Dashe & Thomson is excited to announce the recent addition of Jeremy Vore as Director of Client Engagement. Jeremy brings a background of exceptional experience within the training and development field as a Training and Implementation Manager as well as running RedLeaf Consulting, a change management company. Learn more about Jeremy in the interview below. Q: Discuss your background a little bit. I’ve had a wide range of wonderful professional experiences, but they all come back to my love of communication, teaching, and interacting with people. I’ve been fortunate enough to apply those skills in aviation, outdoor recreation, healthcare, and as a business owner. All told, I’ve been making a living as a communicator and teacher since I was 17. Q: Teenage training professionals aren’t very common! What were you doing? I started sea kayaking in the Great Lakes when I was about 14 and progressed quickly in the sport. I was really lucky and had some world-class coaches and mentors who taught me the difference between being highly skilled in the physical aspects of the sport, which came very naturally to me, and having the experience, judgement, and leadership to be a true, top-level paddler. Part of that education included becoming certified as a British Canoe Union Coach and working for one of North America’s premier paddling centers as an instructor and guide. Everything I’ve done since then has been built on the foundation of communication, risk management, decision making, and leadership that came from that experience as a teen. Q: You also worked as a commercial pilot and flight instructor. What was the most rewarding part of that job? There were two experiences that were extremely rewarding. One was the opportunity to work with students who were struggling or had plateaued at WMU’s College of Aviation. I had a different background and instructional approach than some of the other staff flight instructors and was able to use that to make flying interesting and exciting again. Most of those students ended up becoming excellent, professional pilots. I also helped Cirrus Design develop aircraft-specific private and instrument pilot courses for their technologically advanced SR-series airplanes. These are 4 seat, propeller driven airplanes that have avionics and electronic cockpits rivaling wide body jets, so they aren’t the typical small planes with 1960s technology. We saw measurable improvements in the safety and competence of the airplane owners and pilots as a result of the work we did in the Flight Standards Department. That was very exciting! Q: How did you connect with Dashe & Thomson? I decided to leave my position as a Training and Implementation Manager at Zotec Partners to start a training and change management company, Redleaf Consulting. During the wind-down of my projects, I contacted and worked with Dashe & Thomson to finish a few training initiatives at Zotec Partners before I left. Working with the Dashe & Thomson team was a great experience, and, after I was on my own with Redleaf Consulting, we realized that there was an excellent opportunity to work together. As the Director of Client Engagement, I get to do all of the rewarding things that led me to start Redleaf, but with the resources, experience, and expertise of the Dashe & Thomson team. For me, the decision to join their team was an easy one. Q: What are you hoping to accomplish in your new position? There are really three parts to what I want to achieve. My selfish goal is to build on and develop the foundation of communication, training, and interaction with people that I’ve enjoyed so far in my professional history. From the company’s perspective, I’m looking forward to using my experience and knowledge to help our instructional designers, training developers, and other team members create the best product in the most efficient ways possible. And, for our clients, I want to ensure that we deliver the right tools and content to achieve their specific goals and business outcomes. If I can hit those targets, I’ll consider my role as the Director of Client Engagement to be successful. The post Dashe & Thomson Welcomes New Director of Client Engagement appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, Since our organization runs 24/7, it’s sometimes difficult to communicate face-to-face with all employees. Our managers often use e-mail to communicate important messages, including giving performance feedback. Would you share your thoughts on what is and is not appropriate to communicate by e-mail? Signed,Performance e-view  Dear Performance e-view, When my son, Hyrum, was three years old, he began to sense at times that he didn’t have my full attention. This was the early days of e-services and I was beginning to get emotionally wired into e-mails and other web services. He would toddle into my office and begin chattering about something important on his mind. I would respond minimally. And at some point, he would climb onto my lap, obstructing my view of the computer screen, place both hands on either side of my face, turn my head so my eyes locked onto his, and say something wonderful like, "Dad, do you know what Muffy did today?" In taking control of my head, he was doing more than just trying to focus my attention. He was satisfying his. Our brains dedicate a disproportionate amount of our cognitive resources to observing faces. We become fluent in reading body language long before we master verbal language. Infants can distinguish a human face from inanimate objects or even animal faces. Why the fixation on faces? Because they