I love to think of myself as a great communicator, always saying the right thing at the right time–I like to see myself as someone who has a black belt, not in karate, but in tongue.

But I still get caught flat footed sometimes by someone who takes me on verbally when I’m on my best behavior, minding my own business. It happens at places like the gym when I’m at the top of my game, hoisting my my heaviest.

Then some would be Charles Atlas comes along and says, “Hey, man, would you like me to show you how you do that exercise right?”

I just stand there mumbling, shocked they didn’t compliment my physical god-likeness instead of putting me down. Sometimes I replay the moment over and over again in my mind. Days even weeks later I see the person before me and I come up with the perfect comeback, “Show me the exercise?!  The only thing I want you to show me, Buddy, is your rear leaving this place,” or something equally clever. I see the person put in their place, and there I am smirking and looking smart. I have vanquished them and they know it–at least in my imagination.

I love the accounts of people who were really good at comebacks.

In 1930–in the depths of the Great Depression–Babe Ruth made the huge salary of $80,000 and was asked to take a cut to $75,000. Ruth, not known for being accommodating, flatly refused.

“How can you be so unreasonable,” management asked him. “You are making more than President Hover.” “Well,” responded Ruth, the greatest home run hitter in history, “I had a lot better year than the president.”

W. C. Fields, an early 20th Century comedian famous for his atheism and non-traditional attitudes, “I love children,” he once said. “They’re delicious!” At any rate, toward the end of his life, a friend came to visit Fields in the hospital, and was surprised to see him leafing through a Bible. “What are you doing reading the Bible?” his friend asked him. Quipped Fields, “I’m looking for a loophole!”

Winston Churchill was a man of the great comeback. British politician Bessie Braddock confronted an intoxicated Churchill and said “Sir, you are drunk.” He replied: And you, mam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly.

On the Other Hand, Sometimes It Can be Better Not to be So Clever!

But great comebacks often don’t turn out that well. You think of that perfect thing to say, and the verbal wrestling match continues. Coming up with a clever response like Babe Ruth, W. C. Fields or Winston Churchill to an adversary may not be the most clever course of action. From time to time I do come up with a very clever response to a person—and that begins the real war. I just caused the person to be more determined to give a response even more “clever” than the one I had given her/him. It’s often probably better we’re not as clever as we wish were.

Words today are the clubs and swords of yesterday and can be just as murderous. The truth is that most of the time there is more to be gained by being the rational adult in the room and reasoning with the person about the word bomb they’ve just dropped on me. I need to be more proud of myself for a good outcome that I achieved with another person, rather than a clever comeback—although a funny, mean comeback is most often more appealing in the moment.

So I wouldn’t say never have a mean put down when you face others—sometimes it’s a powerful, much needed tool. We would never recommend that we be a victim of clever, cruel words from others. At the same time, rather than make yourself a warring adversary, look for common ground.

And the most question to ask is, “How will I feel about myself when this verbal battle is over.” Often when I get off my best verbal shot, I’m feeling bad about myself when the conversation is over. If we’re really good with verbal responses–and you and I both probably are–we should pick on people our own size. Little people make our best targets, and we should save our ammunition for elephants, not mice.

Anyone who ever tried to tie a shoe, plan a vacation, or get a project done at work knows this basic principle off life–it takes way too long to get things done. Some processes exhibit precision–heating a donut in a microwave oven takes about 15 seconds–that’s physics. Other things we do take forever if we don’t know how to organize them. It’s all about how we use our time.

“Cheaper by the Dozen”, Steve Martin played Frank Galbreth, a 1920′s scientific consultant obsessed with time and how long things took. Frank and his wife Lillian raised a dozen children at a time when houses only had one bath and a single-car garage. Galbreth, whose children mostly adored him, ran his family with a pocket watch in hand, timing meals and baths.

Frederick Taylor, the Father of the “Efficiency Movement” Galbreth’s patron saint of cutting the time it took to do things was Fredrick Taylor, the father of modern consultants who help organizations with process efficiency. Taylorism–with its relentless call for efficiency–was ultimately rejected as a creepy process that dehumanized people by timing their every movement. The results of his work became the cannon fodder for social commentators to bash the inhumanity of the industrial world, with the accusation that people can’t be driven like cattle.

