no dog in the fight – Workplace Navigator

I travel alone a fair amount. I’m not a road warrior by any stretch of the imagination but as a woman traveling alone, there are apps that I would literally be lost without. Some of the apps I have are purely for my own daily routine that keep me mindful and present even if I’m in a hotel three time zones away. I can remember about 7 years ago, my cell phone fell into a toilet while I was in St. Petersburg, Florida at a conference. Toast. Gone. It was just a regular cell phone (not smart in anyway) but it stopped me in my tracks. How in the world was I to communicate with only landlines? The horror of it. I survived, but I can tell you, I know where my phone is any time I am near water.

I have to say that I view a 5 hours car ride or a 3 hour flight as an opportunity to learn something. I actually look forward to either hearing a book or playing brain games or learning a language while on cruise control or 30,000 miles above the earth. It’s like a blank slate of time that gets filled with a great collage of information, drama and inspiration.

So here they are. The 7 apps that no traveler should be without.

1. Waze. Waze is a navigation app that my cousin’s wife turned me onto about two years ago. It’s free. There are other navigation apps out there but my favorite is Waze. There is a communal feel about Waze. Everyone else who is on the app traveling at the same time is reporting events on the road, they are called “Wazers”. Whether there is an accident, police (visible or not visible) or an object in the road, you are alerted about half a mile in advance. It even tells you if it’s raining or snowing or the traffic is moving at 17 miles an hour just ahead of you. Check out Waze.

2. OpenTable. This is another free app that is indispensable for the woman traveling alone. This will get you a reservation in practically every city in North America (I haven’t tried it overseas). If you are traveling to Seattle, you can research in advance to find the perfect sushi restaurant with walking distance of your hotel or find a reservation on the fly when your flight is delayed. So why is this great for a woman traveling alone? Well, the last thing you want to do is to walk into a restaurant that has a 45 minute wait, is closed on Tuesdays or went out of business 3 months ago and they forgot to take down their website. In addition, you can review the menu and reviews to see if it’s in your price range and lines up with your palate. AND you earn points towards gift cheques to be used at participating restaurants.

3. Audible. I am an Audible devotee. I’ve been a member for over 4 years. Basically, you can listen to most books using this app. There is a membership fee depending on how many books you want to listen to. I have listened to everything from Gone with the Wind to Huckleberry Finn to The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. When books are recommended at a conference, I add it to my wish list. Even my commute is not a waste of time because I am constantly listening to books. As Zig Ziglar describes automobile university, “A study by the University of Southern California revealed that if you live in a metropolitan area and drive 12,000 miles a year you can acquire the equivalent of two years of college education in three years’ time by listening to educational information in your car.” Utilize your travel by learning more.

4. Do It Tomorrow. This is a free app that is basically a list keeper. There is one list for “Today” and another list for “Tomorrow”. I use these lists for everything from keeping notes in a conference, checklists for my trip (don’t forget your bathing suit!), or a running grocery list (AAA batteries, orzo and butter are on my list right now). It’s super easy to use. There are other apps that will share lists which are great as well. This has just been my default for the last two years. Make sure you either have a note pad or some other app but don’t muddle your head with trying to remember AAA batteries. Save that brain space for something else.

5. Weather. I have the default weather app on my iPhone that I can add or delete cities from anytime I want. So if I’m making a connection through Atlanta, I can look up the weather for the next seven days. I recently traveled to Tampa and while you might expect temperatures of 75 degrees in January, the highs were only in the low 60’s (perish the thought). At least I was dressed appropriately and I left my bathing suit at home. Have the weather handy at all times.

6. Routine. I have three apps that are part of my daily routine. I meditate using an app called Holosync usually while on a treadmill or running outside (kill two birds with one stone). I then spend 5 minutes using the free version of Luminosity which has brain games to improve cognition. After that, time permitting, I spend 10 minutes learning Spanish on Duolingo (there are other languages available and it’s FREE). This is part of my daily routine and it grounds me no matter where I am. When I’m traveling, it’s nice to have some things I can count on to enrich me.

7. Hotel Plus. Make sure you download your hotel app. You never know when you are going to be needing a hotel at 2 AM while driving on the belt line in DC (oh wait that actually happened to me). I was traveling to Florida a few years ago with my elderly parents. We were delayed for 4 hours and were to arrive after midnight. I used my Hilton app to find a hotel close to our destination airport and made a reservation. My parents thought I was a wizard. Make sure you have the right apps available before you travel so that you can be a wizard as well. Also, make sure you have your bank app, Starbucks if you’re a fan, etc. so that your life on the road isn’t over the top alienating.

This list could be endless but I think I have the essentials (and I realize there are more than 7). I’m curious as to what you see as an essential travel app that you can’t live without?

