February 2016

Managing The Millennials

Feb 28, 2016 Comments

Scenario 1: Ryan walked by Cathy’s work station and noticed she was messaging someone on Facebook. “I hope that’s work related Cathy, you know our rules about using social media at work”. Cathy replies” yes I know the dumb company rules but I have a personal situation with my son that I need to respond to now”.

Scenario 2: Ryan walked by Cathy’s work station and noticed she was messaging someone on Facebook. “Is everything all right Cathy? You usually comply with the company rules about social media use at work”. Cathy replies “you’re right about that Ryan but I do have a personal situation with my son that I need to deal with now”.

Which of these scenarios reflects Ryan acting as a coach leader rather than a manager?

I present this scenario and ask the question because Millennials, those aged 18 to 34 will outnumber the Boomers in the workplace this year. Their outlook, motivation and needs are different than previous generations according to the experts and studies that have been done.

Coach versus Manager

One of the things that’s important to Millenniums at work is to be coached not managed. This is not something unique to this generation as far as I’m concerned. I am a Boomer and I definitely prefer a coaching style of leadership. I don’t like to be managed.

That brings up the question, what is the difference between coaching and managing?

Coaching signifies development of people while management tends to imply control of people and processes.

There are many things to consider when working to become a coach rather than a manager. In reality however, sometimes a good coach leader needs to also be a manager. It really depends on the situation and the person you are directing.

The more responsible employees are, the less they need to be managed and the more you can coach them. So part of being a good coach leader is to develop people to be great at what they do but also to be responsible and coach-able.

It seems that the Millennials might think they already are highly responsible and coach-able but this may not always be the case as illustrated in this comic video.

A good coach will get to know and understand the motivations and needs of each of his direct reports. This means taking time to meet each person on a regular basis and discuss their performance while also providing opportunities to learn and grow.

A manager however would be more concerned about establishing process, procedures, standards, goals etc and meeting employees to review how they are meeting these performance indicators.

Because companies and organizations need to have some structure, leaders today need to strike a balance between being a coach and a manager. In fact, as Thiagi describes in this video, a leader needs to assume four to five different roles depending on the purpose of a coaching session.

Going back to the two previous scenarios and my question about which approach by Ryan is more like that of a coach, the answer is neither. In these scenarios Ryan is acting more like a snoopervisor and his only goal is to control and enforce company rules.

A coach would trust that the person is doing what they need to do as long as they are meeting performance expectations. They wouldn’t even be having that type of conversation.

The best way to coach and manage people especially it seems for Millennials, is to adapt a coaching style of leadership as much as possible. This takes understanding of coaching principles and techniques and taking the time to apply them with each direct report.

Stephen Goldberg

10 Steps to Hiring Good Employees & Avoid Bad Hires

Feb 14, 2016 Comments

Imagine hiring a high paid executive, firing them after only three months and paying them a one-year severance package costing over $230,000. This just happened in Montreal according to this article that appeared last week in the Montréal Gazette.

According to a study by Oxford economics it costs over $40,000 to replace a staff member. The cost estimation is based on lost productivity during the ramp-up period for new employees, as well as the cost of recruitment. To avoid these costs and reduce turnover, here is a checklist of things you should be doing to ensure hiring the right person.

Go through this list and see what you are leaving out and why you choose to do so. For the things on the list you’re already doing, measure how well you think you’re doing for each on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being excellent. Keep in mind there’s always room for improvement.

