The Knowledge Worker

Yet I know there are individuals who know how to do this and much more.  As early as 1966 Peter Drucker wrote about the knowledge worker:

“Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an "executive" if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.”[1]

That sounds a little high-level to me, so let’s break it down.  We all think and make decisions – every minute of every day.  Think about this: most of the time (about 80%) we are not even aware that our gut – our subconscious mind – is making decisions for us, based on our natural thinking and decision making ability.  Since we all think and decide, we have the ability to impact business performance – if we give ourselves and the people we work with, the ability to use their talents in the best way possible.

The term “executive” doesn’t mean “owner” or “manager.”  It can mean anyone in a business, from the unskilled and uneducated to the skilled and educated employee.  The key is to understand that we are in a knowledge-based economy.  If we can learn how to increase the use of each person’s knowledge strengths in a business setting; performance, results, customer satisfaction, profits, and growth all result – we all win.

So why is it that almost every day I talk with an employee or a business owner and hear frustration: “I love meeting and greeting people, why do I have to work in the back office crunching numbers all day?”  Because someone has to, but does it have to be you?  “I wish I knew why my key employee comes in late every day and grumbles when I ask him to do something?”  Because maybe you haven’t asked him what will motivate him better?

If you are a business owner and complain regularly about your employees, do you wonder why they still come to work every day, or why they haven’t taken another job?

Related: Master The Art Of Employee Motivation With These 8 Tips 

The old is still at work

It’s not often that I will find someone who recognizes the name Frederick Taylor, the father of scientific management – the management scientist who helped to coin the term - the one best way.  But I can assure you that all managers and leaders at one time learned the one best way, or created the one best way, and used this practice to guide the management and leadership of their company and employees.  Assembly lines thrived, factories were constructed, and the economy grew – and grew.

Scientific management worked by exercising a high level of managerial control over employee work practices.  The assumption was that employees did not need to think or make decisions.  And yet, over 100 years later, the old is still at work, leading and managing the knowledge worker in occupations and industries where the one best way does NOT always apply. So is it hard to figure out why our businesses are not growing and performing better?

What can we do to lead and manage better?

Let’s assume we all want to increase the growth and performance of businesses.  If we learn how to lead the knowledge worker better then we can develop more thriving businesses.

• Do we know how to measure each person’s decision and thinking strengths?
• Have we structured our decision making, planning, marketing, advertising, and other systems to maximize the use of each employee’s knowledge?
• Are we using practical leadership techniques to motivate each of our employees to perform at a higher level?

Related: Leadership Tactics To Get The Very Best From Your People

Look at the tasks each employee performs.  Do they require -

• Versatility in dealing with people, job functions or systems?
• Stability and dependability?
• Understanding and communicating with others?
• Planning and organizing?
• Teamwork?
• Empathy?
• Interpersonal communication?
• Concrete organizing?
• Big-picture thinking?
• Conceptual thinking?
• Just do it mentality?
• Strong, practical thinking?
• Long range planning?
• Use of logic?

Measure and match

Once you understand the thinking and decision-making required of each task and job, measure it in each employee.  Is there a match – or a mismatch?  Once you understand the measurement results, do you understand how to lead, manage, and motivate your employees to perform at a higher level?

Leading and managing

I’ve worked with a number of clients who have learned to let their employees use their talents.  The clients learn to lead and manage by enabling their employees to use their decision making talents more, in work settings that increase the use of their talents – and decrease the use of their non-talents.  Here are some examples:

• Asking a work crew how they can mow a lawn, trim shrubs, or rake leaves more efficiently – having a discussion – and understanding the need for someone to be able to pay attention to detail and get the job done.
• Rearranging the duties of the employee with high empathy and need to get the job done on the customer service desk.
• Asking the carpenter for his advice on the layout of the work so he can use his conceptual thinking skills.

Related: Easy Ways Managers as Leaders Use Sharing And Caring For Success

Learning to lead our knowledge workers requires assessing their talents and ours, learning how to use that knowledge of these talents to modify our leadership and management techniques, putting in place a plan to increase business productivity and profit, and learning that there is no longer one best way.  The age of the knowledge worker – 47 years later – can be realized, with focused effort.  Let’s enjoy the challenge to innovate, create, and think – to our growth and performance.

The post Want A Thriving Business? Focus On Leading The Knowledge Worker! appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

Let me explain.  Many of the people we interview have not had the need to look for work on a regular basis, so many are, you might say, a bit rusty, and sometimes embarrassed that they need to look for work.

