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Your #Career : The Right and Wrong Way to Manage Up at the Office…Don’t Assume Good Work will Speak for Itself—the Burden is Usually on you to Find a Way to #Communicate with your #Boss .

It’s an ability that can shape your career more than almost any other—but many employees don’t know how to do it.

Managing up, or building smooth, productive relationships with higher-ups, requires understanding and adapting to your boss’s communication and decision-making style. Many people are promoted because of the quality of their work. But as newly minted managers aim to rise in the ranks, assuming their work will speak for itself becomes increasingly hazardous to their careers.

Roberta Matuson felt unprepared after she rose to a senior human-resources job years ago. “I was tossed into the executive suite with little more than a prayer, wondering, ‘What the heck do you do?’ ” she says. She focused on doing her job well but failed to build relationships with her bosses, leaving her with few allies.

When the company went public, “I got taken out by a wave I didn’t see coming” while the rest of the management team kept their jobs, she says. “You have to toot your own horn in a sea of cubicles to be heard.” Ms. Matuson is now a Brookline, Mass., leadership coach and author of the management book “Suddenly in Charge.”

Employees are getting less help learning these skills as companies shift training dollars toward senior leaders at the expense of middle- and low-level employees. The proportion of employers spending more than $1,000 a person annually to train middle managers, supervisors and rank-and-file employees fell below one-third in the past two years, according to a 2017 survey of 237 employers by Brandon Hall Group. Meanwhile, employers spending that much on training senior leaders rose to 58% in 2017 from 55% in 2015, says David Wentworth, a principal learning analyst for the research and advisory firm.

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Some bosses readily explain to subordinates how and when they want to communicate. Others do better when offered multiple-choice questions, says Julie Kantor, a New York City executive coach. How often do you want updates: daily, weekly or only when I have something to report? Do you prefer phone, instant messaging, email or face-to-face?

If you must bring the boss a problem, offer at least one potential solution. And respect the boss’s time. Mario Gabriele served as chief of staff for And Co, a New York City provider of software for freelancers that was recently acquired by Fiverr, a freelance marketplace. Rather than running to his bosses whenever he had a question, he waited until he could say, “I have these 10 things that we can cross off in 10 minutes,” Mr. Gabriele says. His boss, Leif Abraham, says Mr. Gabriele’s approach enabled him to give more thoughtful answers, and served as a useful update on his work.

A common pitfall is taking a boss’s behavior personally as a sign that “this person is just trying to annoy me,” says Robert Tanner, a Lacey, Wash., leadership and business consultant. Many tensions have a less sinister explanation, based on differences in how people see things and make decisions, he says.

Short of giving your boss a personality test, it’s possible to understand a manager’s style by reading such books as “Please Understand Me,” a classic on personality types, and watching how your boss communicates and makes decisions, Mr. Tanner says. Is she quick to act, or more thoughtful and reflective? Does he focus on facts, or intuitive signals or insights?

One financial-services executive was at odds with his subordinates until he and they understood they had different decision-making styles, says Mr. Tanner, who coached both the executive and his team. The executive tended to make decisions intuitively and change his mind a lot. Employees who preferred a more fact-based approach concluded he was indecisive and cared only about himself. Understanding their conflicting styles helped employees stop taking the executive’s behavior personally and frame their complaints in a way that mattered to him—by explaining that he was hurting the department’s reputation.

Employees also need to understand the boss’s priorities, Dr. Kantor says. What seems like a small error to an employee might look like a systemic failure to a boss with a broader realm to manage, she says. This includes being mindful of how your performance affects your boss’s success.

Bill Sandbrook, chief executive officer of U.S. Concrete in Euless, Texas, says he once gave a manager a big promotion, knowing he’d need mentoring to handle the increased responsibility. Mr. Sandbrook had a stake in the manager’s success, and he was disappointed when the man refused to accept coaching or even answer questions. “The power had gone to his head” and he soon left the company, Mr. Sandbrook says. “The new manager can’t be too proud to show when he doesn’t know something, and he has to totally swallow his ego and listen.”

It pays to figure out what motivates your boss, Dr. Kantor says. Does he or she need to look important? Find ways to help her talk about her successes, Dr. Kantor says. Does he want to be in control? Give him lots of information about what you’re doing and offer choices about next steps so he can make the decision.

It also pays to learn the unwritten rules of your workplace: How are disagreements handled here? When is it OK to interrupt a meeting?

Laura Williams’s boss, Rick Miller, chief executive of Sensible Financial Planning, a Waltham, Mass., investment-advisory firm, sometimes gets tied up in meetings or calls and fails to show up on time for appointments she has scheduled with him. Ms. Williams, an associate financial adviser, knows it’s OK to knock on Mr. Miller’s door when he’s more than five minutes late. She also knows the exceptions to the rule—such as avoiding interruptions when he’s on a client call, which he blocks out in red on his calendar.

“Getting to know how your boss prefers to deal with things is important,” Ms. Williams says. Mr. Miller, who includes “managing up” as a target ability on employees’ performance reviews, gives Ms. Williams high marks.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR BOSS

  • Figure out and adapt to your bosses’ communication styles by watching them interact with others.
  • Seek agreement on how and when to update your boss on your work.
  • Ask yourself whether tensions with the boss may be a problem of clashing styles rather than more fundamental conflicts.
  • Avoid escalating problems to the boss too quickly, before you’ve tried solving them yourself.
  • When you bring the boss a problem, also bring at least one potential solution.
  • If you must disagree with your boss, do it privately, in a calm voice during a low-stress time.
  • Never bad-mouth your bosses behind their backs.
  • Never embarrass your boss in front of others.
  • Avoid overload by asking your boss for help prioritizing projects, rather than saying no.

