Leadershare

Diversity Success Factors for Retail

2010-12-10T11:55:00.005-06:00

By: Jim Langemo

Black Friday has come and gone. You and your team have worked all year for this weekend. You have tallied the numbers (revenue, margin, comparable sales, traffic counts, etc.) and you have asked yourself the big question, "Did we make plan?" This weekend sets the tone for the rest of the holiday season, and the holiday season makes or breaks your year. You know the game. You play it every year and you love it.

You will spend the next few weeks keeping a close eye on performance. You will keep your team fired up and focused on customers. But as a leader, you are already looking ahead to next year. What do you need to do over the next year to make sure next year's Black Friday is the most profitable ever?

What do we know about retail in the next twelve months? Overall, this Black Friday was a success for retail and it shows that the economy is beginning to get better. Sales were up from last year as shoppers took advantage of bargains and free shipping. It's encouraging to know that shoppers were back to buying items for themselves as well as gifts for others. In addition, they were buying higher-priced and higher-quality items compared with last year when they were just buying the basics. Customers were still cost conscious, but they were buying! Online sales were up 9% the day after Black Friday as well. All this points to a better season than last year, but it isn't enough to wipe out concerns for next year.

There are still over 15 million people out of work. The time it takes before new products become commoditized continues to shrink, slashing margins and opportunities for profit. New technology is consolidating products, which means fewer products to offer and fewer products to cover the square footage of the retail floor. For instance, cell phones, MP3 players, GPS, digital cameras, digital camcorders are all converging into one product. Who knows the influence iPads will have in the area of consolidation? An increased amount of retail web presence means that more people are shopping online and shopping less in stores, which crowds competition and makes creating the right customer experience more difficult.

You need to find new ways to grow your business and the days of riding the wave of new technology or moving into a new market are over.

So what do you do?

Consider diversity as a prominent element of your strategy.

Why diversity?

The face of the United States is changing. Your new customer base is primarily coming from three areas:

1. Women - Even though they aren't growing as a percentage of the population, they continue to increase their influence as they move into higher areas of leadership and start their own businesses in greater numbers. Retailers are also recognizing how much they influence purchasing decisions in the home.

2. Minority Ethnic and Racial Groups - In Los Angeles and other cities you can't even use the word minority anymore. Latinos are the fastest growing segment in the USA. 26% of children younger than 5 were Latino in 2009. That means by 2020, over ¼ of the people looking for jobs for your company will be Latino. ¼ of your possible customer base will be Latino. How much do you know about attracting and retaining Latinos as customers and employees?

3. Baby Boomers - The number of people over the age of 65 will jump to 54 million in just nine years (from 35 million in 2000). This will create a customer base often ignored in retail - the retiree. It will also impact the employee base as more people leave the workforce than ever before.

So how do you succeed in an environment that is changing right before your eyes? As you build your strategy and execute your plans, follow the Four R's of Diversity Business Development: Be Real, Be Relevant, Show Respect and Build Relationships.

Be Real - Your potential multicultural customers want to know if you really care about them as people or if you just want to make money off them. Do you care as much as they do about their children's education, about developing their small business, about helping them have fun with their hard-earned money? They will know your intentions by their shopping experience in the store and online.

Be Relevant - Most of your multicultural and diverse customers want what other customers want. They want the newest technology. They want clothes that are in fashion. However, they also want products that are culturally specific, as well as services and financing options that meet their unique needs and are written in a language they understand.

Show Respect - Show respect for the culture and for the individual. Understand where your diverse customers are similar to your other customers and where they are they different. Showing respect doesn't mean treating people the same nor does it mean to give some people preferential treatment. Showing respect means to give uniqueness equal value.

Build Relationships - It's essential to build real relationships with people in diverse communities. It's more than having a booth at your local Cinco de Mayo festival or putting an ad in a multicultural newspaper. Your multicultural community wants you to get to know them. Participate in their community by hiring them as employees, getting to know the issues that affect them and be seen as a true partner.

How do you practice the 4 R's of Diversity Business Management? Primarily, there are four items to focus on:

Change Management - To be successful in this space is to recognize that diversity is primarily a change management effort. It's not enough to just do skill training or have bilingual signs.

Management Development - It is essential to make your managers effective change agents and provide training and coaching so they have the skills to run a diversity-friendly business.

Rewards - Reward managers who grow their business by creating loyal, diverse customers.

Employee Training - Your employees need to know how to engage with diverse customers by adapting your company's desired customer experience to their needs.

Attracting a new customer base takes time, but if you begin to plan now you can experience some wins before next year's holiday season commences. It's a great opportunity to grow your business by showing a whole new population that you care.

Jim Langemo is the managing director of Enso Diversity Group and a proud friend of Monarch Leadership. The Four R's of Diversity Business Development are the copyright of Enso Diversity Group.

Three Tips for New Leaders

2010-11-16T14:23:00.001-06:00

By: Gina Kellogg-Soleil

Kate finally made it! She’s moving up the ladder and feeling like her career is moving forward. This is her time to shine, make a difference and create a name for herself. She has put in her time, proven herself, and now she’s being recognized her for all her hard work. Kate is being promoted to store manager!

Six months later frustration has set in. Kate is repeatedly saying there’s not enough time in the day. She’s following all the company’s policies and standard operating processes, and making sure the team is performing its roles and responsibilities. Emails are checked, deadlines are being met and Kate’s store location couldn’t be more organized. She’s doing everything “right”, so why are sales down, her store employees disengaged, and customers moderately satisfied at best? Kate’s spinning, and she needs to see results fast.

Ah, the proverbial new manager’s trap of being so focused on systematic perfection that we forget about what real leadership is and what truly generates results—people. Sure, when asked what it means to be a leader, Kate, like all of us, can verbally provide the “correct” answer: great leaders inspire a shared vision, model the way, leverage the strengths of others, yada, yada, yada. Let’s admit it, although we all know what it means to be a great leader, leadership is hard work, and it takes time and practice. The reality is that great leaders are great because they’ve learned from the many mistakes they’ve made throughout their career. Kate is experiencing one of the first lesson’s every great leader learns—results come when you put energy into the people on your team, the people who are customers in your store and the people who are within your network; not from solely following systems and processes.

Like Kate, most new leaders tend to veer away from putting energy toward people, and they gravitate to a systematic management approach because it’s tangible, easy to measure, and being able to cross off “to do’s” from a list gives a feeling of success and recognition. And many times they’re good at it! Yes, it’s important to have these systematic management skills, but they need to be balanced with basic leadership. If Kate’s your employee, here are three leadership tips that can help shorten the new leadership learning curve:

1. Trust: The best thing a new leader can do in their new role is spend their first 90 days focused on building trust. Yes, that’s correct – trust. New leaders should spend their first 90 days beginning to build trust with their team by simply observing, talking with employees, and most importantly listening to what their team and customers are sharing. Building trust requires new leaders to patiently soak in the environment and build relationships. When trust is built, both employee engagement and customer loyalty increases—a combination that equates to increased revenue for all. Building trust doesn’t stop after being in a new role for 90 days, though. The 90 days gives the new leader time to begin establishing behaviors that will allow them to integrate the necessary management tactics. Once employees trust a new leader, they become engaged, welcome leadership guidance, and will actually want the leader to succeed.

2. Self-Reflection:  New leaders should immediately get in the habit of looking first at themselves before putting blame onto their employees. Many new leaders fall into the employee blame game all too easy, making statements such as: “It’s like they don’t even listen,” “She’s so frustrating,” “Why can’t they figure out how to do something so simple,” “We’d be so much further ahead if they could only….” Alight new leaders, listen up. A leader is a direct reflection of his/her team, and a team is a direct reflection of their leader. What does this exactly mean? When frustration with employees rears its ugly head, it’s often times because a leader’s behavior is triggering a cause and effect reaction. The solution? When a new leader finds frustration surfacing, self-reflection is a must. Here is a series of questions that can help new leaders troubleshoot perceived employee dilemmas:

     1) Is it possible that others have the same frustration with you?
     2) What about your behavior could be causing their frustration?
     3) How can you change your behavior to eliminate the frustration?
     4) How can you apply the same rational to the frustration you're having with your own employees?

3. Servant Leadership: It’s all about the people. In the grand scheme of things, it’s the people on your team and the people who are your customers who achieve the business results. New leaders can lose sight of how important it is to put down the PDA and put their energy towards their employees and customers. The misconceived notion of new leaders is that they have been put in a position of authority and granted a title of control. Great leaders know it’s the employees and customers who are the ones with the real authority and control, and an instrumental part of being a leader is about serving your employees and customers by helping to ensure they have the resources, knowledge and attention necessary to thrive. Not surprisingly, the concept of serving your people circles directly back to the need for trust. If a new leader wants results, help them put down the PDA and pick up the habit of servant leadership.

How the Chief Narcissism Officer Decides

2010-10-18T14:12:00.001-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

Is one of the secrets of your success your willingness to seize opportunities others shy away from? Do you believe your company’s performance depends largely on your personal gifts? If so, you could be a great leader … or a dangerously overconfident one. The difference depends on how those beliefs about yourself translate into the choices you make.

As if a stunted economy weren’t enough, sweeping government reforms such as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act have sufficiently shaken the confidence of even the most tough-minded and self-assured executives. In a recent Accenture survey, nearly two-thirds of executives from financial service firms believed that Dodd-Frank will require them to rethink their business models completely and revise their long-term business strategies, and almost half believed it will decrease their profits. The study’s authors, Chris Thompson and Samantha Regan, conclude that there will be “clear winners and losers,” and only those firms that seek out hidden opportunities in the reforms will emerge on top.

When it comes to spotting and then acting on potential opportunities, all executives are not created equal. For example, let’s say I give you a choice between two options. If you choose option A, you get an one-week, all-expenses-paid trip anywhere in the world. If you choose option B, I will flip a coin. If the coin turns up heads, you get a three-week, all-expenses-paid trip anywhere in the world. If it’s tails, you get nothing.

Are You a Gambler or Not?

If you’re like most people, you’ll choose the guaranteed one-week trip. One out of four people, however, will predictably choose the higher-risk, higher-reward option. These two groups of people don’t just make different choices; they actually see the decision itself quite differently. Virtually everyone views decisions as a calculation between cost-benefit or risk-reward. Not everyone, however, weighs each side equally. The majority of people pay the risk part of the equation two to three times more attention than they do the reward part. That’s why we describe most decision-makers as Risk Managers. In contrast, about 25 percent of people are Potential Seekers who zoom in on the reward part of the equation. So for Risk Managers, the answer to the little riddle above is a no-brainer: Option A presents a guaranteed trip with zero risk. It’s equally simple for Potential Seekers, since Option B presents the potential for the highest reward … never mind the greater risk.

The law of averages means that half the time, the coin will turn up heads, and the Potential Seeker will be seen as the daredevil who defied the odds and won big. The other half of the time, the coin will turn up tails, and the Potential Seeker will be seen as reckless and be chided for brazen overconfidence and narcissism that blinded him or her to the “obvious” risk.

According to research I conducted with my team of industrial psychologists at TalentSmart, the average Risk Manager and the average Potential Seeker score about the same on every important outcome, from quality of life and job satisfaction to job performance and annual income. This seems to hold true not just for individuals but also for organizations.