Many are accustomed to being recruited from their existing jobs so job search activity is not a skill set they’ve yet mastered.  But it’s not that difficult if you approach job search like you approach your work.  I’ve accumulated several best practices that I thought it important to share so you can improve your job search skills.

What do you love to do?

What is it about your work that you love to do?  What gets you excited about the work that you’ve performed?  Do you enjoy work that allows you the ability to pay great attention to detail, perhaps bookkeeping or computer programming?  Or do you enjoy big picture thinking, like creative settings, and like to develop great customer relationships?

Take the time to list these attributes and tasks.  Once you do you’ll begin to gain focus on what types and kinds of work is right for you.

What do you not like to do?

Conversely, what is it about your work that you could do without?  For instance, I’ve had clients tell me that they enjoyed working in the background, by themselves, but were regularly asked to provide service to customers and clients, putting them way out of their comfort zone.  There are other people who have to crunch numbers all day long when they would really enjoy meeting people and selling product and services.

Understanding what you do not like will help you to rule out job functions which you will not enjoy.

And you know what?  If you go on a job interview and try to feign a like for something you don’t enjoy, the person interviewing you will pick up on it… and you’ve lost the opportunity to get a job.

Did someone say casual dress was O.K.?

You’ve landed an interview and show up dressed, well, quite casual.  The person you are interviewing with may be casual as well, but I have to ask you.  Did someone say casual was o.k.?  A suggestion: if you want to present yourself in the best manner possible, include every aspect of your dress and physical appearance possible.  You are projecting and promoting a brand – you!  If you project a casual brand then it might be assumed you will approach your job that way.  We’ve had women with halter tops and lots of perfume, men with dirty baggy jeans, sometimes heavy after shave.  Think it over.  Is casual o.k.?

What type of questions are you asking?

Seriously, have you done your homework on the company?  On the person you are interviewing with?  Do you understand how the position you are interviewing for functions within the company?  If you understand your talents, drivers, and preferences what types of questions are you prepared to ask so that you can identify if there is going to be a good job fit for you?

Related: 5 Tips To A More Successful Job Interview

What is your job plan?

Do you sit at home wondering what your next move is going to be? Do you keep a calendar or schedule of your activity, or as one of my friends used to say: “Do you spend a lot of time rearranging the socks in your sock drawer?”  If you are used to structure and order while on the job make sure that you continue it in your job plan.

One of my clients was getting overwhelmed by all the emails coming into his inbox, he couldn’t prioritize if he should answer the emails, write the thank you letter to the person who had just interviewed him, look online for jobs, or go to lunch with an important person in his business network.

Let me make a suggestion: Prioritize, Plan, Act.  Looking for work is a full time job.  Organize your activities as you would in the work day.  Unless of course your lack of organization, prioritizing, planning, and acting on the job contributed to your not having a job.

Related: 10 Career In Transition Mistakes That Make You Look Dumb

Be yourself

At the beginning of the day you get out of bed.  At the end of the day you go to bed. In between you look in the mirror and hopefully project the real you throughout the course of the day.  If you need to do a lot of soul-searching to find the real you, do that soul-searching before you start your job search. Focus on improving your self-awareness, your belief in self, and find comfort in the roles that best suit you.  When you’re ready, enjoy the process – prepared to get the most out of your job search skills.

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The post Are You Embarrassed By Your Job Search Skills? Here’s What To Do appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

I recently attended a workshop conducted by David Gadarian, Owner of Gadarian Digital that focused on Blogging for Your Business: Theory, Strategy, & Best Practices.  Afterwards I caught up with David to learn more about his approach to blogging and how he helps business professionals use this social media tool as one strategy amongst many in creating a digital roadmap for their business.

David, thank you for taking the time to meet with me to discuss business blogging. First off, can you explain why you believe it’s important for a business to create a digital roadmap?

When blogging for your business there are real stakes involved, and making good business decisions usually involves a certain amount of complexity.  The digital roadmap provides you with a repository for the past, present, and the future for describing your company’s digital identity.  Developing your digital roadmap is critical because then the business can focus strategy systematically.

As we all know, the Internet is a really big place. A digital roadmap gives you a process to set out the pieces of your digital persona, while also considering additional elements such as the creation of measurement points to evaluate your successes and failures and to then make changes based on those measurement points.

The roadmap is a great document because it gives you a process to follow, to do things step by step while providing you with a very clear big picture view.

As the diagram indicates, development of your digital roadmap is a continuous loop process.  Once completed, you then have the ability and need to adjust regularly based on results. 

