“Up” May Not Be The Only Way To Go!

I am often struck by the differences in value systems between the U.S. and the other countries I travel in. Because we can understand each other, live in similar circumstances, have more or less familiar political, organizational, and family systems, we assume we also share a similar value system. Some of these values may be issues such as honesty, loyalty, fidelity, ambition, money (earning it and spending it), power, pride, revenge, and respect for human and animal life.

For instance, giving and receiving bribes is the accepted way of conducting business in many countries. Loyalty to one’s company is a higher virtue in Japan than here. Infidelity in marriage is accepted in many Latin countries (as long as it’s the man who strays). Revenge is expected if you’re a Sicilian.

I came across a value that I had assumed was universal. It wasn’t. During a speaking engagement to a group of 130 female executive secretaries in Portugal, I encountered women had come from all over the world for a three-day seminar. English was the common language, and much was gained by their talking to one another and comparing jobs, bosses, and social and political environments.

In fact, one woman worked for a boss in Italy and another worked for the same man when he traveled to his Belgium office. In Belgium he was call “Sir,” was formal and non-interactive. In Italy he was known by his first name and joked and socialized with his staff. This man obviously was fitting into the culture of his particular work group and was a good example of how the expected norms of conduct should influence behavior.

The speakers were excellent and all emphasized upward mobility, job opportunities, and strategies for getting ahead. The participants were surprisingly non-responsive. I noticed that they had no questions at the end of the talks and looked glazed a good deal of the time.

I decided to take a survey and found the problem. A large majority of the attendees had been in the same job for over fifteen years and only a small minority had any interest in moving out of their secretarial positions into more managerial or administrative jobs. The organizers expressed not only their surprise, but also their upset at the lack of ambition from the women there.

Their companies had sent these women for three days to a lovely resort by the ocean as a reward for loyalty and good work. If they achieved some personal growth, learned to communicate better, improved their telephone skills, broadened their general knowledge, learned of new computer technologies, and enjoyed the sunshine—that was good enough. The seminar organizers, on the other hand, had seen their purpose as getting the women out of their secretarial roles into positions of greater responsibility, authority, and power.

I was fortunate to be the closing speaker and could use the information from my survey. I changed my talk from “Onward and Upward” to “Happy at Work.” In other words, I extolled the virtues of predictability and security and gave permission to not “go anywhere” and to not feel guilty about it.

In our culture, ambition is almost universally seen as positive, whereas words such as “stuck” and “plateaued” have negative connotations. We don’t have a term in our language defining lack of ambition as a happy state of standing still, as a satisfactory place to remain for an indefinite period of time. I have often heard people ask questions such as: “Where will you be in five or ten years?” As if one should expect to be in a more satisfactory place; the assumption being that wherever you are now is not going to be good enough.

We need to re-evaluate our unexamined priorities. “Up” may not be the only way to go. There is a recent trend of professional women leaving their jobs in order to raise children and find satisfaction as stay-at-home moms.

I have caught myself trying to help people move into more lucrative or more fulfilling work, never wondering whether indeed more is better. I had not considered the security of stability, the pleasure of staying in a position one knows and does well, nor the validity of the choice to prioritize other aspects of our lives above professional success. We will find satisfaction only when we give ourselves permission to follow our own individual paths rather than running wherever the herd is headed.

Copyright © 2013. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.

Relieving the Burden of the Sandwich Generation

There is a generation of people with older children who may still need some parenting and aging parents who need to be intermittently—or frequently—taken care of. These people are called the “sandwich generation” because they are being pushed by the demands of both the younger and older generations. For many, it becomes increasingly difficult to cope with the attention and help needed by their parents.

There comes a time, when it is not clear whether these older adults are being compliant about taking their medicines, whether they can shop for and prepare their own food, balance a checkbook, go out and see friends, or whether they are instead at home watching television all day.

I have written about how to tell a parent that they should stop driving. This is difficult enough, but how can you tell a parent that they cannot be relied on to take care of themselves? And how can you even broach the subject that you—their own child—cannot be responsible for their day-to-day well being? The sooner adult children deal with issues facing their aging parents, the easier it will be when emergencies arise.

