Posts

Internal Mobility, The Talent Marketplace, and Why to Embrace It

The world of work is rapidly evolving, and so are the career aspirations of the people. Compared to what we saw decades ago, people don’t want to embrace the same position for years till they retire. Instead, they are looking for opportunities to try new duties, get new skills, and stay flexible and agile.

On the flip side, today’s labor market is highly competitive, and there is a scarcity of skilled workforce. The PwC CEO survey reveals that a whopping 74 percent of CEOs are concerned about the shortage of critical skills and talent.

As a response to those challenges and today’s look at the future of work, internal mobility comes into play very actively.

The ‘secret sauce’ of internal mobility

The modern internal mobility concept evolved as the next logical step after the traditional career management model. The problem with career management was the idea of “waiting until someone is ready.” This resulted in losing top talent who took career opportunities elsewhere. Even if mobility was facilitated—or rather forced by management—it looked more like “assigning” new roles to employees.

Internal mobility today is agility built into the company’s talent processes. This model allows companies to get the most out of the talent and skills their employees obtain. Employees, in turn, get multiple opportunities like taking new and adjacent roles, upskilling, and keeping up with the company without having to leave it.

Internal talent evolution, however, wouldn’t be possible without technology. Today, the HR tech landscape contributes to internal mobility by providing what are called talent marketplace solutions. Simply put, a talent marketplace is a platform that connects employees with career opportunities inside the organization.

From recruiting to employee upskilling: What the talent marketplace brings in

The talent marketplace helps companies improve their employee engagement, development, and retention. Other challenges the talent marketplace helps address are:

  • Accelerating time-to-hire and optimizing hiring costs: Many organizations still pay big bucks to recruit people from outside. With a talent marketplace platform and insights into the company’s skills and talents, organizations can save recruiting expenses and instead connect their internal employees with the internal job openings.
  • Improving productivity of new hires: Employees who joined a new project or stepped into a new area of responsibilities within the company demonstrate better productivity. The reason follows. Internal talents have already spent some time with the company and can bring their valuable insights and skills to the new role. Besides, the opportunity to shift to a new role within a company contributes to employee motivation, engagement, and development.
  • Addressing skill gaps and future-proofing: The talent marketplace also helps the company coordinate all its available talents and see if they match current and future job roles. This way, companies can spot the skill gaps and align their employee development activities with their strategy and market trends.
  • Building a more agile workforce: In the long run, by embracing internal mobility powered by technology, companies can foster transition to a more agile workforce.

Talent insights as a fuel for internal mobility

One more component that makes internal mobility sufficient is data. The lion’s share of it, apparently, comes from within the company. Employee CVs, job profiles, training programs, and other assets containing information about skills are filling the internal mobility machine. Data about internal skills loaded into the talent marketplace platform transform into insights. Some of them allow companies to:

  • Basically, match employees to existing job openings, projects, and tasks
  • Personalize reskilling and upskilling journeys to help employees grow into new roles
  • Benchmarks future skills and future jobs

Another source of insights fueling internal mobility is the external market. Market trends that have run through the talent marketplace provide companies with insights into emerging roles, skill developments, and future business trends awaiting the particular industry.

With intelligence like this, companies can fill existing job openings with existing employees and take internal mobility to a whole strategic level. Specifically, they can make skills in their company transparent. Also, they can know what skills are still missing in their company, and plan strategies to address these deficits. They can plan, personalize, and predict the effort of employee development initiatives aimed to fill in the skill gaps.

Of course, embracing internal mobility doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, investment, data, and the right technology. But most importantly, it requires the right future-oriented mindset. American Express, IBM, Nestle, P&G, Unilever, and Google are just a few examples of brilliantly performed internal mobility strategies set on the future and employees’ development. Hopefully, more prominent companies will join these ranks.

Hiring for Soft Skills: Benefits and Tips

Today, hiring for soft skills is critical for your organization’s success. By looking beyond a job’s requisite hard skills, such as those needed for cloud computing or customer service, you can attract and retain top talent by focusing on soft skill recruitment.

According to a recent LinkedIn Global Talent Trends survey, 92 percent of hiring and talent professionals stated that it’s “increasingly important” to hire candidates with well-developed soft skills, especially in today’s changing workplace. In the same survey, 89 percent stated that bad hires “typically have poor soft skills.”

Unlike hard skills, however, soft skills are often trickier to assess during the hiring process. It’s hard to tell from a resume what soft skills someone possesses. And traditional interview questions don’t typically focus on these competencies.

In this article, we’ll explore some benefits of hiring for soft skills for organizations. And we will offer tips for switching to a soft skills-focused hiring process.

Benefits of Hiring for Soft Skills

Broaden and diversify your hiring pipeline

Increased workplace productivity, employee retention, and improved customer service experiences aren’t the only benefits of hiring for soft skills. Additionally, hiring for soft skills allows you to broaden and diversify your hiring pipeline since you’re shifting your focus away from credentials.

According to Harvard Business Review, companies with robust talent pipelines focus on “potential, not credentials.” For example, instead of focusing on technical skills, which have a shelf life of a couple of years, soft skills can last a lifetime. Notably, those employers all valued soft skills as much as they did hard ones.

Increase workplace productivity and retention

In a frequently cited study by Harvard University, University of Michigan, and Boston University, researchers found that soft skills training increases productivity and retention by 12 percent, overall netting a 256 percent return on investment. That would make any CFO happy.

Further, as the workplace quickly evolves, upskilling and reskilling are at the top of everyone’s to-do list. Training for soft skills is no different. In a 2019 Consumer Technology Association study, 66 percent of tech industry leaders stated that “professional development programs to hone soft skills” are important or very important to retaining qualified employees over the next five years.

Improve customer satisfaction and experience

Soft skills are also essential when delivering superior customer experiences. After all, most customer service skills are soft skills, such as active listening, communication, and empathy.

And, of course, when customers have better experiences, this leads to increased sales. Forrester recently reported that companies focused on customer experience increased revenue 1.4 times faster while increasing customer lifetime value 1.6 times more than companies without a customer experience focus.

Ease upskilling

Additionally, soft skills are more challenging to teach than hard skills. Why are soft skills harder to learn? For one, they are rooted in personality, unlike hard skills. For example, empathy may be rooted in one’s life experience.

Because soft skills are tied to an employee’s personality, improvement of these skills requires continual learning and self-reflection. It’s just not the same for hard skills like accounting. When you hire for soft skills first, you’ll find it easier to upskill employees. This is because you’ll be focused on easier-to-train hard skills.

Tips for Switching to a Soft Skills Focused Recruiting Process

Focus on your job descriptions

Review your current job descriptions. Do they focus on soft skills such as communication or teamwork? If not, it’s time to step back. Review the competencies needed for the job opening and refine your job ad accordingly. Refocusing your job requirements with soft skills in mind not only helps you find the best candidate but also strengthens your talent pipeline by broadening your pool of qualified applicants.

Structure your interviews

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “hard skills can be trained; soft skills can’t.” Because of this, it’s critical to structure your job interviews in a way to solicit insight into soft skills competencies. However, when refining your interviewing process, be sure to standardize your questions, helping to keep potential bias in check.

Screen for soft skills efficacy

Pre-hire assessment tools allow you to pinpoint soft skills at the top of the funnel. By incorporating these tools into your hiring process, you can hire up to 10 times more accurately. This saves money, time, and, yes, frustration, while creating a better recruitment experience for candidates.

With AI-driven tools such as Cangrade’s pre-hire assessments and job description decoder, you can start narrowing your talent pool quickly, making the right hire the first time. You can learn more about how these tools help you identify the specific soft skills required for success in your organization with this demo.

6 Ways Existing Tech Can Improve Employee Experience

Questions of “experiences” in business often focus on those of the customer–and not without cause. The ideal customer experience makes it easy for consumers to learn about your company and access its goods and services. The same logic applies to the employee experience as well. After all, you want to remove as many barriers as possible between your workers and the essential tasks they need to perform.

The smoother the employee experience is, the more efficient, effective, and satisfied your team will be in the long run. While every office will have different areas in need of improvement, here are six easy ways to improve the employee experience with tech you likely already have available to you.

Smoothing Out the Onboarding Process

The onboarding process is the first real taste of your business for employees, and that taste is rarely as sweet as many wish. This is due in no small part to the dearth of resources and personnel devoted to this critical process. According to a survey conducted by payroll services provider OnPay, over 60 percent of small businesses have their HR handled either by the head of the company or by an employee who also juggles other responsibilities. That means employee onboarding can–and too often, does–take a back seat to other duties.

Thankfully, the right tools can help facilitate onboarding without making any greater demands of your existing team members. Some automated HR platforms, like PulseHRM and Namely, can help set up direct deposits and deploy mechanisms to ensure compliance with company policy. Relying on automated onboarding processes will let you focus more of your energy on the more human elements of the process, such as acquainting them with office culture.

Streamlining Communication

Anyone who’s ever even set foot in an office knows just how critical good communication is to the work environment. But it’s not just the efficacy that’s at stake here. In a 2019 survey from employee experience platform Dynamic Signal, 80 percent of the American workforce reported feeling stressed because of ineffective company communication. With numbers that high, your business simply cannot afford to ignore whatever communication issues might exist.

Every business has a whole suite of communication tools at their disposal—Slack, Teams, email, Zoom, and so on. But the key here is not to let your employees get stuck in the cracks between them. Choose one or two platforms and stick to them. Hopping around between different platforms is a surefire way to put the burden of communication management on the workers who can handle it the least. Whatever software you opt for, opt for it all the way. In the end, simplicity and efficiency are your team’s best friends when it comes to communication.

Facilitating Collaboration

Collaboration may go hand-in-hand with communication. However, work teams must tackle these two soft skills on their own terms. Effective communication platforms are vital for keeping an office running smoothly, of course. Simultaneously, collaboration tools like ClickUp and Asana are an absolute must for ensuring projects are completed on time and with care. With remote work promising to have a permanent impact on the way companies operate, collaboration-enabling tech is a must for just about every business.