Many people will hire me after they’ve put up their website.  They call me and tell me that their website is not doing anything for their business.  That’s because they did not set up a plan, a digital roadmap.  They need to understand and think through what they want that website to do for them, and how it is going to help them achieve their business objectives.

I understand you have recently published a book, Better Business Blogging.  Can you tell me what inspired you to write this book?

The primary goal of the book is to help business owners think more strategically about business blogging.

The book started as an infographic, which saw some traction in the Internet. The reason I wrote the infographic is that I thought it was interesting.  I then wrote a series of blog posts focused on parts on the infographic, and then, based on the feedback I received, I wrote about business blogging strategies that could propel blogging tactics.

With the book, each business can take their own approach towards developing their various strategies and then move forward to dive deeper into the development of blogging tactics to propel those pieces.  The book operates as a business blogging primer that will allow each reader to create their own unique and distinct approach to business blogging.

If a business person is just starting out blogging what recommendations do you have for him?

Start by writing.  Look at blogging as a process – the more you do, the better you get at it. That effort develops in a lot of different ways – you become a better writer for your customers and business, you become a better digital writer, and become more sophisticated over time, eventually developing and evolving other strategies such as SEO or online advertising.

The biggest obstacle I’ve observed by the business owner or professional is letting the fear of blogging overcome the blogging, and the best way to overcome that is to just start writing.

The second biggest obstacle I’ve observed is time management.

What would be some ways to start writing?

A good way to start might be to outline a bunch of ideas, in a digital realm-develop a mind map by placing a bunch of ideas together.  Once you get a big list of ideas, then focus down on either the ideas that are the easiest to write about or the ideas that you think are the ones that will provide your readers the most value.

Telling your story is a great opening strategy that also has broad applications on all aspects of what you blog about.  A big takeaway for stories is that it allows you as the business owner to define yourself, and separate yourself from competitors.  Stories can show personality – how you approach your practice area; and your writing style reflects your personality.  All these aspects have a big impact on how a reader will respond to you.

By the way – in my book I offer up a series of free worksheets to help support the ideas in the book including this one of helping to craft the story of your business.  The worksheets are free to access even if you have not purchased the book.

How can blog post readers respond?

This is a great question and one that really plagues many business bloggers, particularly as they begin the business blogging journey.  From a blog your readers can comment and share, or they can take more direct actions such as contacting you, buying something from you, or they could click on an ad on your website.

If you’ve done a good job persuading them that you are trustworthy, they might subscribe to your newsletter

On the other hand if you have not done a good job with a particular blog post they can leave your website (not a great option), as you are not the only one blogging in your space.

What can you tell me about blogging segmentation?

Within most businesses, you probably have a variety of segments that you serve, often defined as personas (here is a link to David’s free Better Business Blogging persona worksheet.)  In your blog you can write toward specific personas; these can be defined by demographic metrics, psychographics such as what is happening in a buying cycle of a particular customer, seasonality, or segments based on where you are in your business cycle; for instance, you could focus on tax day, or other events that are calendar sensitive.

So for example if you provide car repair, one segment of your buyers might be winter readiness (so perhaps you’d have a few posts about winter tires and the need for new wipers), another segment might be on working moms, and a third segment might specific brands of car owners (Honda, BMW, Ford etc.).  An entirely new segment might be on car owners with automobiles no longer under warranty.  As you can see there is quite possibly some cross-over between your segments.

Taking it further experimentation is a way to test the segmentation strategy.  How do you attract readers – is anyone listening to me? Do these segments actually add value to your business? Have you defined the “correct” segments?  And going back to the top, if you use these strategies they should tie back to your digital roadmap so that you are not guessing but instead directly planning out how to attack these ideas in ways that make sense for your particular business.

Any parting thoughts you’d like share?

Without question readers are smarter and more discerning – the Internet continues to expand so readers now have access to more material than ever.  As a business owner you have to think about how your readers are traveling around the entire internet (and not just your site) and to focus on being exceptional in your writing and marketing efforts.

David, thank you for a very informative discussion. 

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Notice I left out the Mayan Doomsday prediction.  Yep, it’s past December 21^st and we are still here and prospering.  But if you’re worried about 2013 you still might have some of that “glass is half empty” pessimism and it might be impacting your decision to make investments in the growth of your company.  As leadership coach and owner of a job placement firm I want to offer the “glass is half full” perspective to the discussion and focus on the benefits of hiring for 2013.  A thriving business is within reach.