Even if there is hired help, employees need to be supervised. There are too many stories of elder abuse to not stay on top of the situation. All this becomes increasingly difficult if the children live far away or have busy lives of their own.

Many of these older folks do not want to move to a facility where they will be looked after. They live in familiar surroundings and even if these are inadequate, they prefer the known to an unfamiliar situation. Even if staying in their own home is no longer an option, the move may feel overwhelming; particularly, what to do with their belongings. There must be reassurance that the beloved knickknacks and furnishings will find new homes, and that the children will help in managing both the logistical and emotional obstacles of the transition.

One of the issues which must be dealt with is the older generation’s false image of a retirement community as a home for the aged, or worse, the poor house or a nursing home with neglected seniors sitting in rows of wheelchairs in some dark hallway. The perception that the children are putting Mom or Dad “away” in order to get rid of them has to be confronted. The children must also deal with their own guilt and the stress caused by the role reversal as they become caretakers of their parents.

I had that struggle with my widowed mother. She lived in Los Angeles while I was in San Diego, and I travelled every week to take her to doctor’s appointments and to see that the frequent repairs were being done to the old house. As wonderful as it was to still have a mother in her nineties, it was a hardship. Both my husband and I had full-time jobs and never felt like we could get away for a weekend or holiday since there was no one else to check on my mother. I was not successful in getting my fiercely independent Russian mother to move to a retirement community and instead spent time worrying about her and dealing with countless emergencies: her caretaker did not show up, she had a stomach ache, a pipe leaked.

So what to do? How do you get your parents somewhere safe, where they can be taken care of—with available nursing staff 24/7, good nutrition, and especially the availability of social activities?

The one thing that I find seems to work best is to admit that it is becoming increasingly difficult to give the necessary time to care for them. They, of course, may deny that they need help, and even if it is pointed out, some might fight tooth and nail against being moved out of their homes. Taking the parents for lunch to visit such a facility, having them meet staff and residents, and maybe even staying overnight is a beginning. Sometimes insisting on a trial period may be necessary.

It is important to point out the disadvantages of staying put, including possible medical emergencies, as well as the advantages of a retirement community. Many of their friends are too old to visit or have passed away and neighbors are busy with work and their own families. Isolation, boredom, and loneliness are offset by being with other retirees and joining in fun and stimulating activities. Families should also discuss the benefits to changing their relationships from worrying and struggling for control to feeling safe, satisfied, and independent. This will allow aging parents and their children and grandchildren to enjoy each other and the time they spend together on visits.

If none of this works, have an outside person, a friend, tell them how hard it is for the kids to be caretakers and that they should move for their children’s sake. What they are doing is giving their kids a gift by delivering them from worry.

I wish all my readers good luck. I, for one, am a believer that people my age should not live alone but be part of a community where life can be a new adventure everyday.

Copyright © 2012. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.

Taking the Place of a Well-Loved Manager

If you have just been hired to replace someone who seemed to have had no faults and was well-liked and respected in the company, it may look like an impossible act to follow. But there are strategies for handling succession issues.

You do have a challenge ahead of you, but by understanding the dynamics, you can plan an entry strategy that will make it easier for yourself. When a well-loved manager leaves, employees may feel abandoned. They are suffering the loss of a leader, perhaps a friend, someone whose management style is familiar and whose expectations, standards, and values are known.

Such employees will find it hard to accept the replacement. If the newcomer arrives soon after the predecessor’s departure, if no separation procedure helped the group to let go, and if the emotional costs to the group of its loss are not really well understood, then everyone will have a hard time with the change. In a way, as the new person, you can never take the place of the favorite who came before. Intuitively you wish that person never existed. However, you should honor that person while making yourself known and carving out your own niche.

Never disparage your predecessor’s accomplishments, your new coworkers shared in and will be proud of them. They also will be more loyal to the person who left than to you, and any undue criticism may brand you as the enemy. If, as a new manager, you are in a position to make changes and wish to do so, invoke the spirit of the respected predecessor. You might suggest that your program “builds” on the work done before and is probably what would have been done if he or she had continued.