Taylor’s Work of Speeding Up the Process Reemerged as Reengineering and Total Quality Management - Yet Taylorism, with its effort to cut time and costs from processes, ultimately came back in the new forms of process improvement, total quality management, reengineering. The new software created was ultimately much more about managing people than processes, mandating the efficient order of operations and control codes. Taylor’s stop watch was substituted by software that relentlessly regulates the flow of human activity.

Teams Have Never Been Revolutionized as in Process Improvement - Yet high level teams have escaped the rigorous processes that have revolutionized manufacturing, banking, and retail. You can’t by a cup of coffee at Starbucks without the employee entering the code to get into the system, that determines price, does the accounting for the purchase, and precisely orders new inventory. Yet when it comes to teams in organization, efficiency and costs are thrown to the winds–and the costs are huge.

There is little process or measurement of any kind. Performance is linked to profits, but in a painfully indirect way that causes most organizations to fail. It is time to revisit Taylorism and to see how it applies to today’s business team. The cost of human interaction and its failure is the largest cost of business today. Make no mistake that most teams are failing. They are caught up in a mass of inability to cohere and move forward.

Teams are the Biggest Cost Centers in Organizations. The highest cost in business is most often the time teams waste on redirecting, reexplaining, and damage control from hurt egos and feelings is an enormous cost. The organizations that make team process work are the organizations that win. Making teams work–and radically reducing the time to market–is the new frontier of organizations. It has greater potential than the revolution in manufacturing that has changed the world, greater than the advances that Deming enabled Japanese manufacturing to make in the 1950s that lead to Asian domination of manufacturing.

Meetings–the Most Immediate Opportunity for Organizations - One of the areas of most opportunity is meetings–really low hanging fruit. Meetings, which are huge and hated, are the engine of everything. They’re not just formal meetings, but are also the “water cooler” version, and can be conference calls and sometimes email strings. Days and hours are spent on meetings with little or no prework, painfully inadequate agendas, no process for follow up, and no accountability. The cost is millions of dollars each year.

The New Horizon for Organizations–Innovations - Another is forward planning and innovation. Organizations die each day because there is no process of determining what’s next. There are literally hundreds of measures that organizations can take to revolutionize teams. Team success is not measured in meaningful ways.  How and when they should move forward is often happens in the autopsy of their failure. Where is Frederick Taylor when you need him?

So in what ways would I like to be like Steven Jobs?  Who would want to be like him and why? Quirky, odd, unique, contrarian to his very core, he is the model of the successful career in the 21st Century.

In Walter Isaacson’s biography that he simply calls Steven Jobs, Isaacson draws his readers to a concise appraisal of the man, based on 40 personal interviews and extensive research.

Jobs was creative, innovative, brilliant, and not a man I’d relish spending an afternoon with.  He was weird, and not in a captivating way.  Bill Gates described him as a “flawed human being.” 

Yet he had an unerring sense of the products that would change the world.  He cared little about anything else or anybody else.  His most stunning achievement, the iPhone, combined his genius with a disdain for the contributions of others.  He almost rejected apps, the foundation of the mobile digital revolution.

Yet, Jobs models in fundamental ways the successful person of the 21st Century.  Here are the ways you would do well emulating Steven Jobs.

1.  Jobs was interested in doing what he did well–that’s what led him to sustained achievement   He exhibited little interest in what he did poorly.  Early with his adopted father he become confident in electronics. There is nothing more important for you to do than find what you do and to pursue it.   Jobs was a poor student and dropped out of college.  He loved design and audited courses that fed his passion.   The truth of employment today is that most careers courses will not take anyone to a lifetime career.  Degrees are useful to the degree that they supply credibility.  Only your ability to create value will sustain you.

2.  Jobs was transformed into a success by difficult, jointing, fits and starts.  He has brilliant, then he was fired, sought after, and finally prevailed.  Jobs focused on getting brilliant outcomes, not in maintaining a career.   If you find yourself totally off track and beaten down and your goal is to sole to find your next job, you’ll finally run out of job opportunities.  You’ll be successful if you understand and are committed to what you are going to accomplish–not who or what you’re going to be.