Lots Of Qualified Talent

As a former labor market analyst and planner and now leadership coach I read the reports and understand them.  There are quite a few talented people who have left the workforce – by retirement, lost jobs, or stopped looking, to name a few.  There are equally a large number of people who would be interested in earning more money, switching careers or companies, or going off on their own to start their own business.  I know; I have been coaching many of them to reenter the workforce.  You know what they tell me?

“When is someone going to recognize that I can be a great asset to their business?”

Related: The Lack Of Qualified Job Candidates Is A Myth

Point is, there is lots of qualified talent available.  You don’t need to wait for Miss or Mister Perfect (they may not exist, except in your mind).  Think about applicant potential for growth, person-future fit (applicant and company), and performance upsides.  Yes, you need to make sure the person can do the job and has a solid and positive reference and background check performed. But first define your job function requirements and identify the skills, aptitude, attitude, talents, values, and behaviors that the work and job require.

Related: 5 Tips For A Great Job Interview Process

Growth Requires Investment

Yes, this business adage still applies in a variety of areas in your business.  My focus is on talent investment and people investment. Become the owner or manager who believes that people are an investment, not a cost.  Shift the paradigm to understanding that investing in your people assets are good investments that if managed and motivated effectively will improve your bottom line and help your business to grow.

Waiting For Politicians Is Like Waiting For Your Ship To Arrive – You’ll End Up At The Bus Station

At some point all the politicians will decide – something.  Can you afford to continue to wait?  Many of your competitors are not waiting.  What will that do to your competitive position in your industry, in your region?  What are your customers hoping that you will do?  Take action; manage the risk by preparing an actionable plan.  But don’t be one of those owners who end up at the wrong terminal.  This brings me to my next suggestion.

A Plan Requires People To Execute It

Yes.  You first have to have a plan for your people investment.  What resources do you need in terms of finances, materials, equipment, training, and support?  What performance goals have you and others established to help you and your employees to be successful?  What strategies have you developed to guide the implementation of these performance goals? What are your time frames to achieve these objectives?  How will you measure success?  And, are you willing to share this process with your existing and new people to make sure they get achieved?

Related: Want A Thriving Business? Focus On Planning Smart!

Growth Requires Action – Not Pondering

Thinking about something will yield further thoughts, unless the thinking is focused on action and results.  Thinking about hiring new people and becoming preoccupied with thoughts other than those that are focused on hiring new people to help you implement the growth plan that you have been thinking about will not improve your business’ growth.

Waiting will leave you at the bus station, while your competition will be cruising along in their ship.  So if you want a thriving, vibrant, and growing business in 2013, start the process now.

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Practical experience suggests that the employer and employees who work together to create meaningful change processes can and do increase company productivity & profit.

The Managing Change Process

There are several steps to a change process.  Depending on the problem, the organization, the stakeholders, the cost, the time frame, and the impact on the business this process can be more detailed.  Simply put, we are describing the high level steps to a change process.

1. Identify the problem: Give it a name, understand it, discuss with other members in the business what it’s, and, what it’s not.
2. Identify the causes:Engage in a structured discussion with others on the potential causes and ensure that all ideas are considered, don’t consciously omit ideas because your perspective or the perspective of others may dismiss a potential cause.
3. Select the main cause(s):Achieve agreement with others on the main cause(s) of the problem.  Oftentimes using a voting system works well if there is no consensus.
4. Identify a solution:Engage in a structured discussion on potential solutions, ensure all ideas are considered, consider time and cost factors to the solution.
5. Select a solution(s):Achieve agreement with others on the preferred solution(s) ensuring that all affected stakeholders have an equal part in the discussion and the decision.
6. Develop an implementation plan:Identify who will be responsible for implementation of each of the various solution steps, how it will be determined to be effective, and under what circumstances should stakeholders discuss the change in process.
7. Evaluating the solution(s):When the rubber hits the road there are times when the prescribed solution does not fit precisely into reality.  Be prepared, and prepare those with whom you work, to modify the solution.  Some of the alternative solutions, or parts thereof, that were identified earlier in the process are often invaluable in this type of situation.

Related: Two Effective Managing Smart Processes that Enable Business Change

Anticipating Change

In every instance where there are business processes and systems, whether formal or informal, it’s helpful to periodically assess the effectiveness of each process and system to accomplish its objective or purpose.  Developing an environment that openly shares and discusses the effectiveness or efficiency of business processes and systems helps to stimulate employee or work team change discussions.

For example, in most instances businesses will issue invoices that are due and payable on or before 30 days, and it’s customary to assess interest charges for amounts due past the 30 day period.  In a challenged economy it’s not uncommon to find accounts receivables moving past that 30 day mark due to restricted cash flow challenges being experienced by the customer.  Normally a business would assess the charge and not change its practices.

