attention Archives - Dennis E. Gilbert

05
Dec 19
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Project Drama and Workplace Advancement

What do project drama and workplace advancement have in common? They both seem to get attention. Are there other commonalities?

Career minded employees are hungry for opportunity. They often create some of the opportunities by attracting attention to their work.

Attention and Trust

Tesla recently smashed some windows on their new prototype truck. Was this a complete failure or was it really intentional to attract more attention?

Failure or success, it improved visibility. They received huge publicity and many preorders.

Many people would quickly suggest that means success. They only question some would ask is, “Can you trust the product?” If the glass breaks that easily, what else may happen?

Research suggests that customers who have experienced product or service challenges but have had their challenge resolved satisfactorily are actually more loyal than those customers who never had a problem at all. It may seem strange, yet it is true.

Project Drama

Back to the workplace. Does the squeaky wheel get the attention? The project that nearly fails as compared to the project that moved flawlessly from step-to-step? Which one received more attention? Which scenario creates more trust?

Many people wonder why Alice was promoted instead of Jane. After all, Alice’s work seems a little shaky.

We are in a society that is craving more and more attention. Social media feeds get flooded every day with attention seeking propaganda. Something as silly as “the cat meme” gets lots of attention. Smudge became popular overnight.

Onlookers often get irritated with attention seekers. Creating project drama is not a recommended practice. Yet, sometimes you have to toot your own horn and make some noise.

Breaking glass, literally, or metaphorically (glass ceiling, perhaps) also seems to attract some attention.

Does it help with workplace advancement? Does it inspire trust and create success?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

03
Dec 19
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Cell Phones Off and Engaging Your Team

Tags : attention meeting effectiveness trust workplace engagement

You’ve likely heard it at the start of the meeting, “All cell phones off!” Is this the best way to engage your team? Is it the only way?

It is interesting to see the differences in organizational culture. Some meetings invite you to BYOD (bring your own device) and others start with a command to shut everything off.

Attention is a Resource

Attention is often hard to capture. When we don’t get the attention we seek we tend to get louder, send more email, or hold more meetings.

In today’s social and workplace climate attention is scarce. We are always in a battle for what’s happening next on our cell phones, what short video to watch, or a clever .gif file capturing a few seconds of our time.

We have a hyper active society that has learned not to waste anything, especially time. Time wasters and energy zappers are quickly dismissed and the attention shifts to, “What’s next?”

Cell Phones Off or Trust

Should we be turning our cell phones on? What really captures attention and creates engagement? Is workplace trust a factor?

Trust becomes a bigger element in engagement. Since we consciously or subconsciously begin to feel more and more tricked into giving our attention.

We are apprehensive of the email tag line, the text message from an unknown number, and phone calls from unknown callers are seldom answered.

These are trust issues. Things that waste our time. It is the clever language, the trickery, or the click bait that makes us shy away.

For most organizations trust is a competitive advantage. Organizations with a trusting culture do much better when compared with their competition. Organizations lacking trust have much deeper problems.

Do you trust your team to give appropriate attention and use their time wisely? Is your culture engaging and focused? Tough questions.

As I write this we are about to launch into a new decade. Will it be a decade where we turn technology off, or on?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

25
Nov 19
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Work Attention and Why It Matters for Culture

Tags : attention culture focus workplace

Is work attention making a difference for your workplace culture? The psychology of work is important and it makes a difference for your culture.

Absolutely, yes, people still concentrate. Some claim that they are required to do it by multitasking.

For the record, many researchers believe cognitive multitasking is a myth.

Waiting and Focus

There are claims about ADHD, or in more relaxed forms it may be labeled ADD. Largely the medical community identifies this as a proven disorder, yet some naysayers disagree.

Regardless of any diagnosis, attention is harder to come by these days. The lure of attention to something more interesting is hard to break.

Anytime there is waiting, attention starts to drift. It drifts to a Smartphone or even to simple day-dreaming.

It happens before meetings, during meetings, and immediately following meetings. There is checking of email, text messaging, and social media feeds.

Often, the question for organizations or for the basis of workplace culture is, “How do we get more attention?”

Quest for Attention

Clever marketing programs, social feeds, and even television commercials spar for attention.

The quest for attention in the workplace is often attempted by force.

Turn off your cell phones.

Put your phones away.

No cell phones beyond this point.

In some cases, it is presented as a security threat, or a threat to intellectual property. In other cases, it is designed to create focus or allow for more concentration.

Work Attention

Everywhere you go people are jockeying for attention. It is true for the internet search algorithm and it is true for human-to-human message reception.

For organizational culture, attention is more important now than ever. It is much better as a pull attribute instead of push.

When your message is compelling enough to capture full attention without a push for attention you’re winning.