Narcissism and Overconfidence

A few years ago, Don Hambrick and Arijit Chatterjee at Penn State University decided to determine how the ego and opportunism of chief executives affected their company’s performance. The two researchers figured that if those traits were helpful anywhere, they almost certainly would benefit CEOs in the fast-paced, innovation-driven high-tech industry. So they analyzed 111 high-tech CEOs and their companies’ performance. On average, companies led by the most narcissistic CEOs (as judged by such things as the number of times the CEO was quoted, pictured, or referenced in the annual report) performed no better and no worse than companies with more humble chief execs. Companies led by the most overconfident leaders, however, did experience greater volatility, constantly riding a wave of very high highs and equally low lows.

In challenging times like these, a willingness to see and seek opportunities where others see only risk and doom might be just what you need to come out a winner. Seizing the right opportunities, however, requires balanced potential-seeking. Too much caution poses a serious risk to your ability to adapt. Too much unrestricted risk-taking, particularly in a more regulated environment, could bury your company in legal battles and compliance issues. Here are some guidelines for achieving that balance.

1. Be bold, except in your financial reporting.

A leader’s confident actions are vital to keeping the company moving forward. But that same confidence can be a ticking time bomb if applied in such areas as financial reporting or legal matters. A new study published recently in The Journal of Experimental Psychology found that we can reliably predict which college students cheat by identifying the narcissists. And last year, researchers Catherine Schrand at Penn’s Wharton School and Sarah Zeckman at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business found that these overconfident behavior patterns are likely to lead executives eventually to commit fraud.

Schrand and Zechman identify what they call “the slippery slope to fraud.” They discovered that fraudulent managers often take advantage of gray areas in reporting guidelines by slightly over-reporting earnings in a given quarter—overconfident that they would make up for the gap in the following quarter’s earnings. When the next quarter brings more of the same, they now have to cover their tracks for two quarters, which is when it becomes outright fraud. What’s worse is that sometimes this over-reporting strategy works, which only reinforces the behavior. With new federal regulations mandating that compensation be directly tied to a company’s stock performance, the temptation for a manager to fudge earnings will likely be even greater. Best not even to step foot on the slippery slope in the first place.

2. Consult the Anti-You to reveal your blind spots.

Effective Potential Seekers also increase their odds for success by making certain they always have a trusted Risk Manager to consult. As we learned above, Potential Seekers appear to be carelessly overconfident mostly because they aren’t hard-wired to assess risks the way most other people are. If you are a Potential Seeker, before you make any strategic decisions, seek the help of a Risk Manager to frame the problem and possibly uncover risks lurking in your blind spots. Ultimately, the final decision will still be yours, and you may decide to take the risk. But it will be a more informed decision, with the risks more clearly identified.

3. Reflect and Redirect.

Potential Seekers live by the credo, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” Their willingness to try something new—and then change course if it doesn’t work—can be an enormous advantage in a fast-paced environment. The trick is in recognizing when your idea isn’t working. A narcissist’s Achilles’ heel is the tendency to protect his ego at all costs, which makes it difficult to admit mistakes. Think about it this way instead: You’re too smart to follow the wrong course when circumstances don’t cooperate with your plan.

GOOD OLD FASHION VISION

2010-09-20T13:24:00.026-05:00

By: Gina Kellogg-Soleil

In the past couple of years many retailers, regardless of size, have been frantically trying to figure out how to keep their retail operation successful. How to keep consumers buying, employees motivated and the bottom-line in the black. Executives are in the boardroom strategizing, layoffs are skyrocketing and employees continue asking “What are we doing” as the new flavor of the month is introduced - AGAIN. Sound familiar?

The nature of the retail beast is high-paced and ever-changing—which is the exact reason why most of us have stayed in the industry as long as we have. We tend to pride ourselves on having an entrepreneurial spirit and pulling out all the stops to make “it” happen. Although fantastically fun and rewarding from a management perspective, as we continue to blaze-the-trail making “it” happen, our employees and consumers can’t figure out what “it” is. In many cases, this “making it happen” tendency is causing retailers to commit bottom-line suicide.

The solution? Define “it” with a good old fashion vision. When retailers know where the company is going, their employees get excited about being part of the journey. Having a clearly defined vision motivates employees to get “it” done. Having a vision won’t solve all the economic challenges retailers have been faced with over the past couple years, but it will better position the company to meet these challenges head on and continue to grow and thrive when the going gets tough.

If you’re a retailer without a vision, don’t worry you’re not alone. No time like the present! Here are a few steps to get your company or department moving forward in the right direction:

Clarity: Clearly define “it” with a vision! A vision is NOT the mission/purpose of your company. A mission/purpose is why your company or department exists, a vision is specifically where your company or department is going. Most retailers have a clear mission/purpose (which is great), but have no common vision for employees to rally around. Vision creates momentum. Vision helps employees see how their role, behaviors and choices are helping to move the company forward.

Connect: Help employees connect themselves to the vision. Every employee should be able to clearly understand how their role, behaviors and choices connect to the company vision. When employees feel their choices directly impact where the company is headed, consumers reap the benefit of highly engaged employees. The result—Increased revenue.

Communicate: 360 degree communication! Every employee should hear, read, discuss and see the vision. It’s not enough to have the vision posted in the employee breakroom. You need to ask employees their opinion about where the company is going and ask them to communicate how their role, behaviors and choices connect to the vision. Ask employees how they live the vision!

Be Consistent: The hardest piece of the puzzle. LIVE the vision consistently. Do not launch a vision as the flavor of the month. If you’re a typical retailer it’s going to take at least 90 days of consistent behavior from management, and visual communication, for employees to even begin trusting that the vision is a mainstay in the company. Consistency takes discipline, and does not just happen because it was a directive during the latest district or regional sales call. As you craft the vision, make sure you craft a plan that will help management keep the vision alive.

THE SECRET TO MAKING HARD DECISIONS EASY: FIND YOUR PULSE

2010-09-14T15:22:00.018-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

In a moment of self-pity during his infamous reign as the leader who kicked off the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover once confided to friends: “I’m tired of making decisions–one after another all day long. My view of heaven is a place where no one ever has to make a decision.”

Ever felt like Hoover? Most of us have. Especially in times like these when circumstances force us to wallow in economic uncertainty. Psychologists find that while deliberating over a decision we feel about as chipper as we do in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. Our self-esteem and optimism dip, while our anxiety climbs.

Choosing Between Right and Right
Making decisions is so mentally exhausting because we often face multiple attractive (or unattractive) options. Ethics professor at the Harvard Business School, Joseph Badaracco wisely points out that the hardest decisions are not those pitting right against wrong. In reality, the toughest choices are between right and also right. In the case of Right vs. Right, your best option is to pre-determine the verdict by checking your Decision Pulse.

Your Decision Pulse is that one special attribute that makes your team or organization unique. It is the super-criterion that carries ultimate veto power over every other criterion. For example, when it was founded The Home Depot’s Decision Pulse was “whatever it takes to serve the customer.” That meant store employees were expected to do counterintuitive things like forego making a bigger sale if they could better serve the customer with a less expensive item. It also meant that when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1993, district store manager Rich Lloyd could-- without hesitation--decide to overlook his stores’ profit margins for that quarter, and immediately round up over $70,000 worth of garbage cans, garbage bags, shovels and masks, and then truck it all to the bomb site just 45 minutes after the explosion. Only after he donated the merchandise did Lloyd call the corporate office in Atlanta to tell them about the choice he already made.

The Home Depot’s whatever-it-takes Decision Pulse is not just some fluffy customer service platitude. It was a very calculated strategic maneuver. To get their low-margin big box hardware concept off of the ground, co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank knew they couldn’t just be a player in their markets. Instead, they had to achieve “market dominance.” Marcus once explained to a friendly competitor in Florida that if each geographic region in which they operated was like a backyard swimming pool, then The Home Depot intended to be Jaws.

How to Find Your Pulse
You could argue that the every essence of leadership is ensuring that your people make great judgments even when you aren’t there to tell them what to do. Whether you’re leading a small team, a large department, or an entire organization, by identifying and communicating your Decision Pulse will dramatically improve the choices your people make. Here’s how to do it:

1. List all of the reasons why a customer would choose you over a competitor.
What is it that your team does exceptionally well that your target market truly cares about? For example, Southwest Airlines defines their Pulse by price. According to a story told by James Carville and Paul Begalla, company co-founder Herb Kelleher says that above all else, Southwest is “The low fare airline.” That drives every decision they make from which airports to use down to what kind of food to serve passengers (Spoiler Alert: it’s a small bag of peanuts). Of course they also do many other things extremely well. They routinely outperform the competition on timeliness of arrivals and departures. Their flight attendants and gate agents are some of the funniest in the industry. But you won’t catch Southwest blowing cash on frivolous luxuries…like food. They know that low fares are what their customers value most. Everything else is just icing on the peanuts.

The Home Depot stands out through quality of service. Domino’s Pizza was built on speed of service. Southwest Airlines differentiates on price. What about you? Are you affordable; convenient; reliable; reputable? List all of the ways in which you might be special.

2. Put a “B” for “Best” next to each area in which you can truly excel.
You don’t have to currently be the best in those areas, but you should already have many of the pieces you need in order to eventually become the best. If you have to completely overhaul your team or start a bunch of brand new divisions or factories, then this probably isn’t the place for you. The point is to identify in which areas you already possess the raw materials to be #1. (HINT: Be sure to consider not only your strengths, but also competitors’ weaknesses.)

3. Rank your B's.
Rank each of the “B” items based on how effectively each area can differentiate your team. Whichever principle you rank first is your Decision Pulse.

4. Get everyone’s finger on the pulse.
The last step is about getting your people to clearly understand how this Pulse guides their daily decisions. One of the most proven methods for doing this is by employing a process called “diverse analogical training.” This ugly academic phrase consists simply of telling two or three different stories that illustrate one general principle. One of my clients accidentally came up with the perfect training stories for his team by trying to explain to me specifically what his team did that was different than the competition. Thanks to those accidental case studies, his team can now quickly and easily apply the Decision Pulse to completely novel decisions.

I won’t promise that finding your Decision Pulse will take you and your people to some Hooverian Heaven. Indeed you will still be required to make decisions each day. But if you find your Pulse, and check it regularly, you will be a lot further from Hoover’s Hell.

WHAT IS YOUR DECISION-MAKING STYLE?

2010-08-05T15:54:00.013-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

Best-selling author, Nick Tasler, reveals how to start making winning decisions about your career, your people and your strategy.

Great decisions require two things: a map and a G.P.S. Most organizations understand the power of good decisions so they train their people to use a standard decision-making process, problem-solving or critical thinking model. That model is your map.

But have you ever identified from which direction you’re coming from? If I were leaving from Minneapolis and you were leaving from Atlanta we’d both need to take two very different paths to get to Chicago, wouldn’t we? That’s true even if we were using identical, company-issued maps. That’s why shopping mall directories always tell us “You are here.” That’s also why a Global Positioning System is quickly replacing the road atlas as the must-have navigation tool.

So does your organization’s problem-solving model come equipped with G.P.S.? If not, many of your people might be getting lost, even if you’ve taught them how to use a perfectly good map.

Factoring You into Your Decisions
Everyone comes from one of two basic directions when approaching a decision. In other words some of us come from the east and others of us come from the west. That direction depends on your innate decision-making style. Take the brief quiz below to give you a ballpark estimate of your style.

