Christian Executive Women

What Did You Say?

I am forever intrigured by the concept of singleness of heart and action.  References to this in the Bible speak to living life in a Godly way.  Philippians 2:2 – Then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in the spirit and purpose.   Peter knows that to be anything less displays to the world a weakness that can be taken advantage of.

So let’s think about how it applies to our work life.  Do our actions and words always align with a consistent spirit or purpose?  As we’ve built out career, have we ever complain about a situation and when our boss asked us what we thought we dramatically changed our tune?  Have we ever made comments about some one that we would never say direct to their face?  Of course we have.  It is an ugly side of human nature to complain and criticize - and let's be honest, we all know quite a few women who fall victim to this.  Leaders should be above these kinds of behaviors - but even so some of us have taken along this behavior baggage as we have moved up the ladder. 

Mixed messages present a huge opportunity to diminish our strength as a leaders so we need to caution ourselves from being in a position of giving mixed messages for a number of reasons:
 You will not be percieved as solid.
What you say will be repeated.
It is hard to undue a negative comment.
You will be seen as someone that can be drug into negative speak.

Leaders looking to motivate, generate change or create an enviroment of innovation will undermine themselves by conflicting or negative speak.  Some leaders think the way to motivate teams is to empathize with them but this is not always so.  Negativity creates doubt, and doubt is difficult to unseat once it has a place in the mind.

As a Christian in the workplace, guard yourself.  Your witness comes in multiple forms and on many levels.  Seek to remain constant in the words you use – your teams will respect  you for it.

God loves Christian Executive Women whose words motivate and encourage.

Shifts Are Happening Everywhere

Challenging times in the work place make what can already be a hard job even harder.  Constricting budget, reductions in workforce, working harder to get same or lesser results - Wow it is rough out there.  If you talk to anyone in the printing segment from publications to promotional materials, the entire industry is changing.  These are businesses that must reinvent the way they look at products and services and how they go to market.  This is affecting not only big organizations but independent operations as well. 

 

Shifts are happening everywhere.  I have heard business leaders say that current models in many industries will not sustain through the next five years.  Where is the income going to come from tomorrow?  Are we smart enough to be positioned for the future? 

 

You likely have your own challenges right now.  You may be tired and questioning the next step.  So I must tell you to not give up hope and to not give up action.  It will take significantly more right now and you simply can’t let it get you down – you have got to keep the wheels turning. 

 

God can’t move in your life if you are not moving.  No great deed or invention has happened in this world without action.  So as the world quickly shifts you must be nimble and you must act as if each relationship and action is going to sustain you in the future.

 

Consider Ecclesiastes 11:6 –

Sow your seed in the morning,

And at evening let not your hands be idle.

For you do not know which will succeed,

Whether this or that,

Or whether both will do equally well.

 

Frankly I am tired of uncertain times.  Some days it is only by knowing God is with me that I can draw renewed energy.

 

Dear God: I remain faithful and hopeful in the plan that you have for me and my business.  May I continue to generate action and work hard so that you may intercede and help me find the way.  My prayer is to seek your voice and I stand faithful that you will send people across my path to help me.  Amen

When All Else Fails Clean Your Closet

Tough business women know that when the stress has built up to a point where you can not stand it anymore you withdraw and clean your closets.

When there is such much clutter in our business lives, unbelievable push and pull and demands that we are not sure we can meet we may feel pressured to stay at the office and try to figure things out. But that is not always the right way to approach things.

When our mind is full beyond capacity and we feel frozen and overwhelmed, we need to step back and get active with our hands and ceremonially start to clean things out. Activities like cleaning our closets give us the feeling of progress and completion when we can’t get it in our business lives. It moves the forefront of our minds to the task at hand but it also allows our marvelous brain a chance to work on the problems in a non-pressured way. Sooner or later, when tossing an old pair of shoes in the Goodwill bag we will receive a breakthrough on at least one of the challenges we are trying to solve.

It is easy in our busy lives to hit this point of being overwhelmed but take comfort that God wants you to live in the now. Matthew 6:34: Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Be conscious of the long run but focus on what you can impact right now.

So next time you are overwhelmed and feel pressure from all directions take an hour and retreat to throwing out the clutter so you have room in your home and your mind not only to usher in the new, but to bring God back into the space as well.