are the primary tool we use for discerning the intentions of those around us. Our primal programming urges us to assess any being that enters our visual neighborhood. There’s enormous survival value in being perpetually aware of whether those around us intend us harm and whether they’re capable of carrying it out. And nature has endowed us with great facility in making these judgments by reading nuances of the human face. Therein lies the principle for determining when a crucial conversation can be held virtually and asynchronously. The fundamental question is, "Can I do this well without seeing his or her face?" I have a few—not many, but a few—relationships where I can text almost anything and get away with it. Yes, even something a bit terse like, "Your last report was light on facts." And the only reason I can get away with it is because, in these rare instances, if their face puckers up in some unpleasant way, they’ll tell me. They know me well enough that they can imagine the face I had on when I wrote it (curious, but not angry), and if they doubt the mental picture they have of me, they’ll ask. But these are rare relationships. They’re rare because we tend to trust visual data more than verbal. If someone says, "No, I’m not angry at you," but their lip is twitching while they say it, we trust the lip not the words. This becomes problematic in virtual conversations because the massive mental resources that would ordinarily be occupied with scanning your face have nothing to scan, so they imagine it. They might read the words, "Your last report was light on facts" while seeing your face filled with disdain and your lip curled into a snarl. And they’ll trust their imagined picture of your face to give them a proper sense of the threat level you’re communicating. I watched this happen once with a very seasoned executive. She sent a letter to an important stakeholder that her boss, the CEO, later saw and judged to be inappropriate. He called her from overseas while on travel. His first words when she picked up the line were, "I read your letter. I’m disappointed." It wasn’t just the sentence that threw her into a panic. It was the face she conjured in her mind. Her audio and imagined visual experience of that brief exchange led her to flee the company just a few months later. So, here’s my advice: 1. If you need to see the face, don’t write the e-mail. You should always match the bandwidth of your connection with the riskiness of the conversation. If you need lots of visual data in order to ensure your message is being received as intended, wait until you have a high bandwidth connection (e.g., face to face or Facetime to Facetime). 2. If you have to write the e-mail, write it twice. Sometimes, you don’t have the option of delaying the feedback or getting in the same room with the other person (or some equivalent visual connection). In these cases, write the message first to get your content across. Then read it slowly, imagining the other person’s face. Empathize. Try to put yourself in the other person’s swivel chair and imagine how they might feel at each point in your message. Then re-write it with safety in mind. Don’t compromise the content by sugarcoating it or watering it down. Rather, notice those places they may misunderstand your intentions or your respect and clarify what you do and don’t intend for them to hear from you (or see on your face). In less formal relationships, I’ll sometimes describe the facial expression I’m wearing as I write something just to make that clearer! Imagine me looking grateful as you read this last sentence: Thank you for asking this important question! Warmly,Joseph Related posts: Addressing Mediocre Performance Responding to Confidential Feedback Out-of-Sync Performance Reviews

The Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts recently announced the winners of the 2014 Communicator Awards with Dashe & Thomson receiving a Silver Award of Distinction for work with Four51 and another client. Now in its 20th year, the Communicator Awards received over 6,000 entries, making it one of the most competitive award programs honoring communication professionals. Four51, a leading provider of outsourced B2B E-commerce solutions, selected Dashe & Thomson to convert their classroom-based training to an online format. Dashe & Thomson created and delivered a web-based learning solution that included a learning portal, gamification, and engaging eLearning. The learning solution was honored by the Communicator Awards with the Silver Award of Distinction in the category of Interactive Multimedia - Training (corporate). Examples of the Four51 learning solution can be seen in the samples video below: Watch samples of the award-winning custom eLearning development from the team at Dashe & Thomson.  The post Dashe & Thomson Honored With Communicator Awards appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

