May 31, 2006Does the Boss Mean What He Says?
I work in an environment where people can come in just about whenever they want to as long as they leave after the designated time. Consequently, I’ve noticed many don’t put in a full day or they stay until well into the evening, not necessarily because they have so much work but because it looks better to leave late. I like to get here early (7:30-8:00 a.m.) but I want to leave by 5:00. My boss says it’s alright but will notoriously leave me a message at 5:10 or 5:25 and then acts like he expects a response at that time…how can I handle this? I have already addressed it directly. The last straw was when a new employee got permission to arrive at 6:30-7:00a.m. and leave by 3:30-4:00 pm. I get the job done yet I feel demeaned at this treatment. How do I handle it?
Meryl Responds
If you are confident in your employment, I recommend you take your boss at his word and unapologetically respond to messages the following morning. I suspect your boss sends things out when it’s ready to send and doesn’t think about what time it is. I send my assistants things at very odd hours sometimes, and don’t expect a response at those odd hours. I wouldn’t read too much into his messages, as women are often prone to do.
If you are less confident in your employment you may want to reaffirm your agreement and say something like,
I got a message from you at 5:20 yesterday and I get the impression that you expected a reply at that time. Since we agreed that my day ends at 5:00 I want to make sure you are comfortable with my responding in the morning.
Chances are he will say yes since he agreed to those hours. It sounds to me like you need to be clear in your boundaries and teach your boss that you are gone after 5:00. He may test your boundaries but it sounds like he will respect your boundaries if you do.
May 31, 2006I Don’t Want to Make My Emergency Yours
Laurie needed my biography and workshop description for a presentation I’m giving for her group in September. I appreciated the way she acknowledged the last-minute nature of the request she gave me. She said:
I don’t want to make my emergency your emergency, but I need this information by morning. If that puts pressure on you, I could take the information from your website.
Meeting planners frequently “make their emergencies my emergency,” but what I appreciate in this request was that she acknowledged what she was doing and gave me an option. I gladly made her emergency my next priority.
May 31, 2006You Have a Spot on Your Shirt
Have you ever written a fabulous report and had someone’s first comment be about a typo? Have you ever spoken from your heart about a situation and had someone make a comment about a minor detail that had nothing to do with your main point? Have you ever talked about your new inspiration and had someone say,
- You have a spot on your shirt.
Of course we need to let people know about typos and spots and tangents can be interesting. But I remembered to hold my tongue last week when my husband shared a new insight into something he was excited about and I noticed a spot on his shirt. There was plenty of time for me to tell him about the spot, and this was the time for me to listen to the essence of his excitement.
May 31, 2006Out of the Mouths of Babes
Several years after my husband and I separated, my wonderful, adventurous, then 8-year-old son met me at the door one day and looked me right in the face when he said, “Mom, I have something to tell you that’s going to make you angry. But, please don’t yell at me. I hate it when you yell.” Meryl, out of the mouths of babes, is all I can say. From that point on, he learned to approach me with this little phrase and that was all it took for me to gain control of my emotions and be able to reasonably talk to him about whatever negative situation he had gotten himself into. It did not mean he did not get punished if he did something he knew he should not have done….but, it actually made the punishment more meaningful and effective. And I became a happier person because I wasn’t yelling and screaming and building my own level of anger.
May 31, 2006A Smashing SpeakStrong Retreat
The meeting room was the deck of my mountain home. The participants were powerful and dynamic individuals who came from across the country. The information was the same information I present in my books and corporate seminars, but because of the small size of the group, we were able to put it into immediate application. We had feedback from the participants’ friends, family and colleagues. We knew what the issues were. And we set about to create the awareness, skills and conviction for communication transformation. Everyone got individual summaries of findings, comments and action recommendations.
I was grateful for the opportunity to work with such powerful people at such a deep level. I am looking forward to my follow-up sessions with them.