Dear God: Your love for me is greater than I can imagine. I am continually reminded that when I fill up with too much of the world and let the stress consume me that I have filled up spaces that really belong to you. May I learn to step back with hands and heart in order to get refocused. God, please help me solve problems I face at work by keeping centered in life.

Balance a Critical Eye with a Good Heart

As women, it is easy to be critical.  Our minds naturally think on so many levels that we can see the good, the bad and the ugly all in one blink of an eye.  So when this multi-level observation occurs what tends to follow out of our mouths?

 

Collectively women tend to first see what hasn’t been done over what has been done or what is wrong over what has been done that is good.  On one hand, this skill is what keeps us organized and driving forward on behalf of our families and our business - and that is very good.  But when we talk more about what hasn’t been done or what’s not up to expectations too much we tip the negativity scale.  When you move to the negative zone you turn off the people around you.  Walls go up, you aren’t taken seriously and you can be dismissed.  Let’s face it – people just won’t like you or want to hear your message.

 

Teachers are excellent at being trained to maintain the balance.  They lead with the positive and follow up with the feedback.  Do you think you can add a teacher’s heart to your critical eye?

 

Combining your critical eye for detail with a positive message can be hard in the rapid fire challenges you    encounter everyday but your desire to be greater and achieve more demands that you step back and think about this every now and then.  Next time you focus on the bad and ugly and not enough on the good think about this:

 

Hebrews 13:15 - 16 – Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name.  And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

 

We are a living sacrifice to God.  This means in all things that we do – not only in our personal prayer but in our people interactions.  Let us do good by pointing out the good things that others have done because maintaining a good and balanced heart is a daily practice in all things.

 

Dear God, please bless Christian women and guide us so that we know we can praise and up lift others around us as a reflection of our walk with you.    Amen. 

The Lost Art of Taking an Interest in Others

Everyday you have the opportunity to enhance, enrich, inspire and uplift others…and all it takes is a willingness to listen. 

 

Imagine the connections you can build if you just ask someone a personal question – one simple question?  How hard can that be?

 

The question itself doesn’t matter.  People simply get energized when you take interest in them.  You can learn an enormous amount of information just by offering a little hospitality.  Small conversations open doors.  Taking time to listen to someone else first will in turn let them be receptive to listening to you later.

 

Remember people are connected by shared experiences – to have a shared experience you must engage.  In today’s world where digital communication seems to take the lead this can be a lost art.  The only question we know is “How are you doing today?” And then we just keep on walking.  So this question is off limits, think of new ones – just engage!

 

Once you have listened the door is open and it is time to offer a friendly smile and a positive word.  Make someone believe they are valued.  Make them feel good about what they do and who they are even if it is just within a one minute exchange.

 

Now take this one step further.  Think of this as a spiritual gift you have to offer to others. Proverbs 3:27 - Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act.  So simple, and yet so true.

 

Christian Executive Women take precious moments to think about others.

A Teaching Practice in the Workplace

I went to university for a professional education degree with a focus on elementary education.   One class we talked about taking care of children that were rude, smelly or disruptive – okay, kids you just wouldn’t like working with.  The professor told us, “You don’t have to like them in order to love them.”

This was a revolutionary philosophy to me.  It matched Christian principles but could you really get past what you see and what is given to you and put this into practice?  The answer is you can.

I exercised this philosophy for only a few years as teacher and then I carried it into the workplace.   When an employee comes through you it is not necessarily your job to like them, but it is your job to love them.  But how do you love an employee in the workplace? 

Think of loving them in terms of the way a teacher loves a student.  A teacher will:
 • Follow a developmental lesson plan
 • Provide an explanation for the exercise
 • Provide feedback on the work is done
 • Challenge with new experiences
 • Introduce new concepts
 • Offer frequent and genuine praise
 • Correct behaviors when they are off course
 • Not give an A grade for C work
 • Be bold and hold people back when they are not ready for the next step – but be sure the expectations and benchmarks where they fell short are clear
 • Ensure students are better equipped when they leave than when they came

I challenge you to think of how you operate as a leader.  Do you expect great results without providing an explanation for the exercise?  Do you measure performance frequently and give on-going feedback?  Are you sure you are growing your people for the next grade level?