Bad behavior runs rampant in the workplace. The healthcare industry is no exception. The American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs defines disruptive behavior as behavior that "tends to cause distress among other staff and affect overall morale within the work environment, undermining productivity and possibly leading to high staff turnover or even resulting in ineffective or substandard care." Research among healthcare providers found widespread incidence of disruptive behaviors such as verbal abuse, sexual harassment, racial slurs, physical threats, and profanity. Specifically: 91 percent of perioperative nurses reported at least one incident of verbal abuse in the previous year 67 percent of staff nurses reported between one and five disruptive incidents in the previous month One of the most common manifestations of bad behavior occurs between nurses and physicians in the form of power struggles and clashes over roles and personality. One study found that 95.7 percent of physician executives reported knowledge of disruptive physician behavior within their organization. Not only is verbal abuse pervasive, it is also destructive. Research shows disruptive behavior leads to communication breakdowns that affect outcomes like patient safety and employee morale. Specifically, a study of twenty-six medical residents found that failures of communication between physicians and nurses were associated with 91 percent of the medical errors. Verbal abuse also leads to medication errors which harm 1.5 million patients each year. A study by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices found that 93 percent of nurses and pharmacists experience condescending language and impatience from bully physicians when they ask clarifying questions about medical orders, and 87 percent encountered physicians who outright refused to answer their questions. As a result, 75 percent of nurses and pharmacists admitted to having a peer interpret a medication order rather than calling an intimidating physician. Rebecca Saxton, PhD, RN, CNOR, and associate professor at the Research College of Nursing in Kansas City, Missouri, set out to uncover ways to reverse this divisive trend of abusive physician behavior and communication breakdowns. She collaborated with VitalSmarts to create an educational intervention tailored to the nursing experience that included the two-day Crucial Conversations Training course. The Solution: Read our case study to learn how Rebecca used Crucial Conversations Training to improve perioperative nurses’ confidence and ability to address disruptive physician behavior. Related posts: Case Study: Influencer Training Helps Tennessee Health System Achieve 100% EHR Adoption Crucial Applications: Office Haunting—How to Have Scary Conversations at Work Does the path to action still include telling a story?

Medwrite Medical Communications, a provider of expert medical content development and education, has selected Dashe & Thomson to design and develop a learning solution that will convert classroom-based training to eLearning. The updated training will provide much greater flexibility in learning by allowing physicians, scientific researchers, and healthcare professionals to access the course online. The learning solution from Dashe & Thomson will include eLearning development, learning portal development, and learning management system integration. Development of the learning solution is currently underway. The post Medwrite Partners With Dashe & Thomson for eLearning Content Development appeared first on Dashe & Thomson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I have received feedback that my people skills are weak and that I am too direct, and I have been working to improve my performance in this area. I thought I had closed the performance gap, but based on feedback I’ve received, I think the behavior may still be present. Do you have any suggestions on how I might improve my people skills? Too Direct  Dear Too Direct, Given the distance, anonymity, and lack of details of your circumstance, it would be easy to share a few old adages as advice. However, I’d like to be as specific as I can so let me give it a whirl. I’d like to share a few questions you could ask yourself and suggest a few tactics that will hopefully help you and our other readers. First Question: What is the source of the feedback? Often, the feedback we receive comes from a manager. That feedback naturally becomes important, but sometimes you need to clarify that feedback by seeking additional sources. What does a mentor think about the feedback? What does a coworker think about the feedback? What do your direct reports think about the feedback? You are not trying to negate the feedback; you are trying to clarify it, and other perspectives can help. For example, you might have a conversation that goes like this. "Could we talk about a confidential topic? I’ve received feedback that I need to improve my people skills and that I’m too direct." (Notice I didn’t use weak; I think that word is too value loaded.) "I’m wondering what specific behaviors you’ve seen and what advice you would give me." Again, the purpose is to get clarity, not to get evidence to refute your boss. Second Question: Is the feedback specific? In your particular case, I think the feedback is too vague. "People skills are weak and too direct" are both bundles of behaviors or conclusions. Neither will help you improve your behavior and thus your results and relationships. Clearly, the tactics in the first question are related to this issue of clarity. In this second question, the responsibility rests entirely with you to ask enough questions to make sure you know specifically what the feedback means at the behavioral level. What are you actually saying or doing that reflects poorly on your people skills. What behaviors are at the root cause of your manager’s concern? When you receive the feedback, be sure to ask questions for clarity. If you don’t immediately ask questions and need time to reflect on your behavior first, be sure to take the time you need and then return to your manager and uncover specifics behind his or her concerns. Here are a few clarifying questions you might ask: Could you tell me what you mean