This far into the pandemic, this shouldn’t be new news to anyone. In fact, Salesforce reports that 86 percent of executives identify ineffective collaboration as a major cause of failure in business. So there should be no hesitation when it comes to embracing tech that makes collaboration easier. Of particular interest should be platforms that help facilitate collaborative equity. For instance, tracking the volume of tasks and amount of time each worker spends on a specific project ensures that no employee’s experience has to come at the expense of another’s.

Compliance

“Meeting with HR” has long been a specter of the modern office, a dreaded event no matter what the reason. Thankfully, service providers have flooded the market with technology that ensures worker compliance through digital means instead of requiring endless strings of face-to-face meetings. HR platforms like Oasis Advantage and ComplianceHR ensure that employee paperwork is always in good order. More are starting to crop up that make it easier for workers to report incidences of misbehavior without the potential snag of an in-person confrontation.

Overall, leveraging these digital platforms makes it much easier to guarantee a safe and satisfying employee experience for all.

Offering Flexibility

Flexibility may be the single most significant gap between the attitude of employees and employers in the world of work. According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, some 96 percent of US-based professionals want flexibility in their work. And yet, only 47 percent of workers actually have that flexibility. This is primarily due to the long-subscribed-to logic that an out-of-office worker is a less productive one–a myth that the COVID-19 crisis all but shattered overnight.

Modern project management software and digital communication tools like Monday.com and Slack allow employees to fully plug in no matter where they are. For some workers, this could mean greater travel opportunities. For others, it could allow for more time with loved ones at home. Regardless of why an employee desires flexibility, the right tech can help facilitate without a blip in productivity.

Dynamic Training Systems

Job descriptions constantly mutate as businesses themselves grow and evolve. A couple of decades ago, professional retraining was a long, laborious process involving months or years on a college campus. Today, there are more virtual courses and mini-degrees available than any one person could possibly manage. You can take a look at Lynda.com and Open Culture to get an idea of what’s available. The opportunities for succinct, targeted training are greater than ever before. This also means that workers can grow and expand their skill sets. And they can do so without significant interruptions to their careers, facilitating the employee experience in a big way.

Employee experience is the single greatest contributing factor in determining employee satisfaction. By working to make your workers’ lives easier, they’ll work to do the same for you. A happy employee is a productive one. And by ensuring the former, you can all but guarantee the latter.

So, with the sole focus of improving employee experience, leverage existing tech. Your team members, and your bottom line, will thank you.

Image by Victoriasky1

Changing Skill Sets for Changing Times: 5 Focus Areas for 2021

What skill sets are employers looking for most in 2021? How can they partner with employees to develop these sought-after skills?

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic – alongside countless social justice movements – shaped the world in a new way. Now, employers must reevaluate their businesses and see what new skills match the world’s ever-changing landscape.

For employers in 2021, what follows are five of the most in-demand skill sets for our changing times. By enabling growth in these areas, employers across all industries will help their employees and prospective teammates thrive in our post-pandemic workplace.

Skill Set 1: Remote Teamwork

The most obvious change to come from the pandemic is the new work-from-home dynamic. According to Pew Research Center, 71% of employees were working remotely as of December 2020. Given this new landscape, employees need resources — primarily, they need technology to connect and work together.

Businesses should focus on hiring talented individuals who know remote working systems well. In addition, helping current employees further adapt by getting them the resources they need will instantly improve work efficiency. Critically, all workers must have communication channels available, like Slack or Google Meet.

A lack of teamwork causes a communication breakdown and disrupts the company’s goals. But the solution is to provide the right technology and assistance.

Skill Set 2: Time Management

With remote work, limited office capacities, and social distancing, many employers changed their schedules to accommodate health and safety concerns and physical space. Now, many in the workplace may start and end work at different times. These alterations force a focus on time management.

New and existing employees should demonstrate that they can independently manage their time, schedules, and projects. Employers and HR managers should emphasize helping talent learn to meet deadlines efficiently while assisting fellow employees stay on track, further developing time management across their teams.

Of course, employers should continue being flexible with remote work teams. Allowing employees to choose their own hours lets them build their work schedules around home commitments. They can then work when they’re at their most productive, distraction-free – which is the best possible form of time management.

Skill Set 3: Soft Skills

A people-first approach helps a company stand out in the crowd. So employers may not consider soft skills “soft” for much longer.

As social justice movements and awareness grow, soft skills add the human factor businesses need. These skills include adaptability, emotional intelligence, creativity, collaboration, active listening, and knowing how to help other employees thrive.

Soft skills also lead to solutions that put public safety first. For instance, curbside pickup and delivery have been a creative solution for shopping. Employers want workers who can come up with service and people-focused ideas like these.

Businesses also need to recognize and reward employees who can slip in and out of new roles depending on what the company needs. The pandemic has put pressure on companies of all sizes — and they all need employees trained to be adaptable to these changes.

Skill Set 4: Social Media Marketing

Social media has been around a long time; however, 2020 brought a new way to use these digital bullhorns. Specifically, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok help influence and reach the 3.6 billion people who used social media in 2020.

Instagram recently added a shopping tab, which companies of all kinds can use. Facebook Marketplace continues to have a significant impact on shopping habits. Combined with the growth of TikTok’s influence, employees will want to know how to curate a business page and list the company’s products or services in an engaging way. So smart employers are looking for new employees with these talents and will cross-train existing employees to further leverage e-commerce channels.

Moreover, social media is where social justice movements, new trends, and pop culture moments happen. If employees stay current, they can add meaningful or relatable approaches to the brand’s social media pages.

Skill Set 5: Cybersecurity

As the pandemic hit the United States, people wanted information about employment, finances, and staying safe. With countless people and businesses turning to the internet for resources, cybercrime shot up drastically. Still, as people try to get vaccines, phishing scams run rampant. The FBI reported between 3,000 to 4,000 cybersecurity complaints daily last summer.

If a business faces a breach, scam, hack, or malware attack, it could lose sensitive data, like employee or client Social Security numbers and bank accounts. To prevent this catastrophic loss of data and trust, businesses must focus on hiring cybersecurity professionals and upskilling entire IT teams. Simultaneously, managers are helping current employees learn the ins and outs of cybersecurity.

Still, the best employers know cybersecurity is an industry of its own, and specialization often requires years of training. Now more than ever, it’s in every company’s best interests to focus on retaining cybersecurity talent or securing reliable outside services.

Skill Sets 2021: A New Employee Landscape

The unemployment rate is still coming down from April 2020’s record high. On the positive side, there’s plenty of new, eager talent looking to make a difference. And existing employees are showing genuine interest in providing the reskilling and upskilling to update in-demand skill sets. By focusing on these five areas of skills development, your company can revolutionize your workforce and create lasting talent pipelines – even in changing times.

 

Photo: Waldemar Brandt

#WorkTrends: Mapping the Future of Workforce Skills

We’re learning that the term social distancing may not be precisely right — physical distancing is more like it. Socially, we’re finding all sorts of ways of staying close. The same is true with the term “soft skills.”

As this week’s #WorkTrends guest and workforce expert Angela Maiers noted, “You could call them power skills more than anything. These are the power competencies that allow you to succeed, your team to succeed, your company to succeed — in a crisis or not.”

An edupreneur, author, and founder of the global nonprofit Choose2Matter, Angela Maiers had a frank discussion with Meghan M. Biro on why these skills are so important. Angela talked about how these skills have to be developed habitually, but can and should be identified, supported, and refined. Key among them, she noted, is being self-aware — in the context of everyone you work with. “You have to understand how you not only fit in, but how you advance as a team,” and recognize “other people’s diverse competencies.” 

People need the tools, development, and time to fully cultivate their life kit of essential “people” and human skills, she noted. But given the current time we’re all working in — where we’ve had to jump into remote competencies faster than you can type in a meeting ID, what if we don’t have the luxury of time? We may have to problem-solve to tackle very different challenges in the near future, Meghan pointed out — if the nature of the evolving crisis happening today is any indication. 

We all need to be able to handle VUCA, Angela said — “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.” That goes double for today and tomorrow’s leaders. “When you look at a leader that provides a place of not just security… but there’s a calmness around them, there’s hopefulness, there’s resourcefulness around them — those are the leaders that stand out.” Meghan noted that this particular mindset was likely going to be in high demand.  

So can we learn this? Meghan asked. And do we all learn it the same way? “One of the points causing confusion is that we think of skills as masterable segments, but they’re far more than that,” Angela said. “Building a habit is different than mastering a skill. You don’t get a percentile grade.” And since everyone has different competencies, their learning curves are also different — likely more easily addressed by modern learning platforms that can meet the needs of each learner.

We all need to be channeling VUCA now, Meghan noted. And we need to remember that at the core, these “power skills” are really human skills. We’re going to need them all to adapt to the workplace of the future, she said. Life skills are the new power tools.

Listen to the full conversation and see our questions for the upcoming #WorkTrends Twitter Chat. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you don’t miss an episode. 

Twitter Chat Questions

Q1: Why are soft skills necessary skills in the workplace? #WorkTrends
Q2: What strategies can help organizations better develop soft skills in their workforce? #WorkTrends
Q3: How can leaders help their organizations focus on essential soft skills for the future? #WorkTrends

Find Angela Maiers on Linkedin and Twitter

Photo: Bek Greenwood

Soft Skills: In Demand in the Corporate Space

With advancements due to automation and globalization, the outlook of employers has changed significantly. To know if a candidate is a right fit for their organization, they gauge their capability not from a degree, but from the attributes that they display — i.e., soft skills. 