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

WSJ.com | April 11, 2018 | Sue Shellenbarger 

 

#Leadership : Michelin finds Newest #Recruits in High School… Company Launches First-of-its-Kind #ApprenticeProgram

Five young men signed on the dotted line last Friday, marking the start of their careers with Michelin.

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Michelin North America Chairman and President Scott Clark, center, signs Jacob Tucker’s papers for an apprenticeship program. Johnathan Harper, 16, left, is home-schooled and started his apprenticeship a month ago.

They ranged in age from 15 to 17, and they are the first class of high-school apprentices to work at a Michelin plant in North America. Michelin North America Chairman and President Scott Clark, on the job since Jan. 1, welcomed the teenagers personally during a ceremony at the Enoree Career Center just north of Greenville.

“This apprenticeship program is the first of its kind,” Clark said. “This is the first one, so the goal is to do this in other facilities like this all around the state where we have manufacturing plants. We could double, triple it.”

Mauldin High 10th-grader Iquavious Lewis, 15, said he’s known since the fall that he would be in the first class of Michelin’s Youth Apprentice program. He and fellow mechatronics students at Golden Strip Career Center had to take an aptitude test to qualify. Lewis has made all A’s in mechatronics.

Lewis said he’s not scared: “I’m excited!”

Clark and Wilton Crawford, Michelin’s plant manager at the US1 plant in Greenville, stressed the company’s need to reseed the aging workforce — and the difficulty of doing that during a period of full employment. All five high schoolers will be working at Crawford’s plant.

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The unemployment rate in South Carolina dipped below 4 percent at the close of 2017. Workforce participation rates have continued to decline, meanwhile, because of an aging shift in the state’s demographics, experts say.

“We have to be very creative and very aggressive,” Clark said.

In addition to its new apprenticeship program for high-schoolers and its longstanding Tech Scholars program, which currently trains, and bankrolls the education of, about 60 college-level apprentices, Michelin has started recruiting adult workers from other industries, such as hospitality. Clark also described a pilot program in Columbia for ex-offenders.

“We are working with a company that is beginning to retrain people who have had some issues with the law, let’s say, but are reformed,” Clark said, “and we are giving them an opportunity to explore careers as well.”

Michelin has about 9,000 employees across South Carolina — the vast majority of whom are direct hires for the French tire maker. Clark said his company is the largest manufacturing employer in the state. (BMW’s 10,000-plus workforce includes many contract workers, especially in its warehousing operations.) The high-school apprentice program takes teens who are midway through their junior year and has them continue to work at the plant through the end of their senior year. Ideally, Clark said, students will go on to enroll in a mechatronics or related program at an area technical college, where they can take advantage of the free tuition and expenses offered through Michelin’s Tech Scholars program.

He said he foresees doubling the Tech Scholars program in coming years.

“These students, if they get through this apprenticeship program with Michelin, and then can go to a two-year technical school, they can come out of school making $54,000, $55,000 a year,” Clark said.

The high school program is carried out under a provision that allows workers under the age of 18 to enter a plant so long as they are simultaneously enrolled in an academic program linked to the work.

Lynn Tuten, the work-based learning coordinator for Golden Strip Career Center, said she will be in touch with the boys regularly to make sure they are getting everything they need and are showing up to work on time, among other things. All five teens are enrolled in a mechatronics course at Golden Strip.

“This is real-world stuff,” Tuten said. “They can see if it’s something they really want to do.”

Four of the five teens are Mauldin High School students, and the fifth — Johnathan Harper — is home-schooled. Two of the young men started working at Michelin part time about a month ago — earning $10 an hour for nine hours a week — and the others will start this summer, working full-time hours until school starts again in August.

“We build and repair parts in the factory; we get them working and back on the line,” Harper said.

His mother, Terri Harper, has homeschooled her son all his life and said he might very well enroll at Greenville Tech and eventually get a four-year engineering degree.

“I think it’s great that Michelin is working with the career center to give these kids a jumping off point. They work so hard,” Harper said, adding that she liked the idea of her son landing on his feet career-wise.

“The salary does matter because somebody has to take care of his mama someday.”

US1’s Crawford said that during his time as a site leader in the United King dom, he met many workers who had been with Michelin for more than 40 years — starting out as 16-year-old apprentices who worked their way up through manufacturing. These included two plant managers and a man who is now the head of the technical team for North America.

“He’s 64, and he’s got 48 years with the company,” Crawford said, pointing to the high school students seated next to him, “and he stood right where you are many years ago. It’s phenomenal to see that.”

Michelin North America is an $11 billion company with plants across the U.S. and in Canada and Mexico. Some of the biggest ones are in the Upstate: US1 at Donaldson, which makes car tires, opened in 1975, and Anderson County has plants making rubber and earthmoving-equipment tires.

