Will you help me out?

Like you probably, I receive frequent requests from former colleagues (often very short-termed colleagues) who seek an endorsement for their employment opportunities.

I am not always sure how to respond.                                                          

I know the standard way of thinking about recommendations:  say what you know about the work performance in relation to the job for which the applicant is applying

Only with the various new ways of seeking generic endorsements from kith, kin and acquaintances (often I fit this latter category), I consider how to write what doesn't feel so much like an endorsement as it does a word of encouragement. These words are often recruited for public forums that are the professional social media version of Facebook, often Linkedin.com   Instead of writing, "Excellent work habits. Reliable.  Professional.  Customer-oriented. Logical.  Innovative thinker" I have to say more truthfully, "Nice guy who showed up when he was supposed to. Didn't make much fuss about anything.  Flew under the radar unless it was necessary to take a stand and he took one at what I considered the right time."


Truthfully I think these short declarations of what are my lasting impressions of people with whom I worked briefly tell the truth in ways that longer, more formal letters of recommendation do not.  And in a way that is different from the well-behaved letters of recommendation that are only positive for who would write a bad one (why waste your time and the reader's?), they tell a fresh kind of energized truth about the person who is seeking endorsements that show up in your e-box with words like "Can you help me out?"

Sure. If I can.

Do these short blasts of encouragement built on fragments of memory and good will help others?

I don't know.  No one who has ever asked me for this type of professional endorsement has ever sent a follow-up and said, "That did the trick."

In looking for a job, it's hard to know what the tipping point will be in the landing of a job.

One can deduce that every action of effort to get a job--and every act of good will that helps anyone along the way--has some part to play in the development of another person's professional life.

So, when someone asks me for some help that is partly an endorsement and maybe more encouragement, I try to write something good and true.

If I can't, I write nothing at all.

Daphne Simpkins' most recent book is Christmas in Fountain City

Make a proposal that others will accept.

Recommend what you prefer and watch what happens when you do it mindfully.

There is a difference between recommending an idea for consideration or a product and showing your own unbridled enthusiasm for it.

Sometimes I receive emails or Facebook messages that begin with LOOK! or CHECK IT OUT!  What follows is a gush of description that captures the honest, excited feeling the writer had to a product or idea but there is no summary of the benefit of the product itself for me, the reader and targeted customer. 

 To effectively pitch a product there must be a benefit for the intended reader or customer, and the enthusiasm can lead them to it but it is not a substitute for it.

How do you know whether you are offering a cheerleader response or a considered evaluation of a product or idea whose strengths rests upon reasoning rather than an effusion of emotions?

Check your wording and the style of the sentence you use.

A description contains adjectives and exclamations points, often.

A recommendation built upon a summary always points out a benefit for the reader that makes logical or common sense. 

Here’s an example of a recommendation for a book.

Description:  There’s some rich content in it.  I loved it!!!!

Summary:  Dr. James Doty’s new book Inside the Magic Shop explores the dynamic of neuroplasticity  from a neurosurgeon’s perspective, reaching the unexpected conclusion that practicing compassion builds better mind muscles and creates a more harmonious lifestyle for people who understand this.

How to know if you are someone who writes descriptions rather than summaries with benefits just watch how long it takes you to write an excited description and how long it takes to write a summary with benefits.

Time to write:  It takes five seconds to write a description. It takes about two-minutes to write a summary.  

The big difference is that the first grows tiresome to people who confront and brush off spammy posts, emails, and recommendations; the second one builds trust and offers benefits to the reader who knows the difference between an emotional response and a well-conceived logical one.

If you are trying to build a rapport with a consumer base through social media or your email contact list, take the extra minute and a half to craft a summary rather than spout an exclamation that could also just as easily be represented by an emoji.  How often do you think long and hard about an emoji’s content?

That’s about as long and as focused as a reader will respond to your recommendation that is based on your excitement rather than benefits to be gained from the product you admire.