Let’s consider an alternative that then creates a change – the accounts receivable assistant sees a particular account regularly past its 30 day period.  Instead of assessing the finance charge the assistant calls the customer and discusses whether there is a problem with the service, or if there is a problem in the customer’s ability to pay.  The assistant identifies there is a cash flow challenge with the customer and next discusses with her supervisor whether it makes sense to enable the customer to pay in smaller installments over a longer period of time.

The receivables collection process is sound yet in this example the accounts receivable assistant is valued by management to take initiative, inquire, and propose a solution in order to ensure processing of payables.  The assistant is enabled to suggest a change based on economic conditions.

Discussing and Measuring the Change

In the example above the accounts receivable assistant will need to inform a variety of employees, customers, vendors, and other strategic partners of the change, unless management indicates it should be applied on an exception basis only.

The assistant will need to communicate to the customer the nature of the change, the reason for it, the terms of the change (when payments are due and in what increments weekly, for instance), and the implications if the changed terms are not followed.  The assistant will be responsible for evaluating the effectiveness of the change in improving cash flow, lessening time spent on receivables collection monitoring, or other factors determined relevant to the situation.

Related: 3 Tips on How to Lead Work Teams

Informing others within the organization of the change can best follow the analytic process with a slight shift in focus.  For instance:

1. The problem is identified and the solution is described.
2. The causes to the problem are summarized in a manner that supports the solution.
3. The implementation plan and evaluation process are described to ensure it’s understood what the next steps will be and whether the solution will adequately address the problem.

Each time a change is proposed it should incorporate measurement criteria.  Basic criteria include time and cost, qualitative, and other quantitative data.  Surveys of affected stakeholders may be considered to collect data that is not readily available through existing reporting channels.

My leadership coaching client has been implementing this process for the past year.  Guess what? Her employees are very pleased she provided them an opportunity to participate and a process to follow.

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Since Dr. William Marston’s publication of Emotions of Normal People in 1923, when he popularized the view that people’s behavior could be described along 2 axes such that their action orientation was either passive or active and their perception of their environment as either favorable or unfavorable; a number of subsequent researchers have contributed to his original research, culminating in Walter Clarke’s development of the DISC Index in 1956 and Dr. John G. Geier subsequent work on the final instrument framework for DISC. [i]

My purpose here is to relate how knowledge of a leader’s DISC Index can assist her in understanding how to develop eight effective employee motivation tips.

DISC Index And Leadership Interrelationships

As the diagram illustrates, the two upper quadrant (D and I) leaders are extroverted and active in nature, seeking to modify, control, influence or shape their environment according to their own particular view. These are leaders who focus on the what of a situation more than the how or why and they continually challenge and test the limits of the surroundings and seek new ways.   The two bottom quadrant (S and C) leaders are passive and introverted in nature, seeking to focus on the how and the why of a situation and instead of trying to change the existing environment they are more interested in protecting or continuing it.

# 1. Employee Motivation and Decisive Leaders

A leader with high Decisiveness tendencies has a clear picture in her mind of what results she wants. Her actions or messages are designed to promote that idea and to get others to support those results. In order for a high “D” leader to effectively improve employee motivation she needs to communicate to her employees her end result by communicating the end result through the effective use of permission-based questions, i.e.:  Would you like to help me achieve X by Y date?  (Remember, the question only concerns itself with the “what.”)

# 2. Influencing Leaders

High Influencing tendency leaders also want to shape and mold events and have an active voice in that process. Her actions or messages are also designed to promote that idea and get others to support those results, but she tends to do so by working with or through people more using permission-based employee motivation questions that focus on working with others, i.e.: Would it be o.k. if we work together to achieve X by Y date? (Still concerned with the “what.”)

# 3. Stabilizing Leaders

High Stabilizing tendency leaders are more passive and introverted and interested in the how and why—a product orientation. Her primary interests are in maintaining stability within herself and the situation. Permission­-based employee motivation questions that address the specifics are important to this leader tendency, i.e.: Would you be willing to help me identify the specific steps necessary for us to complete X before Y date?

# 4. Cautious Leaders

High Cautious tendency leaders are also more passive and introverted. She also takes a product orientation, asking for specific reasons behind changes and supporting data to back up the decision to change. Why is her favorite question in order to get things done accurately. She is quite receptive to permission-based employee motivation questions messages that reassure her that she and her employees are doing it correctly, i.e.: Can you help me identify how X can be accomplished before Y date, and can you help identify the specific steps we need to take to do so?

