Did You Tell Them? May 5, 2011
Posted by Karen E. Lund in Change, Knowledge, Learning.Tags: Change, Ethics, Knowledge, Learning
1 comment so far
CC Some rights reserved by Purple Phoenix
This story goes back to a non-profit job I had several years ago. Early on in my time there I’d been given the responsibility of maintaining a contact list for our department. As we had unusually high staff turnover, including transfers in and out of the department, it took up a fair amount of time. When we relocated to a different building, it made sense to expand the contact list to include all of our organization’s staff in that building, not just our department. Then someone got the idea that the contact list should include all our staff, not just those in the building.
In the meantime I’d formed a virtual friendship via e-mail and phone with the technicians in the IT department, who were mostly at one of the other locations. I’d only met two of them: the technician assigned to our site and the guy who managed all our cell phones. But the IT guys were a great team and very helpful even though we hadn’t yet met. One of the things they helped me with was the contact list, even to the point of creating an automatic notification system that would let me know when a new e-mail address or cell phone number had been assigned to someone on the staff.
The IT Manager was named Levi. He’d had a long career in computers, back to the days of “data processing” and punched cards. After taking early retirement he did some volunteering, but soon found himself back on the job, this time for the non-profit where we worked. As IT Manager he was back and forth to meetings at both the building where the IT office was and the building where I worked.
One day he passed by my desk and asked how things were going. He mentioned how helpful the contact list was, what with our staff being spread across multiple locations.
“Your technicians are my best source of information for that contact list. They always let me know when someone has been assigned a new e-mail account or a cell phone.”
“Did you tell them?”
He asked immediately. It was clearly a question so instinctive that it was almost a reflex. Fortunately I had told them, and recently. I looked up the e-mail I’d sent to the IT guys thanking them for their help with the contact list and forwarded it to Levi. It was in his inbox before he got back to his office.
As things turned out, Levi left us not long after. He wasn’t a New Yorker, but had worked here for almost ten months. Finally he went home. Not long after I had an opportunity to transfer to the IT department as an adminstrative assistant, and I got to work with those technicians I’d come to know mostly through e-mail.
Early on I realized that the technicians respected Levi enormously. One guy told me he took the job because he wanted to work for Levi. Another confessed (much later) that Levi had once chewed him out for an inadvertant mistake. It stung, but he also remembered the many times Levi had told him he’d done a good job and figured the two had to go together. The positives outweighed the negatives.
The brief conversation I’d had with Levi stayed with me. When I said his staff were helpful to me, he immediately asked if I’d told them. It was important to him that they know their work was appreciated.
Gold Stars & Lollipops
Not long ago I was talking with a friend about her job frustrations. When she’d taken the job her new boss told her not to expect “any gold stars and lollipops” from him for doing her job well. She was beginning to understand that he gave very little feedback, and almost none of it was good. He criticized when he wanted his staff to improve their performance, but he never let them know when they were on the right track.
In one sense I agree with her boss. We’re grown up and don’t need gold stars to tell us when we’ve done a good job. Lollipops aren ‘t good for my figure. I have more than enough t-shirts.
But I do want to know when I’ve done a good job. I also want to know when I’ve done a sub-par job. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, just a few words or an e-mail.
The truth is, very few of us are superstars. Not many of us are failures, either. The vast majority of people are somewhere in the middle, doing a few things well and a few others not so well. We have good days and bad days. We like a little praise but are embarrassed if we feel we’re getting more than we deserve (or, worse, that it may be insincere). A simple “thank you” can mean a lot.
Always Learning
We are always learning, but rarely in formal settings. Most of what we learn happens informally, without tests or grades. One of the most important ways we know we’re heading in the right direction is how others respond to us.
The best way to learn is in small increments. My high school math teacher gave quizzes every week. At first we hated them, but after a while realized that regular feedback meant we never went too far the wrong way without a warning. Flunk a quiz and you know you need to review the chapter before you can master the next lesson. In the same way I can improve my performance if my boss tells me when my work is a little below expectation—before it becomes a big deal and we’re having a meeting with HR and warnings are issued.
The same goes for doing well. I may never land a million-dollar grant for my employer, but if I’m doing small things well and contributing to the smooth running of the organization, I want to know. I’ll do better work if I get a little pat on the back or a “thank you,” and I’ll accept criticism more readily if I know I can earn a kind word by doing better.
When Levi asked me if I’d told his team they were helping me, he wanted to be sure they knew their work was appreciated and that what they did mattered. He wanted them to know they were doing it right. Perhaps he also was reminding me that people need to be thanked when they do good work—and they will continue to do it if given encouragement.
Did You Tell Them?
This post comes with an assignment: Think of someone you know—whether at work or elsewhere—who is one of those quietly competent people you rely on to get things done. Thank them. Don’t get fussy (if they’re the quietly competent sort they might be embarrassed), just say “Thanks” and tell them why. Let them know they do a good job and that it’s appreciated.