 Daphne Simpkins' most recent book is Christmas in Fountain City

A Proverbs 31 Businesswoman

Often read at weddings and on Mother’s Day at church lady groups, this last chapter in the book of Proverbs is underestimated if read only in the context of a good woman being described as the ideal wife.  It is more than that.

For, when you look at the actions that prove her virtues, you see that she is a hard working business woman who sees a field and buys it, keeps her hands busy making crafts and clothing to sell or for her family, and gets up early and works late into the night to make sure she has provided for her family.  In the story, her husband strolls through the town admired and respected by all for having such a hard working wife, but the reader doesn’t see the husband working. The wife is holding the family together by being a good provider. 

In many ways this description of the hard-working provider encapsulates many of the nuggets of business advice offered throughout the book of Proverbs that points readers to look at how ants and other animals and insects store up food for the winter and how sluggards who don’t work won’t eat eventually.  It is a lesson is a work ethic and is written by a King’s mother to her son, who says he has special responsibilities because he is a leader.  Because of his great responsibilities he is urged to avoid heavy drink so that his mind is clear to make good decisions and if he really wants to be a leader he needs someone who will work as hard as he needs to.  There you see the description of what is called a Proverbs 31 woman:  a hard working business person who puts in long hours but works smart.

A Proverbs 31 Woman Mildred Budge in Cloverdale

Good Manners Make You a Better Writer

Good manners can make you a better writer because the stance of courtesy helps you to remember to put others first.  When you do, you write with someone else in mind.  Your agenda becomes what would help the other person.

Putting someone else first puts you in a position of vulnerability called being humble.  That is not a place America or many countries celebrate.  If people thought about the power of humility more, they would recognize that being in a "one down" position makes you stronger. The reason?  When you are in a more humble stance, others do not wear their defenses for long.  They trust you more easily. When people trust you they are more likely to work with you in the solving of problems or the selling of goods.

To build upon that position of trust actively express gratitude.  The simple exercise of good manners, like saying thank-you, greeting someone by name, offering to help, signing off with your own contact information on all  correspondence, make it easier for the other person to remember you and not have strange feelings of discomfort about you.

There you are in their memories:  offering to help, ready to say thank you, willing to say 'I am sorry' when you're wrong, able to listen to them and keep your opinion to yourself if it does no great good to offer it.

The more I think about other people and what they need the better able I am to understand how to write what will make sense to them and to provide information that anticipates their questions and concerns and respond appropriately.  All of these activities make a person a better writer and easier to work with in any environment--virtual or otherwise.

Worse than cussing in the workplace is the use of the word: "Whatever"

Emojis and other shorthand ways of communicating in the workplace have promoted the overuse of the dismissive word "Whatever" to suggestions and ideas sometimes tremulously suggested or thoughtfully constructed and offered with hope.

Meant to sound agreeable--perhaps even a compromise-- answering in response to a suggestion "Whatever" often creates the opposite effect of what people believe that they are achieving by using it.

"Whatever" said with a shrug signals to the speaker that the idea being mentioned isn't important enough to elicit a thoughtful response.

"Whatever" said while not looking up from the screen suggests that you are not really listening.

Look "whatever" up in a dictionary that captures popular culture words that have lost a precise meaning, and it could say:  "Anything goes and nobody cares."

If not having standards in the workplace and no passion for the job either are the ethics and attitudes you want to promote, then use the word. If not, don't say it.

Word to the whatever-wise:  Don't replace "whatever" with the word "Awesome."  

Awesome is not an awesome word.

Whatever isn't either.

Better manners means better tips (and ultimately, more loyal customers)

Yesterday I went to my hairdresser in a nearby town who when I arrived was engaged in a conversation with a co-worker—the hairdresser working at the next station. 

 A nod of hello to me, she continued to talk with her co-worker, while using her hands to signal that I should sit in the shampoo chair which I did.