3.  There was nothing like Steve Jobs for being unstoppable.  After a series of brilliant and unsuccessful products during his first time at Apple, he went out on his own to pursue his goals.  Then he came back to Apple to begin again.  It was a 14 year ride from almost bankruptcy to success.  Just because your career seems stuck, misaligned, and off track, it’s still a path that can take you where you want to go if you are unfailingly drawn to outcomes.

4.  You may not be creatives in the same way that Steven Jobs was, but you can create value.   Organizations today, in a hyper-competitive world, have a small window in time to create and dominate a space.   Organizations are not looking for programmers, they’re looking for people with programming ability who can create a product.  They are not looking for salespeople–they are looking for sales.  They don’t need accountants–they need people who can creatively allocate resources to create a path to success.  You may not create an iPhone (but maybe you will).  The point is that you must have a point in being where you are and where you’re headed.  You must create every day.

In my childhood and young adult years, I spent a lot of time with people who said “no” most of the time.  Some of them I am related to.  It wasn’t so much that they said to me, “No, you can’t do that.”  Instead they said a lot of “No, I won’t do that.”  Wow.  Is that ever a conversation stopper!

It took the form of statements like:  No, I won’t learn that.  No, I won’t do that.  No, I won’t help on that.  No, I won’t change that.  No, I won’t adapt.  No, I won’t grow.

End of conversation.

That’s what gives the “Power of Not” it’s unique potency.  There is no conversation, no dialogue, no give-and-take, no collaboration and no compromise.  All there is, is “NO.”

The Power of Not isn’t about skepticism.  Skepticism is healthy.  And it’s not about holding the line on standards, quality, or ethics.  Holding those kinds of lines is the foundation for success.

The Power of Not draws an arbitrary and ungenerous line in the sand.  It is always about defining and building boundaries.  It is never about expanding boundaries.  It is always about limitation–never about possibility.  It is always about less–never about more.  It is always about me (my comfort level, my convenience, my preferences)–it is never about others.

Our political dynamic in the US is sadly defined by this Power of Not.  Unfortunately the same is true too often of individuals on teams and in key roles in organizations.  True also in families.

It’s hard to combat the Power of Not, because the very act of saying “no, I won’t” significantly dis-empowers the other party.  It poses the challenge of moving a self-declared immovable object.

So what can you do? Do you just give in and give up?  I hope not.  First, look into your soul and ask if you yourself are wielding the Power of Not too frequently.  If the answer is yes, then stop yourself as you are about to say the next knee-jerk “NO”  and ask how you could turn that into a “yes”–or just even “maybe” or “tell me more.”

If your team or your life is being ground down and pushed into gridlock by team members or life partners who are quick to set limitations, boundaries, and silos through the Power of Not, then it is time for you to have some conversations with those team members or life partners and counter their next “no” with something like:

• Can you meet me part way?
• Instead of “no,” could you try “maybe”?
• What would it take to change your “no” to “yes”?
• Let me explain why a “yes” on this from you is important to me, the team, the business and see if that moves you from your position.

Then you will need to lay out the consequences if the person continues to Dominate by No–and stick to those consequences.  Is it re-assignment to a different role?  A reduced role?  Even termination?  Or your own departure?  Or an end to a relationship?  If there are no consequences, the Power of Not will win.

Don’t allow the Power of Not to jeopardize the outcomes you need to achieve or to make your life miserable.  Life, after all, really is too short.

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Dorothy Drummer is President of Dorothy Drummer and Associates and is a subject matter expert on hiring high performance employees. 

Many CEOs have made a bad hire at some point – but if you are wondering about how to insure that you make that bad-hire investment, here are a few tips:

In my 25 years of executive recruiting I have – more than once – been asked to clean up after the departure of a bad hire.  Talking through the situation with my client, I can usually spot some indicators as to why it might have gone wrong from the start.

1. “Let’s fill this opening as quickly as possible!”

This can be attractive – why let the HR people slow things down? Get that new person on board as quickly as possible so that the work can move forward!

But no — designing a carefully-reasoned process, and allowing enough time to be sure that when you make your decision you have seen the candidates that will inform your decision properly, is essential.

2. “Don’t bother with a job description — use the one that’s already in the file.”

You want the same skills the previous executive had, don’t you? And you’ll “know it when you see it”– so why delay things for some document?

