HR Articles

By Gregg McLachlan
WorkCabin.ca

We’ve all seen managers who struggle. Once, a manager asked me why employees were not embracing her, or talking to her. My advice, as a fellow manager, “you’re coming on too hard too fast.” The response to that: “I’m not going to change who I am.”

OK. Fine. Take your chances, then.

The best managers are able to adapt to their environments and adjust leadership styles. This isn’t the military. Being a manager isn’t about breaking down your team, literally, and then training them for war.

Here are 10 mistakes managers make that alienate employees:

1. Keeping people out of the loop. Don't restrict communications to only a limited few, thereby keeping everyone else out of the loop. All those people categorized as "everyone else" quickly identify you as being disconnected and out of touch. They quickly perceive you to be an Us vs Them manager. (Them = employees)

2. Trying too hard to be a quick change artist. Too many managers make change for change sake. They rationalize making changes as being necessary. “I have to put my stamp on things!” they say. That’s a crock. Good managers are able to identify what needs fixing and what is working well. Leave well enough alone. Workers aren’t stupid. They know what things are being changed just because you want to change things.

3. Coming on too hard too fast. This is a classic fail, especially among new managers. Rather than integrate themselves into a workplace, they come onboard like a tornado swirling through an office. These types of managers are obsessed with showing everyone that there’s a new sheriff in town. (This is odd because I’m sure employees read the memo about your appointment.) They’re loud. Sometimes obnoxious. And they want everyone to conform to their quirks.

4. Failing to talk about the craft/industry you are all engaged in. Your experience means zilch if you cannot connect and talk with the people around you about your industry. If your industry is about making widgets, talk about what makes a better widget, recognize when widget-making is successful, and so on. You won’t build credibility by only talking about last night’s NHL scores.

5. Being a Blackberry faker. Managers who are constantly messaging or looking at their Blackberry when supposedly in conversation with a worker are quickly identified as a) not being interested in what workers have to say, or b) being a Blackberry faker (someone who uses a Blackberry as a crutch to appear to be super busy all the time).

6. All talk, not action. We’ve all encountered the manager who talks a good game. He/she can sit in a boardroom or staff meeting and appear intelligent by words alone. But his/her inability to transfer words into action at the worker level is always apparent. Eventually people figure these managers out. In other words, they’re soon called blowhards.

7. Surrounding yourself with weakness. To avoid feeling threatened by skilled people who are stronger, weak managers often surround and insulate themselves with other weak managers who can be easily manipulated and will rarely ever say ‘no’. Weak leaders want subordinate managers who will agree with everything they say. But your employees will easily see through it. They’ll see you as being weak.
 
8. Ignoring how to be a regular person. Some managers are so stiff and regimented that you’d like to tap them on the head and ask, “Hello, are you human, do you have any interests beyond just work?” OK, OK, I mentioned about talking about NHL scores in #4. Actually, effective leaders who get to know their employees will engage in non-work related conversation. This is a nice break from the work talk all day.

9. Being afraid to ask employees for their advice. Almost everyone wants to be part of the process of making a workplace a successful and enjoyable place. Managers who think they have all the solutions are living in a fantasy world. Your staff have great ideas too. Tap into those thoughts!

10. Being paranoid and not trusting of anyone. Managers who commit this sin are always paranoid about everyone. Who’s on board? Who’s not? Who’s talking behind my back? Who’s leaking memos? Their actions (see #s 1 through 9 above) clearly show staff that there is no trust. When you don’t put your trust in your staff, your staff will feel like you have no confidence in them. That creates an unhappy workplace.

Gregg McLachlan is the founder of WorkCabin.ca. He is also a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches.

By Michael Stewart

Leadership coaching isn’t about teaching a leader to do the things they already know, but done better. It is about putting the ball in the hands of his teammates and guiding them to victory.

The recent movie, The Kings Speech, was about the man who became King George VI and how his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, helped him overcome a severe stutter. But it was also about how the therapist (coach) helped King George VI believe in himself so he could overcome his limitations. Through coaching, King George VI learned to trust himself, thereby overcoming his stutter.

Hundreds of King George’s out there

King George VI wasn’t a poor leader. He just lacked the confidence to be a leader because everyone doubted him and it manifested itself through a speech impediment.

Within any corporate environment, there are hundreds of King George VIs just waiting to emerge: all it will take is the proper coaching. Yet, too often, organizations simply assign an internal manager to an employee to coax them into doing their job better. This isn’t coaching but skills training.

Effective leadership coaching starts with the right culture and a supportive upper management that believes that it brings value to the organization. It also requires that coaching not be limited to senior executives only, but be pushed downward throughout the organization. That is the only way to create a coaching culture.