My first ever SpeakStrong retreat was a sublime experience. I definitely plan to repeat it. I hope you will be here for the next one. Stay tuned for details.
May 24, 2006Success Story from India
I work for a US based multinational company in Bangalore, India. We work on very tight schedules, and working 12 to 14 hours per day is quite normal in our office. To top it off, there is the traffic jam during office hours. So I used to start from home at 8:30 am to reach back home close to midnight.
Because of this, I started missing my kids and family, and started having the fear of them being alienated from me. As a solution, I came up with a suggestion that I start at the office early in the morning, at 7:00 am and leave office by 4:00pm to beat the traffic, spend some time with family and kids in the evening and then work from home for another couple of hours late in the night. When I explained my situation and solution, my manager agreed and I communicated the same to the entire team.
The following week, my project lead send a recurring meeting request to meet every alternate day, from 4:30 to 5:30, to review the progress we were making on our program. It was an important meeting and I was required to be present. I was totally annoyed at seeing this meeting request, especially after communicating my work timing changes. I chose to decline the meeting request with a comment :
- As you are aware, I have changed my work timings so that I leave from office at 4:00 PM. In case of emergencies, I am willing to stay late and complete some activities, but I would like to have any pre-planned meetings to be completed before 4:00pm.
I copied the request to my manager - who happens to be my lead’s manager as well.
Immediately came my manager’s response supporting me, and the meeting timing was changed to fit my schedule.
May 24, 2006A Rude Remark from My Assistant
Dear Meryl,
I manage a service to the community that needs coverage when I am gone.
Before leaving last week I asked the department members if they had all that was needed to hold down the fort while I was gone. My part time assistant shoots me the comment ” Yeah, for you not to make any mistakes before you leave.” This is not the first time for this kind of statement which I find very hurtful. It’s like a knife was stuck in my gut and twisted.
I said nothing, got up and left but found that it bothered me. As I dug out of the work that was waiting for me, upon returning to work, a few responses came to me for the next time I am in that position.
What are your thoughts … ?
“It must suck to be perfect.” “It sucks to be perfect, it is so boring.” “Perfection is so dull.”
Am I just too thin skinned or should I consider the source and let it pass?
Meryl Responds
My first thought was -
- If I never made mistakes, I wouldn’t need you.
But my second thought was that you need to have a talk with her where you go into her issue.
- Your comment about my mistakes sounded biting and led me to believe you have an issue with my errors. We’re here to support each other, not take snipes, and if you have any issues or suggestions about how I do my job, let’s put them on the table.
She just might hold some resentment that you make careless errors she needs to fix, or she might hold resentment over normal human errors, in which case you need to be clear about your expectations of each other.
May 24, 2006If I Come In Early, I’ll End Up Staying Late Anyway
This Poison Phrase comes from this week’s wonderful, eye-opening and inspiring Success Story. The contributor adjusted her hours to miss traffic, and Spoke Strong to protect her end time. The plan works well for her, but her coworkers are unwilling to follow her lead because they say,
- If I come in early I’ll end up staying late anyway.
The fact is, these people will end up leaving late because they don’t have the strength of will not to. The author of the story proved it could be done, but if someone is unwilling to back up arrangements with action, the best of arrangements will fall through. And many will blame others for the failure of the plan rather than taking responsibility for not honoring their own boundaries.
So if you believe you will end up staying late if you come in early, you will. But if you develop the strength of will to say,
I intend to honor my arrangement and to hold others to honoring it too,
That’s what will happen.
May 24, 2006This Drug Could Do a Lot of Damage and I Won’t Fill Your Prescription Until I’m Sure You Know the Risk
Lily was impressed with Susan’s weight loss, due to a “miracle drug” Phen-Phen. Lily got her own prescription but when she went to fill it, her pharmacist read her the riot act. She told her:
You’ve got too much to lose to risk taking such a dangerous drug just to lose a few pounds. This drug can do a lot of damage and I won’t fill it until I’m sure you understand the risks.