Write a good job description for the position. You can consult my previous article on writing a job description and even download a job description template.
Write a good job advertisement that has you stand out from the crowd. This is especially important for highly competitive positions where you may be competing against top brand companies. Here is an example of a job advertisement I wrote for one of my clients that is different from most. As well, here is an article showing five examples of creative job postings.
Ask your candidates to write a letter explaining why they would be the best person for the job. This not only tells you how motivated they are but also gives insight into their written communications and their ability to express themselves. Job seekers will send out many resumes but only those really interested in working for you will take the time to write this. This can be stated in your job posting as I did in my example.
Create a career page on your website that is designed to promote your company in workplace to potential candidates. You want to attract the best people so there’s some selling involved here. Make this multimedia rich by adding photos, videos and quotes from employees about their experience working for the company. I’m assuming here that people like working for as often people are seeking a better work environment and relationship with their boss or coworkers. Here’s an article and video about using an about us video to attract the right candidates.
Advertise the job on the right platform for your target candidates. Use word-of-mouth marketing through current employees, suppliers, customers and personal contacts. Almost half of jobs are filled through word-of-mouth.
Use online search tools such as LinkedIn recruiter, LttileBIGJob or Indeed to approach non-active jobseekers who might just need a nudge to consider working for a better employer.
Conduct interviews with reference checking in mind so that you ask pertinent questions about the candidate’s past that can be verified with their former employers. Read more about this in this article and video. Inform candidates at the first interview that you will be checking the information they provide with their past employers. This keeps them honest in the interviews, especially if you keep reminding them of this.
Use assessments and skill testing to better qualify the best candidates and gather more information to help you make more objective hiring decisions. I use multiple assessments throughout the hiring process. Check out this article and video for more information.
Conduct second or third interviews to dig deeper with candidates after you’ve gone through the skill testing and assessments.
Check references using the information the employees provided during the interviews. Get employees to give measurable indicators of their past performance that can be verified with their former bosses. Ask the candidate to arrange the reference interviews with their former employers. This way you don’t have to spend time chasing people to get them to speak with you. If they can’t do it for whatever reason you know there is a problem and you need to find out what it is.

How well are you doing and applying the above best practices for good hiring? What can you do to improve?

Hiring the right person is a crucial step in good job performance and employee retention. I’ll go more into these two other components in future articles and videos, so subscribe to our blog and newsletter and videos.

Stephen Goldberg

Solutions to Resolve Your Key Restrainer to A Problem or Goal

Feb 02, 2016 Comments

A key restrainer is the top item holding you back from solving a problem or achieving a goal. Once you have identified the key restrainer the idea is to remove it so that the driving force to solve the problem or achieve the goal can move you forward. This is the essence of the force field analysis technique for problem solving.

In my previous articles and videos, I explained how to first choose the right problem or goal to work on and then how to identify the key restrainer using the Force Field analysis technique. I used the example of stress as the key problem and will continue to do so for this article.

In my last article I used the example of stress as the problem and made a list of possible restrainers. I will choose time and workload as the key restrainers and combine them since they are very similar, so that treating one will automatically resolve or improve the other.

To develop a solution for the key restrainers (in this case time and workload), write down a statement that describes the solution, which in this case could be something like:

Reduce stress by better managing workload in order to have more time for exercise, family and fun activities.

This could open a whole new problem related to workload and in this case it might be best to go through the Force Field analysis exercise again for the issue of workload. In other words, what is the key restrainer for a reduced workload?

The solution would vary depending on your position but if you’re a manager one of the obvious solutions would be to delegate or assign tasks to staff members. If you’re not a manager it might mean prioritizing your work and eliminating redundant and unimportant tasks.

Let’s treat this in the context of a manager and explore some solutions for workload.

Solutions to reduce workload in order to have more time for exercise, family and fun activities.

track how I spend my time
list all my tasks and responsibilities
identify tasks and responsibilities that could be assigned or delegated
decide which staff member can assume new tasks and responsibilities
meet with appropriate staff member to discuss new assignments and identify training or coaching requirements
follow-up with staff members on new assignments and provide training and coaching

Once these actions to the solution have been applied you must evaluate whether the solution has removed the restrainer and resolved or improved the problem. Some problems take longer to resolve than others and you have to go in steps.

Something like stress can be measured by asking yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how stressed am I? You can ask yourself this question every week as you work through your solution.

Usually by addressing the key restrainer for any problem or goal should take care of all the other restrainers as well but this may not always be the case, so you might need to address another restrainer or dig deeper on a particular restrainer as I mentioned earlier.

You can also work on the solution using my goal planning worksheet which will help you to establish dates for action steps and to also identify obstacles along the way that need to be resolved. Here’s a link to my article and video on achieving any goal using the goal planning worksheet that you can download.

It’s important to work on the right problem and follow the steps to resolving it, especially if you are doing this as a team.

Please let me know how this is working for you and if you have any questions.

Stephen Goldberg