I had the pleasure of hearing Col. Mark Slocum, Commander of the 4th Fighter Wing, speak at a local Leading Wayne event here in Goldsboro, NC this past week. He advocated that every leader should have a critical thinker; someone to poke holes in your ideas. Basically, the opposite of a “yes” man. Every great leader needs someone to challenge their ideas to make sure the ideas are sound. I completely agree. The problem is that it is not the easiest thing to go out and look for criticism. It’s uncomfortable. It’s being vulnerable. It’s being humble.

I have to say I face this, to some degree, every week when I send out my blog draft to “Cathy’s Brain Trust” to several old friends from college and beyond. I have to say that the first few drafts (some two and half years ago), received glowing reviews along with a slew of grammatical corrections. So, although I felt vulnerable when I hit the send button, I received mostly thumbs up and was forced to acknowledge the holes in my grammar. There have been many times since those first few posts where there was some not so favorable feedback. Some posts never got published. It was humbling and, at times embarrassing (there is a big difference between roster and rooster). I survived. I have endured. I have learned. And I’m a better writer. And, as with any exercise like this, we have all learned from each other. The group has even admitted to me their discomfort sometimes when contributing but the intent has always been to make things better!

So where do you go looking for the Critic? Here are some ideas:

1. Perspective. Look for someone with a different perspective. In a recent Mastermind (a group of like-minded folks working for a similar goal) conference call, one of the group members had raised that idea that if you are creating a coaching website, it really doesn’t make sense to have other coaches give you feedback about the site. They will come from a coaching perspective and not a client perspective. So go find someone with the perspective of a potential end user. If you are developing a new garden for a senior center, go talk to the seniors that will be using the garden. If you are making a new kid friendly tortilla, go talk to some kids. If you are looking for feedback on the employee picnic, survey the employees and their families. Find a different perspective from those who are invested in the outcome.

2. No dog in the fight. Make sure you are getting feedback from someone with nothing to gain or someone without a dog in the fight. I can remember having a menu tasting for a restaurant I opened some twenty years ago, and we had the staff taste the menu. Probably not the most unbiased crowd to poll. Those folks wanted to get the restaurant open and get paid, they would probably have said that everything tasted great. Come to think of it, I’m not sure we eliminated any menu items from that tasting. Make sure your Critic doesn’t have anything to gain from sitting back and nodding their head. Make sure they don’t have a dog in the fight.

3. Feed Forward. If there is an opportunity, look for feed forward. Feed forward is when you ask for how you could do it differently or more effectively the next time. This is not a deep brutal post mortem on everything that went wrong (although this would be necessary for things like equipment malfunction) but rather a look at what is possible in the future. As Marshall Goldsmith recommends, pick one behavior you want to change like, “I want to be a better listener”. Try it on for size with a few folks that are your coworkers, your boss and your direct reports. Let them know you want to be a better listener and ask them what that would look like to them. Be careful NOT to look back for examples where you were not a good listener. This is all about moving forward (not backwards). Ask them for two suggestions and shut up. Make notes. Thank them. You can ask your participant if they would like some feed forward on something they would like to change. Ask for feed forward.

4. Anonymity. There is also value in having the critique come from an anonymous source. Wiley has an Everything DiSC 363 Assessment where you can have four different groups of people give feedback and all the feedback is anonymous except for the manager. So all the direct reports are in one group, all the coworkers are in another. There’s also the option of including the board of directors, customers and/or a manager(s). They are all asked about the leader’s style in various areas (i.e. collaboration, approachability, directness, etc.) and given the option for various preset comments. I think this is really effective because if 20 out of 25 raters said that, “Joe could be a lot more approachable”; it’s a powerful statement rather than 20 different comments trying to say the same thing. The point is that if there is anonymity, you will receive more honest feedback. This is especially true if you are in a leadership position and your direct reports may feel there will be repercussions if they say anything unflattering. There may be a reason to have your Critic have anonymity.

5. Trusted. Then, of course, there is the trusted group that you know will give it to you straight. There is no way to say how you cultivate this group except that you’ll know when you know. It’s like “Cathy’s Brain Trust”, the group has morphed a bit overtime. A member would never give feedback or I didn’t find value in it. Trust is a two way street. If I received some constructive feedback and blew up in anger or ignored the feedback, I am letting down my side of the bargain. So if you ask for criticism be prepared to receive it graciously and give up on the illusion that you need to be perfect. It’s not going to happen. We all have flaws and, mine in particular, is a grasp of American English grammatical rules. It doesn’t mean I can’t write, it just means I need a trusted English major as a part of my brain trust.

Let me just say that it’s easier to be surrounded by “yes” men. It’s more comfortable to be untested and to ride the status quo. I get it. I still get slightly squeamish when I send these posts for feedback. I love this mantra on criticism from Christine Kane: SWSWSWSW “Some will, some won’t. So what? Someone’s waiting.” There is someone out there waiting for this post on this topic. Whew. What a relief.