1. a) I do my best work when I have to make quick decisions
b) I do my best work when I have plenty of time to think through my options

2. a) I would choose a 100% chance of winning $1,000
b) I would choose a 50% chance of winning $2,000

3. a) I thoroughly analyze before making a decision
b) I make quick decisions even if I don’t have all the facts

4. a) I thoroughly examine the consequences before trying something new
b) I’m usually one of the first people to try something new

5. a) I choose my words carefully
b) I say what’s on my mind without much thought

6. a) I usually go for it when I see something I want
b) I closely examine the risks before making a choice

7. a) I am quicker to jump on new opportunities than most people
b) I prefer to think things through before pursuing new opportunities

8. a) I rely more on gut instinct
b) I rely more on research and evidence

If you answered mostly “a” then you probably have a Risk Managing style of decision making. Three out of four people like to consider every option closely and will almost always choose the safer bird-in-the-hand option.

On the other hand, if you answered mostly “b” then you might be the one out of four people who are Potential Seekers. You pay attention to risk, but it’s not nearly as important to you as the potential for reward.

You can be a great decision maker with either style. The first step is understanding from which direction you’re coming from, and whether you naturally pay more attention to risk or to reward. Because that style is literally shaping the decisions that shape your future.

Find Nick's book "The Impulse Factor" @:
http://www.amazon.com/Impulse-Factor-Innovative-Approach-Decision/dp/1439157278

The One Asset Every Effective Leader Must Have

2010-07-12T17:50:00.012-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

It’s not charisma. It’s not intelligence, either. It’s not even integrity. It’s a skill that all of us have, but surprisingly few of us know how to maximize.

What is the one thing all effective leaders have in common? That’s the multi-billion dollar question posed virtually every day from Minneapolis to Mumbai by store managers and sales associates to the top brass in the C-suites.

To find out, let’s do a quick experiment. Take a few seconds to imagine the most effective leader you’ve ever worked with. Get a clear image of that person in your mind. Was that leader bold or sensitive? Were they known for being charismatic or soft-spoken? Were they visionary or pragmatic? Were they book-smart or streetwise?

An effective leader can be any one of those things, can’t they? The only thing every effective leader does is make good decisions—good people decisions and good strategy decisions. Here’s why: Other people—whether they are hourly sales associates, corporate team members or company shareholders—won’t follow somebody whose choices lead to dead ends. Without good decisions, no amount of charisma or honest intentions can save a leader from failure.

How to Start Making Better Decisions
The good news is that anyone can become a better decision-maker by better understanding the two key elements that produce a decision: the person and the situation. Think of it like this: Person x Situation = Decision.

Most decision-making experts focus on identifying how people make decisions in different situations. For example, if people are given a choice between one bird in the hand or two birds in the bush, we know from common sense and decades of research that most people will—you guessed it—take a bird in the hand. Sounds right, doesn’t it?

The problem is that “people” don’t make your decisions, you do. So, it doesn’t matter that three out of four people will choose a bird in the hand, if you’re the fourth person who dove headfirst into the bush. It doesn’t matter if three out of four people are reluctant to open that new store in Shanghai or invest in that new social media channel if you’re the fourth one who already signed the lease and uploaded your avatar on TheNewNewThing.com.

What matters is that you understand how you tend to make decisions, as well as how you leverage that tendency for the best results. You not only need to know whether you’ll make the decision or not, but also how you’ll tend to execute it, how you’ll tend to adjust during the process, and how you’ll learn from it in order to make an even better decision the next time.

Be Your Own Coach

2010-05-04T15:26:00.003-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

In today’s highly uncertain environment, wouldn’t it be nice to have a wise advisor available to you 24/7? Help keep you, your team, and your organization on track?

In fact, that sagely guidance is more accessible to you than you think, and it doesn’t even require you to keep a high-priced executive coach on retainer. You could be just the advisor you’ve been looking for.

Executive coaches perform two essential functions. First, they provide clients with sound, objective advice. Secondly, they help clients execute that advice. With a few simple yet highly effective, proven techniques you can start tapping into your inner coach.

How to Give Yourself Sound Advice
Recall someone you know - a colleague, an employee or boss - who recently made a decision that they now regret. You saw it coming. Your advice was right on the money, even though you’re too big of a person to say “I told you so” (even if you're thinking it).

Now, think of a regrettable decision that you made recently. Maybe you wasted budget dollars on that unnecessary office equipment, or let your envy of a competitor drive you into a saturated market. Or maybe you compounded a problem with your team by putting off a tough decision. In hindsight, the right choice was clear all along, but you botched it up.

We’ve all been in both of these situations. Why is it that we’re so good at giving advice to other people, but so often blunder when giving ourselves advice?

It's all about objectivity and emotion. When we dish out advice to others, we really don’t have anything to lose or to gain, which removes emotion from the situation. So, we can give clear advice on what someone should do because we don’t have a vested interest. On the other hand, our emotions kick into overdrive when we’re the ones taking the big risk or potentially receiving the big reward.

But with just a little imagination we can overcome our less rational selves. Psychologists have discovered that when people imagine a situation as though it were happening to a friend instead of to themselves, they are able to think much more logically. Katherine Milkman, a researcher at the Wharton School, explains that this simple trick can shift our entire mode of thinking. Pretending that we are the coach advising the client moves us from what psychologists call "system 1" thinking (the “want” system driven by our impulses and emotions) to "system 2" thinking (the more deliberate and logical “should” system).

So, the next time you’re trying to decide what to do, imagine that a friend has come to you for guidance on the situation. What would you advise?

Of course, once you’ve adopted that outside perspective and decided what you need to do, the next step is to actually follow the course of action.

How to Act on Sound Advice
NYU Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer and his colleagues have amassed more than two decades of evidence supporting the idea that wording can make all the difference between intention and action. When we frame our advice with an if-then format, we are far more likely to follow through. For example, instead of saying that you “want to spend more time on strategic planning,” or that you “will try to be more strategic this month” you should phrase it as “if I’m still at the office after Wednesday’ status meeting, then I will spend 30 minutes on strategic planning.”

The power of the if-then format comes from its ability to create instant habits. The “if” part of the statement places an automatic reminder in your brain to be on the lookout for a specific situation. When your brain recognizes that you are indeed sitting in your office after Wednesday’s status meeting, it automatically cues you to perform the “then” action (i.e. “spend 30 minutes on strategic planning.”) If-then formatting replaces the years of behavioral conditioning it would normally take to create a habit. Gollwitzer has found that if-then phrasing makes people as much as two to three times more likely to stick to an exercising regimen, eat healthier, avoid distraction, and do just about anything else that typically pits us against our own wills and wants. The same technique can help you bridge the gap between your intentions and your behaviors.

One day, you might find that you want the expert guidance of a bona fide executive coach. Until then, you can turn yourself into a quality interim by taking an outside perspective on your future courses of action, and by using if-then planning to execute them.

Help Your People Do a Better Job

2010-03-18T10:45:00.005-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

Disengagement happens. Contrary to what most of us think, however, poor management isn’t always the cause. The fact is that being an inspiring, emotionally intelligent leader and an excellent coach isn’t always enough to keep your people fully focused and productive. Sometimes they need a change to their job more than they need a change to their manager.

A team of researchers led by Justin Berg, now a graduate student at the Wharton school, developed an innovative tool called the Job Crafting Exercise. Based on more than a decade of research, the tool helps guide employees through a process of reorganizing their current job tasks into new self-defined “roles.” It not only helps employees see their jobs differently, it helps them do their jobs differently. The result is a more engaged and ultimately, more productive employee.

Five Steps to Reinvigorating Your Team With Job Crafting:
1. Clarify the Business Objectives of their Job. Before allowing employees to begin the Job Crafting Exercise, it’s vital for managers to clearly state the outcomes that an employee’s job needs to produce for the organization. After all, the exercise is futile if employees become fully engaged in a job that fails to produce results.

2. Allow Employees to Complete the Job Crafting Exercise. The tool instructs employees to list their current job tasks, and then their strengths—what the employee is good at doing; their passions—what types of tasks the employ enjoys doing; and motives—what outcomes the employee wishes to achieve from their work, such as pay or recognition. Employees then arrange their strengths, passions and motives into clusters with certain job tasks. These clusters become the new self-defined roles of their job. Berg emphasizes that employees don’t actually eliminate any of their essential job tasks when completing the exercise. They simply reorganize their job tasks in a way that is more personally satisfying.

3. Don’t Interfere. “Managers have to let go of the prison guard tendency,” Amy Wrzesniewski says. Wrzesniewski, a professor at the Yale School of Management and one of the tools co-creators explains that as long as managers have properly clarified the job’s required outcomes and provided adequate reasoning for why these objectives are necessary, the manager must let her people go through the exercise on their own. This key distinction is what makes the tool so much more effective than traditional “job design” techniques in which managers or HR departments designed an employee’s job for them.

4. Create a Plan with the Employee. Once the employee completes the exercise, managers should sit down with employees to discuss how they can help the put that new job role into action. This isn’t a managerial sign-off ritual as much as it is a short working session (30-40 minutes) to make sure that both manager and employee are working toward the same ends. It’s also a learning opportunity for the manager. Co-creator and distinguished professor at the University of Michigan, Jane Dutton points out that one of the bonuses of job crafting is that management often learns about more effective ways of working that they can apply to other areas of the organization.

5. Craft in Teams. “In a team environment,” Wrzesniewski says “it’s often beneficial for employees to do a little job-swapping.” Inevitably, the Job Crafting Exercise will reveal necessary tasks that an individual employee doesn’t care much for doing. Some employees like more social tasks such as making phone calls or attending meetings, while others love digging into more solitary problem-solving tasks. Both sets of tasks need to be completed by the team, but it usually doesn’t matter which individual performs which task.

While it’s undoubtedly true that disengagement happens, nobody says it has to happen for long.

"Welcome to the Neighborhood" Party this Saturday

2010-02-25T15:26:00.000-06:00

Alison Tasler | Jacob's Well – church for people who don't like church

Dear friends and neighbors,

You are invited to come welcome a new family into the neighborhood. Basra Hersi and her daughter, Ladan, and two sons, Yahye and Anas, moved into their very first home on a chilly and blizzard day the end of November. Basra is originally from the Somalian capital of Mogadishu and has raised her family here in the U.S., most recently in Minnesota. Basra said that to have a place they can call home is absolutely a "dream-turn-reality". Some of you may have met Basra or even her home this past summer. Their home was built by Habitat for Humanity hands from all over the twin cities (4636 4th Avenue South).

As you can all imagine, meeting new people at backyard BBQ's or at McRae Park across the street have been out of the question the past few months. Please stop by between 10-12noon Saturday, February 27th to welcome them! As a first time home owner, single mother of 3, juggling a full time career and moving into a brand new community (in the winter!), life has been pretty wild. Please bring Basra and her children something that was helpful to you when you first moved into your home or neighborhood. A good recipe, favorite repair shop, babysitter, spare tool kit laying around in the garage, Mpls snow removal tips, bill payment planning, local doctor/dentist, good person to fix ABCD around the house, etc, etc. I think you get the picture. All those things that come with learning a new home and neighborhood over time would be wonderful to share with Basra. Purchased gifts/items are not necessary!!! We all have loads of wisdom and maybe extra "stuff" to pass along.

Looking forward to introducing the Hersi's to all of you,
Nick, Alison, Rueben and Frankie Tasler

4740 Bloomington Avenue South - Mpls, MN 55407

A Low-Cost Way to Improve Performance

2009-12-30T16:55:00.007-06:00

By: Nick Tasler

How do you motivate employees when your cash cow is low on milk—when there is no longer room in the budget for the usual financial incentives like pay raises and bonuses? The answer is simple: Make work meaningful. Build on your people's natural desire to see how their work fits in with the grand scheme of things. All workers want to feel that what they do matters to other people, that their day-to-day tasks are somehow indispensable.