According to a survey by Talent Q, 9 in 10 employers look for effective soft skills in the applicants. These abilities are critical in any environment that requires interaction and collaboration. They define the various attributes of personality that help us complete a job successfully, including how intently we listen to others, how empathetic we are towards colleagues, and how we approach a problem.  Among the most important soft skills potential employees should possess:

  • Communication skills — such as the ability to communicate effectively within teams and with clients
  • Interpersonal skills to resolve conflicts without hurting anyone’s feelings
  • Confidence — to be able to effectively present ideas
  • Teamwork and leadership skills— such as the ability to participate and lead within a team
  • Critical thinking and decision-making skills — to make strategic decisions despite uncooperative clients, tough deadlines, or issues within the team 

As well as:

  • Networking skills
  • Cultural Sensitivity
  • Flexibility

Soft Skills in the Age of Automation

In the past, employers hired candidates based on degrees, certifications, and domain-related skills. The competition was tough. With the introduction of automation in almost every industry, the competition has become even tougher: for some of these tasks, we are competing with robots. A McKinsey Global Institute report says that around 375 million jobs will be lost to robots by the year 2030, and two million jobs that require human skills will be created. 

Though automation is only here to make our lives and work easier, businesses are still in dire need of professionals with unique human skills. After all, bots can make transactions, but they can’t make deals. Despite the emerging importance of automation, job positions that require soft skills can only be filled by humans. We still need skilled professionals who use their emotional intelligence to make strategic, profitable decisions. 

Essential for 21st-Century Employers 

A study by Wonderlic found that  93% of employers consider soft skills ‘essential’ or ‘very important’ in their potential employees. Moreover, according to a report by  Burning Glass, more than a quarter of all skills mentioned in the US job postings (for even the most technical job roles) were baseline or soft skills. Further, according to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends Report, 90% of organizations are undergoing a structural and cultural transformation in order to be more dynamic, connected and team-centric. And employees or candidates who can’t keep up with the changing requirements may not be eligible for growth-oriented, high-paying jobs. 

Can Soft Skills Be Taught?

In a recent trial aimed to find out if soft skills can be taught, soft skills training was offered at 5 factories in Bangalore over a period of 12 months. Researchers found a 250% increase in productivity within 8 months of the trial’s conclusion Employees or job candidates who want to develop their soft skills can work with various soft skills trainers who offer structured training or frequently conduct soft skills training workshops. At the corporate level, some employers are hiring a certified corporate trainer. It’s imperative in either case to ensure that the training addresses the given objectives. And as the demand for soft skills continues to increase, soft skills training is on the rise as a career choice as well: those with a passion and aptitude for training and coaching are finding that opting for a role as a soft skills trainer offers both high pay and a great deal of flexibility.

Today’s organizations need human professionals with uniquely human skills, or they can’t flourish. Employers should be proactive and analyze their organizational and employee needs, conducting soft skills training to fill in the gaps. It’s the best way to keep up in this changing corporate scenario. 

Photo: John Schnobrich

Soft Skills Aren’t Optional: How to Teach Them Well

When you hire employees, especially Generation Z and the youngest millennials, you’re investing in the future of your organization. Contributing to their development is one of the smartest investments you can make. But too many companies overlook the basics when it comes to learning and development. 

If you only focus on training to meet the specific tasks and requirements of a given job, you may be developing your employees as much as you think you are. Particularly when it comes to new employees switching to an unfamiliar role, or just-hired younger employees new to the workplace, they may lack foundational abilities you now take for granted. A study by the CollegeBoard found that employers find 26.2% of college students lack sufficient writing skills — and one fourth are generally poor communicators. 

So before you train for job-related tasks, make sure your employees have these essential skills. Call them soft skills, call them life skills, or call them basic work skills, but these four are not only critical for success in your organization, but throughout a career. And whether the training is up to managers, team leaders or anyone else there are a number of tools to help get your employees up to speed:

1. Time Management

Of all the skills employees can and should have, time management is one of the most vital, no matter what the position or task. This is really a group of skills, including knowing how to prioritize, create a list of must-dos, create a workable schedule, delegate tasks, and know how to create downtime. All of these add up to employees being able to work efficiently and manage their time productively.

The best time managers are those who are never fazed by deadlines: give them a deadline and they’ll meet it, no matter what. They know how to focus on the most important tasks and limit the amount of time they spend on the less important ones. They can create and keep to a schedule because they know how much each task will take them. 

Teaching It

Given that how to manage time varies greatly depending on teams and roles, team leaders and direct managers should be involved in teaching this particular skill. Young hires fresh out of college may have mastered the ability to keep up with classwork but will need to learn how to transfer the skill into the context of work. One effective approach: implement routines and incremental goals throughout tasks. These make it easier to segment the day into manageable chunks.

Team leaders and managers may find scheduling software helps: there are a number of different applications, such as When I Work, or a task management software like Asana or Centrallo. But don’t just leave it up to tech. Make sure to clearly communicate the priorities to employees at the start of each new task — and then help them figure out how to allocate their time more effectively.

2. Interpersonal Communication

Some employees will see more direct and immediate benefits from strong interpersonal skills, particularly if they’re in people-facing and communication-heavy roles. But whether employees are going to be giving a major sales presentation or relaying information to a coworker, interpersonal communication is always essential to get the point across. 

The skill includes verbal, nonverbal and listening skills, as in being able to recognize emotions and see someone else’s side. Non-verbal communication involves being able to recognize the subtleties of body language, eye contact, and gestures, and look beyond traditional assumptions to understand what’s really going on. For instance, lack of eye contact is often misinterpreted as dishonesty when it’s actually shyness or nervousness.  

Teaching It

Learning interpersonal skills is a personal process for most employees, and can be tricky with a brand-new hire or a person who’s naturally shy. As such, it’s best taught by mentors or team leaders with small, close-knit teams — provided that your team has the right dynamic to keep everyone comfortable.

You could start by teaching employees how to listen effectively, and recognize the different types of communicators — such as controllers, analyzers, supporters, and promoters. Each enters a conversation differently, and responds to a different listening and speaking style. 

Gather the team and have each person take a personality test to find out what kind of communicator they are and what they value in communication. From there, compare notes: see how each team member tends to communicate, note the similarities and differences — and work on ways to better communicate with each other based on this new data.

If you need more avenues to foster stronger interpersonal communication among your workers, consider heading online. There are a number of classes for improving personal skills, including those recently listed on The Muse. 

3. Written Communication

Writing is often just presented as one of the communication skills, but it’s likely better to set it apart and give it the focus it needs. This is a skill that’s undoubtedly critical in the workplace — the most valued, but perhaps the least utilized. Most of us can read and most of us can write in terms of knowing how to form sentences. But there’s an enormous gap between people who can write and people who are good at it.  

The ability to write is among the top three most valuable skills to employers: 82% of employers want to bring in new hires with strong written communication skills, according to recent research by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The cost of hiring poor writers can translate into as much as $2.9 billion each year spent providing remedial writing training for current employees. Add in new hires as well, and that sum rises to $3.1 billion. And no matter the promises of AI to help assist with writing, technology can’t fill the gap in terms of bad writing. 

Teaching It

For employees in marketing departments and HR, for instance, written communication is usually a key part of the role. But the goal here is to enable all of your employees to build at least foundational writing skills — so emails are readable and a small brief or abstract is coherent. If you have employees with more potential, you’ll want to focus on helping them harness that with specific tools. 

Writing skills training may entail mentors — who can help with overall polishing and tone. But managers and team leaders are often the last stage of screening before a product reaches a client — and will know what will or won’t pass muster. But when a team leader has bad habits, those will carry through onto the team. Teaching writing should be done by those who are skilled in it and by the tools that are specific to it. 

Make sure the organization implements a clear and comprehensive style guide and provides it to all employees — sometimes poor writing is simply a matter of not knowing the rules. Set up periodic trainings on the standards of communication, presenting not only what’s expected of employees in terms of writing, but clear samples to model correct usage and style. Consider bringing in a writing coach to “workshop” pieces of writing with new employees: a hands-on, small-group setting is a great place to show what works and why. Reward good writing and share it so employees know what it looks like. But don’t punish mistakes: you don’t want employees who dread the process. 

4. Organization

In the workplace, we often sense who is organized and who isn’t by the state of their desk: some keep their workspace tidy and with everything in its place; others keep it in a state of perpetual disarray. But organizational skills are far more than what meets the eye. They usually go hand in hand with strong time management skills (reserving time to straighten the desk is a simple example). 

But organizational skill is also a matter of knowing all the steps to a task, being able to envision them and know how to complete them, who to bring in for different phases, and when to bring in a senior coworker for help over a hurdle. Organization is vital for any employee whose job includes overseeing, managing, project completion, or team leading. Likely, that’s nearly everyone — in some form. And it’s hard for employees to see — or convey — the big picture in terms of purpose and objectives if they don’t have the energy or ability to look away from the small stuff. But aligning with a greater sense of mission is a key part of employee engagement, particularly among younger employees. And it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Teaching It

Organizational training is usually team-specific, sometimes department-specific. For example, the organizational process that works for marketing workflows isn’t necessarily well-suited to engineering; bringing in an outside expert on calendar and schedule management won’t necessarily work for employees whose tasks have to be completed within a single day.

Direct supervisors are often the ideal choice for organizational training, with backup support from experienced team members. They know the strengths and weaknesses of their team — and are typically the ones who need to connect the dots or undo a snafu. 

The trend to remote working may call into question the need for a tidy desk for some — but it’s the mentality that needs to be emphasized here, and remote teams certainly need to learn how to be organized. Starting by training how to create a routine and a schedule — and stick to it — creates a framework for other facets. Employees need to know where they need to be, what they need to be doing, and when they need to get it done.  Begin with a daily schedule of the top three or four tasks for a given day, then increase with more tasks, over time, as the team masters what needs to be completed.  

This is where you may see a spark of recognition from new employees, particularly those just out of school — who suddenly see the similarities between meeting deadlines for schoolwork, which is mostly done individually, and completing tasks with coworkers as a team. Each has a part to play; each can contribute to the overall completion. Then, start tailoring the organizational methods to best meet the specific nature of a particular team or department. Just make sure skills are taught consistently, regardless of personal management styles or functions. As teams become more cross-functional, it’s key your employees have a shared language and skillset to draw from.  

