Tornados are part of the standard fare of springtime in Oklahoma. Truthfully, most of the people I know get a bit desensitized to the tornado warnings.

Me too. But sometimes we get a wake-up call.

A colleague of mine was driving back to Oklahoma City from the south part of the state when the warning sirens went off. Listening to the radio, she could follow the storm’s track.

She thought she was driving right into it, so she turned around and went the opposite way.

Then the storm changed directions. She turned again. And again. Turns out there were multiple potential funnel clouds, going in various directions.

Having grown up here, she instinctively looked for the safest place to pull off the interstate and park: lowest level, away from power lines.

That’s when she spotted a farmhouse, and ended up on the porch of a total stranger, asking if she could join them in their storm shelter.

It’s one thing to knock on a neighbor’s door and ask to borrow a cup of sugar. It’s another thing altogether to ask a person you’ve never met if they can keep you safe during a storm.

There are many “tornados” in the business world, things that threaten our safety.

Customers’ needs change, financing options become limited, technology fails (always when we need it most!), marketing efforts wither, key employees leave (and become your competitors), even good news like record-breaking sales put a strain on the system.

How comfortable are you asking for help when you need it? How do you know if you have become desensitized to the “storm warnings?”

Every business person needs a support system. Smart business leaders get their support system in place before the warning sirens go off.

Help is all around you. Look for people with the experience, connections and perspective that you may lack within your company. Here’s a short list of ten external resources you can turn to:

• Management consultants
• HR consultants
• Financial consultants
• CPA’s
• Attorneys
• Bankers
• Peer advisory groups (like EWF andndash; okay, that was self-servingandhellip;)
• Business coaches
• Industry experts & trade associations
• Customer councils

When you have tough decisions to make, when you are lost in the weeds, when life goes off course, you need people who will challenge your thinking. You need people who are not desensitized to the “storm warnings” you may have overlooked because you live with them every day.

Whose porch do you end up on when you need help?

Let’s talk about a delicate subject. Money. Your money. What you make, your own compensation. I know, it’s not polite to talk about politics, sex or money, but I’m tired of seeing tired of seeing women business owners shortchange themselves (literally!).

What do you believe you deserve to be paid? Seriously, what do you think your compensation should be, based on your expertise, wisdom, knowledge and all the blood, sweat, and tears you have put into your business.

Is that what you’re making? If so, you can quit reading right here, because the rest of what I have to say is for the thousands of women business owners who are not paying themselves what they are worth.

Ask yourself, “Would someone buy my business and run it for the same compensation I receive?” If the answer is no, it’s time to make some changes.

I often see women business owners generate enough revenue to hire the people they need, purchase the equipment they need, spend the marketing dollars they need, and simply take what little is left over at the end for themselves. If that’s what you are doing, it’s not a condemnation of you. It’s a clue that something in the business needs to change.

I’m suggesting that if there is not enough to compensate you for what you are truly worth, it’s time to re-examine your business model and face the brutal fact that if your business can’t compensate you, you need to find a business strategy that is more successful.

Of course it is common in the start up phase to take little or no compensation out of the business or to put profits back into the business. But at some point that has to stop. At some point you need to balance the needs of the business with your personal needs.

Looking at what you deserve to earn provides a fast (although sometimes painful) wake-up call that will lead you to make the necessary changes in your business.

So here’s what I want you to do.

• Decide what your compensation should be. This can and should be based on a variety of factors. Here are two articles that can help you determine what makes sense: http://bit.ly/EntrepSalary & http://bit.ly/NFIBcomp.
• Print out your 2010 budget. Okay, I know, you don’t have a budget. Pull up your 2009 income and expense statement and export it to an Excel spreadsheet.
• In the line item that says “Owners Salary” plug in the number you answered above. Doesn’t matter if it’s $24,000 a year or $250,000 a year. Let’s just see what happens.
• Now look at how that affects your bottom line. My guess is that you have a big, negative number under net profits now.

What you have just seen in that big, negative number is the reality of what you need to fix to make your business worth your time and effort.

What needs to change in your business for you to finally begin to earn what you are worth? How does putting your desired compensation into your budget as a legitimate number change the way you think about your business?

