for a Christmas tree that we could cut down.  We found one that we all liked in record time.  Then we checked it for both bird’s nests and praying mantis egg pouches (you don’t want those hatching in your house on Christmas Eve!) both of which automatically disqualify a tree from being brought home with us.  We did NOT check it for poison ivy vines. Therefore, we could not have noticed the delicate one wrapping up its trunk.  My husband cut the tree down while I held it up by its infected trunk, and then we took turns dragging it back to our minivan.  We lifted it up onto the roof rack, tied it down, and drove off without realizing that my gloves were covered with crud.  And at some point during that ride home, I must have brushed my hair off the side of my face with my poison ivy-covered glove.   

As I sat on the carpet in one of the Sky Harbor Airport gate areas scratching, I realized how much my appearance had affected my self-confidence.  Normally I travel in my business attire and I feel pretty good about myself.  But on this day my hair was pulled back because it made my face itch when I wore it down.  It had seemed ridiculous to bother with makeup when the side of my face looked like I’d been kissed by a hot iron, so I had left it off.  And since it was a travel day and not a day of meetings, I had on jeans instead of a suit.  This combination of crud and casual look made me slink though the airport avoiding eye contact with everyone, and I sat on the floor rather than have a fellow traveler next to my oozing, throbbing face. 

Of course, I know that my attitude is completely in my own hands.  I may not be able to cure the poison ivy before my meeting, but I certainly have the power to control how I react to it.  I can sit on the floor and mope, or I can take my rightful place in one of the gate area chairs and start preparing for my meeting.  I stand up, brush off my bad attitude, and sit in the closest open chair.  There is a person seated next to the cruddy side of my face, so I make a bet with myself.  If he moves, next year the family buys an artificial Christmas tree from Wal-Mart.  If he stays, then we go back to the tree farm and add poison ivy to the list of things we check for before cutting a tree down. 

He stayed.

10.  Buy a travel set of toiletries.  You don’t want to waste time tracking them down every time you leave the house.

9.  Just because the lights in your own car turn off automatically when you take the keys out doesn’t mean that they do the same thing in your rental car.

8.  You’d be amazed at the amount of jewelery that doesn’t set off the metal detectors in the airport.  And at the amount of liquids that you can smuggle past security in your purse.  This last statement does not apply to half-drank bottles of Diet Coke, however…they’ll call you on those.

7.  Always build in more time to your travel than you’ll need.  Sure, it’s wasted 99% of the time, but you’ll be awfully glad you did when you hit that 1%.

6.  Never completely unpack your suitcase once you arrive home.  It just gives you the opportunity to forget things.

5.  Airport gift shops are a great place to pick up unique birthday and Christmas gifts for your friends and family.  It helps kill time, and it saves you the trouble of scrambling around for these items on your precious days off.

4.  Watching takeoffs, landings, and cloud formations from the window seat of a plane never gets old.

3.  Eating out in restaurants does.

2.  Our bodies all respond differently to the stresses of air travel.  Mine requires lots of water, eye drops, and ibuprofin.  And chocolate.

And my personal favorite lesson learned:

1.  There’s no place like home.

Not the best day at the office

Being an effective leader isn’t easy.  When you look at the top of your organization you’ll most likely see a blend of strong and weak leaders.  What makes the strong ones strong and the weak ones weak?  How can you avoid being one of the weak ones as you make your way up your organizational chart?  Understanding-and staying away from- these six trouble spots will greatly increase your chances of becoming one of the good ones.