Work and Life Skills, Integrated

The World Health Organization notes that we spend one-third of our adult lives at work.  That means what we do and know how to do at work inevitably has a huge impact on the way we live our lives. Employers have a responsibility to invest in their people for countless reasons, but this is key. Essential skills don’t stop at the office. We want and need to develop employees who can rise to challenges, as they have the skills to draw from, whether in life or at work. 

These are the people who keep your organization going at crunch time: they know how to schedule, how to communicate, how to write, and how to stay on top of the workflow. And they become comfortable enough in their abilities to help coach others on these vital skills as well. It’s an investment that pays off for generations.

What Soft Skills Do Employers Want?

Most jobs have specific requirements. But beyond technical skills, employees also need more general soft skills to get the job done. According to the Job Outlook 2018 Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a team are the top two soft skills that employers seek in job candidates, followed by written communication and leadership skills.

Why do companies rank these skills so highly? Let’s take a closer look at the most important soft skills.

Problem-Solving

We hire people to solve problems, so it’s no surprise that problem-solving is at the top of the most-wanted skills list. Problem-solving involves critical thinking — the ability to ask the right questions to define the problem, then examine the evidence and analyze various solutions to choose the right course of action.

Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce, but according to a recent study by MindEdge, a Waltham, Mass.-based learning company founded in 1998 by Harvard and MIT educators, many millennials lack critical thinking skills.

“It is no longer enough to have a specific set of technical or discipline-specific skills, but rather we must foster broader critical thinking to address the challenges that lie ahead for all of us,” according to Dr. Jennifer L. Schneider, the Eugene H. Fram Chair in Applied Critical Thinking at Rochester Institute of Technology.

But like muscles, critical thinking can be developed. “Critical thinking is a skill that can be learned through practice of the fundamentals — for example, information literacy, integrative problem solving, design and innovation.” Learning how to read and analyze information, then taking a creative approach to solving problems will often result in better solutions.
However, she says, it’s important for employers to allow workers to ask questions and give them room to make mistakes.

Teamwork

Teamwork is an umbrella term that includes trust, active listening, asking for and giving help when needed, shared responsibility, accepting the strengths and weaknesses of others, resolving conflicts and constructive criticism.

As work becomes more collaborative, employees must be able to embrace a variety of opinions and viewpoints. And as the workplace itself becomes more diverse and inclusive, employees’ ability to work well with others is crucial to an organization’s success.

Gone are the days of the superstar, and companies are learning that workplace silos and turf wars are detrimental to employee engagement levels and the company’s bottom line.

Written Communication

Employees at every level need written communication skills. From sending and responding to emails to writing reports and other documents, the ability to write effectively — and also to understand what has been written — is a necessary skill.

Employees must communicate with co-workers, bosses and subordinates in addition to clients and customers, and even the public at large. And before an employee even secures a job, they need to submit a polished resume and application letter.

Employees are brand ambassadors for their companies, and their written communication is a reflection of the organization. Grammar, spelling and punctuation errors reflect badly on the company.

Leadership

Companies need more than just workers. They also need people in the succession pipeline: future leaders. Potential leaders need to possess all of the skills listed above, but they must also be able to motivate others, delegate tasks, manage conflicts and exhibit emotional intelligence.

“The numbers on a balance sheet will change, the stock price will fluctuate, but an emotional connection will resonate long after the statistics fade,” says Susan Kuczmarski, head of the Kuczmarski Innovation consulting firm and co-author of “Apples Are Square: Thinking Differently About Leadership.” “Contrary to popular belief, it is not financial reward that inspires greatness — leaders find a way to connect with others and inspire the ability each of us has.”

In the past, she says that leaders who expressed themselves emotionally were considered weak. “However, the new leadership paradigm asks you to contribute your total self, express yourself emotionally, show enthusiasm and concern about others — to express you really care.”

The Secret to Retaining Tech Talent: Give Them Ways to Grow

If you want to keep that tech talent you invested so much time, energy and resources recruiting and hiring on, put yourself in their shoes. Work is about far more than coding: as employees rise in tech, they may be called upon to make presentations, participate in a conference, lead a team, articulate a complicated process to newbies, troubleshoot with peers — you name it. And employees are hungry to expand their skills. Companies that overlook this reality stand to lose that talent they worked so hard to find. That’s going to impact not just your present, but your future: those stand-out new hires already marked as candidates for succession may look elsewhere for opportunities.

To say this is not an ideal time to be bleeding talent in the tech sector is beyond an understatement. According to a recent survey by the job site Indeed, 86% of hiring managers say it’s challenging to find and hire tech talent. The average tenure in a job in 2016 was 4.2 years according to the BLS. But the average tenure in the tech industry is far lower, according to SHRM — only three years.

The reasons are numerous — including the nature of working in tech itself. Tech talent is by nature hungry to learn — whether or not you’re providing the opportunity, learning is part of their DNA. Many tech companies focus far more on apps and tools than on social and language interaction. But if you had the chance to ask a tech employee, most would readily convey a need to improve their soft skills as well — which is evidenced by the rising popularity of soft skills courses for tech talent offered by giants such as Harvard Extension.

The overall economy and work climate also play a key role:

  • Recent economic shake-ups left many people realizing they need to keep a Plan B in their professional pocket.
  • A thrilling but endless disruption of new innovations and new start-ups are constantly clamoring for tech talent — including your employees. Today, the pace of development and rollouts is generally rapid fire, and the people who work in this climate are used to training and ramping up fast.
  • It’s intensely easy in this digital, mobile and social environment to look for greener grass on the other side.
  • Increased globalization means different cultures, a variety of social behaviors and a range of different languages. To unify a multinational, multigenerational team takes far more than just hiring them.

Millennial Culture

Millennials have a core sense of healthy self-worth, and tend to see themselves as consumers of employers and jobs they can pick and choose from. But according to research by Deloitte, they’re also looking for an employer that offers more stability than ever before. And in terms of any career, you have to grow to remain in the same place. So if they’re in a job that doesn’t provide the chance to grow, they’re going to look for one that does. 18-35 year-olds stayed in a job for an average of 1.6 years last year — a trend noted by Lingo Live in their new report on the importance of upskilling for tech employees. Millennials are not only hungry to learn, they’re hungry to land in a place they can.

Align Learning With Working

The bottom line for today’s talent, and today’s digital culture a well, is that they are constantly experiencing new things: new apps, new social media pages, new forms of communication, new emojis, new policies and procedures, new bus routes, new challenges. This is the case at work as well as in life. Add the unique circumstances of any individual — such a software engineer for whom English is a second language or taking a job has meant living in a new country.

Every time our attention shifts to a new task or a new environment, we are thrust into a learning capacity once again. If you don’t provide your people with multidimensional learning and development opportunities, it doesn’t mean they don’t need to find the education and upskilling they need to grow. It just means their learning needs will not align with working for your company.

Instead, create that alignment — and then leverage it to drive engagement and ambition as your employees learn and grow within the context of their employer. Consider the soft skills you may want to offer:

Language skills and proficiency: According to the “Real Benefits” report by Lingo Live, language skills are overlooked by employers but highly valued by employees. In fact, a full 70% of engineers they surveyed believe their language skills play a key role in career advancement in their industry. Especially for tech talent that has been sponsored on a work visa, the challenge of communicating, writing, reading, and even interacting in English can be daunting. It’s a challenge easily remedied with a range of web-based, easily accessed language courses and practice.

Leadership skills: From team management to cultural customs and social etiquette, we expect a lot of our managers and leaders. In fact, the Education Advisory Board pinpointed a need to developed five key soft skills for tech talent, all of which are critical for a successful career trajectory. Rising up through the ranks usually means taking on more responsibility and overseeing employees. Among these key skills STEM fields are facing an increased demand for: creativity, teamwork/collaboration and building effective relationships. All can also be bridged into language development and cultural training, enabling tech talent to gain confidence that they can, indeed, become leaders.

Upskilling your talent is a tangible way to demonstrate that you value your employees not just as present-tense labor, but as future assets to your organization. But the benefits go far beyond the doors of your company and right into recruiting. Your employees will convey your brand whether or not you intend them to, but if they are growing and able to learn and develop within the aegis of your organization, they will let others know — and that makes you an employer people want to work for. For any organization trying to establish itself above the fray in this era of transparency, and be able to truly attract, hire, engage and retain the best tech talent, being able to provide soft skills training is an undeniable plus.

This article is sponsored by Lingo Live. Views are my own.

Photo Credit: Compu-Net Systems, LLC Flickr via Compfight cc

 

Selling Yourself in the Interview

As 2016 ambles forward, more recruiters are going to be hiring than ever before. Not only are Millennials taking the job market by force, but plenty of current employees are planning on making a job transition, both inside and out of their own career paths. With all of that competition, selling yourself matters. It’s essential to stand out from the pack and highlight what makes you more hireable than the Joe Shmoe interviewing before you and the Jane Doe interviewing after you.

Know What You’re Looking For

The first thing to know before you even go in to interview is what you want out of your working environment. 20 percent of employees in the workforce right now are determined to find a new job before the end of 2016, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.com. The same survey found that, besides salary, the most important factors that come to light when considering a new positions are job stability, good benefits, location, good boos, and good work culture. Consider, before you plow headlong into a new position, which of these perks are important to you and whether or not you can live with your new position in the absence of any of these factors. If you’re one of the lucky ones balancing the call for multiple positions, weigh your options against each other, and shoot for the best fit.

Skills, Skills, Skills

Having the right skillset for the job is imperative in today’s work environment. The Skills Gap is a very real issue, with a Corporate Voices for Working Families and Civic Enterprises study finding that more than half of business leaders think it is difficult to get non-managerial employees with the necessary skills, training and education that they need. As the skills become more complex, the gap becomes larger, with IT firms stating that a whopping 75 percent are understaffed or are currently looking to hire. While you don’t have to get every single certification out there to prove that you’re qualified, bringing concrete examples of what you do know can help your chances out greatly.