To make that connection clearer for their people, companies like Medtronic (MDT) have for years invited customers to give testimonials at their annual meetings. Qualcomm (QCOM) collects and shares stories with employees about how cell phones have saved people's lives in emergency situations. The Volvo Saved My Life Club lets customers and employees alike share stories of how Volvo's safety features kept them safe in potentially fatal car crashes. DaVita (DVA) routinely shows its employees video segments in which patients and family members express appreciation for their kidney dialysis work.

The message these practices send to people inside the company—from the shop floor to the C-suites—is that "without your work, the world would be a worse place." It's more powerful than a pat on the back from a manager. It's like a pat on the back from the universe. Now that's all well and good in a New Age, touchy-feely sort of way. But amid all of the turmoil businesses are facing right now, should efforts to make work more meaningful really be a priority? After all, nobody is going to feel good about work if the company has to close its doors.

Bottom-Line Impact
According to research by Adam Grant, an associate professor of management at the Wharton School, making this connection doesn't just improve morale. It also has a huge impact on the bottom line. Grant has discovered that when people get to meet a living, breathing person who benefits from their work, their job performance skyrockets. In one study, Grant found that university fund-raisers who listened to a scholarship recipient tell how the assistance had benefited him increased by 200% the number of weekly calls they made to potential donors. The average amount of funds they brought in jumped 500%, from $400 per week to more than $2,000 per week.

That's an impressive increase in performance by any standard. It's especially so when you consider what did not happen to create the surge in productivity. The callers were not offered a raise. They did not go through extra training to sharpen their interpersonal skills or persuasion techniques. Their managers did not receive extra training on how to be more charismatic or transformational. It required no internal branding effort to communicate a newer, more inspiring vision. The only expense incurred by the organization—time or money—for this dramatic increase in productivity was the 10 minutes of time that fund-raisers spent listening to the beneficiary of their work.

Grant has found the same kinds of performance increases in sales reps, firefighters, police officers, lifeguards, and MBA students. In his opinion, it should come as no surprise that making work more meaningful should motivate significantly higher performance. What does surprise him is how slowly most managers are responding to this motivational opportunity. "In national surveys over the past three decades, meaningful work has swamped all other job attributes as the No. 1 feature that Americans value in a job, yet so many managers spend very little time thinking about how to make work more meaningful," he says. Is it any wonder why it affects bottom-line performance?

On the flip side, research shows that employees who fail to link what they do to the benefit it provides others are much more likely to slack off. The moral of the story is that meaning matters.

Improved Quality of Work
Introducing managers and employees to the beneficiary of their work taps into a slightly different and perhaps even deeper human need to believe that what we do is important—that rolling ourselves out of bed every morning serves some greater purpose. Making that connection doesn't just motivate people to do more work. New evidence also indicates that it improves the quality of work. For example, when radiologists see a patient photo before viewing that patient's X-ray, they actually make more-accurate diagnoses.

A large body of research in social psychology is now showing that the basic desire for meaning grows under threatening conditions created by times of war, natural disaster, and economic uncertainty. Times just like right now. So why not help your people use their jobs to satisfy that hunger for meaning, and create a substantial performance increase in the process?

I believe that most managers truly care about the well-being of their employees over and above their contribution to profitability. Unfortunately, they often feel forced to make a choice between organizational performance and employee well-being. Helping employees to see their work as more meaningful is one of those rare instances in which employee well-being is not just compatible with, but also contributes to, the organization's financial growth.

To start infusing a greater sense of meaning into your organization's work, Grant recommends these strategies:

1. Invite customers who have benefited from the company's products and services to come in and speak to employees about the impact those products and services have made in their lives.

2. Conduct surveys and focus groups about not how easy or fun your products or services are, but rather how to have a greater impact on the people who use them. Then communicate to your employees the specific role they can play in making this impact.

3.Collect stories directly from beneficiaries, and share them via town-hall meetings or on the company's intranet.

4. Structure group discussions about other beneficiaries who might value the work that employees do.

5. Provide recognition for employees who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help beneficiaries in meaningful ways.

If you can increase the sense of meaning your employees feel, you should see a notable increase in performance and engagement. And who knows? You just might begin to find your own job as a manager that much more meaningful.

Questions from Seth

2009-12-15T12:32:00.003-06:00

By: Karen Rulifson

I just read this on Seth Godin's blog (great blog by the way), and it really resonated with me. Take a minute to ask these questions to yourself, and most importanty, ask the question, 'why?' after each one. This is a great quick way to help you prioritize.

Who are you trying to please?
What are you promising?
How much money are you trying to make?
How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?
What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?
Which people?

(and after each answer, ask 'why?')

Prime Your Mind For Action

2009-12-14T17:23:00.004-06:00

By: Nick Tasler

In my last article, I explained why people who believe they control events in their life are such an asset to the companies they work for. Good leaders also wanted to know what about everyone else? How can they get other team members to adopt that same proactive mentality, even during anxious and uncertain times? At least temporarily, you can inspire that grab-the-bull-by-the-horns attitude in just about anyone. A quick experiment illustrates how:

Phase 1: Think about a decision weighing on you right now. It can be any choice that involves asking "should I do X or should I do Y?" For example, should I stay in my current position, or make a lateral leap? Should I go to that training seminar next week or play hooky? Should we invest in that new venture now or wait until next year? Once you have that vexing question in mind, think about a couple of the short- and long-term consequences of both options, and then about some of the challenges you'll face with trying to act on one of those options.

Phase 2: Think about a project you're already working on. Maybe you've already given that new venture a green light and are ready to dig in. Maybe you've decided to go ahead with that systems upgrade you had been putting off. Or maybe you already concluded that you want to try your hand leading a new department. With that project in mind, jot down a few of the steps you'll need to take in order to successfully implement that plan.

Deliberation vs. Implementation
The two phases above represent routine mental exercises we carry out every day—deliberating some choices and implementing others. Had we been monitoring your mood, your self-esteem, and your perceptions of risk during this experiment, we would have likely found you in two very different states of mind. In experiments like these, psychologists Shelley Taylor at UCLA and Peter Gollwitzer at NYU found that when people think about implementing a decision they've already made (Phase 2) it puts them in a far better mood, significantly raises their self-esteem, and makes them feel much more in control of the world around them. In fact, while locked into phase 2—what Taylor and Gollwitzer call the "implementation mindset"—people even believe they are less vulnerable than others to random events like getting mugged, being in a car crash, and falling victim to an earthquake.

When we mentally shift gears from deliberation to implementation, from contemplation to action, it changes more than the just way we see the decision at hand. While mapping out the plan for implementation, we feel more confident and more invincible about ourselves in general. That's because implementation is a cue for our brains to zoom in on how to get the job done and to tune out the self-doubt and vulnerability that inhibit action.

A Mindset is a Powerful Thing to Waste
The implementation mindset stirs up what Shelley Taylor calls "positive illusions," which are somewhat unrealistic, self-serving beliefs. Around 90% of people believe they are just a little more competent, smarter, or kinder than average. "Generally, most people are more optimistic than facts warrant," she observes. Nearly all people hold healthy, positive illusions about themselves some of the time, but Taylor says that's a good thing. That's not just because positive illusions make people feel more chipper. She has found that mild self-aggrandizing can also foster higher creativity and productivity, and help us persist more when tackling challenging goals like, say, weathering a recession.

But positive illusions come and go. When we find ourselves knee-deep in deliberation—agonizing about how we will continue to provide for our families, or how we can retire when the funds in our 401(k) have vanished—positive illusions disappear almost entirely, leaving us feeling much more like pawns than knights. That's why recessions are a double-whammy. Economic ruts are hard enough to pull out of even when we're operating at full steam. But uncertainty about the future also puts employees and managers in a constant state of deliberation—fretting about the consequences of what might happen next, rather than confidently implementing plans of action.

The good news is that, with a little effort, we can kick-start the implementation mindset.

How to Bite Back When Reality Bites
One of history's great mysteries is why George Washington felt so compelled during the first year of the Revolutionary War to meticulously oversee every detail of the renovations on his homestead, Mt. Vernon. Washington knew full well that if he didn't win the war, he almost certainly would be granted a one-way ticket to the hangman's gallows for treason. He also was fully aware that he was getting clobbered. Despite all the stress and anxiety, Washington spent late nights on the front lines writing letters home specifying things like what colors the new curtains should be in the living room.

Washington wasn't delusional. By mapping out his home improvement project, he was fostering the implementation mindset, which then allowed him to persist in the overwhelming war effort. You can do the same thing from the front lines of your battle to beat the recession or meet your growth targets for the coming quarter.

1. Pick a Project You Are Already Thinking About.
As Washington proved, this project doesn't need to have anything to do with your work. It just needs to be a project you have some measure of control over. It could be growing tasty tomatoes, planning a vacation, shaving a few strokes off of your golf game, helping your kids do better in school, or losing 10 pounds.

2. List Five Implementation Steps. Jot down five actions you will take that, if carried out properly, will virtually guarantee success on your project.

3. Identify When, Where, and How. Peter Gollwitzer's research has proved that this last piece is critical, so don't take a shortcut now. Write down when, where and how you intend to take each of the five implementation steps. For example, if your project is "plan a vacation," one step might be: "After dinner tonight, I will look at vacation packages on my laptop." From there, your brain will know what to do.

You can then do the same exercise with your people. To get more bang for your buck, you might want to work with them to select a work-related project that you would both like to see accomplished this quarter. Then coach them on breaking down the implementation steps and identifying the specifics of when, where and how they will carry out these steps. When performed this way—as a coaching exercise focused on a real work project—your reward will be twofold. You'll not only prime your people's minds for action on all their work activities, but also help them to deliver on a specific milestone for the quarter. Everybody wins.

The Time to Implement
When I spoke to Shelley Taylor, she was quick to point out that "positive illusions are rather like fire. They can light your house, or they can burn down your neighbor's house." What she calls "windows of realism" furnished by the deliberation mindset are vital to accurately estimating risks and costs. You could (and indeed many people do) argue that propping open more windows of realism a couple of years ago might have prevented the recession altogether. When you're trying to determine whether or not it's a good idea to embark on a new venture or invest in expensive real estate, the implementation mindset in you or in your people can be very detrimental. It can inspire unwarranted optimism and careless judgments.

But if you're an executive trying to clear the recession malaise from your corporate climate, the windows of realism in your office space are probably open far enough. It's time to implement.

Gary Hamel: Three Challenges Facing Organizations

2009-10-12T12:33:00.006-05:00

By: Karen Rulifson

I just read this blog and couldn't say it better myself:

Published by Michael Lee Stallard on October 11, 2009

Last week I was invited to attend the World Business Forum in NYC with 50 other leading bloggers. The presentation that resonated the most with me was Gary Hamel’s. In it, he outlined three challenges facing today’s organizations:

1. How do we build an organization that can change as fast as change itself? Change is accelerating at this time in history and organizations need to act faster to deal with opportunities and threats. Consider the changes in the last century including in healthcare, microprocesssors, transportation, computing power, the internet, telephony, gene sequencing, biotech, etc.

2. How do we build an organization where innovation is everyone’s job? The accelerated pace of change makes this a necessity. Do employees understand their organizations innovation insights? Is every employee’s contribution to innovation measured?