# 5. Decisive & Influencing Leaders

As you can surmise high Decisive and Influencing leader combinations focus on the what, speed, and interactions with others.  Her permission-based employee motivation questions look like this, i.e.: Will you help me to achieve X by Y date if we can do it together?

# 6. Influencing & Stabilizing Leaders

High Influencing and Stabilizing leader combinations focus on people and process, she wants to make sure everyone is involved in the process.  Her permission-based employee motivation questions look like this, i.e.: Would you all like to help me develop the steps to complete X before Y date, to make sure we all benefit from each others ideas?

# 7. Stabilizing & Cautious Leaders

High Stabilizing and Cautious leader combinations tend to slow the pace down a bit, focusing on process and tasks equally, and she makes sure that others identify the steps and results to ensure work is done correctly. Her permission-based employee motivation questions look like this , i.e.: It’s very important that you detail the steps you need to take to accomplish X by Y date, will you make sure that you record the steps and fully describe how you accomplished it?

# 8. Cautious & Decisive Leaders

High Cautious and Decisive leader combinations are a challenge, no doubt. She combines interest in the end result with a need for the detail. Her permission-based employee motivation questions look like this, i.e.: Will you be able to identify the steps needed to accomplish X by Y date?

Leadership coaching as well as leadership training activities utilize the DISC Index and other psychometric assessments to help leaders better understand themselves and to then use that knowledge to improve employee motivation on a continual basis.  Which profile fits you best?

The post Master The Art Of Employee Motivation With These 8 Tips appeared first on Tweak Your Biz.

Narrow Your Search Term

Those results are astronomical, would you agree?  So what if we searched instead for some more narrowly focused terms, like “leadership management skill” – results – a little better at 132,000,000, but still a ton of searching.  How about “leader coach training” – results – much better at 24,100,000, but still a lot?  How about “leader as coach” – results – still at 178,000,000, pretty darn high?  Hmm, this does not seem to be working too well.  Let’s try another tactic.

Define What You Need

What a novel thought.  How will you benefit from leadership training?  Do you need assistance in how to develop and lead a work team, create an effective process to manage change, develop and maintain a productive work environment, or learn effective communication, counseling, and effective coaching skills and techniques, to name a few?

Bear in mind, a Google search for any of these terms will yield – you guessed it – millions of search results.  So how do you identify the best leadership training for you?

Related: Why Most Leader As Coach Training Fails

Ask Your Customers – Internal and External

Yep.  Ask them.  If you’re serious about earning the leadership mantle within your company – ask those most interested in your success – those who work with you and those who receive products and services from your company.  Sound a bit trite?  Perhaps – but depending on the respect you have earned from those internal and external customers they should give you an honest appraisal – or completely ignore the request (in which case you should take the hint).

Related: Shhhh… Listen! Do You Hear The Sound Of The Leadership Coach Coming To Your Business?

Take A Formal Assessment

Would you agree that successful businesses grow, have great financials, and have well integrated sales, marketing, and operations functions; and when combined with superior leadership, teams, and employees that develop and implement good planning, businesses can be top performers?

Believe it or not – there are very effective assessment tools that can measure your ownership perspective, employee alignment, personnel practices, team effectiveness, strategy and planning, customer service, sales and marketing, operations, management, company culture, and leadership.  Measured across these 11 spectrums you can get a pretty good feel for where leadership needs to be effectively exerted, and it will help you understand better how to tailor your leadership training.

Understand The Person Within

Yes, a large part of leadership development will concentrate on you, for, in order for the training to be effective you will need to understand you.  That’s where the coaching part comes into play – both for you and for your business.  Commit to learn as much as you can about yourself – your talents, motivations, and preferences – and then commit to learn what drives those who work with you.  Instead of directing, telling, and yelling – learn to ask, gain commitment, and buy in.  Work with others, not over then.

There’s lots of information available to learn.  It can lead you to become a leader – but the person within has to want to grow – with or without Google teaching you.  Oh, and we’ve done a little work for you.  Check out these related posts and enjoy the journey.

Related: Become A Better Manager: 10 Inspirational Management And Leadership Blogs

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But what if you’re one of those business owners, managers, or supervisors who, well, are just not too excited about developing your leadership skills?  Is there actually a way that you can learn how to become a leader without working at it?  After all, it seems like a lot of effort, time, expense, and – heck, what’s the real benefit and hype about leadership development that can generate over 541,000 searches on Google?

I’ve got some great news for you – and some bad news.  First – the bad news:

Lazy people don’t make great leaders.