Soft Skills & Emotional IQ

Perhaps even more important than hard skills are soft skills. Soft skills refer to a set of personal attributes that enable somebody to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people, perhaps the most important of which is Emotional IQ. Even if you’re the best programmer in the world, if you can’t work on a team, you won’t get hired by somebody that needs a team player. On the flipside, even if you’re not the best programmer in the world, you might still get hired because you possess an aptitude for learning and an attitude that says, “I can work with anybody and love it”. This type of flexibility and positivity has been tested for and found in 90% of high performers and explains 58% of success in the workforce across industries, according to some.

Ask Good Questions

In any interview, the best candidates don’t merely answer questions, but they ask them too. Hiring managers want to see that applicants are engaged and excited to work wherever they ultimately end up. If an interviewee isn’t asking questions, how does that person know that they company they are applying for is going to be the right fit for them? Asking questions that show a proactive nature and evidence of critical evaluation are perfect. Here are two examples queries listed by US News as two of the “smartest interview questions you could ever ask”:

  • “If you were to rank all the people who have done this job in the past, tell me about No. 1 and why you would put them there?”
  • “You’ve described this as a place that welcomes innovation. Can you tell me about a time when you failed at something, or when someone else in the organization failed at something? How did the organization deal with it?”

Be Yourself

Selling yourself matters but the most poignant piece of advice that you can follow during an interview is to just be yourself. We all know that there are plenty of toxic leaders out there that probably shouldn’t be managers, the type of people that are crotchety and mean, quite possibly sadistic, and quick to put down anybody that challenges their authority. These managerial types are easy to spot right off the bat by the way they make you feel like a doormat during the interview. Fortunately there are plenty of other managers who are not like that, and these are the ones that you want to work for. Imagine, for a second, that you sail through the interview with the first, mean boss, because you act like another cog in the wheel who will mindlessly follow orders.

The problem is that once you land that job, your true colors will shine eventually. Be yourself from the get-go. As Liz Ryan mentions on Forbes: “You can laugh at a job interview. You can be yourself. You can make a joke. You can be real. I talk to hiring managers all day, and I’ve never heard one of them say ‘I talked to a job-seeker who seemed very qualified, but was too real.’”

Ultimately, know what you want, know what you can do, know what you’re willing to do, ask questions, and be yourself. This is the road to success in the 2016 workforce. The sooner you find yourself doing these things, the sooner you will have landed the job of your dreams.

Photo Credit: donhiggins.resumewritingservices via Compfight cc

How to Attract and Retain the Best Employees in 2016

As colleges crank out more graduates, our economy’s pool of potential employees grows. Selecting and enticing the right ones are going to be paramount to any business strategy in 2016, especially because the pool is diluted to the brim with mediocre to average prospective hires. Many business are going to need to brush up on hiring and retention strategies if they want to attract and retain the best employees in 2016.

Polish That Glass Door

It wasn’t long ago that employers began carefully scrutinizing their prospective employees Facebook profiles to determine more about them than they may be letting on in the first interview. It didn’t take long for potential hires to turn the tables. Websites like Glassdoor offer a place for employees around the world to review their places of work, list pro’s and con’s, and rate the company’s CEO. It’s basically like Yelp! for the job-seeking world. Building up your talent brand means ensuring that your organization is represented in the job market as the employer of choice via online profiles and employee reviews. This also includes social media, as sometimes Facebooking and Tweeting employees serve as your best talent brand ambassadors.

Prepare, and Be Snappy

You think you’re the only business looking to hire talent? Businesses are going to be competing for the best all throughout 2016, so make sure yours is snappy. Demonstrating that you respect their time and gather as much information as you can in a short amount of time via personality tests and video conferencing. On the flip side, if you are looking to get to know your employees a little better before you hire them full time, consider establishing internship programs. Not only does this gain you the ability to observe somebody’s work before hiring them, but it also gives you an edge with the first pick of the best college students before they even graduate.

Offer a Partnership Instead of a Job

Two-thirds of companies will face an internal skills shortage in the next three to five years, and only 30% of employees are satisfied with the future career opportunities within their organizations, according to Eremedia.The solution to this is not to offer “jobs” to candidates, but instead to offer a partnership, or a trade of sorts.

In return for their hard work (and their paycheck of course!), explain to your prospective hire what types of skills they will be learning that will make them more employable in the future, either for positions they may obtain via internal promotion, or at another company. It’s ok to recognize that your employee might not stay with you forever, and most potential hires will probably appreciate the honesty.

Recognize that no candidate is perfect, but that they can be trained to get pretty close. This type of flexibility and willingness to up-train a bit will also help fill the hard-to-hire positions left void by the STEM skills gap. Also, recognize that attitude and soft skills can be more important than having all of the hard skills. What is important is the career aspiration and that you have a candidate that’s looking toward their future. Those candidates are the ones that want to better themselves, which will, in turn, better your business.

Give Better Perks Than Coffee

Traditional benefits packages include health insurance, 401k, a of couple vacation hours, and probably free coffee on the jobsite–but traditional benefits packages aren’t enough to attract the best and brightest anymore. Millennials, the majority of your incoming workforce, are changing the way the workforce views perks. More laid back dress codes and flexible work hours fall in line with the new Generation’s valued self-expression. More flexible work hours and work-from-home options highlight your understanding that they place just as much importance on spending time with their families and their pursuing their passions as they do on working for your business and earning money. Make sure that your employee is happy, and your employee will make you happy.

Encourage Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Business author Daniel Pink believes that all workers actually want only to be provided three things: the autonomy to do their jobs, however they have to, the opportunity to master their trade, and that purpose beyond earning a buck is inherent in their work. The workplace is changing to reflect these realities is apparent, as more people are being offered flexible scheduling, up-training, and the chance to work for companies that better the world and do more than just “make money.” Initiatives as simple as going green at the office can provide that purpose. These three principles show that even employees that don’t have all of the hard skills can be guided to learn them because inherently people want to be good at what they do. If you provide an environment in which an employee can excel by giving them those three basic things, they’ll better themselves, they’ll better your company, and they’ll stick with you for as long as they can.

By adhering to these principles and preparing for the new generation’s wants and needs, you’ll be attracting top talent throughout 2016. Miss any essential tips that I missed? Comment below.

photo credit: #1 via photopin (license)

Another Soft Skill We Forget: Self-Development Strategies

I’m deep into the current season of The Voice. It is the only television show that I watch on an actual television. (NetFlix and my computer screen usually win my attention. See one my favorite Voice contestants perform below.)

What fascinates me most about The Voice is how these individuals have managed to invest their energy toward a path that emphasizes their strengths. It’s a risky road for sure — especially in the capricious entertainment industry. However, the rewards are there. The most common outcome, especially in younger participants, seems to be an increased level of confidence in their own skills as a performer. (Winning is not the only valued outcome that emerges.) The mentoring relationship, critical to The Voice, of course — hones the strengths these individuals possess.

Ultimately, however, they must recognize their own gifts and seek a path to pursue those gifts. In the case of budding performers, it may have translated into seeking mentors in an established choir or building skills in a focused training experience of some kind. (Camps, singing at smaller events.)

Without this step, the journey cannot begin. As we are learning, developing “soft skills” can be a game changer for both work and career. Self-development ranks up there with a “chosen few”.

When we educate students or less established employees about the world of work, techniques to stoke self-development strategies are commonly neglected. Yet, another “soft skill” that could change the course of an individual’s career.

Becoming your own advocate — and owning this process — can be a huge advantage.

Here are a few ideas to rectify this situation:

Encourage Self-Discovery. This involves reflecting on key experiences to unearth perceived strengths, as they complete their courses or begin to amass organizational experiences. Often the signs of an emerging strength are subtle and overlooked.

Teach “conversation”. Handling important, yet difficult, conversations is a needed workplace skill. When broaching development needs/desires, less established employees may feel insecure to move forward and open the channel.

Discuss the range of options. Ultimately, taking responsibility for development is personal. However, if you are unaware of the range of development possibilities, this all becomes moot.

Encourage balance. We must balance our need to drive self development with the needs of the organizations. However, both are vital to a healthy career.

What are you doing to develop your own career? Share your ideas here.

Image credit : StockSnap.io

The Choice Is Yours: 4 Decision-Making Tips

The choices we make shape our experience of life. That’s undeniable, yet many of us suffer from poor decision-making, or make choices without fully considering or realizing the consequences.

Some of us were never mentored on how to make choices, but knowing how to make good decisions is one of the most important skills we can possess. Sometimes it feels difficult to choose since there is often an invisible tug-o-war between saying “yes” to one thing, which inevitably means saying “no” to another. When we are caught in an internal conflict over which way to choose, we can feel overwhelmed. This can have a paralyzing effect upon our necessary action. When we succumb to indecision, even in our indecisiveness we are making a choice.

The main issue with decisions is that we know at our core we cannot have it all. It’s an impossible goal to achieve and thinking that we can have it all puts more stress and strain upon us. To think we can have everything we want is a world view wrought with suffering. The deeper truth is we can have anything we want, just not everything we want. And therein lies the rub of being at-choice in any given moment.

“Today I am what I am because of my yesterday’s choices. And where I shall be tomorrow will be decided today.” ~ Unknown Author

Unexamined choices, or going with our emotional state is a recipe for cultivating a life of pain. We can’t move through life thinking that the fulfillment of desire is going to also equal a deeply satisfying life experience.

All of us have stories of living with the pain of consequences we had not anticipated or desired. Our experience of life today, this day, right now, is the sum total of all the decisions we’ve made up until this point, and it also includes the decisions that others have made for themselves. Other people’s decisions have a consequence that we experience as well. This is the pain and imperfection of our human condition.

“We are free to choose but we are not free from the consequences of our choices.” ~ Steven Covey

All of us are connected and interconnected. Every decision we make shapes our experience and as we are not islands unto ourselves, our decisions affect others as well. The decisions we make at work or at home affect more than ourselves. We are confronted with decisions continuously. Even a simple decision to get up in the morning when our alarm goes off, or to instead hit the snooze button. The decision to work late or go home, the decision to take the time to make a healthy dinner, or grab fast food.