3. How do we build an organization that actually inspires extraordinary accomplishment? This is the most important of the three challenges facing today’s organizations. On average, seventy-five percent of employees are not engaged in their jobs. We need employees who regard their jobs as the way to bring their passion in the world. Our job as managers is to build a work climate, a sense of purpose that inspires initiative because obedience, diligence and intellect are mere table stakes in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace.

These ideas are from Hamel’s book, The Future of Management.

The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire

2009-10-05T17:33:00.007-05:00

Those who are innately confident and self-directed routinely outperform co-workers, regardless of their backgrounds

By Nick Tasler

There are two kinds of employees. Some believe they can make things happen, and the others believe that things happen to them. The first group believes that the outcome of their life and career is more or less in their own hands, and they wouldn't have it any other way. The other group takes the approach of sitting around and waiting for a bus to take them somewhere.

This distinguishing feature is captured by something called a "core self-evaluation." After more than a decade of research, psychologist Tim Judge has discovered that virtually all superstar employees—from rainmakers in the field to line workers on the floor to big guns in the boardroom—have one thing in common: a high core self-evaluation. Judge describes core self-evaulation as "a person's fundamental bottom line evaluation of their abilities."

Judge and his colleagues have shown overwhelmingly that employees who feel like they control the events in their lives more than events control them, and generally believe that they can make things turn out in their favor, end up doing better on nearly every important measure of work performance. They sell more than other employees do. They give better customer service. They adjust better to foreign assignments. They are more motivated. They bring in an average of 50% to 150% more annual income. Not surprisingly, these employees also like their jobs a lot more.

Better Performers in Good Times and Bad

In one study, Judge and his team tracked the progress of more than 12,000 people from their teenage years to middle age. He found that core self-evaluations predicted who did and didn't capitalize on the advantages life dealt them. With only a bleak view of their capacity to handle life's challenges and opportunities, even the brightest kids born to executives and engineers failed to reach as high an annual income as their less fortunate classmates.

By contrast, the supremely confident sons and daughters of roofers and plumbers who had only mediocre SAT scores and below average grades earned a 30%-60% higher income than the smart kids with dreary views of their abilities. And those kids with all the advantages of intelligence and pedigree plus a firm belief in their competence earned three times as much money as their otherwise equally blessed peers.

It seems that the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful employees has as much to do with an employee's beliefs about her ability as the reality of that ability. Considering that this difference is based as much on illusion as on reality, you might think the employee's performance would take a serious nosedive under challenging circumstances.

After all, if you think you're special, what happens when your superior or your board tells you about the areas in which you're falling short? Worse yet, what happens when the self-described superstar finds himself laid off or responsible for a division with tanking revenues? In other words, what happens when people who believe they are capable of controlling the world find themselves in an economy that is out of control?

It turns out that this is when the true stars shine. Tough times weed out both those with low self-evaluations and those who only pretend to have a high self-evaluation. In a series of studies by different researchers, employees with high self-evaluations have been found to respond better to corrective feedback. They also experience less stress and burnout than other employees, struggle less with work-life balance, and persevere more when searching for a job. Rather than shattering their beliefs in their abilities, it seems that a high self-evaluation creates a mental toughness that makes these people stronger and more resilient even when the chips are down.

The Core of Your Recovery Strategy

To identify these stars who can take charge of your organization's rebound, you can use Judge's simple 12-question "Core Self-Evaluations Scale." (You can learn more about the scale and download it for free on Tim Judge's Web site.) It would also be a good idea to start keeping an eye out for these positive go-getters already working for you and consider giving them more responsibility and visibility in your recovery efforts. Here is how to spot them:

• "I Think I Can" Attitude: Kindergarten never taught a lesson more supported by empirical evidence than this: People who believe they can overcome challenges are more successful in virtually every sphere of life, including work.

• In Control: Does this employee take control of his work, or does he always point to outside circumstances when his projects go astray?

• Confident, Not Narcissistic: There is an important difference between having a high self-evaluation and being a narcissist. Does the employee pitch in when teammates need help, or bad-mouth co-workers they view as threats? Are they receptive or defensive when you give them feedback?

• Emotionally Stable: Employees who aren't easily discouraged are less likely to succumb to stress and burnout. They solve problems instead of saying, "See, I knew it wouldn't work!"

You could argue that getting these winners and their can-do attitudes on board still can't do much about a dismal economy. After more than a year of watching the economy go the way of the Titanic, nobody would blame you for trying to wait out the hard times. But do you really want to spend the coming months soothing your anxieties with a box of chocolates, and hoping that your bus arrives before the wind picks up?

Making Better Decisions

2009-08-25T12:38:00.009-05:00

By: Karen Rulifson

Nick Tasler recently had an interview done for his book, The Impulse Factor, and I wanted to share it here. Through his years of research, he found our efforts to make better decisions aren't complete if we don't take into consideration who is making the decision. He mentions about one quarter of the population have impulsive tendencies while the rest of the population are risk managers. He then provides a clear understanding of how we make the choices we do and the tools to make better decisions. Here is his interview:

How is your book different from other books out there on improving your decision making?
There are a lot of really great books on decision making out there. Virtually all of them are focused exclusively on how certain situations are going to impact the decisions we make. Now, that’s really important information, but a key piece of the puzzle is missing if you really want to improve the way people make decisions. You must take into account the natural tendencies of the decision maker. How each of us differs—whether we are more cautious or more impulsive—is going to impact how we see a given situation, and ultimately how we make a decision in that situation. Genetics have a lot to say about which kind of decision maker you are, and so do the experiences that have shaped you over the course of your life.

How are they alike – and how are they different?
Some people simply are more impulsive than other people, and they tend to make quicker—often riskier—decisions than other people. We know from a slew of psychological research that’s been done over the past decades that the majority of people steer clear of risk whenever they can. But not everybody fits that cautious mold. A naturally more impulsive person—that includes about a quarter of the population--doesn’t make decisions the same way most people do. They see things differently. Where the cautious majority of people see situations in light of what they might lose and how to manage the risks, the more impulsive people make decisions based on what they stand to gain from that situation. Cautious people tend to be more concerned with preserving their peace of mind, where impulsive people are concerned with scoring a bigger piece of the pie.

Another key difference is that the impulsive people tend to be much hastier when making decisions. And they actually prefer it that way. Think about this: impulsive people are nearly five times more likely to prefer making decisions under time pressure than cautious people are. In fact, 72% of cautious people said that they are least comfortable making decisions under pressure-packed conditions. On the other hand, over half of impulsive people said that they are most comfortable making decisions when they are pressed for time. As you can imagine, that stark contrast in styles has a huge impact on the conditions individual people need in order to make good decisions. To get the best results, some people need enough time, and others need limited time.

Why is it important for people to know their decision making style?
It’s absolutely vital knowledge if you ever intend to become a better decision maker. If you don’t know the way you naturally tend to approach decisions, then you’re going to end up reading a lot of advice and trying a lot of strategies that simply don’t apply to you. We often hear that you need to allow yourself plenty of time to make decisions. That’s fantastic advice for cautious people, but not for impulsive people. On the other hand, we generally don’t need to tell a more cautious person to think things through or to count the costs – they do plenty of that already. Both kinds of decision maker play a crucial role, and there are strategies they can both apply to become better decision makers. But the strategies are going to be different depending on which kind of decision maker you are.

The Impulse Factor talks about a genetic difference between the two, tell me more about that.
That’s one of the most fascinating things I found when researching the book. For a long time, I had been seeing these stylistic differences between people even though most researchers were glossing over it. But only recently have scientists begun to focus a lot of attention on a certain dopamine gene. Basically, this gene affects the way some people’s brains deal with dopamine. Dopamine is a brain chemical what makes us feel excited. For example, when you’re standing at the edge of an open airplane door with a parachute on your back or getting ready to buy a risky stock, your dopamine levels jump before you do. Except about 20-25% of the population has a certain dopamine gene that mutes the response that these people have to dopamine. So, where most of us can get excited by a good book or a roll in the hay, it doesn’t cut it for these people. They are wired for more stimulation, which makes them do things that most of us wouldn’t. They end up doing a lot of things without fully considering the risks or the consequences--it makes them impulsive.

In today’s fast environment, wouldn’t it be better if we were all impulsive?
Not so fast. We can’t forget that positive developments have come hand-in-hand with some rather unpleasant side effects. The need for stimulation seems to play a big role in addiction and other social ailments that we would be better off without. Traditionally, we haven’t paid enough attention to the positive aspects of impulsivity, but we absolutely can’t deny its negative aspects. If everyone were impulsive, businesses would all function like Enron, family life as we know it would be almost non-existent and human society would probably slip into unrelenting chaos. The truth is that we need a balance of impulsive people and cautious people in virtually every family, team, company and society. In fact, we need just as many, if not more, cautious people than impulsive people.

Ahh, and what might the most cautious segment of the population learn to improve their decision making style?
First of all, they really need to understand that caution is sexy too. Without fail, every time I give a group of people the Impulse Factor test, some people are always disappointed to find out that they are more cautious. They feel impulsive people are the only ones having fun or achieving success, which is clearly not the case. Impulsive people might sound more exciting, but on the whole they are also far more dangerous—to others and to themselves. Acting on a healthy respect for risks and consequences the way more cautious people do, is a good thing. Cautious people are three times as likely to consider risks before acting and are much less prone to taking shortcuts than impulsive people. An impulsive person left to their own devices will spend more time chasing their tail than creating any kind of value for themselves, their company or their society. So, if you’re cautious take pride in the fact that you don’t usually act rashly or carelessly.

The Great Entreprenuerial Leader

2009-08-12T11:51:00.015-05:00

by: Gina L. Kellogg, MA

As an entrepreneurial leader you are moving in what feels to be a thousand different directions. You are balancing business development, operations, employee management, your personal life and the desire to do the craft you love. You find yourself in a circle of dismay, at the same time being filled with the satisfaction of making "it happen". You wear all the hats, play all the roles and make sacrifices beyond the imagination of the mainstream. You do this because you know, in the core of your being, that what you believe is possible. You can feel, smell, see, taste and hear the reality of your dream. You are already living in the vision and image of what your hands are in the process of creating.

In coaching entrepreneurial leaders, I have found there to be a great difference between entrepreneurial leaders who "make it", and those who find themselves choosing to settle back into a life of "clocking in". Those who "make it" know what they stand for. They honor their personal values, and are an inspiration to others because they exude through every ounce of their being truth, authenticity and a genuine understanding of self. They have a vision, believe in their vision, and articulate their vision with such conviction and meaning that others gravitate to the mere image of what the entrepreneur already knows to be true. They are courageous, face their fears and view the inevitable challenges as opportunities to transform, grow and learn. Most of all, they embrace and welcome the evolution and constant change that will create a greater brilliance than even they themselves are able to imagine.

The Perfect Entrepreneurial Storm

2009-06-10T12:33:00.006-05:00

By: Sarah Sladek, Limelight Generations

A few weeks back, I was a mentor for the Girls Going Places Entrepreneurship Program in Minneapolis. I was truly inspired by how business-saavy these young girls were, and being in the generational line of work, I know that today's students and young adults claim the largest volume of start-ups in America. This business-savvy generation presents great opportunity for some, and great challenges for others. In either case, this generation presents significant change for our business climate as we know it.