They don’t even make good leaders.  Matter of fact, I’m not sure it’s very easy to explain how you can become a leader – but at the risk of appearing lazy myself, I’ll give it a try and list some practices that should be part of any leadership development program.  Bear in mind, it’s not an all-inclusive list, but it might save you some time to start, and if you need a leg up on learning some effective leadership development practices, you just might experience some of the good news – great leadership improves business performance!

If You Lead – They Will Follow?

Not all the time, but the concept is right.  You need to learn to lead and manage effectively.  And that requires some effort.  First off, let’s understand that each of us has our own unique perspective – our lens through which we view business activity – it’s ours and not shared by anyone else.  Your ability to learn effective leadership and management practices comes from experiences that are distinctly yours, and built from your professional and life perspective.

A central element to effective leadership of others requires that you understand better how to understand other individual perspectives as well as to better understand how you can increase the connection between their perspective and your own unique experiences in leadership and management.

Formal Authority Does Wonders For The Insecure

The use of formal authority to lead and manage others does not yield effective leadership results over time.  It may yield production and service delivery results.  Can’t argue that.  But do employees look up to a manager who, in order to get things done, always tells and rarely asks?  When I was leading and managing large groups of employees I used to say that leading and managing works best when you emphasized interpersonal communications 90% of the time and your authority 10% of the time (at the most).  This leads to the next effective practice – communications.

Talk Less – Listen More – Understand A Lot

In every business there is a necessity to communicate with others in order for that business to be successful - however success is defined for that business. The necessity to communicate can be wrapped around one's perspective, their motivation, professional standards, and even their personality.

As human beings we learn to communicate at a very early age.  As adults in a business setting, we need to continually relearn how to communicate effectively in that business in order to satisfy both our own internal needs for acceptance and growth, and for the business' need for achieving its success.

There is a business communication process in every business.  More than likely it is a combination of formal and informal practices, procedures, and policies that have evolved over the life of the business.  The process may be characterized as cohesive and aligned, or, it may be characterized as full of contradictions and cross-purposes.  Two extremes, but not unrealistic.  In businesses which focus on developing and maintaining effective communications, constant effort and attention is given to the effort.

What's Your Glue Look Like?

As a leader it’s important to understand what the glue is that can hold your business communication efforts together.  Most often that glue starts with a commonly shared perspective on the company purpose and mission, whether that purpose and mission is written or unwritten.  Where the purpose and mission are unwritten it is an important first step to discuss with staff their understanding of the company’s purpose and mission.

I’ve given you several practices for leadership development.  You may be a CEO, Owner, Manager, or Supervisor but you may not be a leader.  Leadership authority generally is assigned by the employees.  Employees accept you as the manager; they do not have to accept you as their leader.  You need to earn their acceptance as a leader.

Learning to lead is a continuous process.  Enjoy it.

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For instance: Have you anticipated everything that will happen tomorrow, the next day, and the next year? The answers vary, but the truth is – no one can with absolute certainty.

I am fairly certain that change is a constant – hence, we need to continually evolve in our careers, our personal lives, and our habits.  Yes, habits.

The Steady Job

Many remember the day when their parents came home from a job that they worked a lifetime at.  It was expected and accepted that you would work for one, maybe two companies in your lifetime.  If you were a job changer something was wrong – you were unstable, perhaps unreliable, and maybe not well motivated.

For those of us borne of the baby boomer generation we’ve maybe experienced a tad guilt, regret, or wonderment that we haven’t been able to hold a job like Dad (Mom’s usually stayed home or did not have to work). We may have blamed something or someone else.  But, as the saying goes – stuff happens – change occurs.  Adapt or lose relevance.

Job Shifting – Shape Shifting – The Millennial Challenge

Fast forward to today’s workforce with millennials – job changing is much more frequent, some would say even expected if today’s millennial worker is to accomplish her career objectives.  In fact, I’ve worked with clients who express guilt that their career is at a standstill unless they get a new job - every 3 years!

So what’s an employee – or an owner – to do?  Seems to me that the days of having your cake and eating it to are gone – or are they?  Has anyone yet embraced the concept of continual career evolution?  Again, adapt or lose relevance.

Continual Career Evolution Defined

How people manage their careers within and between organizations so that they continually evolve their expertise and their value recognizes the need for a continuous development path that enables people to adapt to changing work and personal environments – continuous career evolution.

Let’s look at an example – a 50+ something professional who started over 35 years ago handwriting business plans – before portable computers, word processing, Microsoft Word, Apple, etc.  He hand wrote his work, gave it to his assistants (then called Secretaries), who spent days typing (IBM Selectric) the plans.  The plans got copied, 3-hole punched, and mailed (not by Pony Express though) to the client.