It’s only by paying yourself what you are worth that you will have an accurate portrayal of the true costs of running your business. It’s time to ask yourself what you are worth and design a business model that compensates you at the level you deserve.

A TALE OF TWO WORKPLACES: A friend of mine works in a medical office. The entire staff is female, the doctor is male. One co-worker is a passive aggressive martyr who alternately brings people special gifts, then goes unresponsive, withholds information, and does sneaky things. Another co-worker complains regularly because she feels unappreciated, has frequent emotional meltdowns, shares intimate details about her personal life, and obsessively focuses on little issues, like which coffee filters they use.

Fun place to work, right?

In contrast, a woman I know runs a business with a work force that’s 85% female. Their teamwork has allowed them to be successful through both up & down markets. When the workload is heavy, they all rise to the occasion. They have an incredible retention rate; many employees have worked there over 20 years and many have relatives or friends who work together. They are seen as leaders in their industry. And their entire leadership team is not only female, they are related!

What’s the difference?

We’re all familiar with the horribly negative stereotypes about women working with women. We hear about women not getting along at work and we roll our eyes and say, “Too much estrogenandhellip;what else can you expect?”

GENDER DIFFERENCES

Well here’s a newsflash. Women are different than men, so they behave differently in workplace than men.

Research shows that female brains are wired to empathize while male brains are designed to understand & build systems. Studies of children show that girls are more likely to seek consensus & be more concerned with fairness rather than competition and that take turns 20 times more often than boys. The relationshipandmdash;not winningandmdash;is the goal.

Generally, women seek friendships based on intimacy & understanding, whereas men like to sharing activities. While men’s self esteem is typically derived more from their ability to maintain independence, women’s self esteem is maintained more from ability to sustain intimate relationships.

In total: women have a greater awareness of emotional climate, are more relationship driven & have communication, connection, & responsiveness as primary values, as opposed to competition, winning.

EXPECTATIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS

Those are all great qualities and, when used appropriately, contribute to women’s success in management. But strengths overused become weaknesses and work against us. When we expect these wonderful relationship qualities that are intended for friends & family to carry into the workplace, we create unrealistic expectations for ourselves and others.

At some point, we have to be about the work, not just the feelings, not just the relationship. To get past the negative stereotypes, we have to change our expectations.

What I see at the core of the negative stereotypes is not women working with women. It’s about people working with people. Imperfect human beings working with other imperfect human beings. We’re all different. We have different needs, different communication styles, different life experiences and different hot buttons.

So why do we look at these situations & see them as being about women? We’re quick to assume that the issue is womenandmdash;too much estrogen–when we haven’t looked deeply enough at the problem.

IT’S ABOUT LEADERSHIP

The problems in the first workplace I described are not the result of women working with women. They are the result of a workplace with several emotionally unhealthy employees & a very weak leader who won’t address problems. He sets no limits, will not coach or correct employees with no consequences for bad behavior, or accountability. The problem is flawed leadership, not too much estrogen.

The second situation I described is about a workplace with a very capable woman as president who has worked hard to become a great leader. She has a management system designed to address problems, and a commitment to coach, train and develop people. There are clear goals, expectations, consequences and accountability.

Surely we can all agree to stop perpetuating the negative stereotype by making oversimplified assumptions that workplace problems are a result of women working with women. We can also make sure we are not acting out any of those unfortunate behaviors ourselves or acting in a way that perpetuates the problem.

Let’s commit ourselves to improve our leadership abilities so that we can address workplace situations rather than assume they can’t be changed and blame the problems on women working with women.

In the words of one of my favorite leaders, Ghandi, “Be the change you wish to see.”

Here’s a little story about a half an hour of my life that I’ll never get back. A colleague called to talk over a concern. She had a strong referral to a prospective client, so she called her and left a message. A couple of days went by and when she didn’t get a call back, she called again. Two more days and still no word. We’ve all been there, right?

So we ended up in a long conversation about what might be going on. And in the process we theorized at least ten different scenarios. Maybe the prospect was out of town, maybe she changed her mind, maybe she got sick. Maybe the person who referred her had misunderstood her level of interest, maybe she was expecting a call from a different person, maybe my colleague wasn’t clear about why she was calling, and on and on.

After about half an hour of this, we simply hoped for the best and hung up. Within minutes, I heard from her again. The prospect had emailed andndash; she was definitely interested and they set an appointment. She’d simply been busy and apologized for the delay.

