My Biggest Mistake - Trying to Do Too Much

Many of you have read the recent articles on LinkedIn by invited thought leaders who have contributed to a series called My Biggest Mistake. While I have enjoyed reading their posts and learning about pivotal moments in the lives of those whose names and deeds are familiar to many of us, their mistakes are not really mistakes, but rather moments when they stepped outside their norm and came to a realization they may not have had prior.

We live in a culture where even our mistakes are supposed to be success stories, but in reality, we do make mistakes and they are our greatest learning opportunities. Of these missteps, the most critical are those we repeat and from which we do not learn. These mistakes become patterns, which become deficiencies and hold us back - for me that has been exceeding my limits to the detriment of my goals.

Last night this realization finally fell on me with a heavy enough impact that I have recognized the flaw and am dedicated to overcoming it. For more than two and a half years I have been working on an MBA, and while there have been bumps in the road along the way, the last year has been particularly rough as my body was headed towards an eventual neurosurgery in March of this year. Since the progression was gradual I did not realize the surgery was going to happen in the middle of a semester and ended up missing the better part of a month.

With the obstinance of a beast of burden, however, I was determined to salvage both of my classes. In so doing, I have nearly lost both of them to inadequate performance. If I would have been circumspect and assessed my own limitations, I would have picked a class, concentrated on it and achieved one good grade that contributed to completing my program rather than spreading myself too thin and performing below my standards in both classes.

But that is the difficulty, isn't it? When it comes to ourselves we are often wanting in the ability to honestly critique our own behaviors – and admitting limitations – well that’s just un-American. What I realized last night, however, was that not only had I made this mistake in my current educational endeavors, I had exhibited the same misguided application of dedication in several different situations just in the past two to three years. That elevates a mistake to a problem and a problem must be solved.

We live in a world where being overwhelmed is routine; where the schedule to manage work, family and education consistently seems untenable; and where the pressure to keep up drives us to ever-greater extension of our time and effort – add in commuting in Houston and every day feels like a Spartan Race. To maintain our progress we tend to triage, but that tactic means we are constantly trying to catch up in the areas that were not emergent.

Since, the vast majority tend to function in this reality, it is important not only for me to not become overextended, but to learn how to assess the achievable to ensure projects and team members are consistently successful. My director recently commented in a conversation related to other issues, and I am paraphrasing, that not over-promising is just part of being professional. Recognizing we have limits is neither palatable nor simple – but it might just be the key to sanity as well as achieving more in all aspects of our lives.

Your LinkedIn Profile Reflects on You and Your Employer

Although we routinely see articles describing the mistakes not to make on our social media profiles, it is amazing how many people either do not take the advice to heart or simply see their documentation as an afterthought. Facebook is Facebook and if it is private it should remain private – although that is another discussion entirely. But your professional profile on LinkedIn is for other professionals to view and it can convey a great deal about you and, inferentially, your company.

Let me be a bit more specific. I am a hiring manager, or a student, or a job seeker and I see a profile of someone in my area of interest. This individual has a senior sounding title, and upon reading a bit of their press, I not only realize the title is senior sounding, but the individual really has been doing the work one would think would be associated with the title. I decide to read more about them on their LinkedIn profile and the first thing I see is a picture with their kids and dogs.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore my dogs and when people stop me in the street to talk about them I am thrilled to discuss their characteristics and quirky behaviors. And half the work I do is because I want to set a good example for my kid and ensure she has opportunities that were not available to me – but everybody has kids and dogs.

In a strictly utilitarian way, the picture on LinkedIn is for identification purposes. You want to know you are dealing with a professional who takes their role seriously. Can you smile – sure, if that’s your thing – seriously that was a joke. The objective is that if people meet you and then go to your profile they know they are looking at the right person and that if they see your picture and meet you afterwards, they are able to match what they have read about you with the person before them. No boyfriend’s arms around your neck, no pictures of your last fishing adventure, and definitely no other people in the picture with you.