According to the UK-based Institute of Leadership and Management study Creating a Coaching Culture, “coaching is a particularly powerful tool in the modern workplace – one that has proven to be a highly effective way of developing individual and organizational performance by unlocking capability.”

Coaching for leadership is about creating a culture that, through its leaders, will achieve a high level of performance. It is not about job training, skills development or getting a new certification. It is about helping a leader be a better motivator, mentor and change leader.

Too often an organization’s goals trump an individual’s goals, leaving the individual to fend for him/herself. Although an organization’s goals are quite important, leadership development coaching focuses on individual development, and in turn, organizational development.

To facilitate a coaching culture an organization must help the individual leader improve in some very important areas: as communicators, in conflict resolution, interpersonal skills, and management abilities. In other words, it must build confidence.

It’s about the individual, not the organization

What isn’t a focus in leadership development coaching are organizational priorities like productivity and profitability. These are indirectly achieved through an individual’s improved leadership abilities.

In 2009, the International Coach Federation Global Coaching Client Study found that “the vast majority (86 per cent) of those (clients) able to calculate company ROI (Return on Investment) indicated that their company had at least made their money back . . .and the median company return was 700 per cent”.

The biblical adage “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” is quite apt even in the workplace. An effective coach, working within a coaching culture, will help a leader achieve far more than if the leader was left to learn it from a book. In the elusive search for better ROI, a leadership coaching culture will go a long way to achieving an organization’s objectives.

Michael Stewart is the managing partner of Work Effects, a Minneapolis, MN based human resources and management consultancy that helps organizations build better leaders and more trustworthy organizations through unique training, coaching and assessment programs. He can be reached at: info@work-effects.com.

SOURCE: Troy Media

By Michael Mercer, Ph.D.

First, pre-employment tests can tell you if a job applicant has qualities similar to your best employees.  If the applicant’s pre-employment test results look good, then you can feel comfortable spending time interviewing the applicant.  When you evaluate job applicants, you can learn a lot about them . . . if you listen to how they talk.

In my third book – “Hire the Best – and Avoid the Rest(tm)” – the most frequently quoted phrase I wrote goes something like this:  “The behavior you see from a job applicant during your screening process is likely to be the very, very best behavior you ever will see from that person.”

Isn’t that the truth?

For example, let’s say you want to hire a mannerly person.  Well, if Applicant A is mannerly during your screening process, that person probably will act that mannerly or worse if you hire Applicant A.  But, if Applicant B acts unmannerly during your screening process, then you may expect that person to act that unmannerly – or even worse – if you hire Applicant B.

PHRASES APPLICANTS USE TELL YOU A LOT ABOUT THEM

Imagine the atmosphere you want in your workplace.  Most managers desire a professional and friendly atmosphere.  That means your employees must act professional – so they represent you and your company well.  Pre-employment tests will tell you is the applicant will ‘fit in’ your corporate culture in terms of interpersonal skills, personality, motivations, and intelligence.

Unfortunately, some job applicants talk at work the same way they do off-the-job.  This often creates a monstrous problem – if you want your employees to convey a professional demeanor to your clients, prospects, and co-workers.  Since pre-employment tests cannot hear how job applicants express themselves, you must conduct in-depth job interviews in which you observe how the applicants act and talk.

7 PHRASES APPLICANTS USE – THAT ARE BIG WARNING FLAGS FOR YOU

Give pre-employment tests and job interviews and reference check job applicants.

And also, carefully listen.  Hear if they talk in the professional manner you want your company to display.

Here are seven (7) phrases applicants may say that can give you an awful lot of useful insights into the person you might hire.

1 & 2 & 3 = “KNOW” PHRASES

Examples include

-  “… you know?”

-  “I don’t know.”

-  “Do you know what I’m saying?”

When someone makes a totally clear statement, but ends it with the question, “… you know?,” I always wonder why they are asking me.  Doesn’t the person realize s/he made a perfectly clear statement?

Next, resourceful people do not say, “I don’t know.”  Instead, they say, “I’ll find out” or “I’ll ask someone who knows, and then I’ll tell you.”  Beware of job applicants who fantasizes you feel impressed when they utter, “I don’t know.”

Finally, “Do you know what I’m saying?” can feel unnerving.  On the cartoon show “South Park,” one of the characters – named Butters – starts a business.  To speed up his learning curve, he attends a convention of people from across North America who operate similar businesses.  Those people end almost every sentence by asking, “Do you know what I’m saying?”  At first, Butters politely answers, “Yes, I know what you are saying.”  Finally, after he hears “Do you know what I’m saying?” for the umpteenth time, Butters replies, “Yes, I know what you are saying – so you don’t need to ask me again.”

Important = You do not want to hire an someone who sounds dim, because they uncontrollably keep spouting “know” phrases, such as “…you know?” or “I don’t know” or “Do you know what I’m saying?”