by "my people skills are weak?" Could you share a specific example of something I did or didn’t do that has caused you to think this about me? Do you have any suggestions for handling similar situations in the future? Similarly, you could ask questions about what was meant by being "too direct." To dive deeper here, ask for specific times when you are too direct. Does your directness show up as anger or sarcasm? When you give feedback, do you roll your eyes? Do you come in with a monologue and seldom ask questions to get another’s perspective? Do you focus on the task at the expense of the relationship? Some managers clearly value accuracy more than harmony—they value getting it right more than they value getting along. The best managers demonstrate that they value both. Do you play "gotcha" but never give praise or encouragement? Are you all business and no play? Do you only "lose it" when there is a deadline or a missed budget, or do you hold everyone accountable for every little thing? I won’t go on and on about the variations of being "too direct," but hopefully you can see what I mean by getting clarity at the behavioral level. At the end of this conversation, you should be more aware of what behaviors you need to change, and you can then make a specific behavioral plan to improve your people skills. Third Question: What can I do to improve? If you have clarity about the issue and that clarity has been enhanced by talking to others, you should be able to make a plan. I turn here to Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success for a couple of key tactics. Begin by asking yourself, "What results do I want?" You might want your boss to give you a 4 or 5 on a performance appraisal instead of a 2 or 3. Or you might simply want him or her to state that you have improved in your next one-on-one meeting. Do you know your crucial moments? In what circumstances and with whom do you become too direct? When are you tempted to become angry and use sarcasm and not ask questions or listen? When you can pinpoint your moments of weakness, you will be more prepared to behave differently if and when these crucial moments arise. What are the vital behaviors you’ll use in these crucial moments? For example, you might identify these vital behaviors: When I see a performance issue, I will remain calm and ask myself, "Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do that?" I will begin all conversations with an observation and question, not an emotion and conclusion. If I lose my temper or become sarcastic, I’ll call time out and sincerely apologize. There could be many different crucial moments and vital behaviors, but you need to select yours. And you’ll need to marshal enough sources of influence to help yourself stick to your behaviors. Do you vividly understand what will happen if you don’t improve and what the benefits will be if you do? Do you have the skills to enact your behaviors? Do you have the support of friends? Do you have cues to remind you about what you have committed to do? If you get enough sources of influence to encourage and enable you, you can make improvement almost inevitable. You will have created your own plan which will lead to your success. I wish you well,Al Related posts: When It’s Time to Let People Go Holding People Accountable What Happened: Time to Let People Go

A week and a half ago was DevLearn, I’ve been mulling on writing this post ever since. I was not at DevLearn, but did take part heavily in the backchannel. I felt like I followed most of the speakers good enough, although still filtered and not as good as being there. Dangerously Alarmist One of the keynote speakers really stood out to me, though I was very cautious about his message. To me, Eli Pariser’s keynote felt very alarmist and dangerous in the message it spread. It sort of felt like the local nightly news which filtered information specifically for the shock value. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of research on the "filter bubble" and watched Eli’s TED talk from 2011. It’s entertaining, but this is where the non-filtered stops. You can watch the TED talk here: Information is analyzed and presented in a haphazard way, including the 57 signals that Google search uses to filter your search results. Everything Has Always Been Filtered Google A more fair way to look at these signals would be from a positive point of view, such as all signals are helpful and necessary to make sense of your search results. If there is something wrong with a signal, that should then be described further. They are presented as a negative thing. Signals in this list include things such as the location and language of the user. Google must filter results based on your location and language, it’s absolutely necessary to present what’s relevant to you, and in a language that you speak. Facebook As far back as I can remember, Facebook information has been filtered. Every so often filters are changed and privacy is modified, it’s business as usual and to be expected when using a commercial service, and they warn you. Eli brings up a point that his more conservative friends were slowly filtered out of his feed. This happened because he clicked on more of his liberal friends links, and less on conservative friends links. The filtering happened on the human side, but the computer side noticed the pattern and tried to adjust accordingly, this sounds beneficial to me as long as I have the last say. If at any point you decide you don’t like how things are filtering, Facebook makes it very easy to change. Unfilter Yourself