Author: Anna B. Mitchell | Greenville News USA TODAY NETWORK – SOUTH CAROLINA | March 13, 2018

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#Leadership : Take These Steps To Boost Morale After #Layoffs …The #Employees who Remain After a Round of Layoffs will Likely have High #Anxiety. Here’s How to Lessen the Impact & Get Everyone Back on Track.

You might think that employees who survive layoffs feel lucky or valued, but a study by outplacement provider RiseSmart finds that surviving team members have unique challenges that can hurt their productivity, and 43% of companies are not prepared for the impact.

“Most of the focus is on the employees who are leaving, and that’s understandable,” says Dan Davenport, president and general manager of RiseSmart. “Not enough attention is paid to the impact on the surviving employees by companies.”

Anxiety and a drop in morale are commonly felt, says Davenport. “Employees wonder what’s going to happen next,” he says. “They’re also worried about their former coworkers who are leaving the organization, wondering if they’ll land on their feet. This can lead to a loss of productivity.”

Companies need get in front of the potential impact by putting a plan in place, says Davenport. “You can’t eliminate the impact on productivity and morale when you have a layoff, but you can do a lot of things to minimize impact,” he says.

HAVE A GOOD COMMUNICATION PLAN

Start by sharing as much information about the layoff with the survivors as possible. Most managers aren’t adept at delivering this kind of information, so provide training when necessary, says Davenport. “They need to understand how to address the team,” he says. “Prepare them with messaging and notification training to make sure the process is a smooth one and doesn’t lead to legal liability.”

Be transparent about what is happening, how many people are affected, and how positions were selected, Davenport continues. “Reducing headcount is a business decision,” he says. “Explain how laid-off employees are being cared for, and be transparent about the future. Talk about what to expect when going through stages of transition and how work will be distributed, and discuss the possibility of future layoffs.”

Not delivering the right message or even ignoring it altogether can have a sizeable impact on business; 70% experience a negative impact on future talent acquisition efforts, and 81% report a negative impact on brand, according to the study.

 

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HELP EMPLOYEES DEVELOP RESILIENCY

Another tactic that can help surviving employees move forward is offering lessons in resiliency, suggests Davenport. Consider holding mindfulness training in the office, such as meditation or journaling classes. Learning how to “build in a pause” when reacting to situations will help employees learn how to process information and take out emotion before they react. Engaging in gratitude exercises, such as by journaling, can also increase positive emotions and reduce stress.

“It’s important to help employees keep their focus on the future,” says Davenport.

HOLD ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE MORALE

Finally, arrange events where employees can get together and share feelings, suggests Davenport. “Employees need to feel safe and comfortable in sharing,” he says. “It takes three months or longer for your surviving team to return to productivity. If you don’t do anything, it can take longer.”

Share your vision of the company’s future and connect each individual employee to the goals you have set, Davenport says. Offer career development, provide coaching, and encourage mentorship programs.

“Employers need to understand that employees who remain will experience the same stages of grief and loss as the employees who were let go,” says Davenport.

FastCompany.com | February 21, 2018 | BY STEPHANIE VOZZA 2 MINUTE READ

#Leadership : Why Everyone’s Salary Should Be Revealed…Transparency in Pay Provides Employees with Reassurance that They are Being Treated Fairly in Relation to Their Peers.

That’s because employees at companies that didn’t practice transparency just assumed that their coworkers were making more money.

“It turns out that pay transparency—sharing salaries openly across a company—makes for a better workplace for both the employee and for the organization,” David Burkus, author of Under New Management: How Leading Organizations Are Upending Business as Usual, said in his TED Talkearlier this year. “When people don’t know how their pay compares to their peers’, they’re more likely to feel underpaid and maybe even discriminated against. Do you want to work at a place that tolerates the idea that you feel underpaid or discriminated against?”

Keeping salaries secret does exactly that. Since companies are often transparent about expenses like health care and travel that have skyrocketed over the past few years, “It makes sense to pivot from the old way of keeping pay grades under a veil of secrecy to a more transparent way by sharing the compensation information on all employees based on the different roles,” says Tim Tolan, CEO and managing partner of the executive search firm The Tolan Group.

In fact, being open about what you pay employees can have benefits that exceed the savings companies can have by negotiating with each individual employee.

IT BOOSTS EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION

“Transparency in pay provides employees with reassurance that they are being treated fairly in relation to their peers,” says Jeanne C. Meister, coauthor of The Future Workplace Experience: 10 Rules for Mastering Disruption in Recruiting and Engaging Employees. “They may still leave, but pay may not be part of the equation.”

Workers who are paid less than the market rate for their jobs were more satisfied if their employer was transparent about their pay, according to PayScale. And if someone sat down and openly discussed the reason behind the compensation, their job satisfaction rose from 40% to 82%.

 

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IT INCREASES EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

In a study from Cornell University and Tel Aviv University, researchers found that keeping salaries secret is associated with decreased employee performance. In an experiment, students were paid a base salary for completing three rounds of a computer matching game. While participants played the game individually, they were assigned to a four-person work group. Half of the participants were informed about only their own performance and bonus pay, while the other half experienced pay transparency, being told what the other team members were being paid. The study found the group that had pay secrecy also had decreased performance in the task.

IT ENCOURAGES GROWTH AND RETENTION

Pay transparency provides an incentive for employees to climb the ladder, says Burkus. “The research shows that when people know how they’re being paid and how that compares to their peers, then they’re more likely to work to move up it,” he said in an interview with Harvard Business Review. “And even those high performers are more likely to work hard to stay high performers in order to demonstrate why they bring that much value to the organization.”

