Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How 21st Century Leaders Develop Their Teams

Business owners who wish to increase their growth trajectory should be mindful of succession issues and make solid plans to ensure that the next generation of leaders is ready to take over. Manager training is a critical part of the mix, but should your business engage in formal or informal training, and what type of mentorship should you encourage?

I spoke with three business owners about their strategies for getting their organizations' leaders up to speed: Josh Harcus, co-founder and chairman at sales agency Hüify in Wilmington, South Carolina; Joey Kercher, founder and CEO of Air Fresh Marketing in Denver; and Nina Ojeda, founder and CEO of beauty aggregator PRÊTE in Los Angeles.

What's your definition of a leader in your organization? Is leader synonymous with manager?

Josh Harcus: A leader is an individual who has a lasting impact on those around them. A good leader will have a positive impact, and a bad leader will have a negative one.

Being a manager does not necessarily imply the qualities of leadership. The title of manager gives one the opportunity to lead, but a good manager must make the choice to sacrifice for those underneath them.

 

Joey Kercher: A leader in my organization is someone who takes initiative to make our company better and doesn't rely on others for motivation.

For me, the definition of leader is not synonymous with manager, though they are intertwined in many ways. Managers focus primarily on tasks, time and keeping projects on track. Although a leader has to have managerial abilities, leaders also need to focus on interpersonal relationships. Leaders often have to act as the face of the company as well.

Nina Ojeda: Leadership doesn't come with a title, it's a choice. A leader is someone who always puts their team first, company second and themselves last. Leaders can be managers, but not all managers are leaders.

How do you develop leaders or engage in manager training? Is your approach more formal or informal, classroom-based or experiential?

Kercher: We develop rising leaders by first hiring the best people. We look for those who have expertise and intelligence as well as the capacity for growth. My company is small, so we do not have a formal method for manager training. Currently, we operate as a flat organization, in which each team member has the flexibility to make their own decisions. Failing is okay as long as we can track our mistakes and learn from them.

Harcus: My colleague David is a terrific example of my company's approach to leadership development. Since David's team focuses primarily on sales development, David wanted each of his team members to grow in their abilities to build rapport and think on their feet. So he had everybody do open mic, stand-up comedy at an improvisation club in San Francisco. It was awesome to see each team member thrive under the pressure of trying something terrifying, and conquering it. Along with stand-up, David has conducted many formal manager training sessions that are essential to his team's development.

For the rest of the interview, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.

Microfeedback: The Future of Management

A few months ago, I attended an employee engagement workshop. The facilitator suggested that millennials require performance feedback more than once a year. “Maybe once a quarter,” she said.

More like once a day!” I couldn’t resist calling out.

I wasn’t kidding. For the 80 million millennials who now make up a majority of the workforce, no news is bad news. If they don’t hear from their managers frequently, they think they’re doing something wrong and quickly grow disillusioned.

Nevertheless, an open door policy in which employees are invited to stop by a manager’s office for extended feedback sessions multiple times a day simply isn’t practical. So what’s the solution?

The innovative concept of microfeedback originated in the consumer space and consisted of collecting a small amount of information from customers at key moments in their shopping experience. The goal was to gather relevant customer feedback for a more accurate assessment of their satisfaction.

Think about this, though. Why can’t the idea of microfeedback be extended to performance management? We certainly have the technology. Intra-company messaging systems like Yammer, Skype for business, and Slack are growing exponentially and with some groups (like millennials), are even  more popular than email.

Imagine that your direct report gives a status update in the departmental meeting for the first time. You think she did an exceptional job, but instead of noting it in her file to be reviewed in six months (or worse, forgetting about it completely), you send her a “thumbs up” emoticon via Slack. The action takes you less than 30 seconds, and yet your employee has a piece of encouraging feedback that will make her day.