An April 27, 2009 article in BusinessWeek refers to this change as the "perfect entrepreneurial storm". Just as the famously independent Generation Y enters business school, the world economy goes to hell in a handbasket. The former blue chips of Wall Street can no longer offer long-term job security and generous end-of-year bonuses, giving this new generation of MBA graduates the impetus to pursue their own business ownership dreams.

If business schools are smart, they will rush to embrace this entrepreneurial generation and give them the tools they need to realize those dreams. The time is certainly ripe. Most colleges had already observed declines in enrollment in nearly every major--with the exception of business.

What can business schools do to unleash this generation's inner entrepreneur? The BusinessWeek article advises them to take a cue from the Tuck Scho ol of Business (Tuck MBA Profile) at Dartmouth, which is hosting a new business plan competition, with a $50,000 prize, in an effort to inspire new entrepreneurial ideas and create jobs on both a local and national level.

Or they can follow the lead of schools like the Haas School of Business (Haas MBA Profile) at the University of California, Berkeley. The school's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation provides students with the expertise to pursue their ideas and improve their negotiating hand with venture capitalists. It's a great example of how to encourage innovation in both new and established companies, and we need more such schools offering innovative solutions to the entrepreneurial challenge. With their accumulated store of knowledge about how to launch a business, and proximity to the profitable ideas in technology and the sciences, business schools should be the ideal platform to nurture a new generation of entrepreneurs. And this generation—highly social, confident, and networked—seems ready for the challenge.

I would add that high schools could take a lesson from Thomas Alva Edison High School's Business Entrepreneurship Program. The Business Enterprise program utilizes work-readiness training, job shadowing, e-mentoring, college site visits, guest speakers, and entrepreneur and high-tech clubs to give students a foundation of skills to build upon and transition from a high school setting to post-secondary two-year and four-year educational programs. If more schools provided business training at an earlier age, perhaps America's workforce would be successful at bridging the talent gap and not be in danger of lagging behind Europe, India, Australia, and other countries already preparing their next generation workforce.

Certainly the world needs this new generation of business-savvy entrepreneurs—now more than ever before. If the economy is going to recover, their optimism and their new ideas will be a big part of the reason.

Trophy Kid to Shot-Caller Rule #1: Speak Up without Talking Down

2009-06-10T11:49:00.008-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

The one thing middle managers and executives alike from companies of all shapes and sizes agree on is that credibility comes from speaking up. In the knowledge economy where information is worth more than its weight in gold, it is critical to be an active participant in the knowledge exchange. As young employees, there are two fatally flawed tendencies that get in the way of effectively speaking up.

1. PROBLEM: TAKING WITHOUT GIVING

Remember this: Your employer is not your teacher. The importance of being a good learner was relentlessly drilled into us from the very first time our miniature shadows darkened the doors of our kindergarten classrooms. While growing up, our lives were dominated by authority figures—coaches, teachers and parents—whose job was primarily to teach us. To maker their jobs easier, they taught us how important it is for us to be willing to learn. Managers, however, need more than just your willingness to learn. A manager’s job is about getting things done and they need your help for that. Good managers don’t mind teaching you, but all of them expect you to do more than soak up knowledge.

SOLUTION: Paraphrase if you must, just contribute something. Ideally, you’ve done some homework or solid thinking before a meeting or during an email exchange so that you have something new to add. But as my Gen Y friend Eric told me “if you’re in a meeting and you really can’t think of anything new to add, then at least paraphrase a main point.” His managers agree. It shows that you’re actively participating and not just being a parasite on other people’s mental energy. And it really can help to crystallize fuzzy concepts for other people who maybe aren’t totally getting the big picture yet.

2. PROBLEM: Speaking with Unearned Authority

Personally, I’ve never had a problem voicing my opinion. I was that nerd in the 200-student lecture in college that raised my hand to ask the professor a question. For those of you more like me, remember this: It’s good to speak up, but bad to be a know-it-all. Bosses and co-workers want your contributions. What they don’t want is your baseless certainty, your sarcasm or your need to constantly display your superior intellect. I made this mistake more times than I care to admit when I started my career, and my ideas always suffered because of it.

SOLUTION: Master the Art of Suggestion. Even when you’re making a statement, phrase it as a suggestion. Instead of saying “This apple is clearly red,” say “I wonder if this apple is red, even though some parts of it look green like Sam mentioned?” Statements come across as argumentative even when you don’t intend them to be. Suggestions come across as though you’re trying to building on other people’s ideas instead of demolishing them to make room for your own.

Destination Nation

2009-05-14T13:45:00.016-05:00

By: Gina Kellogg-Gardner, MAOL

As a store manager I loved managing destination stores. You know the store locations that customers have to go out of their way to shop at, stores that are off the beaten track. Why did I love managing these store locations? Well, even though my traffic was less than my fellow store manager’s locations my customers were on a mission to buy! Customers walking into a destination store go out of their way to get there, and are already in a purchasing mind-frame when they arrive. Because my customers were ready to purchase, add-on-sales and up-selling was that much easier. My traffic may have been lower, but my conversion rate and sales ratio was through the roof.

Has today’s economy actually turned your retail store into a destination hot-spot? Today, consumers are making a conscious decision for how and when they spend their money. Because consumers are more intentional about when and what they buy, when a customer does walk into your store they have already made the decision to buy. In our economy, your customers are in a purchasing mind-frame when they walk through your doors! Learn how to take advantage of the economic climate, increase your retail sales and breathe a sigh of relief. Register for Destination Nation, and on June 30 experience this season’s thought provoking session and retail inspiration. >>>Retail Fusion.

How to Go From Trophy Kid to Shot-Caller

2009-04-24T16:45:00.016-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

Last year a few smart, ambitious Gen Y employees at TalentSmart asked me about the things I’ve done and learned that might help them steer their careers. These conversations plus the fact that I have a younger brother finishing college in the fall got me thinking and eventually researching. Here is part one of my answer.

THE RESEARCH
As a recovering trophy kid myself, I’ve learned quite a bit about this topic the hard way. But I wanted this to involve more than just my opinions. So I spent the last couple of months conducting structured behavioral interviews with managers from corporate stalwarts including Target, Best Buy and General Mills all the way to cutting edge startups and non-profits. To avoid speculation and generic platitudes, I asked these managers to tell me about a specific Gen Y’er they have worked with that had/has clear leadership potential. Then I asked them to describe specific events and situations covering everything from how they do project work to how they write emails. After 30 or 40 minutes, we then switched gears and had the exact same interview about one specific talented, yet somewhat disappointing Gen Y’er (i.e. a trophy kid).

THE RESULTS
Regardless of age, industry or company size, I was astonished to hear manager after manager tell me virtually identical stories listing virtually identical behaviors distinguishing the effective Gen Y leader who “gets it” from the talented trophy kid who doesn’t. The much-touted intelligence, confidence and ambition of Gen Y are every bit as real as the entitlement, narcissism and poor follow-through. The big difference? Some Gen Y’ers have simply learned to behave more in-line with the first set of traits than the second.

The good news is that even raging, narcissistic trophy kids can whittle away their rough edges to reveal the confident and humble high-performer underneath. It’s not rocket science, but it does take a willingness to confront face-to-face some uncomfortable realities about your thinking and action. In the coming weeks, I’ll be blogging about 10 specific things you can do to make the transition from trophy kid to influential leader.

WHAT YOU CAN DO IN THE MEANTIME
I included this quick and dirty table below to help you start thinking about what you currently do, say and think that is either helping or hurting your career. Whether you want more flexibility and independence, more meaningful work, or a fat pay check and a corner office, truly doing good work is what ultimately gets you there. Branding, blogging and social networking definitely help to open doors, but once inside that door your boss and/or clients need substance.

NEXT GENERATION LEADERS	TROPHY KIDS
Create meaningful work for themselves	Expect meaningful work to be given to them.
Ask “is there anything else I can do?”	Say “that’s not really my job”
Constantly strive to do their best work	Constantly claim “I’m trying my best”
Try to solve problems on their own before asking for help.	Ask for help at the first sign of an obstacle.
Use self-deprecating humor to give everyone a laugh	Make sarcastic comments in attempts to be funny
Think about how what other people want	Frame things in terms of “what I want…”
Have enough self confidence to learn from other people	Talk down to other people
Eye long term rewards for themselves	Expect a constant flow of immediate rewards
Pride themselves on results	Pride themselves on trying hard
Earn their success	Blame others for failures
Try to create real value	Try to earn praise
Adapt their language and appearance to fit the situation	Believe that their appearance defines them
Seek out feedback on their performance	Get defensive when critiqued

Will Gen Y be a Hero Generation?

2009-04-03T14:16:00.012-05:00

By: Nick Tasler
Obviously, we’re in a crisis. Obviously, it sucks. But this might be just the crisis Gen Y has been groomed for…if not destined to overcome.

Nine years ago, in their book Millennials Rising Neil Howe and William Strauss argued that every 4 generations a “hero generation” is born. The last such generation of heroes was the band of WWII brothers (and sisters) known to most of us as Grandma and Grandpa. They were followed by the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X and then—four generations later—Gen Y.

Each of these hero generations is raised by adults that are deeply concerned about the youth. Their parents believe that the world they know is just one more generation of wayward youths away from total collapse. So the parents take especially close, nurturing care of their children. In such times, parental neglect becomes sacrilege, and these children are constantly reminded that they are the future.

Then at some time during the hero generation’s young adulthood, crisis strikes. These crises—the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII—provide the catalyst for this special generation to step up and carve out their destined places in history. Strauss and Howe called the crisis the “hero trial.”

Gen Y’s Hero Trial In our case, the concerned parents are Boomers. The first wave of wayward youths are the Gen X’ers. The hero generation is the Gen Y’ers.

What I found so remarkable about Millennials Rising is how eerily prophetic it was. Corny as it sounds, goose-bumps literally sprouted up on my arms while reading it this morning. It predicted a coming crisis sometime in the “Oh-Oh’s” (i.e. between 2000 and 2009) that would act as the Millennials’ hero trial. Keep in mind, this book was published a full year before 9/11 and eight years before the recent economic meltdown. Nostradamus couldn’t have scripted it better.

Although hopeful, the question Strauss and Howe posed is: Will the Millennials pass their hero trial? Psychologist, Jean Twenge doesn’t think so. In 2006, she wrote in Generation Me that Strauss and Howe got it all wrong. She argued that Gen Y was more narcissistic and self-serving than Baby Boomers ever dreamed of being. She did some very convincing research showing that Gen Y college students scored way higher on Narcissism scales than Boomers did when they were in college. She also pointed to the poor youth voter turnout in 2000 and 2004 to show how Gen Y was not at all concerned with civic virtues like Strauss and Howe claimed. Instead, she argues that Gen Y cares as little for the world beyond their individual cocoons as Gen X, and even less so than Boomers.

But then came the 2008 election in which Gen Y mustered up a higher youth voter turnout than in any election since 1972 when 18-year olds were first granted the right to vote. Now that a crisis has unfolded it would be interesting to recheck the narcissism numbers. Just as Boomer young adults rebelled against the values of their parents and triggered the Me-first mindset, isn’t it possible that circumstances have caused Gen Y to choose their own new path as young adults?