In the same profile, I overlook the picture and keep reading, whereupon I find several spelling errors and a couple of grammar mistakes. Honestly, one misspelled word and I think most of us overlook it, but multiple and we start to see a pattern. The grammar – well, if you’re a writer it might bother you more than most. It does send a signal, however, either you had someone else set up your profile, they made mistakes, and you were too busy to check the work, or you did the work and don’t usually produce content on your own and didn't ask anyone to proofread your efforts.

No matter the reason, your profile says I do not pay attention to detail, I am not concerned with the image I portray, and if I am this careless with something that goes out in front of the whole world – or at least the LinkedIn world – what else do I just let slide. That attitude then reflects on the company who employs you. You are a director level executive, you are that inattentive to your work and the company you work for not only hired you but promoted you – ultimate conclusion, that company must not be very squared away either.

None of this may be true, mind you, but the impression remains. As a result, you not only damage your own reputation, but your company might lose out on talented applicants as a result of their conclusions about the company resulting from your profile. I will be the first to admit I have made careless errors and that any product can always be improved and refined, but it takes active attention. Even though you might have forgotten about your LinkedIn profile, others who see it will like remember you and your company – and not for the right reasons. 

Non-Linear Careers Need Non-Linear Human Resources and Hiring Manager

Yesterday, I read a post by Penelope Trunk on LinkedIn entitled The Strongest Careers are Non-Linear. I could not agree more. Unfortunately, the world around us spatial thinkers is built at 90 degree angles, connected by perfectly straight lines that meet to form rigid, impeding, cages all set in a straight trajectory upon which advancement is difficult and variation discouraged. Until the systems in which we function change their vision of potential, ability, value and skills, non-linear individuals will continue to suffer more often than they benefit.

As a professional, what is the most valuable characteristic to you in an employee, a colleague or a manager? Without equivocation it is intelligence; the ability to think critically and develop solutions without the need for direction or instruction. Those skills could have been developed, and more likely were developed, from a variety of experiences, exposure to myriad problems, and confronting unexpected difficulties. Except for those roles that require a true technical mastery, i.e. nursing, programming, surgery, there are few professional roles in which an intelligent, motivated, thoughtful individual cannot excel.

And yet the only group in which variation of experience is celebrated is upper level management and leadership. Recall the last time you considered, or applied for, a new role and had less than seven years of experience. Your first hurdle wasn't whether or not you could perform the role; it was trying to guess which key words from the position description to write, and how many times, in the company’s online application portal and how to structure your resume, not to your strengths, but to get past human resources’ censors. Not knowing how to defeat the HR system, should not be a reason individuals have difficulty competing for a role.

On the other side, hiring managers are forced to constrain their positions to the little boxes defined by HR – certain wording for certain roles, defined pay for defined roles and an inability to vary based on the talent or experience of individuals who are interested in working with a particular group. How many times have you seen a role advertised that needs advanced skills and ability but the pay scale and HR level eliminate those who would fulfill the goals of the role? Yes, you save money in the short run, but you also do not successfully achieve the objective of the role, which is a loss in the long term, and self-defeating for the work.

This constrained system punishes everyone from veterans who have skills most of us could never approach, but that are not easily defined by the civilian world; to stay at home parents who juggle all the tasks of caring for a family and household while engaging with their community and then seek to re-enter the outside work force; to individuals who have scrapped to survive in the difficult economic environment of the past seven to ten years by taking contract jobs, temporary positions, and roles that are difficult to define our outside their normal expertise. But all these backgrounds can make an individual more savvy, capable and eager to contribute than someone who went to undergrad, received a BA in business, worked for two years, went back for an MBA, worked in a fellowship and then became a department administrator – or some variation of that recipe.