Buried in all this information and alarm is a good lesson. Unfilter yourself if you believe it’s necessary. You can’t rely on others to filter information, or unfilter it for that matter. Here are a few good ways to unfilter yourself: Use critical thinking when surfing the Internet. Critical thinking is the number one thing everyone should be taught, and it should be used on the Internet. Follow many people (who add value) and look at what they have to say, or the articles they post. Don’t limit yourself to just your interest, expose yourself to different industries and different points of view. Educate yourself on how Facebook filters and how to use tools like Google properly. It’s all out there in plain English (or whatever your language may be) and most companies aren’t hiding the way they do things. Put the work in when searching for and interpreting information. Don’t expect others to do the work for you, even if filters were not there, it would still take much work to find information outside your bubble, possibly even harder. Even if you do all of this, you’re still going to have a certain level of filtering in the information you get, sorry. Example: If you are looking for some feedback on how easy it is for a user to navigate a learning experience, you may start with finding somebody to test it on Twitter. Just by doing this you are limiting yourself to a tech literate crowd, they already are more Internet savvy than the average user who uses say, Facebook (had to throw that in there). Sorry, the bubble is impossible to escape. Enjoy it, work with it, it’s helpful. Just like the doctor who always tells you to get exercise. Nobody can make you, you’re going to have to do it yourself. You’re going to have to go out there and get some things, it’s not always going to come to you on a non-filtered silver platter, even if the filters didn’t exist. Your Bubble Your bubble can be a great place, and I recommend you take advantage of the Internet being yours, and being what you make of it. Reach outside what you normally do. Read things you wouldn’t normally read. You can’t expect others, or technology, to do the work for you. Relying on machines to make an educated guess isn’t a bad thing, as long as you make the final decision, and trust me, you do. The solution to the filter bubble is to expand your personal learning network and vary the sources of your news and information. Don’t rely solely on yourself because as you can see from Eli’s talk, you’re not a good filter, and neither is anybody else. Positions you disagree with will not be clicked on regardless of Facebook making them visible as long as you decide not to click on them. So, take a risk and click something new. You are the only one that can personalize your bubble properly; everybody else, human or electronic, can only try to help. Thank them for the help, and then make your final decision. Still want to wear your tinfoil hat? Have at it: DuckDuckGo - A search engine which is anonymous and without any "bubble." Don’t Bubble (by DuckDuckGo) - Information about how search engine filtering works. Don’t Track Us (also by DuckDuckGo) - More information on how tracking and filtering works. Sorry, no related posts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andrew Maxfield is director of the Influencer Institute. What does poverty have in common with obesity? Both are conditions—states of being—that result from repeated behaviors over time—patterns of doing. If you’ve read Change Anything, you know that we claim both of these conditions can be dramatically and fundamentally altered by changing the habits that produce them. And habits hinge on pivot points called vital behaviors. Influencer Institute, a charitable private operating foundation funded in part by VitalSmarts, has applied a behavior-change approach to helping people escape the clutches of dire poverty in Oaxaca, Mexico through a partnership with an organization called Cause for Hope. Let me relate a few lessons we’ve learned that can perhaps help you in your own personal change efforts as well as in your training and coaching. First, insist on vital behaviors. There are many important and interesting behaviors, but few vital ones. You’ll know a vital behavior when you see it because other behaviors and results naturally follow if you get the vital behavior right. In the case of our experiments in Mexico, participants who lifted themselves out of dire poverty over the course of several months did just a few key things: They made and kept weekly commitments related to growing a small business. They kept daily financial records of income and expenses. They saved an increasing amount of money each week, even if in very small increments. Take Connie, for example. Now a proud owner of a children’s clothing store, she describes how her monthly income grew from less than $200 to over $400 (and still growing) and how she now has accumulated $800 in savings. Further, her husband’s earnings have improved substantially due to her influence. Her children will have opportunities that she never could have provided without focusing on her vital behaviors. Second, find or create a team. You might think that getting yourself out of poverty is your battle alone, that it’s a math problem involving your income and your expenses, period. And in a sense, that’s true—at the end of the day, you must be the one to enact the behaviors that change your condition. However, engaging the help and encouragement of supportive team members is a powerful component in an influence strategy to change your behavior. This