“Would you just make a decision already?”

I’ve said those words out loud plenty of times, but this time I was posing the question to myself, while staring at a 60-pound crate of apples. The decision at hand: Does this apple look good enough to keep?

I frequently encounter questions like this during volunteer shifts at my local food bank where there are a surprising number of decisions to make. Most of the time the answer is obvious, but getting stuck on one apple bottlenecks the entire process of sorting through 60 pounds of apples.

My fellow volunteers run into the similar situations every week. One week it’s apples the next its onions, but the decisions and the questions never stop. How do you want to organize this? Where do the crates of past go? How should we label the snack items? It’s one decision after the other and it’s the biggest roadblock to productivity.

The reason we get stuck is because we all want the best possible outcomes. We home...

You’ve set goals.

You’re targeting professional milestones.

You’ve crafted a plan for success.

Does it include ways to be more visible at work with your managers and even your colleagues?   

Your work and the effort you put in at work are only part of being successful. Increasing your visibility directly impacts your compensation and opportunities to advance your career. 

Letting your work speak for itself leaves a lot of room for interpretation and quite honestly results in a lot of missed opportunities every single day.

Standing out at work doesn’t require you to take on more work. It’s not about being the first one to the office and the last one to leave (or log off.) It doesn’t mean you have to brag about everything you’re working on.

Your visibility at work comes down to - being strategic and intentional in your interactions. Here are three tangible ways you can stand out every day: 

 1. Do what you say...

Surely you've seen the highlight by now. The final play of the NFL game between the Raiders and the Patriots. The one where New England was heading toward a win. It was almost guaranteed... until a huge mistake at the end of the game that result in an unlikely fumble recovery returned for a touchdown by the Las Vegas Raiders. 

As a football fan, I couldn't believe the end of the game. That highlight will be shown for decades. 

As a business owner, I see the potential for more conversations than just the outcome because I know mistakes happen, but they rarely happen in such a public way. The final play of that game was a HUGE mistake. Everyone at the game and on the field saw it. Millions of other people (fans and non fans alike) have seen the play. It wasn't just a mistake, it was a lack of fundamentals and there was a conversation after the game about accountability and who was responsible for the mistake and ultimately the loss. 

In sports all of that gets...

A quick search about small talk and effective small talk reveals lists of questions, articles on the “necessary evil” of it and hacks to make it easier.

What if you tried to personalize it instead of trying to avoid it? Instead of arming yourself with a list random questions or looking for an easy way out, what if you prepared for the conversation and walked away from the interaction having accomplished something? 

If you consider small talk a necessary evil of course you’re going to try and avoid it. If it’s always awkward you’re not going to initiate it and if you think it’s a waste of time you won’t bother putting yourself in position to have the conversation in the first place.

Small talk can be all of those things. Often because it’s not the conversation we prepare for.

We prepare for the big moments and the “real” conversation. We think small talk is something we endure or blow off altogether.  

...

If there’s one universal takeaway from the Olympics over the last week – it’s that sports isn’t just about the outcomes. Sports can be used to tackle much bigger conversations, like mental health. Simone Biles is a tremendous athlete, the best in the world at what she does. And she is human just like you and just like me.  

Sports at its core is about coming together as human beings and being part of a community, whether you are a community of athletes or a community of fans. You can use sports to be rude, divisive, and controversial or you can use sports to bring people together. 

I hope you will choose the latter and use these sports conversation starters to build relationships in small talk this week.

I don’t think about myself as working in a male dominated environment. Which sounds odd coming from someone who’s spent 20 years inside sports locker rooms as a sideline reporter and sports broadcaster.

I get lots of questions about what it’s like in a locker room. Here’s what I see: Talented and skilled people who want to excel and succeed at a high level. People who can deliver in pressure situations because of the hours they spend training and preparing.

There are two things you should recognize about what I just described:

1. I could just as easily have been describing the people you work with. The job descriptions are different but the drive and desire to win can be the same. (Although your office probably smells better and has less laundry on the floor.)
2. This is not a group of people that has time to waste in their day. Athletes regularly put in 10 to 12-hour days and sit through more meetings than you might realize.

When I take these things into...

Last week as I stood in the Mariners clubhouse introducing myself to new players and asking for interviews, I recognized a familiar trend and pattern. On average it took about five interactions for players to smile, open up in conversations and drop their guard in interviews. Those interactions included just walking past me in the hallway, me saying “Hi” in passing, introducing myself and then asking for the interview.

Throughout my career I’ve noticed the five interactions average in building relationships with athletes and coaches. 

And here’s the thing to keep in mind, the people I work with recognize that talking to the media is part of their job, but ensuring they do that willingly (I can assure you few people are jumping at the chance to talk after a loss) and openly requires effort on my part to build those relationships.

Maybe you’ve never stopped to think about how many interactions it takes to build a relationship, but you can certainly...

The world needs a lot of things right now. 

The most important of which might be communication skills. Not the ability to talk, but the ability to truly communicate, engage in discourse, listen to people with different viewpoints and seek common ground. 

Communication skills have never been more important. 

It will take big, difficult, awkward, emotional and thoughtful conversations to spark change. If you're not ready to jump into those kinds of conversations - don't opt out altogether, start small. 

There are ways to practice the skills you need for big moments. I suggest trying sports conversations. The video explains why. 

The person who coined the phrase, “there’s no such thing as a stupid question” was either flat-out lying or unaware of all the stupid questions he/she was asking.

I know from experience there are plenty of stupid, bad, lazy and unproductive questions – all of which lead to a lot of eye-rolling, but that’s not the worst part, neither is the sounding stupid part. The worst part is the wasted time. That’s what you should be worried about.

It takes longer to get the answers you need to figure out the real issue, identify solutions and inspire action when you’re asking bad questions.

And just so we’re clear – if you are following the advice of most so-called “experts” you’re probably asking these types of questions.

• "Experts" who preach the importance of open-ended questions probably haven’t bombed with those on live TV.
• Academics, like those in the Harvard Business Review, who advocate follow-up questions as...

Happy Holiday week!

I’ll keep this short and sweet since you’ve got a lot on your plate. Don’t forget that sports topics make good small talk options around family and friends. Debate if that’s your style but keep it light enough to avoid huge fights.

You should be connecting with people not alienating them.

Happy holidays!