For more where this came from, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

Bridge the Soft Skills Gap in Your Young Professionals

Why don’t young professionals today hold themselves to a higher standard when it comes to their attitude, work habits, and people skills? In his new book, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap, my friend and colleague Bruce Tulgan explores these five reasons:

Pretend Adulthood

Most entry-level professionals are coming to you straight from school. If they have the most in-demand technical skills, then they are probably coming from college or university; maybe graduate school. That means they’ve probably become quite accustomed to a very luxurious form of pretend adulthood. Of course, there is substantial coursework. Still, they have very little supervision and a great deal of latitude in all manner of their personal habits and conduct. They are accustomed to staying out late hanging with their friends and skipping morning meetings.

Helicopter Parents

Even after they arrive in the workplace, new college grads are still only a phone call or text away from their parents.  Even worse, maybe they are on their own now, for the first time, after being reared by parents who did all the work for them of closely scheduling, managing, and supporting their every move. With their parents doing so much of the work, many young professionals never mastered the basics of taking care of themselves.

High Expectations

The customization of everything has entrenched in young professionals a fundamental expectation that individual accommodation is the norm.  And surely too many people told them each and all, way too often, “You are a special case.” Their basic assumption is that they should be able to just “be themselves” and “express” their true identity at work, even if that might include stuff like failing to follow through on a day when they are “just not feeling it.”

Unpracticed Interpersonal Skills

Communication practices are habits, and most young professionals are in the habit of remote informal staccato and relatively low-stakes interpersonal communication because of their constant use of hand-held devices and social media and instant messaging. They stare at their devices too much, send too many texts, and are becoming increasingly less articulate because they have so little practice having real conversations.

Professionalism Vs Individualism

Much of what older, more experienced people might see as matters of professionalism—attitude, self-presentation, schedule, and interpersonal communication—new college grads are likely to consider highly personal matters of individual style or preference and really none of their employer’s business.

Want to learn how to cope with these young professional characteristics more effectively? Check out Bruce’s book for practical answers and advice for better preparing your young professionals for success.

Could Your Employee Be Uncoachable?

Executive coaching is professional intervention with a focus on developing the skills needed to drive change, manage complexity, build top performing teams, and maintain a strong personal foundation to thrive under challenging conditions. It can be worthwhile, but also very expensive and time-consuming.

The hard truth is, there are times when you should make the investment in an employee, and times when you should save your money. My friend Marshall Goldsmith wrote an article detailing some of these circumstances, and I’ve added a few of my own.

She doesn’t think she has a problem

Some successful adults, said Marshall, have no interest in changing because their behavior is working just fine. You could employ the best coach in the whole world, but if your employee doesn’t care to change, you’re wasting your time, the employee’s, and the coach’s.

He is pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization

Some employees have strong beliefs about the way the organization should operate, and those beliefs may be at odds with yours. If this guy is already going in the wrong direction, said Marshall, all your coaching will do is help him get there faster.

She’s in the wrong job

An employee might feel that she’s in the wrong job with the wrong company, that she’s supposed to be doing something else or that her skills aren’t being taken advantage of properly. To tell if you’re dealing with one of these people, Marshall recommended asking her: “If we shut down the company today, would you be relieved, surprised, or sad?” If you hear “relieved,” send her packing. Coaching will not make an unhappy person happy.

For more signs, see the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How Much Time Do You Actually Need with Your Boss?

According to a Leadership IQ study “Optimal Hours with the Boss,” most people spend only half the time they need with their boss. Employees who spend the optimal six hours interacting with their direct leader per week are 29 percent more inspired, 30 percent more engaged, 16 percent more innovative and 15 percent more intrinsically motivated than those who spend only one hour per week.

Believe it or not, though, more time is not necessarily better. When employees spend more than six hours per week interacting with their leaders, diminishing returns are seen in terms of building inspiration, engagement and motivation. The study showed that levels of inspiration or engagement remained the same or declined beyond six hours of interaction.