One of the most important first steps in avoiding a bad hire is to start by defining the position and the skills, experience, and personal profile the ideal candidate should have. That job description that’s in the file is probably a dusty document that someone compiled to sit in the file.

This is the time to involve interested parties, which might include board members, other senior executives, and direct reports – in creating a description that is also a recruiting tool that markets your mission and your corporate culture and encourages qualified candidates to identify with the job and be willing to go through the evaluation and selection process with you.

Be sure you are not looking for someone exactly like the executive who left – or the exact opposite of that person. It’s essential to zero-base the description process, without defining it by previous employees: where is the company now, where do you want it to be in five years, and who can help you get it there?

3. “Don’t wait until there’s a group of candidates – just bring them in as you find them.”

Pulling together a group of qualified candidates, and interviewing them within a short time of one another, will give you the points of comparison you need to reach a clearer and more assured decision.

4. “Don’t waste time scheduling long interviews – I always know in the first five minutes if it’s someone I’m going to hire.”

A job interview is not like anything else. Think of a two-circle Venn diagram: some people interview well, and some people perform well. You always hope that your candidates will be in that overlapping center section that covers both groups; but if they’re not, you want them in the “perform well” group.

You might also be thinking “if they don’t interview well, they won’t present well as my executive.” An interview is nerve-wracking and candidates can get tongue-tied by the very circumstance of trying to present their experience, capability, and personality effectively in a small window of time. If you think it’s someone whose background could be good for you, use referencing to find out what he or she is like in a more normal – though still challenging – work situation.

5. “I’m not sure about making a decision, so I’m going to stall while we look for more candidates.”

It’s true that the absolutely perfect person for your job could still be out there, and given just a few more weeks, you might be able to rope him or her in for an interview…but if you haven’t already found them, how likely is this? And if the ones you’ve already met suspect that you are holding off in the hopes of finding someone better, they are likely to remove themselves from consideration, on the theory of “if they don’t want me, I don’t want them.”

These are just a start – but they happen more often than they should! The financial side alone — including the bad hire’s start up, severance, and the cost of finding a replacement – can easily equal a year’s salary. In addition, there are costs in terms of productivity, employee morale, and your own confidence. Take the time to do it right – and add a valued and valuable member to your team.

As in the iconic 1972  movie, The Godfather, every team you’ve ever been on begins with a wedding.  It’s not just that the bride and groom are getting married–it’s the marriage of everyone on the team. The wine is flowing, the outfits are lovely, there is dancing, speeches and toasts.

As a team member, it’s after the wedding reception is over that you have to keep the team relationship alive.  There are few human experiences that produce a greater high than working on an effective team.  But what do you do when a good team goes bad?  In The Godfather, the beginning is about making common cause, respect and loyalty.  By the end, it’s pride, power, and intrigue.

So how do we know when a good team goes bad?

1.  Watch the Numbers to Tell You If the team Is Unraveling–the Numbers Are the Early Warning System.  If your project is behind, overdue, out-of-favor, or unsuccessful, the team will begin to its first signs of unraveling.  It’s not a matter of if it will happen, it’s a matter of when.  When the numbers are bad, the pressure is on, fingers are being pointed, there are whispers in the background, and accusations are being made.

2.  Everyone Goes Silent and Gets Busy on the Team–Nobody Has Time to Talk to Anyone.  There still are Happy Hours in the afternoon, and people greet each other warmly in the halls and meetings.  But everyone has less interaction, and they’re in a hunkered down mode.  Emails are more perfunctory and are beginning to go unanswered.  Meetings are inexplicably canceled, even on important topics.

3.  Avoid Denial–Remember that You Don’t Have Much Time–Take Action.  When you hear these early warning signals that the team is unraveling, your natural reaction will often be denial.    You believe that you shouldn’t make waves, you should avoid frank conversations, and if there is an elephant in the room, you should look the other way.  Remember that you have less time than you think–not more–and the situation is worse than you thought.   In times like these paranoia is your friend–act now.

4.  Launch a Communication Offensive to Key People in Your Organization Beginning Right Now.  Here’s something you can do that others won’t bother to do–make a list of everyone in your organization who would be important to convince if you were applying for your job today.