The drama was over, mystery solved, but here’s what occurred to me. When we don’t have information, we make it up. We invent things. We hypothesize. We hallucinate. And most of the time, what we make up and invent is negative. For some strange reason, when there is a gap, a vacuum, we fill it with a negative.

Hmmm, makes you wonder what your employees are thinking, when they don’t have all the information. As leaders and employers, we all want fully engaged, committed, productive employees, right? Is it possible we might forget to provide employees with some critical information so that they CAN be committed, engaged and productive?

Like letting them know the company’s strategic direction. Like processes and procedures. Like, um, expectations. Wow, there’s a thought! Let employees know where we are going, how we need to get there, and what we expect them to contribute along the way.

I think about the half hour my colleague and I blew on the phone just trying to figure out why this person hadn’t called her back (not that I didn’t enjoy it!). Or course, we didn’t think of it as wasted time. Surely not, we’re professionals! We were “problem solving.”

Just imagine how much wasted time might be going on in your business when employees don’t have the information they need. Worse, when they don’t know where to go for it. When their conversations turn negative, I bet they don’t think of it as wasted time any more than I did. They think they are problem solving too.

Here are three simple things you can do to fill that information vacuum:

• Involve your employees in strategic planning. Then they not only know the direction, they help shape it.
• Explain to employees how the company makes money (and how you lose it). They may not have a clue about the things that keep you up at night, like wasted time, wasted materials, wasted opportunities
• Define your expectations for each employee. Be sure each person knows how they contribute to the company’s success and profit.

And the next time you find yourself without information, I hope you won’t fall into the same pattern as I did. Fill in the gap with a positive, not a negative.

Our thoughts and words matter.

If you ever doubted this, take a look at the fascinating book The Hidden Messages in Water, by Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto. He photographs water at the point of freezing, when it forms crystals. Each crystal is surprisingly unique.

Even more surprising is the fact that when someone directs positive or encouraging thoughts toward the water, the crystals become beautiful. When someone directs critical or negative thoughts toward the water, it forms unsightly shapes.

Add to the novelty of this experiment the fact that the human body is composed of 70% water, and it really gives us something to think about.

We’ve known for many years that too much stress can make us sick. Now we understand that negative thoughts and words may have an equally detrimental effect. What we say to others has an effect on them, either positive or negative.

As leaders, this awareness is particularly important right now. The business climate is tougher and more competitive than it was a couple of years ago. The economy is less than robust (I’m trying not to be negative!). We may be working with smaller staffs, and trying to accomplish more with less. Flat is the new up.

Increased expectations plus decreased resources equals stress for both you and your employees. While a little stress is actually energizing, unrelenting stress is immobilizing, destructive and decreases productivity.

Just when you need employees to be more committed, engaged and productive than ever, you very likely have fewer resources to motivate them. No budget for bonuses, not even a budget for extra time off.

The good news is that studies show the most effective motivation is completely free. Employees are highly motivated by feeling like they contribute to a shared goal and are appreciated for their efforts. Positive reinforcement costs nothing but a few minutes of your time.

Take a look around and see who needs appreciation. Make it a point to use the simple words, “Thank you” or “Good job.” Be as specific as possible and relate your appreciation to specific behavior. “Thanks for getting that report done quickly. The data you provided helped us make the right decision.”

The benefits of positive reinforcement apply to you too! Our self-talk affects how we think and feel. Listen carefully to the talk that’s going through your head and notice how much of it is negative. Are you telling yourself you are incapable? Or disorganized? Or confused? The next time you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts about yourself, remember the photographs of the water as it freezes — that is what you are doing to yourself, or to others.

We can choose to create beautiful crystals or unsightly blobs. We can choose to write off Emoto’s book as a novel, new-age experiment or we can choose to acknowledge that words and thoughts have power. Our power can be positive or negative.

Our energy goes out into our workplace and into the world like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a still pond. Are our “ripples” that we put into the world fostering more negative or more positive behavior?

Positive words and appreciation are needed more now than ever. I invite you to experiment with this idea yourself. Take a week at your office and make it a point to use positive encouragement with your employees, your co-workers and yourself.

Let me know what happens!