When I asked Leadership IQ CEO Mark Murphy about this curious finding, he said: “When you spend too much time with the boss, it starts to feel like micromanaging.  People want a certain amount of boss time to get aligned, share concerns, ask questions, etc., but then they want to actually go put all of that information into practice.”

Email Doesn’t Take the Place of Face-to-Face

Among people who only spend an hour per week interacting with their leader, 33 percent of that time is face-to-face interaction and 42 percent is via email.  By contrast, those who spend six hours per week interacting with their leader spend much more of their time (48 percent) in face-to-face interactions, and much less of their time (27 percent) interacting via email.  So, not only is the amount of time spent interacting with one’s leader important, but increasing the percentage of face-to-face interaction matters as well.

For the rest of the post, check out the SilkRoad blog.

A-Z Retention Strategies from Beverly Kaye

Since employees who quit cost their companies up to 200 percent of their annual salaries to replace, retention is one of the most important issues facing businesses today. Virtual employees are especially vulnerable to retention issues because they often lack the camaraderie that’s present in an in-person environment.  Adapted from the new edition of Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans’ bestselling book Love Em or Lose Em, here are 26 A to Z strategies you can employ right away to keep your virtual team members from quitting this year.

Ask WHAT KEEPS YOU?

Do you know what your virtual employees want from their careers? Never assume. Since you don’t have the benefit of face-to-face communication, you’ll be wrong.

Buck IT STOPS HERE

Your virtual employees are every bit as much of your responsibility as your in-office employees. It’s up to you to make sure they are engaged and want to stay.

Careers SUPPORT GROWTH

Don’t confuse virtual employees with short-term, hourly employees. They need viable career paths too. Facilitate these. Don’t ignore them or get in the way of professional development.

Dignity SHOW RESPECT

Do your virtual employees know that you value and appreciate them? Ask yourself honestly if you are taking them for granted because you don’t have a strong in-person rapport.

Enrich ENERGIZE THE JOB

Are you constantly challenging your virtual employees, or is it the same old, same old? Make an effort to take things up a notch.

Family GET FRIENDLY

Even virtual employees can have work/life integration challenges. Don’t force them to choose between work and loved ones.

Goals EXPAND OPTIONS

Your virtual employees might not be interested in moving up, but they should have some forward-thinking goals. Take the time to help them develop and execute these.

Hire FIT IS IT

Take care to hire people upfront who will not only be successful virtual employees but who will also be a strong fit for your culture.

For the rest, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Millennials Aren’t Aimless Kids Anymore

Picturing millennials, we may think of late bloomers carrying huge debt and living in their parents’ basements.  For many millennials, however, those days are far in the past.  According to the results from a survey I conducted last year with Deloitte, 50 percent of currently employed millennials already meet our definition of a leader.  Forty-four percent of them have only three to five years of experience, yet 41 percent have four or more direct reports.  By contrast, at the same age, most baby boomers (born 1945-63) and Gen X-ers (born 1964-79) were still in junior-level positions.

New Leaders Sink or Swim

Organizations haven’t adequately prepared these young professionals to be managers, and it shows.  Of current millennials who are leaders, only 36 percent said they felt ready when entering the role, and 30 percent still do not feel ready today – citing managing difficult people or situations, lack of experience, and dealing with conflicts as their top concerns upon entering a leadership role.  Informed leaders agreed that millennials lack self-awareness and the ability to effectively manage others. 

Development Focus is Critical

This lack of preparedness echoes what has been reported in prior research.  A recent survey by the American Society for Training and Development reported that two-fifths of millennials don’t think their cohort is entering the workforce with sufficient skills to become future leaders, and Harvard Business Review claimed that the average age to receive leadership training is 42, or a decade away for the average millennial leader.  Over half of ASTD’s respondents felt that millennials require specialized leadership development programs, but only 15 percent said their organizations offer such programs – though the business case for them is clear.  For instance, higher-performing organizations are 57 percent more likely than those from low-performing organizations to have a millennial leadership development program in place.