IT HELPS FIGHT GENDER BIAS

Transparency requires employers to justify their decisions, and makes it less likely that these decisions will be based on bias or discrimination, says Kate Mueting, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Sanford Heisler, LLP.

“For example, D.C. has one of the lowest gender pay gaps in the country (11%), and this is largely attributable to the fact that the federal government has lock-step, transparent compensation,” she says.

Earlier this year, Fast Company reported that President Obama had announced a proposal aimed at closing the gender wage gap by requiring companies with 100 or more employees to report their staff’s pay broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This information would be an update to the EEOC tool that currently collects wage data from businesses and isn’t scheduled to start until September 2017.

BUT THERE COULD BE DRAWBACKS

“In reality, salaries remain a sensitive topic,” says Lauren Griffin, senior vice president for Adecco Staffing. “Before openly speaking about your income with peers, it’s important to consider whether those conversations would offer any benefit.”

For example, sales environments commonly share performance rankings, which hint toward a person’s paycheck. “In that situation, openly discussing pay could encourage teams to share best practices and drive them to get better,” she says. “In addition, it could help retain less tenured employees who want to know what to expect as they move up within an organization.”

While there may be justifiable reasons why one employee commands a higher salary, such as increased responsibilities or experience, pay discussions can cause team members who don’t have access to the big picture to become disgruntled and feel undervalued, says Griffin.

“Once you open this door, you can’t close it,” she says. “Employees who perceive that their salary isn’t fair when compared to a peer’s can spread those frustrations to other colleagues and teams, ultimately leading to poor engagement, turnover, and decreased productivity.”

HOW TO SHARE THE NUMBERS

Potential drawbacks make the way that you share the information important. Choosing a method that fits your company culture can help. For example, Buffer puts all of its salaries on its website for anyone to see. SumAll shares numbers within the company, and Whole Foods employees can make an appointment to view the company’s “wage report.”

Other companies post pay rates for certain positions and let employees figure out individual salaries based on the hierarchy or their organizational chart. Some companies share their formula for calculating pay rates, while others provide the median salary for key roles and make this transparent both inside the company as well as on the company’s Glassdoor page.

“Some executives are concerned about the privacy issues,” says Tolan. “A way around sharing exact amounts would be to use salary bands and provide ranges for each role—and while you would still know which band a coworker is in, you probably would have to guess at their actual salary.”

Sunlight makes it impossible to hide things, said Berkus in the HBR interview. “And so in a transparent culture, regardless of how you do it, you tend to find people who have a higher sense of the organization being fair,” he says. “You tend to see increases in collaboration and all sorts of other positive effects.”

 

#Leadership : Why My Company Started Helping Our Best Employees Quit…This Company Sits Down with Every Employee who’s Stayed for Three Years to Plan their Career Options—within the Firm and Without.

The reason, Finkelstein says, is simple: It’s difficult to acquire and hold onto outsize talent, but far better to house it within your organization for a short time than not at all. Rather than fight turnover, companies may do better to embrace it—and instead focus on improving the quality of the people who cycle through its doors, as opposed to reducing the quantity of those who do.

THE CASE FOR BUILDING AN EXIT DOOR AND OPENING IT WIDE

This a concept my own company is taking to heart. After all, more money and bigger titles can only go so far, particularly for talented employees who aren’t primarily motivated by extrinsic incentives like those. Sometimes the next level up simply doesn’t match an employee’s aspirations, skills, or career timetable.

So the best thing for an employer to do is to help them find another great opportunity, instead of pouring time and resources into trying (and failing) to get them to stay. The companies that succeed will build reputations for launching leaders’ careers, which can help them attract the next wave of promising talent.

 

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That’s the theory, anyway, that recently led us to formalize the exit route as a key part of our staffing plan. The way it works is this: Throughout their tenures, we ask our employees to consider (and reconsider) their desired career goals for the next five to 10 years. We discuss possible paths to help them achieve those goals, and the skills and experiences they’ll need to acquire along the way.

Because we hire many younger professionals with limited work experience, we often have to invest heavily in developing their skills and expertise. Generally speaking, we hope that all high performers will stay with us for at least three years, both so our investment will pay off and so they’ll have time to thoughtfully consider what they want next in their careers. After that period, though, we work with them on advancement opportunities—inside the company and out.

To do that, we work with our employees to define three potential paths: two within the firm and one beyond it. If they choose the exit route, we make introductions to potential employers, serve as references, write LinkedIn recommendations, and even coach employees through the search process. Sure, these are resources we could be putting into retention efforts instead, but the preliminary results suggest we’re doing the right thing.

WHAT COMPANIES GAIN BY HELPING EMPLOYEES MOVE ON

Here are a few of the benefits we’ve already begun to see.

Increased employee engagement and retention. Being able to openly discuss career routes is a great relief for many employees, and this openness contributes to a supportive, transparent culture. The program also encourages managers to think more like career coaches than micromanagers preoccupied by short-term needs. Managers learn how to engage with team members in thoughtful, authentic ways, building trust and loyalty and improving overall employee engagement.

And since managers actually understand their employees’ career objectives, we’re better equipped to assign meatier projects—even if they’re not directly tied to employees’ roles—to help them build their desired skills. This can help increase the odds that our most talented employees stick around longer, because they feel valued and see tangible advantages to doing so.