There are many reasons the systems are set up the way they are – convenience, management, logistics, ego, turf - and while some of these are sincere attempts to deal with work load and organization, the effect is that talented, driven contributors are eliminated and the best person for the role often does not have a chance to sit with the hiring manager. If HR systems, as well as hiring managers who have had linear careers themselves, will imbue their efforts to find the most talented individuals with flexibility and sagacity, they may find the employees they hire do not fit a mold but are the perfect fit for their group and organization. 

How Do You Work On Both Becoming a Better Leader and Manager?

Often our careers become overwhelmed by the daily needs of our functional work - the litany of meetings and tasks, fighting traffic and bureaucratic systems, and trying to cram in workouts and attention to family needs inevitably leads to exhaustion by the end of the day. And yet, we look into the future and see both the need to become better at what we do and to develop skills we know we do not yet possess. This forward looking objective takes time and contemplation we do not always have, but is necessary if we are ever to move beyond our current setting.

When we do find the time to dedicate to improving, however, the next hurdle becomes immediately apparent; we are supposed to become both better managers and leaders but we quickly recognize that not only are these two completely separate efforts, they appear to be almost incompatible. For clarification, management is the process of budgeting, dealing with human resource processes, planning and problem solving. Leadership, on the other hand, to put it simply, is about survival. Yes, leaders communicate well, exhibit inspiring behavior, engage and motivate others - which are certainly no small tasks - but leadership sees future threats and determines the strategies necessary to survive. No institution or organization will survive without leadership nor will they exist without competent management - you need both.

The need for both leaders and managers points to the need for two sets of competencies - the development of which are relatively incompatible. Becoming a better manager means learning the systems, mastering the tools, and producing competent work associated with your role. In many ways management skills are easier to define and improve upon because there are specific steps - you learn how to complete the review and promotion process; how to submit a budget and follow the rules for doing so; how to submit a personnel request; and how to plan for a new department and its staffing. All of these are tangible tasks that can be supported with explanatory flow diagrams and quantitative values of success.

Leadership, however, lies in a different realm indeed. If you were to read the hundreds of management consultants, professors, business leaders and managers pontificate on leadership, you would conclude that leadership was about you, the individual; how you act, how you choose people, how you grow your career, your aspirations, your vision for the future. I think they are wrong. Leadership is not about the individual who is acting as a leader.

The common thread between all leaders, whether business, military, government or non-profit, is that they take themselves out of the equation when they are looking at what it will take for their entity to survive. Abraham Lincoln, for example, saw clearly the objective of his efforts - the survival of the Union of the United States - and took actions that would enable that goal whatever the sacrifice or uncomfortable truth. Jack Welch does not invest in companies based on ego but looks for the characteristics he knows from experience are necessary to contribute to his company's overall success.

For some reason, the leader that has always resonated with me is Winston Churchill. At first flush, you could look at his staunch resistance to capitulation with Germany as an arrogant stance that was based on his own ego - but it was not - it was based on his realization of what it would have meant to have compromised with Nazi Germany for the future of all those with a different world view. I mean, how could you not respond to his address to the British Cabinet when he declared, "If this long island story of ours is to last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."

As leaders, or potential leaders, we will need to master the voluminous tasks associated with management, but we will also have to learn an entirely different set of skills to create within us the characteristics of the leaders we admire. Chief among them is letting go of our own self interest in the pursuit of the greater objective of the institution or the organization. That change of mindset is integral to acquiring, developing or improving other leadership skills and will be the basis of a continued discussion of leadership in upcoming posts.

Entangled

When my heart breaks,

It does so on the day I can no longer see the contemplation in your eye.

Your memory will not be sweet and I do not want to remember you fondly;

I want to grasp you and understand your complexity;

To see how you form thoughts and actions;

To hear your voice in forlorn tones at early morning hours;

To know you are too entangled to ever think of leaving.

No mausoleum - no Kentucky homage or engraved stone;

I do not want to love you when you are in the ground or scattered above it;

I love you now - in these moments;

In these messy, fluid, fragrant, imperfect moments;

When being a wife is meaningful;

When a husband is the only being worth a passing thought or persistent contemplation.