Maybe it is even delivered via a device.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

21
Nov 19
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A Perspective About The Noise In Your Head

Tags : attention caring listening noise

That noise that is rattling around in your head is obvious to you, but no one else really notices or cares. As people we often hope that someone will notice, and more importantly care.

Ask someone why they were disappointed with their service and they’ll likely tell you that it was because no one seemed to care.

Why Care?

When you think about your friends from grade school, high school, or college do you wonder if they’re thinking about you? Perhaps they are, yet most people are much more engaged with what is happening right in front of them.

We sometimes refer to this as the squeaky wheel principle. The idea that whoever squeals the loudest gets the attention. In some regards, this is always true.

As humans we are hard wired to be alert to what is happening right in front of us. If someone starts shouting, we stop, we observe, and we listen more carefully. It is our instincts at play.

If we feel threatened or hungry or scared, we follow instinctual instructions to change the situation or be more alert than normal. We care about what happens next.

What does it take for you to notice or care enough to give your undivided attention?

Noise In Your Head

This is important to remember, the noise going on in your head is really just your noise. It isn’t necessarily noticeable to others.

Sure, you could walk with a stomp, put on a pout face, or clench your fist, but unless you are in front of an audience, it’s likely that no one will notice.

The noise in your head is your noise, unless of course you choose to share it. Even then, it is up to others to notice, observe, and listen.

Here is what matters the most. When we take a minute to care enough to ask someone else about their World, it gives them the opportunity to have their noise heard.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

07
Nov 19
-

Capture Attention or Face a Bigger Challenge

Tags : attention career marketing success technology

For the majority of the people in the workforce today, the World has changed. Some suggest we are in an information overload society and we filter much more than we consume. What are you doing to capture attention?

When I was a kid, after school I would jump off the school bus and run as fast as I could to my house. It was an exciting time. I couldn’t wait to get started.

Get started on what? What captured my attention?

Whatever it was that a few friends or one of my siblings may have established for what you do after school. At times I played alone. It may have been with a ball, a matchbox toy, or throwing around a few sticks in the nearby woods.

Pace of Technology

Consider this, just a little over a decade ago there were no smartphones. Text messaging really started to take off around 2005-2007. YouTube was founded in 2005, and didn’t start to become largely known until a few years later.

What does this technology history lesson indicate?

If you are in the workforce today and you are more than 25 to 30 years old, things have changed dramatically. It has all happened, right in front of you.

If you lean towards the younger side of the workforce scale you may not really remember much difference. If you are in the middle to older side of the scale, change is very noticeable.

The challenge today for every career conscious workplace professional and every business endeavor is not so much about change as it is about attention.

How do you capture the attention of your marketplace?

Capture Attention

We’re all selling, whether it is our expertise and why we are the right choice for the job or promotion, or whether it is our products and services, or a third category is perhaps, both.

When I was a kid, on a lucky day I had just a couple of friends to play with.

Technology hasn’t made us more reclusive; it has opened up the World.

The challenge then, is being interesting and valuable enough to get the attention of your market.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

21
Dec 18
-

Are You Gaining or Destroying Market Attention?

Tags : attention customers market value

Every time I login, I get a pop-up flash sale. When I attempt to exit, I get a different pop-up. At the networking event someone pushes the sale of a ticket. The TV commercial shows misery and asks for money. Is this helping with market attention or pushing it away?

Most people will enter your website with curiosity first. An “order now” pop-up is painful before I’ve had a chance to view the menu.

We don’t like telephone calls from someone we don’t already know.

We shy away from non-profits, even those that we share a purpose with because we’re afraid of being guilted into something more.

Although the intent is to improve, what we sometimes call marketing is driving down or driving away business.

Market Attention

There are a few simple rules for navigating market attention:

Don’t assume or treat everyone the same. Repeat buyers are different from new contacts.
Attempting to create a feeling of guilt with your base is the quickest way to weaken your relationship.
Understand that diminishing attention means your value proposition is less attractive than it once was.
Hitting your base (tribe, customers, members) harder and expecting linear (or greater) results is almost always a fallacy.
Respect and reward those with the energy to engage, as much as or more than what you offer potential new customers.

Gain More

Your market is built on trust and emotion. Certainly, fairness and value are part of that process. Gouging your market is a turn off. So is the repeated invitation to subscribe when you already have.

Attempts to gain market attention and increase your base are sometimes doing the opposite.

Two steps forward, two steps back, doesn’t get you very far.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+

Tag Archives: attention

Dec 19

-

Attention and Trust

Project Drama

Dec 19

-

Attention is a Resource

Cell Phones Off or Trust

Nov 19

-

Waiting and Focus

Quest for Attention

Work Attention

Nov 19

-

Why Care?

Noise In Your Head

Nov 19

-

Pace of Technology

Capture Attention

Dec 18

-

Market Attention

Gain More

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