I  submitted to a head-washing that made me think she had a dog at home that she bathed rigorously in the family bathtub.

As some people do when washing a head and find themselves distracted, she kept returning to the same place behind my right ear, and I fought the urge to say “Woof!!  Woof!”  for I had never felt more like a dog in the hands of an animal groomer.  Because I like dogs this did not offend me.

What did offend me was my hairdresser wasting her opportunity to earn more money, for I know something that my hairdresser doesn’t know:  she is better at her job than many other hairdressers I have tried, but other hairdressers with lesser skills have a more cultivated and refined professional personae than she evidences.  They charge more for their work, and they get much better tips because the environment where they work requires good manners and a professional personae.

The skills of creating and using that personae are not out of anyone’s reach for they are based in simple courtesy:  greet the customer, ask and answer questions according to what the customer needs and wants to know, be present in the experience (perhaps humbly or flexibly present), and smile often and generously.  Thank the customer for coming in and say, “I’ll look forward to seeing you next time!”

My hairdresser didn’t do any of that though I gave her ample opportunity.  The only question she asked was:  “Whatcha want today?”

I replied, “You have always given me an excellent haircut, but today I hope that the lengths in back can be evened up to simply one length, and I would prefer that my bangs not be shorter than my eyebrows.”

She gave me a superior haircut while her attention flitted back to her pal-co-worker, and their exchanges were like cheerleaders who band together and exclude other people who have come to the game.  They talked about other customers.  They talked about an absent co-worker who had called in sick, and they knew for a fact she was hung over.   It is not an uncommon dynamic in various places about town where you go to do business.  People at work often talk among themselves, and pretend that the customers are deaf, invisible—or simply not there.  

Yesterday at the beauty shop,  another customer was sitting with perm rollers in her hair and her head wrapped in a long string of cotton to keep the fluid from trailing down into her eyes and down her back, and she tried to enter their conversation to no avail.  We were adult customers but we were treated like children who should be seen and not heard.  We were customers who were handled efficiently but could have been handled better, and if we had been the tips would have increased and our willingness to recommend their services to others would be more often expressed.  The business would thrive. 

I will most likely go back to my hairdresser because she gives a good haircut, but I grieve for her future, which could be so much more prosperous than it is in the small town where she works hard all day long to deliver low-priced haircuts and earn the low wages and proportionately small tips that come with it.  Her work deserves the kind of price and profits other hairdressers earn with better manners in better beauty shops but don't cut hair as well as she does.   She could have more money and a brighter future, if she knew.  I want it for her.  All she needs to do is learn better manners and use them.  

The discipline of courtesy can flesh out a professional personae that will take anyone farther in life than bonding with your co-workers while customers sit quietly in your presence.   

Self Doubt is not Always Alzheimer's (It's something else.)

It has been happening too often—that forgetfulness that makes me think, “Uh oh.  This is more than a senior moment.  This could be That.  It could be Alzheimer’s.”

Some of the worst moments I have kept to myself.  I have shared the less dramatic ones with family and friends—can’t exactly remember where I parked my car, lost my keys, the mail, my ten dollar bill that used to be called mad money but had become emergency gas money—it’s gone.

 When did I spend it?    I couldn’t remember. 

I told those stories to a few people who knew how to sigh or click their tongues sympathetically.  Yes, that has happened to me; the sighs and moans agreed.  No biggie. 

Only there were some biggies, and I wasn’t telling those too-big stories because I didn’t want to convince people I was developing Alzheimer’s disease.  I just wanted to see where I fit inside the broad range of how people as a group were losing it (memory, control, and my bearings); I hoped, similarly as we grew older together in the South where going crazy is kind of expected in certain ways—not feared either.

 I miss that socially acceptable way of growing older really, because as I have aged I have censored the telling of my Southern eccentricities and become more serious about monitoring behaviors that fit under that scarier heading of “symptoms.”