In the spirit of transparency, I was born in 1978, which according to Strauss and Howe (1982-2000) makes me a Gen X’er. According to the Pew Foundation (1976-2000) that makes me a Y’er. Regardless of where I objectively fit (if it’s even possible to make an “objective” generational cutoff), I consider myself a recovering trophy kid. That makes me both optimistic and a little nervous about what I consider to be my generation’s ability flourish in the hero trial. I’m sort of nervous, because everything I’ve read about the entitled Gen Y’ers in the workforce, I can relate to. Such as the time when, within the first two months at my first job at the 60,000+ employee global consulting firm, I outlined what I was certain the global new hire training program should look like. Then I demanded that one of the firm’s partners look at it. I never did hear his response to the idea, but I can only imagine what he thought of me personally. Had I not learned to smooth down my entitled trophy kid edges, I would be mostly useless right now.

On the other hand, high self-esteem has significant benefits if based on some real ability that Gen Y definitely has. I’m also convinced Gen Y has the right ideals—valuing collaboration over individual gain; humility over hubris; learning over being “right;” and practicality over idealistic masturbation.

The verdict of the hero trial will depend on 4 questions:
1. Will we be able to translate unbridled optimism into effective action?
2. Will the weight and duration (could be years) of this crisis eventually bury that optimism altogether?
3. Will we become so disillusioned with the state of the world that we choose to withdraw from it instead of holding strong to change it?
4. Will we get defensive when critiqued, or will we learn to do what’s necessary to become influential in a world we might not care much for at the moment?

A few years ago, John Mayer said that he and all his friends were “waitin’ on the world to change.” I think the time for waiting has passed. What do you think?

Livin' on the Edge without Falling Off

2009-03-27T12:18:00.002-05:00

By: Nick Tasler

The other day I posted an article about beating your impulses. Every time I write or talk about that, someone points out that not all impulsive decisions (or impulsive people) are bad. I fully agree. In fact, sometimes they can be good. Really good.

But there is a difference between good and bad impulses.

DYSFUNCTIONAL IMPULSIVITY: Psychologists have identified two different kinds of “impulsive.” One is called ”dysfunctional impulsivity.” That’s what people who are slaves to their impulses have. They get their kicks mostly from booze, blow and law-breaking. They usually end up with illustrious careers as inmate #7825. Or they end up getting buried–financially and/or physically.

FUNCTIONAL IMPULSIVITY: Some people are just risk-takers. They push the speed limit, but don’t drive drunk. They make bold decisions, but don’t win Darwin Awards. They fail often, but then adjust accordingly and continue on. They never stop being impulsive, but they don’t keep making the same bad choices over and over again. They are constantly learning from past experience.

TO BE FUNCTIONAL think about which risks also offer potential reward, and which risks are just plain old risks with no potential payout. Where the functional might break some rules to get ahead, the dysfunctional break windows just because they feel like it. Are you telling off your boss just b/c it feels good? Are you skimming off the top to pick up some chump change while jeopardizing a much larger long term payout?

Impulsive people are always going to be impulsive, but some learn and some just lose.

Radical Innovation

2009-03-25T11:41:00.012-05:00

By: Gina Kellogg-Gardner, MAOL

So what’s the big deal about innovation anyway? The big deal is that new ideas, originality and the modernization of status quo is the survival guide for our new economy and global marketplace. Long are the days of systematically ran businesses having the competitive edge. Today, companies who think big picture, creatively respond to consumer needs and act entrepreneurial have the edge. In today’s economy companies have a choice – embrace radical innovation or fold.

How does a company embrace radical innovation? Leaders have to get savvy on multi-level collaboration, engage entry level employees in decision making and become immersed in consumer input. Leaders need to become expert visionaries, encourage employees to act on new ideas and foster a culture of creativity. Another key ingredient to radical innovation is talent. Aside from leadership, companies need to have a talent bench of creative souls – designers, consolers, storytellers and artists.

Most companies already have what it takes – employees who want to innovate and consumers who want new ideas. To move innovation forward, leaders need to promote a culture that actively connects consumers to the creative brilliance of employee’s.

Five fears that keep senior leaders from engaging Y

2009-03-05T09:30:00.003-06:00

by Sarah Sladek, Limelight Generations

I recently gave a presentation on the importance of recruiting and retaining younger generations in the workforce when someone in the audience raised his hand in vehement protest.

He assured me that concerns regarding younger generations in the workforce were no longer relevant. "All bets are off", he said, because the economy is in dire straits and younger generations will have to go back to kissing up and climbing corporate ladders.

Not so fast! For starters, the economic mess we've found ourselves in is not a permanent situation. And it certainly isn't going to stop people from aging.

Forty percent of our workforce will be eligible to retire in 2010. Whether all 40% retire at once or stagger their retirements throughout the next several years, that percentage will continue to increase with each passing year.

The economy might be in the toilet, but all bets are certainly not off.

As I travel around the country, I often hear questions and comments from Baby Boomers which are somewhat on the critical side--criticizing younger generations for their high expectations, for wanting to leave work early, or for their casual attitudes about dress and formal communication.

However, criticism usually stems from fear, and I have discovered there are five common fears keeping senior leaders from enjoying their younger colleagues:

Fear of job loss. Since the beginning of time, senior leaders have been fearful of getting pushed out of the way by younger leaders. Nevertheless, if we want to compete in a global economy, then senior leaders and younger generations must work together. If you are a senior leader, willingly share your wisdom with our future leaders. When it comes to business, there is simply no greater cause.
Fear of technology. As we all know, Gen Y is the most tech-savvy. They may be trumped by Gen Z (the next generation) but for now, they are certainly dominating in technology. If you are a senior leader and you are afraid of technology, then it’s up to you to get trained. Technology is here to stay.
Fear of looking dumb. There is nothing more unnerving to some senior leaders than to be “shown up” by someone who is half their age. If you are a leader, then it’s up to you to admit when you don’t know something, and to be excited you have someone younger on your team who can answer that question. Younger generations know a lot, but you won’t know this if you keep them at bay.
Fear of optimism. This may sound bizarre, but many senior leaders are pessimistic, while surveys (even recent ones) indicate that Ys are very optimistic. Leaders are only as strong as the people they surround themselves with, and your company will need the creativity, networks, and positive attitudes of Ys to pull it through these difficult times.
Fear of change. There has been more technology developed in the past five years than the past 50 years. The youngest generations are accustomed to change, and they are bringing us new ideas, a new world view, and new ways to work. Traditions are important, but it’s equally important to evolve. Resisting change almost always leads to resisting relationships and talent which squelches opportunity.

If you are a senior leader, be careful not to resort to fears and stereotype younger generations as less motivated or more egocentric or downright difficult. Now, more than ever, we need fearless leaders. Leaders to encourage everyone to aspire to be the best they can be, while also encouraging collaboration and bridging gaps.

The future should be—must be—ours to build together.

Fostering the Right Culture

2009-03-04T17:48:00.006-06:00

By: Karen Rulifson

How can a leader create a culture that fosters innovation, productivity, employee engagement and a sense of ownership? That's a million dollar question, right?!

Addressing this question, Harvard Business Review recently published an article with excerpts from a new book, The Ownership Quotient, by Joe Wheeler, James Heskett and Earl Sasser. They found key themes from companies that have created strong and adaptive cultures. Some of the themes are:

Leadership must set a clear vision of the mission, values, behaviors, measures and actions. They must then consistently walk the talk and model the way for others to follow. I've seen many leaders document the strategy and then file it in a drawer, forgetting the important messages. Instead, be the leader who brings up the messages in team meetings and 1:1 conversations, consistently reinforcing the intended culture.

Leaders must reinforce the culture by recognizing those who exemplify its values, behaviors and performance. Do this authentically and ensure the recognition is meaningful. Also, determine ways to recognize success both formally and informally. Perhaps you create value-based and project-based awards that are done on a monthly or quarterly basis. Perhaps you also write notes to individual employees. I've even seen a team that created a "you rock" program whereas any employee can give a rock to another as an informal way of saying thank you or job well done.

Listen to your team's comments regarding hiring, coaching, recognizing behaviors and promotions. The comments will typically indicate their satisfaction, or lack, of the culture you are creating.

Periodically revisit your values and associated behaviors and update them as needed. Even when the culture is positive, and especially when the culture is positive, you don't want to get stagnant. Ensure you and your team are benchmarking other areas in the company and out of the company. You don't want to experience a loss of curiosity or interest in change.

There are many benefits in creating and maintaining a strong and adaptive culture, and it all starts with the leader. Follow the tips in this article, and you'll be on your way in building a successful team where people want to work and a business where clients want to do business.

To read the full article, click here.

How to Make Good Decisions in Bad Times

2009-03-04T15:54:00.005-06:00

By: Nick Tasler

From Detroit to Wall Street to Silicon Valley, it seems that bad executive decisions have become the rule instead of the exception in today's corner offices. Shareholders, employees, politicians and even managers themselves are asking - if not begging - to know why. What is the cause of all these bad decisions, and how can we start making good decisions again?

Bad managerial decisions do not stem from low intelligence. Bad decisions are not rooted in flawed logic, deficient math skills, a poor understanding of business trends or any other of the usual suspects. Bad decisions result from emotional ignorance.

At TalentSmart, we surveyed over 6,000 board members, colleagues and employees from a cross-section of industries that ran the gamut from hospitals to tobacco companies, churches to casinos and everything in between. The key stakeholders of these organizations rated managers on 22 separate leadership skills, including such stalwarts as strategic thinking, focus on results, character and the ability to communicate and articulate vision. When we compared scores on all 22 skills to managers' ability to make good decisions, one in particular stood out: emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence ratings tell us how well managers understand their emotions and regulate their impulses. As it turns out, nearly 70 percent of leaders ranked highly in emotional intelligence were also among the most highly skilled decision makers. Overwhelmingly, it's the managers who are most adept at understanding how others influence their own emotional state; take responsibility for their part in difficult situations; and make the most of bad situations, that are capable of making sound decisions in a timely manner.

In contrast, guess how many of those with a poor grasp of their own emotions ranked among the most skilled decision makers? Zero. In fact, 69 percent of emotionally ignorant leaders ranked among the bottom 15 percent in decision-making skill. Those who fail to handle conflect effectively; refuse to shoulder responsibility for their actions; and remain unaware of their own fear, anger or excitement are dreadfully inept at making decisions.

If emotional intelligence is so critical to a manager's ability to make good decisions, the next logicl question is how emotionally intelligent are most managers?

This is where the story takes a dark turn. In another study a few years ago, we measured the emotional intelligence of hundreds of thousands of workers from janitors to CEOs. We found that emotional intelligence rises steadily as people get promoted up the ranks into middle management. From there, however, emotional intelligence declines precipitously with every rung up the corporate ladder, finally bottoming out with CEOs. It seems that the people least equipped to make good decisions are those we trust to make the most profound decisions. Perhaps this sheds some light on how so many of our businesses have ended up where they are today.

The good news is that emotional ignorance is curable. It doesn't happen overnight, but it can be learned in a couple of months with just a little focused effort. Here's how to get started.

1. Understand Your Emotions as They Happen
Take note of what you are feeling and doing as a situation unfolds so you can learn to harness your emotions in difficult situations. Remember that ignoring emotions doesn't make them magically disappear. Only now after the Wall Street crash are we finally hearing people talk about fear and panic. A year ago, nobody wanted to talk about anything except fed policies and interest rates.

2. Step Away from the Emotional Situation
Keep your finger on the pulse of your emotions and know when to allow yourself the opportunity to step back from the situation. Once you get food at sniffing out your emotions as you feel them, evaluate them objectively. Try picturing the current situation in your head as if it were happening to someone else. What would you recommend that "someone else" to do in order to create the best results?