has been the case in our work in Mexico, too. Each participant belongs to a "peer-mentoring group," which provides the vehicle for ongoing peer-accountability, motivation, and learning. At weekly group meetings, participants engage in a ritual of making and keeping a commitment relative to growing his or her small business and reporting on the prior week’s commitment. Group members hold each other accountable for making steady progress and also participate in joint problem-solving sessions. These participants are progressing together in ways they couldn’t (and didn’t) alone. Finally, consider a condition in your own life that you’d like to change. It might not be dire poverty, but there is at least one thing that you can learn from this experiment: results ensue when you pursue the vital behaviors. Related posts: Influencer Institute: Introducing the Influencer Institute—And a Call to Action! How can I help participants who are creating their own change plan in Influencer Training create an actual results statement? Vital Behaviors for Entrepreneurs

It’s been a while since my last post, and for good reason. I started a new job in early November and then in mid-November I moved into a new house. Big changes with a lot going on to say the least. With all these changes, my ideas haven’t slowed, but they have changed a bit. Being at a different company sparks different types of ideas. Solutions for each company are as unique as the company itself. In order to empower employees at a company, there is no single solution. A social network will do it for some, others need a mobile content network to empower field employees mobile devices. There are many others, but there is one I believe is often overlooked. The most overlooked method of empowering employees in this social age is the wiki. They’ve been around for some time,  even a relic from Web 1.0, therefore may be overlooked as old technology. Pairing a wiki with modern technology can do just the trick to create a vast network of social learning. The modern technology I have in mind is responsive web design, a wiki that can be used on any device, from anywhere. Employees are directly tasked with creating, maintaining, and sharing the knowledge. That’s power. The power a wiki gives employees is immeasurable, it makes the employee a direct contributor, not just a passive consumer. It even gamifies the learning process as co-workers can see who the biggest contributor is, or who had recent updates. Some organizations already take advantage of the strengths of a wiki. I’ve experienced its strengths first hand, and it can truly empower employees, making them feel the power they have to decide where the company goes, and what type of impression they leave on it for years to come. A Learning & Development department that can learn to be enablers of learning, not gatekeepers of learning is a Learning & Development department that will continue to be relevant for a very long time. The department will thrive and be relevant to the companies growth on a larger scale than without the wiki. Formal training is necessary, but it’s impossible to keep up with everything, embrace the knowledge share. Finding ways to manage the information and tap into the raw learning power of an organization is a skill every L & D department must master. It Costs Too Much No, it really doesn’t. You don’t have to make anything fancy or even pay for a wiki. In fact some of the wikis that cost money are more difficult and cumbersome to use than a free wiki. It probably costs more money to keep one person on staff than the entire development of a responsive wiki, it would require working closely with IT though, if you dare. The benefits of a company wiki far outweigh any costs, knowledge would be managed by employees, self-correcting as it is on Wikipedia, and powerful because of the motivation it can give employees. There are free solutions out there, the most well-known would be MediaWiki which many are already familiar with, including yourself if you’ve ever been to Wikipedia. That’s right. Free, open source code runs one of the most successful knowledge websites on the Internet. A bit of development time in designing a responsive framework for your wiki, a place to house It all, and you will have possibly one of the most successful knowledge sharing technologies on earth. Have You Seen The Power of the Wiki? I know there are many cases of a wiki being used at companies to share information. Can you share your success stories or successes you’ve seen? How else can you see a wiki improving the performance of employees? Please share your thoughts on using a company wiki to share knowledge and foster the open culture that every company needs moving forward. You might also enjoy: Mobile Learning in the Enterprise, An Introduction Solutions to Bring Mobile Learning to the Enterprise Challenges and Barriers to Mobile Learning in the Enterprise