Then re-establish your relationship with these key people, preferably in short one-on-one meetings.   Remember that if you keep a heads down, work hard, don’t look up approach, the most incompetent people you know will be talking to your team members and your bosses, and you want your stakeholders to know you’re working to build the organization.  If the people you’re scheduling meetings with cancel your meetings, there was never a time that you need to be more persistent.  Keep after them until they meet with you.

5.  Disrupt What’s Happening to Your Team–Communicate, Reorganize, Recommit.   The  cost of a failed team to the organization is enormous, and it is amazing how organizations allow teams to fail.  When good teams unravel, they can be put back together again.   Putting the team together in a team session is the only proven way to put teams together.  It is not the work of an untrained person.

You must work with a professional facilitator to put together an agenda that lets the team put everything back into place.  You must first address the business problems the team is facing.  You must then establish fundamental common causes that will draw the team to work together.  Then the team must establish the ground rules that it will follow.  Finally, a true system of accountability must be established.  Regular meetings of the team must continue to do a diagnostic of how the team is doing.

6.  Protect Yourself at All Times.  This is a fundamental rule in boxing and in teams, because people are unpredictable and you can receive a blow and literally not know where it came from.   Staying on with a team that cannot correct its direction a long time after you should have left is damaging to your psyche and your career.  Don’t take it personally.  Know when its time to move on before you get shoved.  Even NFL teams have wins and losses.  What you learn today will catapult you forward tomorrow.

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I must … but I can’t.  We should … but we won’t.  We will surely fail unless we do … but I certainly know that we won’t.  Such are the classic forms of “double-bind thinking.”

Victim.  Stasis.  Gridlock.  Futility.  Lack of accountability.  Ultimately letting yourself off the hook and expecting that others will do the same.   And finally expecting that others will let YOU off the hook, too.  Because, “What’s a guy to do, anyway?”  So collectively your team, your division–maybe even your whole company lives in the world of  “We must, but we can’t, so surely we will fail.”  Call it whistling in the dark or hiding under a sheet–you know very well–and everyone else does too–that ultimately it will all catch up with you and the fall will be catastrophic.  You won’t be blamed–probably–because you, like everyone else chose not to state the uncomfortable truths.

We call it “double-bind thinking.” It is rampant in organizations and it is killing companies with mediocrity and lack of accountability.

How do you recognize “double-bind thinking”?  Big hint:  The little word “but” is usually a part of the conversation.  “The design is disastrous, but I’ll start WWIII, if I say that.”  “There’s no way we can meet this commitment, but Sales already promised it.”

The answer to “but” is “So what?”   And that’s how you start breaking the devilish hold of the Double-Bind on your team, division or organization.  “The design is disastrous, but I’ll start WWIII, if I say that.”  SO WHAT, if you start WWIII?  That’s probably exactly what is needed.

I’m not suggesting that you be inflammatory.  Be respectful in your approach and try to win some buy-in.  You might be surprised at how quickly others join you.  You might be surprised at how many others see the double-bind and recognize the disastrous course it will lead to.

And you might be surprised at how much relief you feel at speaking the truth, stating the obvious, and creating an environment of accountability.

But, you say, I might be labeled a troublemaker, naysayer or worse!  But?  So what?

As a rising star executive or someone who is already running a turbo-charged organization, you’re at the top of your game.  You’re tough, resilient, often brilliant, and you can solve any problem.  When there’s something difficult to do, they come to you.

You can achieve the “mission impossible.”  But can you sustain it with your energy and present skills?  And are you unknowingly subjecting your organization and your own career to potentially cataclysmic risk?

I spend a lot of time working with executives in this situation.

Do you get an incredible high by being the only person who can pull a critical project over the finish line?  When there’s an impossible–or nearly impossible–job to be done, do you find yourself volunteering … against your better judgment?  Are you everybody’s go-to person?  Do you frequently find you are doing your own job–and a couple other jobs, as well?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you may suffer from “Mission Impossible Syndrome.”  A lot of executives are Mission Impossibles who have built a career on the never-say-no principle.  Promotion follows promotion.  Accolades and awards come in quick succession.  You are GOLDEN!  Until it all comes to a spectacular, crashing halt–leaving you and your career splatted against a brick wall.  As an executive coach, I’ve seen it over and over.  I recently watched several “golden” Mission Impossibles burn up in the stratosphere, going from their respective companies’ most highly regarded senior managers to virtual pariahs–in a matter of a few months.  And it never needed to end that way!