Love is something you have the power to give. So many people are short on love in their lives; many do not even know what unconditional love is and many more do not understand that love comes with discipline and guidance.  As a leader people are watching you, they read even your smallest of moves.  Do your teams know that you love them and want them to grow for individual success as well as corporate success?

Jeremiah 31:4 - I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.

May Christian Executive Women love employees and seek to grow their professional skills.

 

The Profit Exercise

Recent conversations in my business networks have yielded a reoccurring theme of constriction of revenue leading to pressure on profits.  This leads me to ask, how well do your teams understand how your sales turn into profits? 

In good times and bad I think it is vital that your entire organization understand how money is made and how profit is achieved.  Often staff will hear large dollar numbers associated with a sale or income and assume there is an equally large profit that someone is pocketing, but we know this is rarely true.  We also know that when margins shrink it hinders our ability to reinvest in the organization and increases wages and rewards. 

I encourage you to consider offering an information session for everyone from the front door to the back door on how profit is determined.  Here are some good things to include in this type of session:

 - Open by asking the group how much is considered good profit on one dollar of revenue?

- Normalize the data by sharing benchmark numbers for average profit by various industries – then share your targets.

- Share details on the organization’s largest overhead expenses – what bills have to be paid before a penny is even earned?

- Review the sales/contract process.  For your inside teams you'll be able to do a lot of myth busting here.

- Walk through a sample job costing exercise to get to gross profit and net income.

- Discuss the influence that each position has over the profit factor.

- Discuss opportunities to increase profit.

- Consistently focus the discussion on the sustainability of the organization – the need to invest in capital expenditures, pay down debt, grow people, invest in new products, sustain marketing and business development – express that profit is not really profit, but the means to keep a company healthy.

I have found tremendous benefit from doing these profit exercises.  Amazing things happen when team members from different departments share their perspectives on how they touch money.  I usually see an increase in information sharing as well as an increased feeling of respect for work.  There is always an interesting conversation of sales vs operations so be prepared fro that aspect up front.  Everyone in account management and operations wants sales contracts written differently.  I have heard “Sales just doesn’t know” on more than one occasion.  Another viable output of these sessions is a company listing of financial and operations terminology.

So I ask you.  Even if you are a small private company, what is the harm in sharing how the profit is achieved and what your plans are for it?  How can you use this to your advantage?  Can you set motivational rewards for your team when profits exceed the set benchmark? 

You must release your fear of people knowing too much or information going to the competition.  If you are doing the right things right you will have team loyalty and team buy-in.  Do not let fear of sharing information impede the success that you could achieve.

Dear God, thank you for giving me a good job with the ability to earn an income that will provide for my family and my needs.  God, may I remember Psalm 54:6 – I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you; I will praise your name O Lord, for it is good.  Amen.

May God bless Christian Executive Women who bring integrity to financial management.

It Show Time: Why It’s Important to Not Lose the Best Practice of Practicing

Rehearsing is an important part of preparation for everything.  As a well developed professional this makes sense and we easily embrace rehearsing when preparing for a sales presentation or client meeting but we sometimes ignore this incredibly valuable practice when it comes to other areas of interactions. But if you think about it, sometimes our smaller day to day interactions hold more significance then the outward client facing events. 

Ask yourself, what would the results be if you spent ten minutes in quiet preparation before the start of your next team meeting?  Consider taking the agenda and not only writing out the message points you want to emphasize but actually say them out loud – you know, practice.  What if prior to a performance review or coaching session you wrote down the key three objectives you wish to convey and again, state them out loud prior to the delivery.  Consider even employing this technique in front of phones calls – write down your main points for the call, state them and then execute. 

In our hurried careers collecting our thoughts is seen as a luxury we can’t afford to spend time on.  Often busy routines keep us from utilizing the art of role play or practice - but rehearsing delivers more thoughtful word choice and elevates the level of confidence conveyed in tone and pace.  It results in a more confident and succinct you!

Need more convincing?  Think about one of the greatest stories in the Bible – the story of Moses imploring Pharaoh to let the Jewish population leave Egypt.  Exodus 4:29-30 – Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses.  He also performed the signs before the people.