1. You don’t lead yourself well enough.  This one really comes down to your character.  Are you honest?  Trustworthy?  Do you follow through on your commitments?  How’s your work ethic?  Can you be relied on in emergencies?  Face it- if you can’t lead yourself well, you can be sure that nobody is going to follow you.
2. You don’t care enough about the people you are trying to lead.  People will not follow you until they believe that you have their best interests at heart.  This is something you can’t accomplish with a mere title; this is a bond that must be built over time.  Do you really know your people?  You have to show an interest in their personal lives and know what their career aspirations are. You have to be able to see things through their eyes.  Make an effort to connect with them regularly.  Respect them and encourage them.  Only then will they allow you to lead them.
3. You are in the wrong department or company.  Many of us have ended up in careers that we did not ever plan for; they are just comfortable.  This is fine if you are a follower.  If you aspire to become a leader in your organization, however, your job has to be a good fit for you. You must be energetic and enthusiastic at work, which are very hard to do when roles don’t fit you properly.  Do you volunteer to come in early, stay late, and work on those special projects? Is your passion coupled up with expertise in your field?  If you don’t have them, consider finding a role, company, or industry that better suits you.
4. You are not a strong communicator.  Leading is often about communicating your vision to others.  This takes many forms; training, meetings, emails, and one-on-one conversations.  Master all of them.  Read up on email etiquette.  Join a local chapter of Toastmasters to become better at public speaking.  Read the book “On Writing Well” by Zisner.  Whether you become a leader or not, improved communication skills will have a positive impact on your career.
5. You don’t have the drive.  This is the most important aspect of success to me.  It takes plenty of drive to rise through the ranks of a company.  If I had to give up all but one of my professional attributes, this is the one I would keep.  If you don’t have the drive, go back to #3 and take a hard look at yourself. Drive is a large part of what makes you promotable.  One of the employees in my office recently applied for a job opening that was two steps above his current one.  He knew he didn’t have the experience for it, but he spent an hour interviewing with one of our company’s regional managers- and when a different opportunity (a much better one!) needed to be filled by that regional manager, he immediately thought of the man he had interviewed.  Drive gets you moving- and if you don’t have it, you’re stuck in park.
6. You are not willing to make the necessary sacrifices.  I have always believed that a company’s #1 leader is also its #1 servant.  You put the employees and the company’s needs before your own.  There are late nights, travel, and missed ball games with your children.  It’s all part of the price of leadership.  These aren’t the only sacrifices; you also have to spend a good portion of your personal time developing your craft.  This could mean studying up on your industry, or brushing up on your communication skills.  And it always means pitching in to do whatever is necessary to make the company succeed.

Look within yourself.  How do you measure up in these areas?  It is hard to determine how you fare on the first two- you might want to ask a colleague’s opinion on those.  Get to work on the areas where you hare holding yourself back, and start your leadership journey.

Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath

You are at a job interview.  It’s going well- you’ve already been meeting with your potential new boss for half an hour.  Then the question comes: “What are your strengths?”  You blink once or twice, then launch into a description of strengths  that is primarily comprised of what you think the interviewer wants to hear.  Maybe you get the job- maybe you don’t- but the question settles into your mind.  What ARE my strengths?

That was my question to myself too.  Over the years I’ve worked on developing leadership skills, and that work has affected my personality to the point where I wasn’t sure what my true strengths were.  I was excited to have a chance to explore the subject with Strengths Finder 2.0.  Below is my review.

Did I learn anything new?  The basic concept of the book is that you should discover what your strengths are, and spend more time developing them than you do on improving your weaknesses.  Tom Rath used over forty years of Gallup research on human strengths to identify thirty-four different personality “themes.”  You discover what your top five are by taking an online quiz.  I learned what my themes are, but more interestingly, it shed a lot of light on why I do some of the things I do.

Was it interesting and entertaining?  The book is comprised of a brief introduction section, and the rest of it is devoted to descriptions of the thirty-four different themes.  It wasn’t entertaining, but reading about my strengths was certainly interesting.

Could I relate to the author?  It wasn’t that kind of book.  The author did talk about himself and his experience.

Was the writing style and the format easy to follow?  Yes.  I particularly liked the way that the different strengths were written in block style down the right-hand side of the pages, and they were listed alphabetically.  That made them easy to find.

Did I finish the book?  I read the introduction, took the online test and read about my strengths.  I also scanned the other strengths, but I didn’t read all of them.   