You crave to hire employees who are productive, dependable, and speak in a manner that represents your company well.  Do you know what I’m saying?

4 = “NO PROBLEM”

Imagine a restaurant waitperson did something for you.  You said, “Thank you.”  Then, the waitperson said, “No problem.”

“No problem” is not a simple, innocent phrase.  It clearly tells you the employee provided the service which was “no problem” to provide.  You reasonably can wonder:  If it was a “problem” for that employee to do, would the employee have done it?

When one of your customers pays for something, your customer expects your company to provide the service or product.  But, if your employee says, “No problem” to the customer that implies the employee did his or her job only because it was “no problem” to do their job.

Is that the impression you want to give your customers?

Or, if an employee helps a co-worker, and then says providing the help was “no problem,” that co-worker reasonably could wonder, “If I asked my colleague to do something he considered a ‘problem,’ would he have done it?  It sounds like that employee may prefer work that is ‘no problem’ to do.”

Result = Saying, “no problem” instantly makes the person seem lazy and uninterested in doing work s/he might consider a difficult or a “problem” to do.

I bet you want to hire job applicants who will do their job duties – even if it includes work they feel is a “problem” to do.

5 = “MY PLEASURE”

This is one of the most bizarre statements your employees might say to a customer.”

Reason:  Your customers do not care if your employees get any “pleasure” from serving them.

Important:  Someone pointed out to me that when an employee does something for a customer and then says doing that deed was “My pleasure,” that could imply something highly inappropriate.

[No, I will not explain this inappropriateness any further.  Use your imagination.  Do you know what I am saying?]

Also, what if the employee did not take “pleasure” in serving your company’s customers?  Would the employee do his job if s/he did not experience “pleasure”?

Aspects of any job are not a “pleasure” to do.  In fact, that often is why your customers pay your company to do it.  Your customers do not care if your employees experience “pleasure” doing what they are paid to do.

So, watch out if a job applicant gets carried away spouting “My pleasure.”

6 = “OH, REALLY?”     

When you say something, and the person you talked to does not believe you, that person might feel like saying, “I don’t believe what you just said” or “I question the accuracy of what you said.”

But, rather than appear rude, some people will listen to you, and then say, “Oh, really?”

Everyone knows the person actually means to say, “I don’t believe you” or “You said something stupid.”

You need to hire job applicants who diplomatically respond to your customers and employees who say something the applicant does not believe is true or accurate.  Really.

7 = “TRY”

You might seriously consider throwing any applicant out the door if the person says, “try” to you.  Using the word “try” is a terribly bad sign.

For example, I handed a copy shop employee one of my brochures to make photocopies and staple.  I stood next to the employee as he stapled one brochure without making sure all pages were neatly stacked.  The horrible result:  That brochure was unusable, because the page edges were uneven and sloppy.

I nicely said to that copy shop employee, “The brochure you made looks sloppy, and I cannot use it.  Please staple every brochure so it looks neat and professional.

That employee replied, “I’ll try.”

I responded, “’Try’ is not good enough.  You actually need to do it correctly.”

I suspect no one ever told him he never should “try.”  Instead, he actually was hired to do quality work.

When someone says, “Try,” it is their sneaky way to weasel out of actually doing something.

For instance, if you tell an employee to finish a project by a certain day and time, and the employee says, “I’ll try,” you should say to that employee, “I do not want you to ‘try’ to finish by the deadline I gave you.  I want and expect you actually to finish by that deadline.”

Saying “try” is somewhat like saying someone is “a little bit pregnant.”  Either you are or you are not pregnant.  Likewise, either you actually do – or you do not do something.

So, be aware and beware when applicants tell you they “try” to do their work assignments.    Their “try” statement is a huge red warning flag waving in front of your face.

Remember:  Try not to hire applicants who proudly say they “try.”

SUMMARY = LISTEN FOR 7 PHRASES POPPING OUT OF APPLICANTS’ MOUTHS

Certain phrases uttered by job applicants speak volumes about how they will talk and act – if you hire them.  After all, the way job applicants act during your screening process often shows you how they will act if they work for you.  Pre-employment test results will reveal if an applicant possesses personality, people skills and motivations similar to your superstar employees.  But you also need to listen carefully during job interviews.

So, be aware – and beware – when an applicant says:

1.  “… you know?”

2.  “I don’t know.”

3.  “Do you know what I’m saying?”

4.  “No problem”

5.  “My pleasure”

6.  “Oh, really?”

7.  “Try”

Use pre-employment tests, reference and background checks, and other job applicant evaluation methods.  Plus remember:  You can learn a lot about job applicants . . . by listening to phrases they use, you know?  So, try to listen for these horrible phrases, you know?.  Do you know what I’m saying?  And congratulations . . . take pleasure when you observe these warning flags.

