Monthly Archives: March 2009

Good advice from a banker

Attitude and self-assurance dictates the risk we are willing to take to act on our ideas for business development and has so much to do with success in business and relationships.

I liked the message I read in this article http://tinyurl.com/cqlhvf from Jean-René Houde, the CEO of the Business Development Bank of Canada from an address he made to entrepreneurs.

I know that the biggest ingredient of success for entrepreneurs is a combination of self-confidence, self-esteem and the ability to influence people to listen to you and act on your ideas.

At the core of this is an understanding of yourself and others because how can you be effective with people if you don’t understand them?

The key element that holds each one of us back from fully using our natural qualities and strengths is fear. When we can identify what drives fear in us and what negative tendencies it causes, we can find ways to resolve those causes and free ourselves to realize our goals.

In an economic crisis our fears become even more heightened and we need to really build our inner resources to protect ourselves from becoming stuck with inaction, which can only worsen things.

On the bright size retail sales in Canada were up in January by 1.9% http://tinyurl.com/dzzv82. I observed this first hand when I went shopping for a gift at the mall on Monday at lunch time and could not believe the shopping activity there.

So think big, positive and take action.

Stephen

The leadership debate with Henry Mintzberg: Community-ship is the answer

Here is a great article on leadership for today by Henry Mintzberg.

We have this obsession with “leadership”. Its intention may to be to empower people, but its effect is often to disempower them. By focusing on the single person, even in the context of others, leadership becomes part of the syndrome of individuality that is sweeping the world and undermining organizations in particular and communities in general. Read the full article
http://tinyurl.com/aaxcoz

Why interests are so important for work motivation?

What drives your potential new employees and your existing team members? Knowing this before you hire is extremely important for job fit and to keep people engaged and motivated in their work.

How can you find this out in a one or two hour interview? Most small and medium size businesses people and managers do not interview everyday and often do not have a well planned interview approach that gives answers to everything you need to know in order to make the best decision.

The focus is usually on skills and work experience, which you can easily get from their resume, so why spend a lot of time asking questions about this. As I suggested in a previous article about hiring star employees, prepare a simple skills test to see how they can handle that task.

I remember working with a small business owner who had interviewed a person to be his executive assistant. Her resume showed that she had the skills for the job and after the interview he was ready to hire her. I intervened and asked her to compose a business letter to a supplier on a frequent business matter that required a simple understanding of the business that her research should have provided.

The candidate had difficulty formatting the letter and articulating the message and was clearly not fit for the job. Yet my client would have been ready to hire her because he liked her and believed what was on the resume and what she was saying.

Once we have checked for skills and company fit we want to verify job match and this requires another type of test to measure thinking style, behaviour and occupational interests.
People usually list their interests on their resume. But this does not tell you what their occupational interests are. General interests can be misinterpreted and often we don’t pay enough attention to their job interests.

The Profile XT assessment provides six occupational interest fields and determines the candidates top three interests and matches them to the profile of the job. When the most important activities we must perform for job success meet our top three interest area needs, we feel motivated and passionate about our work.

On Thursday March 12th at 1:00 PM EST I will make a presentation by webinar on hiring and developing star performers using the Profiles XT assessment and explain all the components of this tool including the occupational interest fields.

Using assessments for hiring can save you big bucks by reducing turnover because you will have people better fit for the job. This saves you valuable time that can be put to more productive use. Also hiring and training new employees today is very costly and it usually takes three to six months before they fully understand your systems to become fully productive. The more complex the job the longer it takes.

To attend the webinar you must send me an email request to sgoldberg@optimusperformance.ca and I will send you the details.