On occasion, if it is feasible, you can check the changes with the person who left and thereby receive his or her blessings. The changes you recommend can then bring credit to both of you, preparing your group for transition to your ways of thinking. Use accomplishments of the past as a standard, such as:

“The short time it took you to change the molds on the production line last summer under Smith set a new standard for all of us to meet.” You also can ask, “How would Smith have done it?” Asking for information does not oblige you to do the job in the same way, but it does show that you respect Smith’s competence, as well as the group’s, and that you want to take full advantage of it. You can continue to invent, so that you are not controlled by the past and destined to repeat it, by asking, “Now what can we do to improve? Do we have different circumstances now that we must take into consideration?”

This period of honoring your predecessor also is the time to add your own ideas. By respecting the missing person, you are respecting the other group members, and they are more than likely to react to you respectfully in return.

Most people you meet in the company will put their best foot forward. Tension and difficulties often are concealed or minimized. You will have to be alert to subtle cues of strained relationships, territorialism, cliques, power centers, and the feelings people have about the person you are replacing.

How do you find out what you want to know? Ask questions. Pay attention to the way in which people talk about themselves and others. If you have the opportunity to see people interacting, watch how they treat each other. Here are some questions you may want to ask:

• Tell me about the person I am replacing.

• What was he best known for?

• What were some of the problems?

• How did she deal with them?

Engaging employees keeps them not only involved, but committed to the team. Only then can they become real partners with you.

Copyright © 2013. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.

Change

On the first of February, the home of my biweekly column, the La Jolla Village News, changed its format and is now called La Jolla Today.

A new name for our paper to be published every two weeks, a new format, a new emphasis for our increasingly sophisticated coastal readers—change. As in any change, there will be those that will welcome the new look, they are the adventurers, those who are willing to give up the familiar and plunge into the unknown. Change entails risk, as with anything new, there are probabilities, possibilities, and unanticipated consequences. Of course, in this case, there will be no risks for the reader, only for the publisher. Then there are those who will be upset, write to the editors, complain that the paper was fine before, why make if different and now unfamiliar: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These are the risk averse people, who cling to tradition, to the security of the familiar, of the known.

We need both people, those who will seek to improve the status quo, the innovators, the creators, the inventors, the risk takers. These people need to be confident that they will be resilient enough to weather any possible negative fallout.

We also need the risk-averse people, those who will caution against undue experimentation and who will help in making more carefully thought-out decisions whether personal, economic, or political.

Some planned changes are made regularly, like the New Year’s resolutions we all make in January, you know the one: “eat less, move more.” In other words, make intelligent food choices (I plan to practice portion control by using smaller plates) and commit to an exercise routine that includes strength training, aerobics, and flexibility (I plan to be 30 minutes on the tread mill five days a week).

The only risk of not following through is the resultant guiltly feelings and poorer health.

The Hawthorne Effect could be an additional motivation. What is the Hawthorne Effect? In 1924–32, a group of Harvard researchers studying the relationship between productivity and work environment at the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company in Cicero, Illinois made a discovery consequently known as the Hawthorne Effect.

What they found was that workers improved their productivity no matter how the environment was manipulated—they did better whether their environment was made brighter or dimmer, as long as they were the subject of a study. In other words, individuals improved their performance due to the attention they received from the researchers, making them feel important, and not from changes to the experimental variables. Even when workers were falsely told that the lights would be brighter (they were unchanged) they improved their performance.

How can you use this effect to reach your self-improvement goals? I suggest having a witness when trying out new behaviors—whether an exercise partner who knows your new fitness goals or someone to eat with who knows you are avoiding sweets. In other words, we need the Hawthorne Effect to stay true to our New Year’s resolution,  we need to be observed doing it right. This is why the weekly weigh-ins at places like Weight Watchers work—there is an observer who monitors, and there are other participants who witness and share. Improving alone is hard, get a friend to help you with your goals.

Change, according to the dictionary, means to transform, to modify, to become different. Change also means flexibility, to reverse a previously held opinion or an earlier decision. The way we react to change is also a personality factor; political stances reflect our propensity to tradition and routine or to innovation and risk. Change, whether by intent or by accident is an inevitable part of our lives. We should be ready to accept change and be aware of our habitual reactions to it. We have control over whether we will fight it or welcome it and with the new year upon us, it is our opportunity to do something differently, to do something better than it was.