Our life experience (health, happiness, peace, weight, education, career, success, etc.) is determined by choices. Even indecision, like I mentioned, is a decision.

How do we make the best choice in the moment? Refrain from putting trust in wants or desires. Wanting something doesn’t mean it’s good for us. Kids want candy for breakfast, and we might want a soda instead of water, but wants to do not equal supporting our highest. Knowing what we value most, and knowing what our top priorities are, these will bring us to our best answers. Choose wisely.

Some tips on making better decisions:

1. Choose based upon consequences. Look at the possible outcomes and work backward. Do you like what you see?

2. Avoid seeking perfection in the choice itself. Instead, look for the perfection of a goal in the inevitable consequences of your decision. You’re not perfect, neither is anything else in this world, so why do we seek perfection in the choices we make? How often do we get caught by fear or overwhelm because we are afraid of an imperfect decision? Be clear about your purpose, your values and your priorities, and you’ll find greater clarity around what to choose that will draw you closer to what you hold highest and dearest.

3. Remember to avoid inaction through over-analysis. Ever heard of paralysis by analysis? While it makes a lot of sense to look at the numbers and make informed decisions, getting stuck in the minutia of the details can lead to a lot of time wasted in the decision-making process. Oftentimes our research and analysis is cleverly disguised as procrastination. If you’re caught in doing your due diligence, make sure you don’t stay there just so you don’t have to make a choice. Procrastination is a choice as well.

4. Base your decision upon what is unchanging, and not upon emotions, desires, or wants that are always changing. Look deeper to a more trustworthy source…your gut. That still small voice that makes you uncomfortable when your wants and desires start pitching temper tantrums because they want something. One telltale sign that your emotions are taking over is if you’re looking for validation or permission from others. “Misery loves company” is not wisdom speaking. If you’re looking outside of yourself for direction, you’re not trusting yourself, and possibly it’s because you’re not listening to the wise self (or you don’t want to listen to the “no” answer your gut is giving you). Desire argues with you, wants are averse to delayed gratification. The truth is, if you’re in alignment with your own integrity, your choices become easier and you won’t need to seek out what other people think because you will already be resolved to doing what you know to be your best decision, for your own integrity.

Embrace and accept that consequences are a natural outcome of choice. Give yourself some margin for error. Mistakes are a part of the human experience. I like to think I’m a spiritual being having a human experience. This means I’m having an experience of imperfection. Forgiveness is as important to offer ourselves as it is to offer to others. Redemption comes when we apply compassion to our human condition, and realize, that in every moment we are all in the process of learning.

This post was adapted from Tamara McCleary’s “Yes Is Also No: The Power of Choice.”

About the Author: Tamara McCleary is a national speaker, business performance specialist, writer, social media expert and relationship economist. She has spoken to over 1,000 audiences, has sold $100 million in products and services from stage and is ranked in the top 1% of global social media influencers.

photo credit: teenage confusion via photopin (license)

Career Personality Perspective: What’s Your Angle?

I’ve probably taken close to a dozen personality tests over the years. In just a few minutes, you get a trendy acronym or entertaining epithet to hang your hat on.

While I have found value in these assessments, I also see risk in becoming attached to the alluring labels: we can become quite fascinated with ourselves and our newly branded personalities.

I’m all for opportunities enabling personal growth and learning. The knowledge gained from these assessments can create a healthy balance of self-confidence and humility.

Personality tests can also encourage us to adopt a near-sighted view of ourselves. We think we know who we are.

So when I was approached to experiment with yet another personality test, I wondered what “angle” this one was working.

I jumped into the test. Short and sweet.

And surprising.

Sally Hogshead turns the predictable personality test upside-down. She has spent over two decades of research to develop The Fascination Advantage. It’s the world’s first personality test that shifts the perspective from how you see the world to how the world sees you.

This test challenges us to be the observer and the observed.

Understanding ourselves and how others perceive us is the winning combination for personal and professional success. Seeing yourself from the world’s perspective gives you the ability to fine tune your message to others. What you say may sound crystal clear to you, but your listener may hear nothing but static.

When you understand your fascination advantages and how they are perceived by others, you can dial-in those qualities for clear and concise communication.

Now you’re ringing your true cowbell: effectively communicating your “unique value proposition.”

The Fascination Advantage helps individuals find their unique “cowbells” and effectively communicate their workplace value. Brands can develop a signature story to attract, nurture, and maintain top talent.

For career and brand success in the Social Age, we must consistently demonstrate our value across generations, time zones, and cultures.

The ability to be the observer and the observed is a powerful soft skill to have in your reputation management and brand building toolkit.

Are you ready to learn about “The Fascination Advantage?”

We’ve taken the test here at the TalentCulture #TChat Show and it’s pretty awesome. My assessment results were spot-on!

We’re giving you the opportunity to take the test as well:

Go to HowToFascinate.com/YOU

Use code TCHAT and start your assessment!

Fascinate us and share your experiences with the #TChat community!

About the Author: Jessica E. Roberts is the Community Manager for TalentCulture and The World of Work Community. 

photo credit: One World Before Another via photopin (license)

#TChat Preview: Managing Your Personal Brand’s Softer Skills

The TalentCulture #TChat Show is back live on Wednesday, January 21, 2015, from 7-8 pm ET (4-5 pm PT). The #TChat radio portion runs the first 30 minutes from 7-7:30 pm ET, followed by the #TChat Twitter chat from 7:30-8 pm ET.

Last week we talked about how to maximize the cowbell principle.

This week we’re going to talk about managing the softer skills of your personal brand.

What rings true today in a world gone social that demands transparency and authenticity is the fact that your reputation is your personal brand. And vice-versa.

But with everything so “on” and online virtually all the time, what happened to body language? Nothing actually. In fact, it’s more important than ever, because we spend so much time online. Body language conveys everything from confidence to approachability; it’s more honest than the spoken word.

Literally in the blink of an eye, we can make someone feel quite valued or unceremoniously dismissed. That’s why developing our softer skills is the new differentiator.

Join TalentCulture #TChat Show co-creators and hosts Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman as we learn about how to manage the softer skills of your personal brand with this week’s guest: Deborah Thomas-Nininger, founder of DTN Productions International-Hallmark of Etiquette, a “Reputation Management” training company.

Sneak Peek:

Related Reading:

Alex Freund: Can Body Language Be Learned?

Meghan M. Biro: The Future Of Work Is Boundaryless

Leo Widrich: The Secrets Of Body Language: Why You Should Never Cross Your Arms Again

Diane Gottsman: Office Etiquette: Nine Ways To Strengthen Work Relationships

Carol Kinsey Goman: 10 Powerful Body Language Tips

We hope you’ll join the #TChat conversation this week and share your questions, opinions and ideas with our guests and the TalentCulture Community.

#TChat Events: How To Manage The Softer Skills Of Your Personal Brand

TChatRadio_logo_020813#TChat Radio — Wed, January 21st — 7 pm ET / 4 pm PT Tune in to the #TChat Radio show with our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman, as they talk with our guest: Deborah Thomas-Nininger.

Tune in LIVE online Wednesday, January 21st!

#TChat Twitter Chat — Wed, January 21st — 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and Deborah will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where we’ll continue the discussion with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we gather for a dynamic live chat, focused on these related questions:

Q1: Why is body language such a critical personal branding soft skill? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q2: How has social technology impacted business etiquette over the past few years? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Q3: What effect has social media and brand awareness had on reputation management? #TChat (Tweet this Question)

Until the show, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed, our TalentCulture World of Work Community LinkedIn group, and in our new TalentCulture G+ community. So feel free to drop by anytime and share your questions, ideas and opinions. See you there!!

photo credit: anamobe via photopin cc

 

3 Things To Know About Hiring And Recruiting

Candidate Experience Matters

“Candidate experience” is a term that we’re seeing a lot of in the recruitment, hiring, and HR spaces right now, and we’re hearing it for a reason. There is a lot of competition for the top talent out there in every field, and one big way that employers can gain that competitive edge is through how they treat candidates leading up to a hiring decision.

The candidate experience can begin with how a job post is written, where it’s advertised, and how the application process works. The key to creating a great candidate experience is to really put yourself in the shoes of the people you’re trying to attract.

Don’t let the job description turn into a pie-in-the-sky wish list of skill sets and qualifications. Keep it simple and easy to read, and include some reasons why your ideal candidate would want to work for you in the first place. Choose where and how you advertise your openings carefully. Think like a marketer, about whom you want your message to reach, where they are most likely to see it, and whether or not your posting venue fits with your image as a company.

And finally, don’t put the applicant through a long, tedious and frustrating 20-page form to fill out, followed by 20 more pages of screening questions. Would you enjoy that process? How would going through that affect what you think of your prospective employer? There’s also the chance you run the risk of alienating or even screening out the right candidate when you put them through an onerous process like that, which can reflect badly on your employer brand.

Recruiting Isn’t a Science

At least, it isn’t just a science; there is an art to it as well. There are things you can screen for, and there are things you can’t categorize as easily. You can use technology to match specific skills to specific job requirements, but soft skills and personality traits are harder to quantify.

You may find the perfect candidate on paper, with all the right qualifications, and then discover he or she is a complete mismatch when it comes to fitting in with the workplace culture. Recruitment can also be about building and maintaining relationships over time, not to mention corporate branding and providing that good candidate experience.

Good recruitment strategies are a balancing act between art and science — using proven strategies as well as taking into account the more intangible aspects of qualifying candidates and getting to know them as people.

Hiring for Attitude, Training for Skill

Hiring someone with all the right skills and hoping that the right personal traits or attitudes will appear can result in disaster. More often than not, if a new hire doesn’t work out, it’s because of attitude rather than lack of skill.

The right personal traits, like flexibility or willingness to collaborate, can be as important if not more so than the perfect skill set. Again, it’s a balancing act between the soft skills and the hard skills that a candidate has to offer.