More serious than I have ever been before about how memory slips in aging, I still didn’t tell the other stuff.   I didn’t really tell the scary times when I couldn’t remember great chunks of key information, like my confusion about the amount of money for an online fundraiser for the local animal shelter (1,000 not 300, 000) which I was vigorously supporting on Facebook in front of many people who also love animals, only to get the amount of money to be raised wrong.

 I was forgetting what people wrote to me in their emails, missing the news of distant relatives who had died.  Really? When did she die?   I told you when she died in my email. Didn’t you get my email?  Yes.  I think I got it.  But I wasn’t sure.

And here is where we slip up on the truth:  I have been hastily managing emails because I receive many of them, and in my haste I have not really been reading the messages.  Only I didn’t really know that.  I thought I was reading them.

I am a veteran reader who grew up on Galsworthy, Tolstoy and Austen.  I have always been a lover of reading, only with the onslaught of email, texts and the bombardment of information on the front of every page, I have become something I didn’t know I could be or was:  a skim-reader.  Only I thought I was reading.  Only I wasn’t really, really reading so I wasn’t really, really forgetting key information because I wasn’t really reading content.  But, I was holding myself responsible for knowing that content.

As a result, I have known some miserable moments of self-doubt, confusion and done a rather poor job of tamping down the fear that something worse was happening inside of me.  I was going to make that shift from charmingly eccentric to someone afflicted with a form of dementia of the Alzheimer’s variety.

It took me a while to figure out that so far, that isn’t the case.

The first clue that I had become a skim-reader and didn’t know it was when I asked friends and relatives to tap the Like button for a page I supported, and people who loved me, ignored me. I could see being ignored by people who don’t love me, but when your family and friends don’t respond to a fairly benign request, your brow furrows.  Whassup?

I didn’t forget to ask them. They didn’t forget to respond.  There was a breakdown in the communication.  The answer?  I smiled when the truth dawned in me:  They were skim-readers too. 

I wasn’t the only one.  I come from a family of skim-readers, and I suspect that we fit inside a nation of them with lots of people like me (us) unaware of how much we are only skim-reading—and later, when held accountable for the details, don’t know them and fear the worse.

The good news?   It isn’t worse.  We just have too much to read and have begun to hit the delete button before we have actually read the whole message.

  The answer became clear when a friend of mine told me this:   “My book hit the floor again last night.  I thought I was still reading, but I wasn’t.  Finally the bedside light woke me up, and I realized that my eyes were closed and I was imagining that I was reading, but I wasn’t.  I was sleeping.”

 I have been doing a version of THAT—not the Alzheimer THAT!

The same realization hit me about that dollar amount for the animal shelter. I didn’t forget the rules; I never really read them, but I kind of thought I had, only I hadn’t. My eyes moved down the page—scrolling, is what they call it—but I wasn’t registering specifics because skim-reading isn’t the same as reading thoughtfully and carefully, digesting information and storing it away.

When I began to realize that I wasn’t forgetting so much as never actually reading what I thought I was reading, a great sigh of relief rose up in me.  My word!  I am not demented! I have become a skim-reader, and I didn’t know it.

I imagine that there are other people out there doing the same thing, keeping the same kinds of scared secrets about how much they apparently have forgotten of what has become common knowledge among other people (although there were a number of us who didn’t know our aunt’s mother had died ).  Maybe they have.  Dementia is real. My father had it—my grandmother, too.  But there is an alternative explanation for some of the behaviors known as “loss of memory” and in my case, it turns out that I wasn’t so much forgetting as never reading the whole articles or emails in the first place, only I thought I was.

I have pushed my glasses up my nose and pledged to pay more attention to the flying documents that sail across my screen so when I think I’ve forgotten something, I really will have.

Daphne Simpkins is the author of two memoirs about Alzheimer’s and caregiving:  What Al Left Behind and The Long Good Night.  Both are available on Amazon.