So what’s a Mission Impossible?  They are people with huge drives to succeed, who tend to measure their self-worth by extraordinary achievement day in and day out, and they crave recognition for their achievement.  They are tireless workhorses in organizations and are rewarded and praised for their drive, energy, and willingness to take on the jobs that no one else will touch.

But the strategic threats to the Mission Impossible are built into that very drive to achieve:  they go too far, take on too much, and begin to make mistakes.  Things slip.  And suddenly–usually to their huge surprise–the very organization that sang their praises turns on them with equal force.  Why?  Because they  have put the organization’s goals and success at risk due to their own ego and ambition, even though they thought they were doing exactly the right thing.  So a rapid process of organ rejection begins.

Mission Impossibles face another key strategic threat:  They may surround themselves with a team weaker than they are, which happens for several reasons.  Although Mission Impossibles will rarely fess up to this, they may dislike the competition of team members who are as capable as they are (or even more capable than they).  They also load the team’s agenda so full with their own initiatives that there is no room for other strong, ambitious players who demand the ability to also define and drive key initiatives.  And, while Mission Impossibles may give lip service to wanting to develop people, their ambitious agenda leaves little time or energy to build a strong and aligned team.  They cancel 1:1s and team meetings; developing people will always happen “tomorrow.”  As a result, the team below a powerful Mission Impossible is often surprisingly weak.

In executive coaching, I use an assessment called the FIRO-B to help identify Mission Impossible behavior.  When I combine the FIRO-B with other tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), CPI 260 and 360-degree feedback,  I have found that Mission Impossibles can learn some simple course corrections that enable them to fully leverage their drive to achieve, while protecting their organizations and themselves from the Mission Impossible strategic threats.

Recognize yourself in this?  The good news is you are built for organizational success and achievement.  The bad news is if you don’t recognize and manage your strategic threats, you can crash and burn–even repeatedly–and never know why.

The “big talker” and the “competent doer” are often seen at odds with each other.  Yet people today who will take a chance on you –often investing as much as $250,000 in training and ramp up time–want both technical and verbal abilities.

In the days of Alley Oop, the 20th Century Comic Strip who rode a dinosaur with his girl friend, if you wanted to convince someone, you needed a big club like Oops.    Overstuffed forearms helped to hit the person you needed to convince dead center in the forehead–and then you got your way.

In the 21st Century the tongue is truly mightier than the sword and is in fact the only tool you’ll be able to rely one is your capability to convince.

Here’s why.  No matter what your skillset is–accountant, IT person, healthcare professional, sales and marketing professional–chances are 99.00009% that they will be obsolete in a few years as you use them now.  As you probably already have, over the next several years you’ll end up in front people your income with depend upon whether they hire you are not.

You may very well thrive in this new environment 1) if you continue to update your skills 2) and if you can explain how what you do advances the goals of the organization.   Here are some things to keep in mind:

1.  Paint a vivid picture with your words.   Make people see what you’re saying.  Those of us who grew up in churches and synagogues understand the power of verbal visual images–short stories that pack power.  Remember David and Goliath?  With a slingshot and one smooth stone from the river, this little guy, who had spent his life with sheep, downed the mighty giant.

What if the story had explained in technical terms the composition of the stone and the trajectory of its arc as it flew through the air? If the storyteller had done that, no one would have remembered.  Are you the person to slay the giant in this time of brutal global competition?  You must paint the picture in words of how you’ll do it.

2. Remember the structure of language, “subject,” “verb,” “object”–you must connect with the power of basic language.   When we are trying too hard to be convincing, we use technical, acronym ladened sentences–which will not impress senior management, investors, or key customers.   Languages all over the planet or composed of subjects (who did this?), verbs (what did they do?) and objects (what was the result?)  Try to use dependent clauses sparingly.   A good example is Albert Einstein, who, when he came up with the theory of relativity, only a few people in the world could understand it.  Yet when he explained the theory Einstein used vivid examples that could be understood by a child.