COPYRIGHT 2010 MICHAEL MERCER, PH.D., www.MercerSystems.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Mercer, Ph.D., is a speaker and management psychologist.  His 5 books include “Hire the Best – & Avoid the Rest(tm)” and also “Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change.”  He created all 3 “Forecaster(tm) Tests” – pre-employment tests companies use to select productive employees.  Dr. Mercer delivers speeches and seminars at companies and conferences.  You can contact him – and get no-cost subscription to his management newsletter – at www.MercerSystems.com

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

By Michael Mercer, Ph.D.

Job hunters must avoid using five phrases when communicating with potential employers in job interviews, phone calls, and letters. Job seekers who use these phrases risk appearing lazy or ludicrous and, worst of all, reduce the likelihood they will get job offers.  Learn about what not to say.

Important job search advice: Job hunters must avoid using five phrases when communicating with potential employers in job interviews, phone calls, and letters. Job seekers who use these phrases risk appearing lazy or ludicrous and, worst of all, reduce the likelihood they will get job offers.

1ST Phrase to Avoid = “NO PROBLEM”

Job hunters who say “No problem” in job interviews sound like lazy bums. Saying “No problem” implies you (a) will do work you do not consider a “problem” to do and (b) may avoid doing work you feel is a “problem” to do.

For example, when a service worker – such as a customer service rep or a waiter/waitress – does something I request, I say “thank you.” If that service worker replies, “No problem,” I always feel like asking, “Well if it was a problem for you to do, would you have done your job and handled my request?”

Highly valued employees do all work they need to do – regardless of whether they feel it is a “problem” to do. In fact, I deal with a lot of super-successful people, and I never heard any of them use the phrase ‘No Problem.’” That fact says a lot.

2ND Phrase to Avoid = “MY PLEASURE”

Some job hunters delude themselves into fantasizing that saying, “My pleasure” sounds pseudo-sophisticated. Actually, if you think about it, the phrase “my pleasure” sounds sexual. And that is not the tone job seekers want to set for most jobs.

Also, do you fantasize a possible employer cares if you consider the job pleasurable? Sure, employers want you to feel motivated. But they are not going to hire you just because you mouth the silly, senseless inanity of “My pleasure.”

3RD Phrase to Avoid = “TRY”

Saying “Try” is like being ‘a little bit pregnant.’ Either you are pregnant or you are not pregnant. You cannot be ‘a little bit pregnant.’ “Try” is similar. Either you actually do your job assignments or you do not.

Job hunters must realize no employer wants employees to “try” to do work assignments. Instead, employers search for job candidates who actually do their work. So, useful job seeking advice is to delete the word “try” from your vocabulary

4TH Phrase to Avoid = “YOU KNOW?”

Any job hunter ending sentences with “you know?” sounds ridiculous and self-doubting. When you make a statement, and then add the phrase “you know?,” you sound like you wonder if you said something stupid. Job hunting advice: (a) Avoid making stupid remarks in job interviews and (b) never end your remarks with a stupid question, “you know?”

5TH Phrase to Avoid = “DO YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING?”

A job seeker who makes a statement, and then asks, “Do you know what I’m saying?” sounds unsure. This is a variation of ending your sentences with “you know?” Also, if you know what you said, and said it clearly, you have no reason to ask, “Do you know what I’m saying?”

Actually, hiring managers may make fun of job hunters who use that phrase. For instance, in one episode of “South Park,” a humorous cartoon show, one character repeatedly asks, “Do you know what I’m saying?” Another character keeps answering, “Yes.” After awhile, the other character cannot stand being asked that question anymore. Finally, he says, “Yes, I know what you are saying. So, you do not need to ask me again.” Since even cartoons make fun of “Do you know what I’m saying?,” imagine what hiring managers say about you if you use ask, “Do you know what I’m saying?”

Phrases job hunters use reveal a tremendous amount of useful information to prospective employers. Say smart things, and you might seem sharp enough to get a job offer. Say dumb or ridiculous, and hiring managers may well laugh at you behind your back. After laughing, they will continue searching for applicants who sound like the type of person they might want to employ.

Job Hunting Advice = Job seekers who want to be taken seriously must avoid saying five common yet ridiculous phrases that stop hiring managers from taking them seriously.

COPYRIGHT 2011 MICHAEL MERCER Article Search, www.JobHuntingMadeEasy.com

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Mercer, Ph.D., authored 6 books - including “JOB HUNTING MADE EASY” and also “Hire the Best - and Avoid the Rest™.”  He is an expert in knowing what employers look for when they decide which job applicants to hire - or not-hire.  Dr. Mercer also coaches job hunters in how to uncover job opportunities, impress interviewers, and get job offers.  You can learn about his “JOB HUNTING MADE EASY” book and also read job hunting advice articles at www.JobHuntingMadeEasy.com

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com