I’ll start. Levi, as they say in Brooklyn, you done good. You built a terrific IT department and I was proud to work there. Amid all the craziness, and all the staff turnover, IT was the one department that didn’t lose a single staff member (among those whom you hired) until their planned sunsetting date, except one who returned to college. You taught us all well. And happy birthday.
Of Klout, My First Ambulance Ride, and Chicken Thighs April 14, 2011
Posted by Karen E. Lund in Knowledge.Tags: Klout, Knowledge, Recipe
2 comments
The subject of Klout keeps coming back in the #UsGuys Twitter stream. We love to measure it, malign it, debate it… But we can’t resist checking our own scores now and then, if only to say that they are a fraction of a point too high or too low, which disproves the whole premise.
I’ll go easy on Klout. In most respects I find it to be a decent measure of a person’s effectiveness on Twitter—no other social network (as of today), but pretty good at measuring how well someone uses Twitter. A score of over 60 is very good; the single digits signal a newbie or a bot.
Anyway, my Klout score has stagnated lately because I’ve been using Twitter less. It goes back to about three weeks ago, when I got my first ride in an ambulance. I wasn’t the patient: that was my Dad. He’s had type 2 diabetes for years and it’s well controlled by medication, but occasionally his blood sugar goes a bit too low and he suffers from hypoglycemia. He’s passed out two or three times before, always briefly, and he always recovered quickly once he got some sugar in him. But this time he happened to pass out on the checkout line at a local supermarket. It caused a bit of a fuss.
Dad came to when he landed on the floor, a little disoriented but mostly OK. He was clear-headed enough to pull my cell phone number out of his wallet and give it to a young women who works in the store, who called me. And I was, luckily, at a coffee shop barely half a mile away. I arrived in front of the supermarket just behind the ambulance; a fire truck had already responded and Dad was sitting on a chair, sipping orange juice and surrounded by four members of the FDNY right behind register six, as the young woman had told me on the phone.
That’s how I got my first ambulance ride. (It wasn’t Dad’s first; he’s done that a few times before.) Fortunately Dad was doing rather well, all things considered, and I had the luxury of looking around as we rode to the hospital.
In the emergency room, Dad was examined, tested, poked and prodded, and eventually released against the advice of a physician but with my promise that I would go home with him and stay overnight to be sure he was really OK.
Indeed he was, except that he seems to have injured his left leg in the fall, and so we’ve spent the weeks since his little “incident” visiting doctors and having tests done. I’ve become a regular at Dad’s HMO. I’ve also been spending more time at Dad’s house (thus less time online and on Twitter) than usual, and have been picking up groceries and cooking dinner for him whenever we have an appointment.
I enjoy cooking at Dad’s. It’s the house my parents bought six months before I was born. Mom taught me to cook in that kitchen and I still feel more comfortable there than in my own kitchen, although I’ve had my own place for 15 years. Everything is familiar except the microwave oven that was a Christmas gift from my brother after Mom passed away and Dad had to fend for himself in the kitchen. (It’s the only kitchen appliance Dad knows better than I do.)
About a week ago I got a good deal on some chicken thighs at that very same supermarket where Dad passed out. (No, I don’t ever go to register six, but they were very good to us and I’m happy to give them some business.) I cooked up enough chicken that Dad had leftovers for a couple of meals on his own, but for dinner that night I got a little fancier.
Chicken Thighs with Clout
[Please note that I take most recipes as suggestions rather than absolute rules, and I write them the same way.]
About two chicken pieces per person (all other quantities are for two people)
1 cup (total veggies) diced onion, carrot and celery
1/2 teaspoon each dried sage, thyme and rosemary
Enough oil to cover the bottom of your skillet
Heat the oil in a heavy skillet (cast iron is excellent) and add the diced vegetables. Saute, stirring occasionally, until just tender, then push to the edge of the skillet. Add the chicken parts, browning on both sides.
Add the herbs and about half a cup of water. Stir the herbs, vegetables and water together in the skillet. Cover and reduce heat slightly. Cook until chicken is done. (When it is done the juices will run clear and there will be no pink remaining in the meat.)
Serve the chicken pieces with potatoes, rice or pasta. Spoon the vegetable and herb mixture over the chicken and the starch.
If you’re at all creative in the kitchen, you’ll see how versatile this is. A similar vegetable and herb mixture would be delicious with fish, pork or beef. You could vary the vegetables and herbs; mushrooms and bell peppers would be very good, or some basil and oregano to give it an Italian accent. I think it really needs some member of the onion family, but you could go bolder with garlic or milder with green onions or shallots.
…
The thing I enjoy about cooking, when I have the time do it leisurely, is that it is very creative. Having an appreciative audience makes it almost an artistic endeavor, and my Dad is a very appreciative audience.
Which brings me back to the discussion of Klout at the beginning of this post. After we’d had dinner, then sat and chatted in the living room with coffee, I got ready to go back to my own house. Dad gave me a hug, thanked me for cooking dinner, and said, “You’re wonderful.”
I mean, you just can’t measure something like that.