More predictable succession planning and smoother transitions. When exit paths are discussed forthrightly, managers can gain more time to plan employees’ departures. There’s plenty of runway to document all their projects and processes. There’s also more time to think carefully about contact changes for customers and partners, making the handover smoother and more thoughtfully carried out.

Outgoing employees benefit as well, getting to leave the company on a high note, feeling celebrated, appreciated, and grateful to the company for helping them land their next big role. Nobody’s blindsided or left feeling bitter.

Employer branding and recruiting benefits. In the age of Glassdoor, Yelp, and Quora, it’s more important than ever that employees leave feeling like their time with an employer was well spent. Companies that have built reputations not just for hiring well but for supporting talented people can get a major recruiting boost. Former employees are potentially some of your most powerful assets—people you can leverage for referrals or even consider rehiring later in their careers.

It’s far from intuitive for most companies to invest heavily in recruiting and professional development, only to actively facilitate employees’ departures. But after years of thoughtfully considering our employees’ needs as well as our own, we’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes the best path forward is out.

 

FastCompany.com |  MATHIDLE PRIBULA |  10.25.16 5:00 AM

#Leadership : 8 Bad Mistakes That Make Good Employees Leave…Managers Tend to Blame their Turnover Problems on Everything Under the Sun while Ignoring the Crux of the Matter: People Don’t Leave Jobs; They Leave Managers.

It’s tough to hold on to good employees, but it shouldn’t be. Most of the mistakes that companies make are easily avoided. When you do make mistakes, your best employees are the first to go, because they have the most options.Free- Bubble on the Bubble

If you can’t keep your best employees engaged, you can’t keep your best employees. While this should be common sense, it isn’t common enough. A survey by CEB found that one-third of star employees feel disengaged from their employer and are already looking for a new job.

When you lose good employees, they don’t disengage all at once. Instead, their interest in their jobs slowly dissipates. Michael Kibler, who has spent much of his career studying this phenomenon, refers to it as brownout. Like dying stars, star employees slowly lose their fire for their jobs.

“Brownout is different from burnout because workers afflicted by it are not in obvious crisis,”Kibler said. “They seem to be performing fine: putting in massive hours, grinding out work while contributing to teams, and saying all the right things in meetings. However, they are operating in a silent state of continual overwhelm, and the predictable consequence is disengagement.”

In order to prevent brownout and to retain top talent, companies and managers must understand what they’re doing that contributes to this slow fade. The following practices are the worst offenders, and they must be abolished if you’re going to hang on to good employees.

1. They make a lot of stupid rules.

Companies need to have rules—that’s a given—but they don’t have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order. Whether it’s an overzealous attendance policy or taking employees’ frequent flier miles, even a couple of unnecessary rules can drive people crazy. When good employees feel like big brother is watching, they’ll find someplace else to work.

 

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2. They treat everyone equally.

While this tactic works with school children, the workplace ought to function differently. Treating everyone equally shows your top performers that no matter how high they perform (and, typically, top performers are work horses), they will be treated the same as the bozo who does nothing more than punch the clock.

3. They tolerate poor performance.

It’s said that in jazz bands, the band is only as good as the worst player; no matter how great some members may be, everyone hears the worst player. The same goes for a company. When you permit weak links to exist without consequence, they drag everyone else down, especially your top performers.

4. They don’t recognize accomplishments.

It’s easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially with top performers who are intrinsically motivated. Everyone likes kudos, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. Rewarding individual accomplishments shows that you’re paying attention. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it’s a raise; for others, it’s public recognition) and then to reward them for a job well done. With top performers, this will happen often if you’re doing it right.

5. They don’t care about people.

More than half the people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain that their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate their employees’ successes, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge them, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates. It’s impossible to work for someone for eight-plus hours a day when they aren’t personally involved and don’t care about anything other than your output.

6. They don’t show people the big picture.

It may seem efficient to simply send employees assignments and move on, but leaving out the big picture is a deal breaker for star performers. Star performers shoulder heavier loads because they genuinely care about their work, so their work must have a purpose. When they don’t know what that is, they feel alienated and aimless. When they aren’t given a purpose, they find one elsewhere.

7. They don’t let people pursue their passions.

Google mandates that employees spend at least 20% of their time doing “what they believe will benefit Google most.” While these passion projects make major contributions to marquis Google products, such as Gmail and AdSense, their biggest impact is in creating highly engaged Googlers. Talented employees are passionate. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions improves their productivity and job satisfaction, but many managers want people to work within a little box. These managers fear that productivity will decline if they let people expand their focus and pursue their passions. This fear is unfounded. Studies have shown that people who are able to pursue their passions at work experience flow, a euphoric state of mind that is five times more productive than the norm.

8. They don’t make things fun.

If people aren’t having fun at work, then you’re doing it wrong. People don’t give their all if they aren’t having fun, and fun is a major protector against brownout. The best companies to work for know the importance of letting employees loosen up a little. Google, for example, does just about everything it can to make work fun—free meals, bowling allies, and fitness classes, to name a few. The idea is simple: if work is fun, you’ll not only perform better, but you’ll stick around for longer hours and an even longer career.

Bringing It All Together

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

What other mistakes cause great employees to leave? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Travis co-wrote the bestselling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-foundedTalentSmart.