One method is to look at previous examples you’ve seen of employees who have thrived in your company, figure out what traits or abilities helped them to do so, and then look for those elements in candidates.

The bottom line is that recruiting and hiring are not simple processes by any means, but it can be effective, successful, and even pleasant for all involved when the right strategies are used. So keep these three nuggets of wisdom in mind as you prepare for your next round of hiring:

  1. Treat the candidate well by honestly considering his or her perspective.
  2. Both the “art” and the “science” of recruiting are constantly evolving and need to balanced.
  3. Hiring for attitude and training for skill can have a significant impact on the long-term costs of hiring.

photo credit: .jocelyn. via photopin cc

5 Skills Gaps Employers Need To Address

It’s no surprise that one of the biggest challenges hiring managers face is finding well-rounded candidates with strong skill sets.

Over recent years, multiple studies have addressed the growing skills gap and how to fix it. However, this has caused many employers and job seekers to think that the “skills gap” is a single catch-all for any employee or job seeker who lacks a needed skill.

What’s important to understand, though, is every field faces its own unique skills gap.

Instead of looking at the skills gap as a single, large issue, let’s break it down into five prominent skills gaps employers need to address:

1. Digital media skills

Research shows that 77 percent of companies believe their lack of digital skills is the reason their business hasn’t been able to adapt to new digital trends. When more than 90 percent of companies don’t have skills in social media, mobile media, and internal social networks, it can be difficult to keep your business moving forward.

Employers can address this skills gap by investing time and money into the development of digital skills. Employers can offer training programs for employees in order to teach them about the company’s digital strategy and give them the tools they need to be successful in the digital world.

2. Soft skills

Although hard skills are important for employees to have, soft skills are more likely to help employees increase their performance in the workplace.

Despite the importance of soft skills, 44 percent of senior executives believe this is a weakness for employees. Many employees lack strong skills in communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.

To address this skills gap, employers should provide continuous learning opportunities for their employees. Workshops, seminars, and team-building activities can boost the aforementioned soft skills.

3. Marketing skills

The marketing field is constantly evolving, and marketing professionals need to keep up with the latest trends and strategies.

Marketing professionals need to understand various content marketing skills including analytics, SEO, marketing automation, and e-commerce. Employers can provide training in these areas, which will help them develop stronger marketing professionals and tighten the skills gap.

4. Skilled trades and retiring Baby Boomers

In 2012, more than half of skilled-trade workers were 45 years of age or older. According to Adecco, one-third of senior executives believe the manufacturing industry will be most affected by the skills gap.

To address this change in the workforce, employers must actively recruit younger employees and provide training. This will help employers maintain a streamline of skilled talent, even after Baby Boomers retire.

5. STEM skills

STEM careers are expected to grow 17 percent by 2018. Unfortunately, employers believe 12 percent of workers lack software skills and 22 percent lack technical skills.

One way employers can improve this skills gap is to provide on-the-job training and certification for different softwares and technologies. This will allow employees to continuously learn new technologies and keep up with the latest trends in their industry.

The skills gap is a growing issue for employers and it can only be resolved if employers take action. By taking note of these skills gaps, employers will improve their training programs and develop more skilled employees.

What do you believe are some prominent skills gaps employers must address?

Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video interview solution used by more than 2,000 companies across the globe. Learn more about using video interviewing to jump the skills gap and connect with Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

photo credit: only alice via photopin cc

Gut Check: Leadership and Emotion #TChat Recap

We’ve all worked with them. Brilliant intellectuals who hold managerial titles — yet they struggle to form and sustain effective professional relationships.

They lack self-awareness, and seem even more clueless about how to deal with others. As leaders, they may be tolerated, ignored or even undermined. Despite their impressive credentials, they’re like fish out of water in the workplace.

These leaders desperately need an emotional Intelligence intervention. A gut check. Fortunately, talent development specialists agree that essential “soft skills” can be learned — although the process may be hard.

That’s the topic we tackled this week at #TChat Events with guest, Steve Gutzler, President of Leadership Quest and author of “Emotional Intelligence for Personal Leadership.” As one of the nation’s premier experts in emotional intelligence, leadership and personal transformation, Steve helped us explore the connection between EI and the ability to influence others.

(Editor’s Note: See #TChat Event highlights and resource links at the end of this post.)

Defining Emotional Intelligence: What’s Inside?

At its core, emotional intelligence (EI) is about our ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. Almost a decade ago, psychologist and author, Daniel Goleman, defined the 5 core components of emotional intelligence:

1) Self-awareness: Deep understanding of their own emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives. People with strong self-awareness are neither overly critical nor unrealistically hopeful. Rather, they are honest — with themselves and others.

2) Self-regulation: Like an ongoing inner conversation, this frees people from becoming prisoners of their feelings. Self-regulators feel bad moods and emotional impulses, just as everyone does, but they’re able to control and even channel those responses in useful ways.

3) Motivation: Virtually all effective leaders display this trait. They’re driven to achieve beyond expectations — their own and everyone else’s. The key word here is achieve.

4) Empathy: This is the most easily recognized aspect of EI. We’ve all felt the empathy of a sensitive teacher or friend; we’ve all been struck by its absence in a stoic coach or boss. But in business, people are rarely praised, let alone rewarded, for their empathy.

5) Social Skill: As a dimension of EI, this is not as simple as it sounds. It’s not just friendliness — although people with high social skill are rarely mean-spirited. Rather, social skill is friendliness with a purpose. It’s about moving people in a desired direction, whether that’s agreement on a new marketing strategy or enthusiasm about a new product.

Emotional Intelligence: Leadership Secret Sauce?

Why is EI so vital? Today’s business environment is increasingly collaborative and team-oriented. To succeed in almost any mission, leaders must inspire and influence others. That’s where EI skills make all the difference. For better or worse, every interaction we have in the workplace has an impact on emotions, attitudes and motivation within us and within others. High-performing leaders understand this, and use it wisely.

What did our community have to say about this topic? Check out the resource links and highlights from this week’s #TChat conversation, below. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas and opinions! Your experiences make concepts like EI more meaningful for us all.

#TChat Week-In-Review: Emotions, Leadership and Influence

SAT 12/14:

Steve Gutzler (2)

Watch the Preview hangout now

#TChat Preview: TalentCulture Community Manager, Tim McDonald, framed the week’s topic in a post and “sneak peek” hangout video with guest, Steve Gutzler. Read the Preview: “Leadership + Influence From The Inside Out.

SUN 12/15:

Forbes.com Post: TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro suggested ways that leaders can up their EI skills to help the talent in their organizations shine. Read: “Leadership Is About Emotion.”

MON 12/16 — WED 12/18:

Related Post:Psst! Leaders, Are You Really Listening?
Related Post:Managerial Magnets: Becoming a Leader Others Want to Follow

WED 12/18:

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Listen now to the #TChat Radio replay

#TChat Radio: Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman spoke with Steve Gutzler about why emotional intelligence matters in the workplace, and its connection with influence. Listen to the Radio replay now!

#TChat Twitter: Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and Steve joined the TalentCulture community on the #TChat Twitter stream, as I moderated an open, crowdsourcing conversation focused on 5 related questions. See highlights in the Storify slideshow below:

#TChat Insights: Leadership, Emotion and Influence

[javascript src=”//storify.com/TalentCulture/where-reputations-are-built-leadership-and-emotion.js?template=slideshow”]

Closing Notes & What’s Ahead

GRATITUDE: Thanks again to Steve Gutzler for sharing your perspectives on emotional intelligence and leadership success. We value your time, your passion and your expertise!

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events prompt you to write about how leaders can be more successful by developing emotional intelligence? We welcome your thoughts. Post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Happy #TChatHoliday!

Our weekly #TChat Events are on hiatus until the New Year — mark your calendar for January 8th. We’re preparing to start 2014 strong, with a full month of forward-looking #TChat guests and topics that you won’t want to miss!

Meanwhile, the lights are always on here at TalentCulture, where we’ll continue to post relevant “world of work” content over the holiday. And as always, the conversation continues daily on the #TChat Twitter stream, our LinkedIn discussion group. and elsewhere on social media.

So make merry, enjoy this festive time of year, and we’ll see you on the stream!

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

Managerial Magnets: Becoming A Leader Others Want To Follow

Written by Roberta Matuson

Are you a manager who’s ready for a professional breakthrough? Then it’s time to become the kind leader people will do anything to work for. The kind of leader who draws others to you. It’s time to become a magnetic leader.

Contrary to popular belief, great leaders aren’t born that way. Most are developed, coached and mentored throughout their careers. But why wait for someone else to guide you? Magnetic role models are all around us. So, no matter what your title or level of experience, you can observe more closely and strengthen your own skill set anytime.

Here are 5 best practices to help you get started:

1) Put Your Team First

When in doubt, put the interests of your employees ahead of your own. For example, it’s tempting to volunteer your department to organize this year’s charity event. After all, it would be great PR for you and the rest of your team. But everyone has been working on weekends to complete a critical project on time and within budget. They’re already burned out.

This is a good time to take a pass. Your team needs a break. Let them recharge. There will always be other volunteer opportunities.

2) Go to Bat for Your Employees

Let’s say you’ve been discussing a potential reorganization with your superiors. However, upon reflection, you believe the timing isn’t right for your organization to make that move. You feel uncomfortable asking your manager to reconsider the current plan.

Be bold. Let your boss know you’ve had a change of heart. Explain your rationale, and be prepared to offer alternative solutions. Regardless of the outcome, your employees will eventually figure out that you had the courage to push back when others would have retreated. Those who walk through the fire with you will stick by your side through thick or thin.

3) Learn to “Manage Up”

In my book, Suddenly in Charge, I explain that managing up isn’t about brown-nosing. It’s about developing strong relationships with those above you and throughout the organization, so you can get your people the resources they need to perform well.