So, whether it be a new face lift for our community newspaper or changes in your own business or life, commit to the new you, that healthier, more fit you, the one who has given up on bad habits and who finally will learn Spanish or the piano or enroll in that class or walk on the beach or volunteer for a worthy cause or clean out that closet or…. Write your own plan and share it with someone.

Copyright © 2012. Natasha Josefowitz. All right

Parents and Children Working Together

I often hear from friends who complain about their children who work with them in the family business. I also hear from their children, some of whom are young adults, others are middle-aged, complaining bitterly about over-supervision and a lack of autonomy and trust. One young woman with an MBA told me that her mother checks up on her work more than she does on that of any other employee.

What is going on?

One may well ask whether it is the children who cannot accept any authority from the parent whom they so recently struggled to gain some independence from, or whether, indeed, it is the parents who cannot let go of controlling their child?

Let us examine the dynamics of both possibilities.

One of the major tasks of growing up is growing away from one’s parents. For young people to be able to stand on their own two feet, they must be able to differentiate themselves from their parents. They need to test parental value systems, lifestyles, beliefs, and goals in order to see if these fit their own values and styles. They do this by trying out different beliefs, new ways of living, and by having friends that their parents disapprove of. We call this adolescent rebellion.

Even though the child may be well beyond the so-called “rebellious years,” remnants of this effort to distance oneself may remain. Even when I was in my mid-70s and my mother was in her mid-90s, I still sometimes startled at the strength of my reactions when she criticized me. This is a parent-child dynamic that lasts a lifetime.

So it is no wonder that a child may resist any parental attempt—no matter how legitimate—to control. It may be a helpful suggestion that is taken as criticism or a mild criticism that is perceived as strong disapproval. The push for autonomy from one’s parents is so strong that any supervision is felt as overly controlling.

Children want to please their parents and care so much for what they think that they exaggerate—in their own minds—any parental reaction that is less than absolutely positive. Every child, from infancy through adulthood, wears a little invisible sign around his or her neck that says: “Mom, Dad, please admire me!”

The other possibility, that indeed the parent is a very difficult boss, should also be explored. As children grow older, it is difficult to see them as adults. I still give unsolicited psychological advice to my 62-year-old daughter who has a Ph.D. in psychology and business advice to my 60-year-old son with an MBA from Harvard.

Parents remember all the foolish things their kids used to say and do and still attribute that potential to their grown sons and daughters. They still believe that their own judgment must be better than their child’s.

Parents do tend to over-supervise their own children. Whereas a mother or father may overlook an employee’s minor errors, they would notice every mistake their son or daughter made and overreact. In other words, the expectations of performance are higher for children, thus placing additional burdens on these children who feel under observation all of the time. If children do well, it’s a chip off the old block. If they don’t, then it is perceived as an embarrassing reflection on the parent.

Some parents exaggerate their children’s achievements and give them responsibilities too soon: some parents underrate their children and continue to keep them in subordinate positions longer than is warranted. Either way, it has little to do with reality. Also, other employees often believe that bosses’ children are unfairly given advantages and may resent it, adding to the problem.

Also if the child takes a position different from the parent, that parent may feel betrayed. Family loyalty  and affection get confused with work decisions.

Parents generally have trouble giving up control, and when it’s time to retire many stay on becoming burdens to their children—who would normally pension-off aging employees but cannot because it’s Mom or Dad.

If relationships at work are too fraught with tension, it may be important to the child to prove him- or herself elsewhere, before the parent can accept that child as a valuable member of the team.

There is really only one solution to the problems of parents and children in the same business. It is to talk openly about the one’s need for control and the other’s need for autonomy. There must be constant reassurance about loyalty, commitment, and love. Although these should not be at stake because of a difference of opinion, they often are.

My Mother Complains That

I’ve gained weight

my hair isn’t right

my dress is unbecoming

I wasn’t polite

it matters not

that she complains

what matters

is that it still matters

Copyright © 2012. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.