Forbes.com | September 7, 2016 | Travis Bradberry 

#Leadership : How to Create a Cohesive Company Culture…Most Importantly, you Need to Live & Die by these Values if you Expect Them to be More Than just Lip Service & Words on a Wall.

I’ve spent the past decade building a company that is now the largest patient-physician platform in the U.S., and I believe one of the reasons why it was so successful was because of the company culture we put in place from the day the company was founded. This is the same reason I laid out company culture first when founding my most recent company, iBeat.

Free- Stones stacked on each other

When starting a company, you have the opportunity to set it apart by building a winning and cohesive culture. Culture is crucial, and it can make or break a company. In my many years of growing startups, I’ve learned that building a cohesive culture ultimately rests on two major foundations — a company’s mission and its core values.

First and foremost, a company must have a compelling and inspirational mission. Before you even start your company, you should think long and hard about why you’re doing it. If it’s only to make money, I recommend you go back to the drawing board. Your mission should cover both how you are of service to others, as well as what is so compelling and unique about what the team is doing that would make you want to still be doing it ten years from now.

Stating the mission.
When crafting your mission statement, aim to be energizing, aspirational, and memorable. Don’t get bogged down with fluff and buzz words that are vague and meaningless. Get to the point. If your employees can’t relate to it, then your mission statement won’t mean much to your customers either. Also, make it concise. If you can’t say it in a sentence or two, you haven’t nailed it.

At iBeat, our mission statement is, “Empowering people with the freedom to be fearless, explore, and live longer lives.” Notice it’s not about us. It’s about how we aim to do something greater — empower people.

An exceptional mission statement captures your brand and persona. It helps you stand apart from competitors and simplifies your strategic direction, but some mission statements — the truly great ones — surprise, inspire and transform. They provide purpose. They guide and help unify organizations, and they go hand-in-hand with company culture. Take the time and do this right, and it will pay dividends over the duration.

Be sure to ingrain this mission into your team from day one. At Practice Fusion, learning the mission was not only part of new hire training, but one Friday a month, we gather all new team members and test them on our mission in front of the entire company — they’re usually prepared!

 

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Identifying core values.
Next, an exceptional company culture rests on a strong set of core values. A company’s core values are the attributes you want instilled in your team, as well as rules and guidelines covering everything from how the team treats and interacts with one another to how customers are treated. If implemented correctly, you should be able to hire and fire based on these values.

Core values form a solid bedrock for any organization and really matter to the individuals. Think about your company personality and how it will play into your core values. Are you innovative and witty or quirky and creative? Do you foster a work hard, play hard mentality? If so, create that balance of work and play. Are you a true collaborator? Then advance that behavior in your company and promote the people who get it.

iBeat has six simple and straightforward core values. They are:

We execute without excuses.
We are radically honest.
We put community first.
We are pros.
We are operationally ruthless.
We work to live, not live to work.
These values help us immensely when hiring but also help keep us grounded. We aim to hire intellectual athletes who want more than just a job and a salary. We hire individuals who were excited to be part of new technology that is helping empower people to live longer, fuller lives.

Delivering the message.
Once values are defined, they have to be explained and socialized. I suggest starting with a company-wide, all-hands meeting devoted to rolling out and discussing the values.

Also, bear in mind, values also need to be constantly reinforced. We do this in multiple ways.

For example, one of the first things you see when you arrive in our office is a large wall with the company mission and values emblazoned on it. We also start every new employee training with the values, and we make sure they are aware and aligned with our vision, mission, strategy and values. Additionally, we recognize employees every month for their exemplification of the values. As you scale, you can implement tools like Bonusly and gamify recognition based on these core values.

Taking the time to define a strong company mission and core values breathes life into your employees. It’s the first step in assuring your company culture thrives and survives for the duration. If done correctly, it will be the reason people join your company, and if done incorrectly, it will definitely be the reason most people leave.

Lastly, and most importantly, you need to live and die by these values if you expect them to be more than just lip service and words on a wall. If ‘integrity with no compromise’ is one of your core values, but you knowingly allow people to stay on your team that lie, cheat, or steal, then no one will take your values seriously, and the organization will be compromised.

In contrast, if you see behavior that violates your core values, and you immediately act to remove that person from your team, the rest of the team will respect that decision, as you are acting to ensure the company value system is held high.

We’re searching for top company cultures to be featured on our annual list. Think your company has what it takes? Apply Now »

 

Entrepreneur.com | July 18, 2016 | Ryan Howard

#Leadership : LinkedIn’s HR Chief says the Best Managers Exhibit these 7 Behaviors… The Best Managers Exhibit All of the Behaviors they Demand of their Employees.

Microsoft may have recently announced that it is acquiring the professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, but LinkedIn will continue operating independently.

Free- Stones stacked on each other

Its management culture has been shaped by its founder and chairman Reid Hoffman, its CEO Jeff Weiner, and its head of HR, SVP of Global Talent Organization Pat Wadors.

Wadors spoke with Business Insider earlier this year, and she told us that there is a set of criteria that every manager at LinkedIn is judged on. They apply to any leader at any organization.

These are the behaviors the best managers at LinkedIn exhibit.

1. They support their employees’ professional development

In his 2014 book “The Alliance,” cowritten with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, Hoffman rethinks the relationship between managers and employees, explaining how employers can attract and retain the best employees through the formation of alliances where everyone wins.