3. Prepare Yourself for Feelings of Uncertainty
Be definition, every choice you make depends on your estimation of uncertain outcomes. For nearly everyone, that uncertainty feels uncomfortable so expect some anxiety to accompany decisions. Anticipate it and prepare yourself for it by talking through your thoughts and feelings with a third party who may ot be as closely involved with the situation. Then, accept the fact that you may not have complete control over the outcome, but you can control your reaction to it.

Remind yourself to practice these steps everyday for one month each, starting with step one. Set a reminder on your Outlook calendar or jot it down on a sticky note and post it on your bathroom mirror. At the end of the first 30 days, switch the reminder to say, "Step Away From the Emotional Situation," followed by step three in the third month.

About the author: Nick Tasler is the award-winning author of The Impulse Factor: How to harness your impulses and start making better decisions, and is the former director of R&D at global think-tank and consultancy, TalentSmart.

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow: Avoid being black-balled while giving out pink slips

2009-03-03T13:11:00.006-06:00

By: Sarah Sladek

I recently gave a presentation on the importance of recruiting and retaining younger generations in the workforce when someone in the audience raised his hand in vehement protest.

He assured me that concerns regarding younger generations in the workforce were no longer relevant. "All bets are off", he said, because the economy is in dire straights and younger generations will have to go back to kissing up and climbing corporate ladders.

Not so fast! For starters, the economic mess we've found ourselves in is not a permanent situation. And it certainly isn't going to stop people from aging.

Forty percent of our workforce will be eligible to retire in 2010. Whether all 40% retire at once, or stagger their retirements throughout the next several years, that percentage will continue to increase with each passing year.

Meanwhile, more Ys will enter the workforce. In fact, by 2011 Ys will likely outnumber the Boomers, and we know Ys will support the Xers in their quest for leadership and change.

The economy might be in the toilet, but all bets are certainly not off.

Further food for thought: whether it happens sooner or later, the exodus of the Boomers from the workforce will leave a talent gap in their wake. Yes, Generation Y is the largest generation but they span ages 26-14. It's going to be a while until those 14 year olds can catch up and take the reigns vacated by Boomers.

Even now it's critical that employers start preparing for the talent gap, realizing that in the not-too-distant future they will need to compete for talent. How your company handles its hiring processes and layoffs when times are tough, can influence its position when times are prosperous.

The once-private process of giving pink slips is becoming increasingly public, whether a firm likes it or not. Know that layoffs will be blogged about, live-tweeted, Facebook'ed - ever more the reason to make sure your communication is sharp. Consider this:

Jerry Yang, founder and CEO of Yahoo!, sent out a memo (all in lowercase letters) about the company's mass layoffs of 1,500 employees. The event made news because employees Twittered about their experience. One employee posted a series of roughly 20 'tweets' detailing his laying-off experience.

Shortly thereafter, the board fired Yang. Some critics assume that Yang's casual approach to the cutbacks, which received widespread negative attention, spurred the board's decision to eliminate Yang.

One of the first things Zappos.com's chief executive did when he laid off 125 people was Twitter and blog about it. Likewise, the VP of HR at Thomas Nelson blogged about a job cut of 50 people, first to explain the situation, and then to address rumors related to the cuts.

Each of these tales show we're in a new era of transparency and outreach because of technology. Be ready. All bets are not off, so don't stop thinking about tomorrow. It--they--will soon be here.

The Art of Leadership

2009-02-05T10:13:00.009-06:00

By: Gina Kellogg-Gardner, MAOL

Art is infinite. An artist never reaches a point of complete mastery. The skill of an artist is in constant development; evolving and transforming, adapting to the moment and becoming fluently versatile in order to experience or achieve a brilliantly authentic outcome.

Leadership is art. Leadership, like all arts, takes patience, practice and persistence. The art of leadership is exhibited by modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, fostering an environment of innovation, guiding others toward their own excellence and encouraging the celebration of success. To new leaders these artful behaviors can seem daunting and vague. However, the art of leadership can be taught to new leaders by helping them build five key fundamental skills early in their careers that will allow them to successfully adapt and become versatile amongst any given challenge. Take time now to teach new leaders foundational skills, and watch them achieve and succeed beyond unthinkable limits.

Five Foundational Leadership Skills:

Determine values: Help new leaders identify what they stand for personally and professionally. Facilitate them through a discussion that will guide them toward articulating their top three values. New leaders need to first understand who they are, and what they personal stand for, before they can effectively model the way.
Articulate vision: Teach new leaders how to describe the future. A new leader needs to learn first how to identify where they are headed, and secondly be able to describe their vision clearly and with conviction in
order to inspire other
Seek ways to foster personal growth: Encourage new leaders to seek out ways to personally grow. Hold them accountable to following through on continuous learning opportunities. Advancing their education or reading the latest leadership books, choices are limitless.
Learn to partner: Teach new leaders how to identify the strengths of others, and how to align themselves with those who have talents they themselves may not have. Learning to partner fosters collaboration and respect, and diminishes the desire for silos.
Share wins: Ask new leaders to frequently share their successes with others. Meetings, emails or networking sites are great avenues new leaders can use to communicate personal or team wins. Professionally sharing wins helps to highlight the strengths of new leaders and builds confidence!

Industry News - Keeping up with it

2009-02-04T12:54:00.012-06:00

By: Karen Rulifson

I just wanted to share a FREE and easy way to stay in touch with industry news and trends...SmartBrief.com. It's a resource that I came across about a year ago that I really appreciate! Based on my preferences, I receive regular emails that provide me with the latest articles and topics of my industry. It takes away the time and hassle of me having to google for articles, instead it comes right to my inbox. I know...it may sound like I'm getting paid to advertise for SmartBrief. I'm not. As SmartBrief states on its website: "SmartBrief publishes industry-specific email newsletters in partnership with leading trade associations, professional societies and corporations. It summarizes from the days most important industry headlines, handpicked from hundreds of newspapers and trade publications - straight to your email inbox as industry newsletters." The industries you can choose from span from healthcare to advertising, business, non-profit, retail, technology and many others. I registered for three newsletters: 1) National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), 2) Leadership and 3) Workforce. If one of your goals this year is to increase your knowledge about what's happening in your industry, SmartBrief will be a win for you. The website to sign up is: www.smartbrief.com/signup/index.jsp

Tips for Today's Leaders

2009-02-03T16:21:00.009-06:00

A new year. A recession and a new set of workplace challenges. Anxious employees. Needed is a new set of behaviors from leaders.

Out are the days of leading from the top and ordering the team to follow your ideas. Today's employees need and value collaboration, diverse ideas, providing input and inspiring and challenging assignments. In a recent Harvard Business Publishing article, "10 Mantras for Emerging Leaders in '09," Vineet Nayar lists guidelines for leaders. What especially resonated with me are the following:

Accountability - Now more than ever, leaders need to model the way and walk the talk. They need to say what they mean, be transparent and follow through. This builds trust amongst the team.
Lead from the front line - Know what's going on, understand the pain points of the employees and customers. This will help you make better decisions.
Collaborate and ask questions - Utilize the talented team you have, gain additional ideas and insight, challenge processes. This will lead to innovation.
Be nimble - Now more than ever, change is a constant. To be and stay competitive, one must adapt and be a leader of change.
Be positive - People look to you for inspiration and motivation. Be the positive force that keeps them excited about the vision and purpose of what they do everyday.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

Karen Rulifson

Announcing Monarch Leadership's Exclusive Partnership with Limelight Generations

2008-12-16T14:49:00.006-06:00

Monarch Leadership is proud to announce our exclusive partnership with Limelight Generations, one of the only generational companies in the United States focused on recruiting, retaining, and marketing to generations X, Y, and Z.

Sarah Sladek founded Limelight Generations in 2002. As an Xer herself, Sarah started researching the absence of younger generations in membership associations and businesses. She gives presentations and provides training and consulting on the topic to organizations nationwide.

Sarah is also the author of two X, Y and Z generational books --Rock Stars Incorporated: Hiring the High-Performance, High-Maintenance Hotshots Half Your Age (2008) and The New Recruit: What Your Association Needs to Know About X, Y, & Z (2007).

In 2009 Monarch Leadership will be partnering closely with Sarah in Limelight Generations' launch of XYZ University, the first web-based learning and networking community for membership associations focused on the generational topic, as well as RockStars@Work, the first generation-themed business conference and awards program in the United States.

Gina Kellogg-Gardner

Can you teach passion?

2008-12-15T13:51:00.013-06:00

I was recently asked by a business colleague if I believe passion can be taught. I responded with a confident Yes. I believe we all have passion. Our passion may look different, feel different and transpire into the world differently; but I do believe someone can learn how to tap into their passion. It's not passion that's being taught, it's teaching people how to tap into their passion...

United States businesses have been built on an autocratic system that attempts to mold people to fit into the needs of the business. Based on this approach, we have grown up hearing about all the things we need to "improve" on, which of our "opportunity areas" are getting in our way of being successful and which of our "behaviors" need to be addressed in order for us to live the values of our workplace. A great percentage of people in our country feel as though their passion is growing further and further away from their day-to-day work activity. They feel their passion is being shadowed by the expectations of their employers. Ironically, employers then question why their customer service satisfaction is low, why quality is struggling or why revenue goals are not being met. Teach employees how to unleash their passion and watch the business sore!

Leaders can teach passion by helping their employees discover what their passion is. Teaching is simply about helping others discover something new. How? Leaders need to ask their employees what's important to them, what part of the work do they find most satisfying, what are their personal goals and values, what is their vision? Begin designing jobs that incorporate each person's passion, or simply let employees take on tasks that allow them to use their passion. Move the business forward by teaching employees how to discover their passion, and by supporting their ideas on how to actively live their passion in the workplace. It's a win win!

Gina Kellogg-Gardner

A Culture of Empowering Others

2008-11-25T11:04:00.008-06:00

A critical factor for successful leadership is in empowering others (and then trusting them). Practicing this concept isn't necessarily easy, but it goes a long way in creating a culture where people want to work and are engaged. And ultimately, this practice develops more talent in the organization, which increases overall performance.

As a side note, some people argue that you first need the "right people on the bus," a quote that author Jim Collins created, before you empower them with projects or decisions. Click here to find a great article about this topic.

Back to empowering others... a success story is with the company, Pixar. Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar, has been instrumental in creating a culture of empowering others to create great results. I recently read an article, "Pixar's Collective Genius," written by Steve Prokesch, Harvard Business Review. He starts out the article by stating, "Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull exemplifies the greatest form of leadership: empowering others to achieve the extraordinary."

Steve had the opportunity to meet Ed Catmull while working with him regarding a HBR article and said that Mr. Catmull "describes the architecture of Pixar's collective genius--a community where people at all levels support one another." Steve continues to share that "the results speak for themselves: Beginning with Toy Story in 1995 and ending with WALL•E this summer, Pixar has produced nine blockbuster computer-animated films in a row."

Mr. Catmull's leadership qualities that enable a culture of collective genius include:

Redefining the vision - Creating a vision that will last past the current executive team.
Delegating power - Giving directors tremendous authority. Mr. Catmull and his executive team set budgetary and timeline boundaries, and then the directors and their teams are left alone. When it's time to review progress on a project, the senior executive team's advice is just that - advice - just like everyone else's.
Fighting success syndrome - Realizing that, even with Pixar's success, there are still improvements to make and not everything is figured out.

This article hit home with me and displays a great example of a company who is finding success in empowering its employees. To read the full article and have access to a podcast, click here.

Karen Rulifson