For the complete post, head over to the SilkRoad blog.

In the Homeland, Learn and Share with the Pros

For those who haven't yet Netflixed Homeland, you should. In it, thirty-something CIA operative Carrie Mathison is actively mentored by her fifty-something senior colleague, Saul Berenson. It’s a good thing that Carrie is trying to learn everything she can from Saul now, because within a matter of years, Saul will likely retire from government service. Carrie is ensuring that all of the knowledge he has gleaned from decades of work in the field doesn’t disappear into a black hole.

In the next ten years, the massive Baby Boom generation (born 1946-63) will exit traditional jobs en masse, resulting in a major brain drain. You may be well acquainted with many of these Boomers now, but waiting to pick their brains until they’re out the door is not a good strategy. It’s much better to strike while you have easy access. To that end, here are a few knowledge sharing and gleaning recommendations to employ immediately.

Be a Joiner

Get involved in extracurricular activities sponsored by your company (sports teams, volunteer initiatives, etc.) and third-party industry associations so that you are naturally exposed to senior people inside and outside your field. Become a regular at events that take place more than once, and every time you meet someone, show genuine interest in their work and ask lots of questions.

Practice Reciprocal Mentorship

An evolution of reverse mentoring, reciprocal mentorship is a two-way relationship in which advice and information pass easily between a senior and junior-level colleague. The senior colleague may mentor the junior colleague on general business and career matters, while the junior colleague may provide guidance on twenty-first century workplace efficiencies and technologies.

For more tips, check out the full post on Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Why You're Setting Yourself Up to Fail at Work

No one wants to disappoint a colleague or manager. No one wants to be bad at their job. No one wants to fail. Nevertheless, people do these things every day, and more often than not, they bring the problems on themselves. In the event that you may be unknowingly sabotaging your productivity and success, here are six things to make certain you aren’t doing:

You set unrealistic expectations

You’re a can-do person, so it’s in your nature to automatically say yes every time you are asked to do something. The trouble is, some things – like three meetings in one time slot and a handful of heavy-lifting projects with the same short deadline – are just not doable. It is better to take a step back and assess what’s logically possible than to let people down who trust you.

You insist that you don’t need any help

As my grandmother used to say, no one is going to give you a gold star for being a martyr. Trying to be superman or superwoman is a surefire way to lose track of something important or make a mistake that costs big time. Be a better leader by recognizing that at times, other people may have more bandwidth and/or expertise than you – and let them in.

For more where this came from, check out the complete post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Jumpstart a Stalled Project

There comes a point in many projects were momentum just stops. Why does this happen? Well, sometimes we’re paralyzed by uncertainty or a general loss of interest and passion. Other times circumstances are rocky, and the team would rather do anything else than work on the project. Or, we’re overwhelmed by the mountain of to-dos.

Although the project stall is a common phenomenon, you can’t allow yourself to fall victim for too long. After all, the last thing you want is for your manager to find out about your lack of progress and put you in the doghouse. You also don’t want him to lose trust that you can manage complex assignments independently. How can you extricate yourself?

Seek objectivity

You may be having trouble pushing past an obstacle on your project because you are too close to it. Gather some key materials and approach a trusted friend, peer adviser, or mentor in your industry who has nothing to do with the project currently. Outline the situation, ask for her advice on how to proceed, and see if the fresh perspective will lead you to a solution you hadn’t thought of yet.

Get your right brain on

Step away from the laptop and the online tools for a moment. Commit a block of time in an environment that’s conducive to productive thought, and clear your head. Make a conscious effort to stop thinking about the project and engage in a creative activity. Play a game with a child, draw a picture, or work a puzzle. Turn on Pandora or read a poem that resonates with you. Return to the project a few hours later and see if new ideas have presented themselves.

Like what you're reading so far?  Visit the full post at Intuit's Fast Track blog.