Key to this approach is managers recognizing that the days of lifetime employment are long over, and that their employees won’t stay with them forever. At LinkedIn, Wadors said, the best managers push their employees to constantly grow and develop with new challenges and learning opportunities.

 

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2. They continually review performance

Rather than waiting for the annual review to reveal insights into an employee’s performance, managers constantly keep a dialogue open with their team members.

“Reviews should not come with any surprises,” Wadors said. “They should be actually quite boring.”

3. They clearly set expectations

The best managers ensure that their employees know what is expected of them, and communicate them through discussions rather than a list of demands.

4. They foster an entrepreneur’s mentality

The best LinkedIn managers empower employees, telling them that they should always be thinking of new and better ways of doing things.

5. They encourage measured risk-taking

Wadors said that all employees should be able to say, “I have the autonomy to use my own judgment in getting the job done, within a framework. I’m encouraged to take intelligent risks for the better of LinkedIn and learn from my mistakes.”

LinkedIn’s culture incorporates the Silicon Valley ethos of not being afraid of failure, in the sense that if an experiment fails, it should be evaluated for lessons that can be immediately acted on, without stopping to mourn the loss.

6. They explain the company’s direction

The best LinkedIn managers are transparent, communicating the direction of the company to their team and explaining how they fit into its overall mission.

7. They walk the talk

And finally, the best managers exhibit all of the behaviors they demand of their employees.

Wadors said that employees have the best possible role model with their CEO Jeff Weiner, who is a strong and supportive presence within LinkedIn.

6. They explain the company’s direction

The best LinkedIn managers are transparent, communicating the direction of the company to their team and explaining how they fit into its overall mission.

7. They walk the talk

And finally, the best managers exhibit all of the behaviors they demand of their employees.

Wadors said that employees have the best possible role model with their CEO Jeff Weiner, who is a strong and supportive presence within LinkedIn.

 

Businessinsider.com | June 18, 2016 |

 

#Leadership : Are You Hurting Your Career With Corporate Jargon?…When we have to Dedicate Time & Energy towards Figuring out What someone is actually Talking About, we(your Team) is Inherently taking Away Time & Energy we Could be Putting Towards our Work.

Mindshare? Sticky wicket? Straw man? Power alley? Can you improve your credibility and achieve better results simply by eliminating corporate jargon from your vocabulary?

Elegant business partners holding blank papers on green background

James Sudakow had declared war on the use of stupid corporate lingo. In his new book, Picking the Low Hanging Fruit…and Other Stupid Stuff We Say in the Corporate World, Sudakow not only advocates for speaking in plain English for his own sanity but articulates compelling reasons why doing so can have positive impacts on the work you do, the relationships you form, and even counterintuitively can help you be perceived as more credible.

Having held leadership roles in multi-billion dollar global technology companies and now serving as the Principal of CH Consulting–a boutique organizational transformation and talent management consulting practice–James is no stranger to the perils of swimming through murky jargon and the unintended consequences of its overuse.

If you are a leader of people, ask your teams for help monitoring your corporate jargon violations. It will likely be met with enthusiasm and move you one step further on the path of relatability. Corporate jargon bingo, anyone?

Picking the Low Hanging Fruit is a humorous glossary where we find strange but surprisingly common business expressions from burning platforms and paradigm shifts, to tissue rejection and open kimonos. Sudakow defines these terms and takes a witty jab at the corporate culture by calling out exactly what these terms do not mean, and also sites real examples from his own experiences that show the consequences of overusing these expressions.

People might not understand as much of what you are saying as you think

Most of us move so quickly in the corporate world that we might not recognize that the number of employees who are scratching their heads and simply don’t understand these expressions is larger than we think. As a young consultant working for a Big 4 global consulting firm, Sudakow would find himself sitting quietly in a state of confusion but hesitant to mention that he was lost.

“We all figure it out sooner or later. But why put ourselves through that?” Sudakow states. “Figuring out how to do the work amidst corporate politics and culture is hard enough without throwing a language barrier into the gauntlet.”

When we have to dedicate time and energy towards figuring out what someone is actually talking about, we are inherently taking away time and energy we could be putting towards our work.

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Relatability and Credibility–Corporate jargon doesn’t help

It doesn’t stop with simply not being understood. Credibility is at stake. In some ways, the credibility of the person using the terms can be damaged because his or her language feels inauthentic and doesn’t connect or resonate with people—even if the speaker actually has something very valuable to say.

Why is this so important? More and more have been written recently about the importance for leaders, in particular, to be relatable to their people–this relatability serving as a way to build common ground with the very teams they are asking a lot of. Many factors contribute to how successfully anyone can be in their goal of becoming a relatable leader or colleague, but overusing corporate jargon doesn’t establish anyone as “the common person.” It’s much more powerful to speak in plain English.

So what can we do about it?

Think about what you might say if you were talking to friends outside of work where corporate jargon simply wouldn’t fit. When preparing for formal presentations to groups, think about where you might slip into a corporate jargon violation and think about how you might replace it with a normal word.

 If you are a leader of people, ask your teams for help monitoring your corporate jargon violations. It will likely be met with enthusiasm and move you one step further on the path of relatability. Corporate jargon bingo, anyone? At the very least, be a good corporate citizen and help someone who might be a corporate jargon abuser by simply pulling him or her aside and constructively mentioning that the message might have resonated better in plain English.