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, How do you handle a job promotion when you are promoted from within your peer group? I was recently promoted to a manager position and oversee the team members that were once my peers. What is the most effective way to transition from team member to manager? Promoted  Dear Promoted, When I was ten years old, I was chosen by our elementary school principal to be on the Traffic Squad. As a symbol of my authority, I donned a purple two-cornered hat emblazoned with the name of our school—McKinley. I was feeling pretty full of myself until I discovered that my first assignment involved monitoring hand hygiene in the boys’ restroom. My visions of leading troops into heroic battles were dashed. Instead, I stood by the sinks with a No. 2 pencil and pad of paper recording the names of those who did not properly wash their hands. Tedium turned to terror when my own beloved teacher, Mr. Collins, completed his bodily duties, tucked in his shirt, then stalked past the sinks without so much as a rinse. I was torn. My responsibilities were clear. My authority immense. But could I hold a teacher accountable? And worse, would I rupture our relationship if I brought Mr. Collins to task? It can be tricky to assume a new role in an old social system. It can be as hard for you to see yourself in the new role as it is for others. If you fail to accept yourself in the new role, you’ll either shirk the leadership you have been asked to offer—or indulge your authority in a vain effort to convince yourself of your worthiness for the role. Neither option is good. Likewise, if others have difficulty honoring your new assignment they may either resist or resent your authority. They may also expect special favors—assuming their former peer relationship with you entitles them to some of the benefits accompanying the new office. How can you settle both yourself and others into the relationship? There are two crucial conversations you need to hold. The first is with yourself. You need to decide what it means—and doesn’t mean—to be the boss. When you’re comfortable within yourself, it would be wise to set appropriate expectations with others. Conversation with self: Are you in your own way? If you notice you are reticent to make decisions, hold others accountable, give assignments, or lead change, then you are getting in your own way. Similarly, if you find yourself needing to prove something by exerting your authority—making threats, giving orders, micromanaging—the problem is not others, it’s you. I suggest you spend some time pondering one important question: What does it mean to have power? Does it mean something about you? Does it mean you’re smarter, more deserving, more experienced, or more important than others? Is it about privilege? Or is it about responsibility? And if the latter, what are your responsibilities? I feel much more comfortable with authority when I remember that it is not power over but power to. It is not given to me as an intoxicating privilege, but as a special stewardship. When New York restaurateur Danny Meyer promotes a waiter to manager, he explains that his or her new position is like the gift of fire. "Fire is used in many ways—all analogous to your new duties," he teaches. "Fire can warm. Your duty is to encourage people. Fire is light. Your job is to teach. Fire can cook. Your duty is to strengthen and feed. Fire is a gathering place in many cultures. Your job is to build the team. Fire can also burn. There are rare times when you will need to use your power to give hard feedback. But do so carefully." You will continue to be self-conscious about your newfound power so long as you think it is about you. When you come to understand that it is more responsibility than ornament, you will feel less self-conscious and more conscious of others. You’ll worry less about what others think, and more about what you need to do. Conversation with others: Are they in your way? Once you’ve settled this in yourself, you may find that others are having a hard time accepting you in the new role. Don’t feel intimated by that. Remember, this is not about you. Your responsibility to serve does not change because others don’t think you deserve the job or feel bothered in some way by the need to respond to you differently than they did in the past. If you believe others may have some difficulty with this transition, talk about it. Have an explicit conversation either with key individuals or with the full team to set expectations. Share with them: What you expect of yourself. How you see your duties and what your team should expect in terms of support, guidance, feedback, etc. What are your goals? What are your standards? What will be different from the past? What will be similar? What you expect from them. Describe clearly what behavior and results you expect from the team. If you’ve seen worrying signs of behavior that will impede your team’s ability to perform, describe it. Describe why it is a problem. Be sure to frame the concerns in terms of performance and results, not ego and insult. Describe how decisions will be made. Lay out which decisions will be command (you’ll make them), consult (you’ll make them after involving the team), consensus (the full team must agree before proceeding), or vote (majority rules). Clarifying how decisions will be made will avoid future violated expectations or misunderstandings of your motives. Finally, if you think this transition will be bumpy, schedule in a follow-up conversation to check in with the team on how it’s working and to give them feedback on your views as well. As I watched Mr. Collins leave the bathroom, I pondered my response. Was he flouting my authority? Should I make a statement by writing him up? Would he be angry at me if I invoked my full powers against him? Amidst the turmoil, something in my fifth grade mind quieted enough that I could hear past the din of my ego. I had been given an assignment. The only important question was, would I do it? I calmly added Mr. Collins’ name to the list. The next year Mr. Collins promoted me to Traffic Captain. Best wishes in this exciting new growth opportunity. Joseph Related posts: Chaotic Boss Control Freak Coworker Coworker’s Personal Life