You can't always get what you want

After my last post, an astute reader kindly pointed out that it required assertiveness in order to work on one thing at a time. That got me thinking about what assertiveness is and how you do it.

There are degrees of assertiveness beginning, obviously, with a basic assertion of what you want:

I need to leave at 5:30 this evening.

This feels a little bald, so we can be a little more empathic:

I understand that you’re really busy and would like my help but I do need to leave by 5:30 this evening.

Sometimes, we need to be assertive because people try to break previous agreements; if that’s the case, you can point this out:

You said that if I finished the Johnson report by lunchtime, I could leave early. Now you’re saying that you need me to work late. I’d like to stick with our original agreement as I do need to leave at 5:30 this evening.

Alternatively, you can try to provoke some empathy from the person you’re speaking to, by describing the negative feelings that you will feel if they continue:

When you change your mind after we’ve agreed something, I feel upset and angry. I’d like us to stick with our earlier agreement as I need to leave by 5:30 this evening.

Finally, you can include the consequences of the other person continuing to behave the way they are:

If you insist on making me work past 5:30 this evening, I’ll be so angry it’s unlikely that I’ll get any work done and it’ll harm the good working relationship that we normally have. I’d like us to keep to our earlier agreement as I do need to leave by 5:30 this evening.

Notice that the central assertion of your needs – in this case “I need to leave by 5:30 this evening” – remains unchanged and is repeated each time; this is known as the “broken record” technique.

You can practice these different types of statement until you’re comfortable with the words but when it comes to assertiveness, what comes out of your mouth is less important than what goes on in your head. The American Declaration of Independence declares that the “pursuit of happiness” is an “unalienable right” and the language is very significant here. The Declaration doesn’t say that anyone has the right to happiness – just the right to pursue it and it’s the same with assertiveness.

As hard as it is to accept sometimes, no-one has the right to get whatever they want – but we do all have the right to ask for whatever we want. Truly believing this is the first step to being assertive.

One thing at a time

When I’m talking to delegates about time management, we inevitably come to the subject of multitasking. Once we’ve got past the jokes about men not being able to multitask and women being excellent at it we start to talk seriously about whether it’s either possible or even helpful.

Very often, delegates will boast of their ability to do two, three or more things at once – increasingly, they say they must multitask in order to stand any chance of doing all the things they need to do. Bear in mind that these are the same delegates who complain that they’re too busy and feel under stress, don’t have time to plan and so on. When I gently challenge them on their ability to multitask effectively, given the brain’s ability to focus on just one thing at a time, they’re adamant: they multitask and they’re good at it – it’s what keeps them afloat in the sea of work in which they’re nearly drowning.

It’s not just people with time management issues that do this. BIGresearch claims that 70% of media users consume more than one medium at a time: of those who are listening to the radio, 54% are also online, 47% are also reading a newspaper and 18% are also watching TV. The chances are you’re doing it now – scanning this article whilst listening to music, eating a sandwich, checking your emails and hiding from the boss!

There’s clearly a lot of it about but does multitasking actually help? Research released this week from Stanford University in the US would indicate that it doesn’t and there’s an interesting reason why. It would seem that the people who multitask the most are actually the people who are least able to multitask effectively. Not only do high multitaskers do poorly at multitasking, the more they do it the worse they get! Of course, this has a knock on effect on the quality of their work and the time it takes them to do it – probably prompting an even greater desire or perceived need to multitask.

It’s unclear whether poor multitaskers are more inclined to multitask or whether you get worse at multitasking the more you do it. Either way, I’m starting to build up my library of evidence supporting my theory that concentrating on one thing at a time is the quickest and most effective way to regain control of your time.

Employee Engagement

This week, I’ve been working at home, writing a workshop on employee engagement based around the recently released MacLeod report. As I’ve been researching the topic – and there’s a lot of information out there about it – two things have struck me.

Firstly, to create an environment within which employees can feel engaged is not that difficult. If you give people meaningful work to do, reward them fairly and genuinely care about their wellbeing as they do that work, most people will engage with their job. Of course, many employers don’t provide meaningful work – or even meaning for their employees’ work; they have small budgets and try to skimp on salaries in order to maximise profits; many see their employees as human “resources” rather than human beings. Under those circumstances, getting your employees engaged is going to be tricky, no matter how many great workshops you attend.

The second thing that struck me was that engagement isn’t a binary thing. It’s not that I’m either engaged or else I’m disengaged; I might be highly engaged on some days in some activities but less engaged in other activities on other days. My level of engagement on a day-to-day basis may depend on my mood, on what’s happening outside of work or a hundred other things.

You can imagine it as a continuum. At one end of the scale are the people who are highly engaged with their work – creative, excited to come to work, more than happy to volunteer their best efforts to their tasks, to make suggestions, improvements and so on. These are the people you really want to keep and to keep engaged. At the other end are the people who, essentially, do the opposite – they hate their work, do anything to get out of it, maybe even deliberately sabotage what they’re doing in order to “get back” at their employer for some reason. With these people, you’re lucky if they leave – the danger is that if they’re allowed to continue behaving the way they do, they might continue to stay. Either way, attitude is contagious and both groups will proselytise and try to recruit for their cause.

Of course, these are extremes and most of us, as I mentioned before, will move about on the continuum from day to day or activity to activity but will generally have a “baseline” level of engagement from which we don’t stray too much. What’s interesting is that research indicates that most employees’ “baseline” tends towards the latter of these two examples.

What to do about it? Well, as I said, I’m writing a workshop for employers, so we could sit and wait for our employer to do something about it, to create a better atmosphere to engage us. Maybe some employers will, when they recognise that they need the goodwill of their employees and that it can’t be bought but must be earned. Alternatively, we can consciously try to move our “baseline” up the scale for ourselves – either by engaging more with the work we do or finding other work which engages us more. As someone once said, “ask not what your employer can do for you…” Something like that, anyway.

Beginning is easy...

There's a Japanese proverb that says "beginning is easy; continuing is hard" and I was thinking about this proverb when I was planning this blog. I tortured myself with a whole series of questions - would I be able to keep going, did I have enough to say (those who know me will chuckle at that), would I be able to maintain the discipline and update it regularly? And if I did, would anyone be reading anyway, was there any point to doing it, would it all just be a lot of effort for, essentially, nothing?

The more I thought about it, the more I began to realise that while there’s a lot of truth in this proverb, I don’t think it’s quite right. I agree with the sentiment that continuing is harder than beginning but I really don’t think, for some people at least and I count myself one of them, that beginning is all that easy.

Generally, there are only a few reasons to do something; usually they boil down to either it being something you want to do or it being the right thing to do. On the other hand, there are millions of reasons not to do something – you’re too busy, there are other priorities, there are reasons why it (probably) won’t work, you’re not fully prepared, it’s not quite perfect, the timing isn’t quite right. The reasons are endless.

Some of these reasons (or fears or concerns) may have a grain of truth in them but you’ll never know until you actually begin and, when you stop to think about it, are they legitimate reasons not to even try? Some people wait until everything is perfectly set and perfectly thought out before beginning – consequently, they never actually start. Isn’t it better instead, to just start and then fix it as you go along, if needs be? Beginning, as the Latin poet Ausonius wrote, is half the work.

So if there’s something you’ve been thinking of beginning but have been putting it off, make today the day you begin - tomorrow can be the day you start to fix it, if necessary. As Ghandi said: "If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” Who knows, you may even find that continuing, for you, is easier than beginning.

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