For many of us, using corporate jargon has simply become a habit resulting from being immersed in the corporate world. In Picking the Low Hanging Fruit…and Other Stupid Stuff We Say in the Corporate World, Sudakow helps us understand in a fun and lighthearted way that the words we choose are important and that we can all make ourselves better understood by staying away from jargon.

Forbes.com | June 17, 2016 |  Kevin Kruse

#Leadership : Employee Retention- When Achieving True Success Means Letting Go… It Seems Counterintuitive to Give your Employees Every Opportunity to Leave. But by Helping your Team stay Engaged in their Role, Aligned in their Personal & Professional Goals, & allowing Them to Leave if it Isn’t a Good Fit, you’ll Ensure that Those who Choose to Stay Will be Committed to Doing their Best Work for You, for a Long Time to Come.

The war for talent. The age-old battle waged by HR teams across the country, each vying to secure and retain the best people to help them achieve organizational success. The eternal effort to create systems, process, and benefits to help keep them once you’ve recruited them.

Free- Blowing a DandiLion

At the epicenter of the war for talent resides the tech industry, where many talented engineers and other highly-skilled workers have no problem jumping to another employer for a minor bump in pay or benefits. The result? Companies are forever trying to outshine each other with baubles, beer kegs and nap pods to try to entice this demographic to join them.

What this approach fails to do is inspire loyalty. Despite all the money that these companies pour into perks, at the end of the day, it’s just job hopping.

A Better Way to Retain Talent

What if, rather than doing everything possible to keep people no matter what, you took an alternative approach? That’s exactly what Rami Essaid, co-founder and CEO of Distil Networks, has done.

“It’s almost a fool’s errand to try to hold onto people,” Essaid suggests. “Why work to retain people when the only solution becomes offering more outrageous benefits? It’s an unsustainable cycle where people end up leaving anyway. Why not rethink the way work is designed where we acknowledge people are going to move around over the course of their careers?”

And Essaid has some first-hand experience with this phenomenon. His Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity firm helps customers identify and block malicious website traffic while letting legitimate users do what they need to do. Distil is able to find the “bots” that attack websites and police them before they can do damage to your brand.

The success of the company over the last five years has resulted in the rapid expansion of his team, now 150 strong. Here are some of Rami’s secrets to success:

 Be intentional about the culture you are creating from the start.Rami started Distil Networks with a small group of longtime friends and many of their initial hires included additional friends from their social circles. “This had the potential to create a dynamic of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ based on whether or not you were a personal friend or not, so we made a very intentional choice that we were going to build a company where everyone was treated with a kinship and in a transparent and honest way,” Essaid explained.

The founders of Distil took care to create a fundamental way of working together that was deeply rooted in the values that they shared as a result of this friendship. And by extending those values out to the team as they grew, they were able to keep the same feeling and way of operating over the years.

Really commit to providing developmental opportunities. “We are constantly investing in our employees.” Essaid described how Distil Networks takes great care in providing robust and comprehensive development to its employees. Be it executive coaching support, job rotations to different functional areas, or training and development, this approach aligns with Essaid’s belief that the company can play a role in helping people achieve their own personal definition of success.

Helping people to grow professionally and personally plays a significant role in ensuring that Distil is the right place for them at that time in their journey. And, if it turns out that a great opportunity presents itself outside of Distil, trying to hold people back is not in anyone’s best interest.

 

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Structure career progression to include lateral mobility.Organizations that only afford career progression through promotion to levels of management dramatically limits opportunities. By finding ways to move people across the organization, Distil Networks has found another way to help provide people with the maximum opportunity for development.

Help people spread their wings and prosper, even if that means leaving your company. This is based on a few of the fundamental beliefs and assumptions that the leaders at Distil Networks hold to be true about the world of business. If people leave to pursue opportunities that present massive growth and development potential, keeping them would only hinder them. By letting them go forth and prosper, the company helps them succeed while also ensuring that the remaining workforce is in their place of most potential, doing their best work. If this is the case, Distil will become a much more attractive place to work—for the right people at the right time.

Essaid believes that helping people figure out their path and providing plenty of opportunities to achieve their vision of success is a much more productive, positive and effective cycle than trying to keep people who are not in their “zone” employed for as long as possible until they wind up leaving anyway.

Distil’s method doesn’t come without its challenges. Essaid is the first to admit that it can sometimes be difficult to get people to really think about, or articulate, where they want to go in life and in their careers. But this is not unique to Distil by any stretch.

It is incumbent upon leaders to both develop their own coaching skills and understand and acknowledge that some employees may have given little to no critical thought to their more long-term career goals. In these situations, engaging in frequent developmental coaching discussions can help guide employees in their progress so that they can be more intentional about setting and achieving their goals.

You can’t keep everyone around forever. As Richard Bach famously said, “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.” It seems counterintuitive to give your employees every opportunity to leave. But by helping your team stay engaged in their role, aligned in their personal and professional goals, and allowing them to leave if it isn’t a good fit, you’ll ensure that those who choose to stay will be committed to doing their best work for you, for a long time to come.

Chris Cancialosi, Ph.D., is a Partner and Founder at gothamCulture.

Forbes.com | May 31, 2016 | Chris Cancialosi