Lily decided not to take the drug. Now, years later, Lily’s friend Susan has some serious heart problems as a result of the drug.
I don’t know the professional guidelines that determine what pharmacists should and shouldn’t say, but I do know that Linda’s pharmacist did her a great service. If professional policies keep you from warning people who are on the verge of making a bad decision, you may be prostituting yourself…selling your integrity for the wage your employer pays you. Is it worth the price?
May 16, 2006May 13, 1986: The Wake-up Call I Only Had to Lose Everything For
May 13th was the 20th anniersary of my late husband’s passing. Mike Runion’s death was the catalyst for my personal awakening and transformation. Below is the opening for a book I am in the process of writing about my own devastation and resurrection. I’d like for my wake-up call to be yours too, so you won’t have to go to the depths that I did.
The funeral was as unreal as everything that led up to it. I hadn’t been to a funeral since I was a kid, and I had never been the star of the show at one before. Everyone seemed so sorry for me, but I wasn’t feeling anything. I know I acted far too cheerful for a woman who had just lost her husband.
As I watched Mike’s casket being lowered into the ground, the Pastor’s wife tried to talk to me, but I ignored her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hear her words. I just didn’t want anything to distract me in my last moments near all that remained of him.
I held David’s hand tightly to remind him I was still there. At five years old, I’m not sure how much he understood. I think he was trying to be strong for me, and I was trying to be strong for him. I wanted to stop time, but time went on unaware of my desire. David and I both looked back at the grave site as we walked away.
We flew home a few days later. Everything seemed supernaturally normal when I opened the door and our cats acted so happy to see us. I was grateful to them for keeping us from returning to an empty house. David delighted in being home and asked to go next door to play. All I wanted to do was to curl up under the covers, but something in the mail caught my attention. There was an envelope with a picture of a blue person on it… Krishna I think. The letter had to be from India, which meant the letter had to be from Mike. I studied the envelope and noticed that Mike had sent the letter almost two months before. My heart pounded as I opened it.
It was eerie to read Mike’s happy talk. It was my darkest hour, and his letter wrote of our sunny times ahead. My heart broke for him as I read the words that desperately clung to a future he had to believe would happen. My anger raged at him because his letter was as full of lies as he had been before he left. My guilt flamed over not having been able to break through his denial. Mike couldn’t face the dark reality. If he had, he might have survived it. If I had faced it sooner, he might have survived it. I hear the darkest hour is when the sun starts to dawn. It turned out Mike was right about the sunny days ahead, but he was very wrong to think we would enjoy it together. Standing there with Mike’s letter in hand, I didn’t know it was almost dawn for me. I just knew there were a hundred things I wish I had said to him while I still had the chance. I just knew something had gone horribly wrong, and I couldn’t change it. I just knew I didn’t ever want to find myself in that kind of darkness again.
I had been living in a land of make-believe. I didn’t want to see, but I knew I had to. I hit the wall and my eyes were being forced open. Not that I woke-up all at once in that moment. I was in too much shock to see what was right in front of me all at once.
If you’ve already had your wake-up call, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve already had your wake-up call, you’ve learned that the only way out is to walk straight through things you would rather avoid with an open heart and mind and honest communication. It may be too alarming to face it all at once – after all, that’s why you would rather avoid it. But if you don’t find the truth, it will find you.
If you haven’t had your wake-up call, I hope I can be your wake-up call. It’s a lot easier if you open your eyes and start telling the truth before you and the wall collide.
20 years is a lot of time. ” Coincidentally ” I was visiting in Sarasota on the anniversary of Mike’s passing. The amount of healing that has taken place is phenomenal. It was nice to visit our old stomping grounds with a heart that is both peaceful and grateful. We can’t control life, but we sure can learn from our experiences. And we can learn from each other’s experiences. I hope mine is useful to you.