3.  Avoid abstractions like the latest strain of the flu.  When someone wants me to recommend their idea and they begin to explain it in technical abstractions, I know they are not ready for “prime time.”  I keep pressing them by asking again and again, “But what will your idea do?  Help me understand how someone would use it?”  When they return again and again to abstractions and technical language, I know they don’t have their own idea worked out in their minds yet.  I always ask them to get back to me when they can explain it, but they never do, and their idea never sees the light of day.  What can’t be explained in vivid, visual language just isn’t real.

4.  The “cool factor” is critical.  People talk about being passionate about what they believe it, and I think that’s important.  What’s really important, however, is what I call “the cool factor.”  When I can convince you that something is cool, we’ll both be passionate about it.  The only reason I really like to have a voice telephone is to have immediate access to 911 in case someone wants to mug me–I avoid telephone conversations. But I get so excited about a cool new app.  So what’s cool to you?  Chances are it won’t be difficult to convince me that it’s cool.  That’s when you know you’re convincing.

Do you sometimes feel you’re the smartest person in the room–and the last to get heard?

Are you the invisible person in the room? I know people from CEO to entry level players in organizations  that often feel that way.

Chronic Invisibility is serious.

Not being able to get heard and to influence the direction of a conversation can dampen the future of the brightest of people.    The person  might as well be the unused chair in the corner.

How can you take immediate action?  Here are some steps.

1.  Ask yourself these questions.  Do you feel that you’re more of an observer than a maker of what’s happening?  When you make a comment, does it seem that nobody heard you and that everyone moved on quickly?  Do others get the key assignments?  Are you too often not chosen for key actions?

2. Today begin to see every meeting as a live performance.  Meetings are productions and they are showtime.  That’s not shallow way of thinking, it’s reality.  As part of the production, you have to know your lines.  Be sure you are not only prepared, but take every opportunity to bring a handout that analyzes the issues and gives your view of alternative solutions.  With the right handout, you can dominate the agenda and what’s next.

3.  Stay on top of managing your relationships.  I know we want to think that head down, nose to the grindstone, don’t look right or left is just giving your all to your work.  Actually, however, in today’s team environment, your relationships with team members determines your effectiveness.  So show up!  Show up in email strings, for company functions, and engage people at every level.  It’s not screwing off.  It’s part of your job.

4. Engage everyone at the meeting.  Be sure you speak to every person, every time who is in attendance.  If it’s your style to hide out in the back of the room and isolate, don’t be surprised if no one takes you into account.

5.  Learn to ask really good questions.  It’s not easy.  We enjoy downloading what we think without it occurring to us that there are multiple points of view.  Surface what people think before you begin a monologue about your take on the issue.   I personally didn’t know how to ask questions so I made a list to ask.  “How are you doing?  How was your weekend?  What have you been working on?  Are you getting the help you need?  What are some of the tough issues?  Have a list of 20 questions that you can ask  Give your opinions, but understand the context of the person you’re talking to–and influencing.

6.  Make good comments during the meeting.  People who chatter about each thing that’s brought up experience their own kind of invisibility–no one sees them because they talk so much nothing they say stands out.  The best way is to think about several things you might say during a meeting and to speak up at key moments, volunteering to do key things.  Point out opportunities.  Explain dangers and risks.

7.  Demonstrate your stuff to your team members .  People want more from you than that you do great accounting, program software, or take care of customers.  They want to know how you make a difference.  How was it before you started and how much has it improved now?  Learn to tell the story.

8.  Get professional help from a good coach.  You may spend a few hundred dollars taking assessments and learning about yourself, but working with a good coach will repay you richly, because you’ll be seen as a valuable player when the foundations of the organization shake and the layoffs occur.  Find someone who really is skilled at coaching and who cares about you.

Here’s the bad news.  Total numbers of employees that run companies will continue to decline.  The unemployment that we see is not as much because of a bad economy as it is because of an amazing technology that continues to eliminate jobs.  This will continue.

The good news is that if you are a competent professional and a great team member who solves problems, you have never had a greater opportunity–if you’re not invisible!  Get seen!

Visit the invisible man, http://thoughtsfromtheinvisibleman.blogspot.com/2011/05/greetings-from-invisible-man.html, from whom the graphic comes.