Moses and Aaron in effect had a dress rehearsal prior to going before Pharaoh.  Did you realize that this had happened?  Think about it.  Moses and Aaron provided the context and performed the signs at least once before standing and delivering them in Pharaoh’s courts.  What do you think this did for their confidence level?  Would you assume it supported their ability to work as a team in front of Pharaoh?  Do you think it helped them know what to anticipate?  I have to believe it did.

As women, we multitask and can think on multiple levels at one time, but without focus this can make our message less direct and often weak.  Next time you are rushing from one item to the next I urge you to think of the impact that just five to ten minutes of preparation and practice can do to ensure clear communication that leads to desired outcomes.

Christian Executive Women recognize the value of the best practice of practicing: organizing thoughts, stating them out loud and delivering with confidence

Change - Why Don’t They Get It? What Do You Do If They Don’t?

Have you ever been in a situation leading change and some of the team gets it and some do not?  Everyone has heard and seen the same thing but yet it is all viewed very differently.  It astonishes me every time.  There may be bumps in the transition but change is typically initiated for validated reasons and long term results that will sustain an organization – of course you know that.

I have been both the recipient of change and the leader of change.  In our culture where freedom of speech is certainly taken a little too seriously (feel free to disagree with me but I hope you know what I mean), I have seen team members relentlessly opposed to change and aggressively disagree with new strategies.  The odd part to me is that they will do it in an open forum – they will challenge you in front of everyone else and hide behind the phrase, “I am just saying what everyone is thinking.”  No they aren’t – they are saying what they are thinking the change will mean to them personally and stirring up what everyone else is thinking.

My historical reference in business tells me that it is inherent in human nature to not be a fan of change.  Some people will close their eyes to the opportunities around them all for the sake of protecting routine and a comfort of what they already know.

This is very different than a query that validates the purpose but offers feedback on the execution – that can be helpful to the process and teams should be encouraged to participate in the process of change this way. 

So what about the obstinate team member who will likely speak against the change in the hallways and denounce its success to open ears?  These must be dealt with head on.

1. Know who these people will be and have a discussion with them in front of the roll out.
2. Anticipate their questions and have answers ready.
3. As soon as you hear negative comments counter it immediately with how they should channel their concerns.
4. Restate the need and objective – always bring it back to the core purpose.
5. Have a set of performance expectations developed around the change and attach measurement and rewards to it.

I do not mean to be trite or disrespectful in this next analogy, I honestly don’t.  But think of the two thieves on the cross with Jesus.  One hurled insults the other said Jesus remember me and Jesus responded, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23: 39 – 43)  These men each witnessed the same thing. One got it, one didn’t. 

You need agents of change in your organization.  If you do not have agents of change you need to surround your objectives with people that will carry change through.  Being a leader is a tough job.  Good luck on your change.

Christian Executive Women see the future and know ships do not sail a direct course to get to their destination, but rather they make adjustments with the winds and the elements in order to make the shore safely.

Children Say the Darndest Things – But My Children Just Aren’t that Smart

After a long work week, I arrived home on Friday night happy to be with my kids and cherishing the idea of forgetting about work for just a little while.  After meetings, budget crunching, event planning, marketing rewrites and a massive volume of e-mail I was simply mentally spent.  I needed the contrast of home and to be with the people who loved me.  So what happened when I got there?  Here are snippets of conversations during the first thirty minutes after walking in the door.

How was your day?
 J – I didn’t poop in Caden’s room.
Should you be on the kitchen counter?
  C – Her not suppose to be on the counter.
Why is your arm covered with polka dots?
 J – There are polka dots on my shirt.
Who dumped out the DVD’s?
 C – I don’t know, not me.
I don’t want to play duck, duck, goose.
 J – Yes you do – GOOSE!
Your room is a disaster.
 C – We were sleepwalking and messed it up
Don’t eat your boogers.
 J – Go away mom.

With a deep sigh I soaked in the contrast of work and home.  I was quite satisfied that I don’t expect the thought processes at home to make sense and when nothing is making the least bit of sense you have permission to run around the room smacking each other and screaming DUCK – GOOSE - DUCK - GOOSE.  I am grateful that I have this contrast to keep me balanced.

Ephesians 5 starts with, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love.”  We are told to be like children.  My children don’t know the stress of life and they have this aboundant capacity for love that brings me joy when I least expect it.  Praise God that I can be present to receive their love.

Christian Executive Women know how to drive their organizations but also know how to fill theirs souls.