Today? That same person types all his material on his desktop using Microsoft Word, and emails the document to clients. He checks correspondence on his Smart phone.  His Smart phone allows him to dictate material to send to others and to file the documents in the Cloud.  Note, he’s learning how to work even smarter using Google Docs and other time and space management tools – and the pace and expectations for performance increase.

The point is this professional’s career evolution pattern adapts to changing environmental conditions – technology, speed of decision-making, aptitudes and capabilities of staff and customer requirements. And so too is your career evolution pattern adapting.

The talents that get measured in someone’s continuous career evolution include role awareness, role confidence, self-improvement, self-esteem, and sense of belonging, to name a few.

Drive The Bus

It’s not your parents’ career path anymore.  To keep pace with increased competition, decreased barriers to entry in our technological economy – our new economy – that enables global business to flourish – we need to be open to constantly evolving our career to adapt to the changes as they happen.  Our career evolution is in a push-pull relationship with economic, political, and management evolutions.  Which is leading at a given point in time helps to guide our response.

My observation and recommendation is this: your career needs to continually evolve in order to remain motivated.  How you choose to do so is up to you.  Maintain flexibility; be open to role and career changes, but most importantly, determine what bus you want to drive, what direction you want to go in, evolve your career to enable the change, step on the gas and start driving forward with the change.  Have fun.

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Whatever the reason for their unemployment they need to find work that can use their expertise.  Sometimes they have choices, other times they need to get retrained.  It reminds me of a quote attributed to Yogi Berra:

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

Are You Expert At Your Career In Transition?

Most of the applicants walking through our doors just don’t have the expertise required to prosper in long-term unemployment.  Their expertise is in other occupational areas – accounting, management, technology, engineering, or project management – but not the career in transition role of unemployment.

They do, however, have a series of talents, values, and behaviors that are unique to them – and with those attributes they have the ability to use a process to find their new career.  Yes, a process that has a beginning – and an end.  They have the ability to make choices – after all, there are at least 2 forks in the road.

Examine Yourself

Each time we meet with applicants we help them through a process of self-assessment.  We help them to understand their certainty, significance, and their connection to who they were, to what they are now during their career in transiton, and to what they can be.  We also help them to look at how their talents, values, behaviors, and skill expertise can be utilized in a variety of occupational roles.  In essence, we help them identify what they are great at – and, as Jay Niblick might opine – what they stink at.

So You’re In Transition – Now What?

Before we have this discussion, let’s face up to the one responsible for your transition.  Who created their transition?  Who is to blame – or to take credit?  I find a number of applicants blaming themselves, their former employer, or the economy – so I ask them a simple question - Is your cup one-half full, or is it one-half empty?  If they’re going to be successful in transitioning to a new career they need to move over to the one-half full, optimistic side.

Develop The Plan

Here are ten steps we work with each applicant who is in transition.  This isn’t rocket science, but, if these folks can follow the prior steps of successful self-assessment and establishing an optimistic outlook, they stand much better chances to be successful in their transition.

1. Résumé development – there are many ways to develop the résumé. Consider embodying your positive self-assessment, a functional and chronological listing of your expertise, and a clear statement of your career objective.
2. Identify the strength of your network – and leverage it.  Do you want to be 1 of 300 job applicants to every position posted online? Or do you want to use the network you’ve developed from years of experiences to help you land your new career?
3. Explore the Job Market – Identify your target industry, job class, geography.  Simply put.  Research. Use the Internet’s search engine capabilities to identify companies you would work for, what their needs are, and how you can help them resolve their challenges.
4. Set a goal – time, working capital, and monthly burn, significant interactions (companies, network, and recruiter).  Set the goals, write them down, and challenge yourself to success.
5. Physical health: maintain great health, set an exercise program and follow it.
6. How much time each day, each week, and each month will you allocate to your goals, and accomplish them?  This is your new full time job.  Get into the routine.
7. How will you measure the accountability quotient?  When will you know that you’re hitting your targets: job offer, interviews, losing weight, or sleep-filled nights?
8. Where do you need assistance?  You may be able to go it alone and perhaps not.  Be realistic and identify where you need help.
9. Implement the plan and measure the results – daily, just like when you’re working.
10. Seek feedback from trusted advisors – your family, clergy, career coach, and mentors in your personal or professional network.

OK, one last question, when all is said and done:

When you saw the choices in the road, did you make a decision?

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