In every company, there are people who are somehow able to get what they need while everyone else waits on the sidelines. These people have taken the time to build strong relationships up and down the organization. You can bet these resourceful leaders have no problem keeping top talent on their team. Observe how they work — and if an opportunity presents itself, ask for some tips.

4) Make Yourself Visible and Accessible

Magnetic leaders are visible both inside and outside their organization. Get involved in a professional association. Whenever possible, step up and volunteer to take a leadership position. You’ll be seen as a leader in your field, based on that affiliation. Don’t be surprised if others come to you seeking advice or a position on your team.

5) Treat People the Way You’d Like to be Treated

I bet you’ve heard this one before, right? It seems so obvious — but when is the last time you saw someone in a managerial role who consistently follows this creed?

In my book, Talent Magnetism, I tell the story of magnetic leader, Chris Patterson, CEO of Interchanges, who took it upon himself to help an employee who was in crisis. Patterson made it his personal mission to provide his employee with the best care possible during a life-threatening illness. He did so with compassion and conviction. This is a guy who is magnetic in every way.

Magnetic leaders are highly valued by their organizations — and are compensated accordingly. But it’s not just a reward for their effort and contributions to corporate objectives. Their employers know that leaders who display these characteristics are highly attractive to competitive organizations.

Do you know role models who demonstrate the value of magnetic leadership? What do they do that makes them so attractive to others in their professional sphere? Please share your experiences and ideas in the comments area.

Roberta-Matuson-Photo(About the Author: Roberta Matuson, The Talent Maximizer®, is the President of Matuson Consulting, a firm that helps organizations achieve dramatic growth and market leadership through the maximization of talent. Her new book, Talent Magnetism, is available for download or purchase at Amazon.com. Connect with Roberta on Twitter or on LinkedIn.)

(Editor’s Note: This post is adapted from Brazen Life, with permission. Brazen Life is a lifestyle and career blog for ambitious young professionals. Hosted by Brazen Careerist, it offers edgy and fun ideas for navigating the changing world of work. Be Brazen!)

(Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with others in the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events every Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Rebecca Krebs via Flickr

Psst! Leaders, Are You Really Listening?

Listen: ˈlɪs(ə)n/

Verb: To give one’s attention to a sound.
Synonym: hear, pay attention, be attentive, concentrate on hearing, lend an ear to, and to be all ears.

We all understand the mechanics of listening. But too often today, when we have the opportunity to listen, we’re content with just passively letting sound waves travel through our ears. That’s called hearing. Listening is something entirely different. It’s essential for leaders to pay attention when others around us have something to say. Why? Because developing better listening skills is the key to developing a better company.

Lack of Listening Puts Organizations at Risk

Because leaders live in the ‘time is money’ zone, information gathering tends to focus on immediate requirements:

I need an answer! Give me a snapshot, infographic or sound-byte. GO, GO, GO!

However, when input actually arrives, how authentic are you about listening? Do you pretend to care, just for the sake of getting at what you think you need? Or are you receiving, absorbing and processing the entire message?

We’ve all had moments when we politely smile and nod throughout a dialogue. The speaker may feel heard and validated, but we miss out on potentially valuable information. Or how about those moments when we greet someone in passing with a quick, “Hi. How are you?” and continue moving forward without waiting for a response.

Occasionally, that may happen. But what if it’s a habit? What if others in your organization learn to expect that behavior from you? When people assume their ideas and opinions don’t matter, communication quickly breaks down. This kind of moment isn’t just a missed opportunity for meaningful interaction — it’s a legitimate business issue that puts your organization at risk.

Why Don’t We Listen?

When we’re part of a conversation, but we’re not paying attention, we send the message that we just don’t care. However, our intentions may be quite different. These are the most common reasons why we fail at listening:

  We’re developing a response. Instead of maintaining a clear, open mind when others speak, we quickly start composing our reply or rebuttal. Many smart people tend to jump into that response mode — usually less than 40 words into a dialogue.

  We’re preoccupied by external factors. In today’s multitasking environments, distractions abound. We’re bombarded with noise from things like open floor plans, and a constant barrage of texts, tabs, emails, calls, and calendar notifications.

•  It’s not a good time for the conversation. Have you ever been rushing to prepare for a meeting when someone stopped you in the hallway with a simple “Got a moment?” While it may be tempting to comply, it’s wise to simply schedule the discussion for another time. You’ll stay on track for the meeting, and can focus on the request as time permits.

Checked Out? Ideas For Stronger Communication

I ask my team questions and invest time in discussions because I’m interested in their answers. Actually, I need those answers. After all, employee feedback is critical for a more engaged, productive, fulfilled workforce.

To foster better understanding, try asking follow-up questions to verify what people intend to convey, and discover how they feel about what they’re saying. This simple gesture will cultivate a culture of openness and camaraderie. Also, we can use tools to streamline the communication process and help us ask smart questions that reveal more about employees.

However, there’s no point asking questions if we only respond with a nod and then move on. If your mind is too cluttered and your day too busy to engage fully, be honest with your team. Assure them that you’ll get back to them when you’re able. And of course, don’t forget to follow up.

How To Make Mindful Conversation a Habit

Still, many leaders struggle with the art of active listening. That’s why it’s important to learn useful techniques and make practice a part of your life.

Deepak Chopra, MD, observes that leaders and followers ideally form a symbiotic relationship. “The greatest leaders are visionaries, but no vision is created in a vacuum. It emerges from the situation at hand.” Effective leadership begins with observation — knowing your audience and understanding the landscape. Even the most eloquent, powerful speech will fall on deaf ears if the speaker doesn’t listen to the pulse of the audience.

It’s never too soon to start practicing this art. Here are 4 easy tips to improve your ability to listen and lead:

1) Repetition. Repeat anything you find interesting. This helps you recall key points after a conversation ends. It’s also a smart technique when you meet someone new. Repeat their name throughout the discussion. This not only solidifies the name in your memory, but also helps build rapport and trust.

2) Read Between the Lines. Pay special attention when a speaker changes tone and volume, pauses, or breaks eye contact. These subtle signals are clues that can reflect emotional highlights or pain points (anger, sadness, happiness). And body language often reveals what words don’t say.

3) Mouth/Eye Coordination. Looking a speaker in the eye establishes a connection and lets them know you’re listening. But don’t hold their gaze too long. Recent research suggests that eye contact is effective only if you already agree with a speaker’s message. Instead, try looking at the speaker’s mouth. That may feel awkward, but this keeps you focused on what they’re saying — and they’ll know it.

4) Reflection. Seal the deal by thinking back to extract meaning. You may be exhilarated by a great conversation — but without a mental debrief, much of it can be forgotten. Reflection is critical in developing the takeaways (and subsequent actions) that make the discussion valuable. Try mentally organizing important points by associating them with a relevant word or two. Then, in the future, you’ll more easily recall the details.

The art of listening is about much more than exchanging facts. Active listening helps those in your company feel validated and connected with you and your organization. Genuine conversations weave their own path. Give them your time and attention. Along the way, you’ll solve problems and generate new ideas that will have a lasting impact on you, your team and your business.

Also Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with others in the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome to participate; or join our ongoing Twitter conversation anytime. Learn more…)

Image Credit: Stock.xchng

Leadership + Influence From The Inside Out #TChat Preview

(Editor’s Note: Are you looking for all the highlights and resource links from this week’s #TChat Events? You’re in luck — they’re right this way at the #TChat Recap: Gut Check: Emotions and Leadership.)

“It’s not personal — it’s strictly business.”
–Mario Puzo “The Godfather

Have you ever heard someone at work echo that classic line to dismiss their ruthless, destructive or self-serving behavior? In the past, that kind of cold-blooded Mafia mindset was all too prevalent in business. But these days it’s losing relevance, as emotional intelligence takes hold.

Although academics continue to debate various “EI” models, the core concept is simple. It’s based on the notion that the more mindful we are of the “human” side of business (in ourselves and others), the more effective our performance will be, and the more likely we’ll influence others’ performance.

While some people resist the term “emotional intelligence,” the concept is gaining traction. Some of the world’s most successful organizations — companies like Google and Microsoft — are actively developing emotional intelligence in their workforce. Why does it matter? And how can it “make” or “break” your professional reputation?

That’s the topic we’re discussing this week at #TChat Events, with EI expert, Steve Gutzler, President of Leadership Quest, a Seattle leadership consultancy, and author of “Emotional Intelligence for Personal Leadership.”

“Sneak Peek” Hangout

To kick-off this week’s discussion, Steve joined me for a G+ Hangout, where he briefly shared some fascinating insights about the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace:

This week’s #TChat Events promise to be helpful for anyone who wants to work more effectively with and through others. So bring your questions and ideas — and let’s talk!

#TChat Events: Emotional Intelligence, Leadership and Influence

#TChat Radio — Wed, Dec 18 — 6:30pmET / 3:30pmPT

TChatRadio_logo_020813

Tune-in to the #TChat Radio show

Our hosts, Meghan M. Biro and Kevin W. Grossman talk with Steve Gutzler about why emotional intelligence matters in the workplace, and its connection with influence. Tune-in LIVE online this Wednesday!

#TChat Twitter — Wed, Dec 18 7pmET / 4pmPT

Immediately following the radio show, Meghan, Kevin and Steve will move to the #TChat Twitter stream, where Dr. Nancy Rubin will lead an open chat with the entire TalentCulture community. Everyone with a Twitter account is invited to participate, as we address these 5 related questions:

Q1: Why is emotional intelligence so critical for today’s leaders?
Q2: How do emotional “soft skills” complement hard-edge business skills?
Q3: What is emotional hijacking vs. emotional self-management?
Q4: How can business leaders offer productive emotional influence?
Q5: What technologies can foster employee appreciation + emotional commitment?

We look forward to hearing your feedback, as talent-minded professionals, who care about the human side of business.

Throughout the week, we’ll keep the discussion going on the #TChat Twitter feed and on our LinkedIn Discussion Group. So please join us share your questions, ideas and opinions.
We’ll see you on the stream!