Was it worth the time I invested to read it?  Absolutely.  It was a quick read and the information I gained from it was definitely worth the time.

BUSINESS MOM’S RATING:  4  If you are interested in getting to know yourself a little better, pick this book up.  It’s an inexpensive quick read.  My only criticism of the book is that two of my five strengths were not right for me.  I spent a couple of weeks mulling the test results over before I decided to ignore those two and replace them with two others that I felt should have been in my top three.  I’m not sure if it is the test itself, or if I over-thought my answers.  Regardless, I now have a much better understanding of what my strengths are. 

Sure, the photo was staged after the meeting ended, but you get the general idea.

I am trudging up the walkway to my house after a three day business trip to Chicago and then two grueling, twelve-hour days in the office.  All I want to do is hug my family, relax for awhile, then fall asleep on the couch.  But I hear noises behind the thick log walls of my house.  Is it crying?  Yes- I hear two children crying.  The noises are coming from their bedrooms.  I walk in the front door to find the house completely trashed, and my husband is standing there, grimacing a “hello” at me.

Did I learn anything new?  Absolutely.  A good portion of this book deals with sales people’s “ploys” and the “tactics” buyers should use to thwart those ploys.  I had no idea salespeople were viewed so negatively by buyers; these descriptions were definitely unflattering.  However, selling IS strategic, and I appreciated the fact that the author mentioned which ploys were hardest to overcome.  And now I better understand that the indecisive buyer who is dragging their feet might in fact be a cunning negotiator.  It’s interesting stuff.

Was it interesting and entertaining?  It was interesting, but it was not “entertaining” to read how negatively my profession is viewed.

Could I relate to the author?  Not really, but I do know others like him.  He’s a salesperson-hater. 

Was the format/ writing style easy to understand?  Yes…especially the section on “ploys” and “tactics.”  There were some good real-world stories in there too.

Did I finish the book?  Why or why not?  I only read past the halfway point.  That is because the end was specifically on writing and then negotiating the formal contract themselves, and that is not particularly helpful in my business.

Was it worth the time I invested to read it?  Yes.  But I wouldn’t invest the time to finish it.  I have too many other unfinished books on my shelves for that. 

Business Mom’s Book Ranking:  3  I learned a thing or two, but I’d only recommend it to you if you have a strong interest in this particular subject.

Sometimes Life goes along smoothly, and we are able to happily make progress towards our goals.  And sometimes it doesn’t.   Those bumps in the road slow us down.  And sometimes we slow down to the point where we don’t even know if it is worth the effort to get going again.  “Sure,” you say.  “Maybe Mother Teresa kept going, but I’m certainly no Mother Teresa.”  So I’ll give you a much more down-to-earth example: myself.

I’m committed to spending two hours a day working towards my personal goals.  When things are going well, I hit that goal with no problem.  But this summer it’s been one bump after another.  My mother-in-law with dementia has been living with us for eight weeks.  Bump.  Our house had a bat infestation and a bird mite infestation. Bump bump.  My career has been on hold for six weeks as I wait for information about a promotion I am supposed to be receiving.  Bump.  The basement flooded, my administrative employee quit, and the list goes on and on.  Bump, bump, bump.  I can tell you that these bumps have absolutely slowed me down.  So how do we keep making progress when things get bumpy?

• Adjust your expectations.  When you hit those bumpy patches in Life, give yourself permission to slow down. 
• Plan to accomplish goals weekly or monthly, instead of daily.  This gives you breathing room on those really tough days.
• Celebrate all of your progress.  If you are able to hit a milestone during a bumpy patch, take the time to pat yourself on the back.
• Remember that you are writing your life story.  The hero of a good book always has obstacles to overcome. When you look back over those tough periods, you’ll be so pleased with yourself that you kept going.  And you’ll realize that you cherish those itty bitty steps you took during the hard times more than the giant strides you took during the good times.

Keep going, despite the bumps.  Sure- the average person would stop.  But you aren’t average, are you?