These Soft Skills Can Go a Long Way

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Paul H. Eccher and Dave Ross for Talent Management magazine. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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While they may not appear in a leader’s official job description, some soft skills can help connect them with employees at a deeper level.

Consider this scenario: Joe Smith is a potential successor for the CEO position at a global financial services company. He excels at boosting sales for his company in the Asia-Pacific region, and he is good at anticipating emerging trends and translating them into actionable business strategies. He is driven by personal achievement and region performance. However, Smith is not very charismatic or personable, and he often fails to connect with and inspire others. As a result, his successes to date have been short-term, and without improving his communication skills, his promotion to CEO isn’t realistic.

According to a recent study by global engagement research firm Leadership IQ, about 90 percent of new hires fail because of attitude, not because they lack a certain skill. As a result, it’s critical that employers take into account the soft skills of prospective employees and how these can help differentiate between pre-hires with similar backgrounds and technical abilities.

The first of four of the soft skills most repeatedly linked to executive success is:

Listening and collaborating. Executives who can give their undivided attention to others and are fully present in their communications often maintain better working relationships with people both in and outside of their organization. Rather than jump to assumptions during conversations, good listeners focus on understanding someone’s point of view rather than crafting their own response and asking questions that drive increased understanding and clarity. In addition, by consistently engaging with their peers, these individuals understand the importance of using team collaboration to solve complex business problems or come up with new ideas. Without these skills among leaders, companies are at risk for low employee engagement levels or missing out on new ideas and perspectives that could help grow the business.

As more businesses become global, there is greater demand for talented leaders who can develop, maintain and grow relationships with colleagues and customers across multiple borders and cultures. These qualities are also important for companies that use the complex matrix structure, in which leaders must connect with people across different teams and functions.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Paul H. Eccher and Dave Ross are co-founders and principals of The Vaya Group, a talent management consultancy. They can be reached at the firm.

How and Why Perception Gaps Impede Working Women

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Kip Kelly for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Perception vs. Reality

The gender-based perception gap reveals that men have a more favorable view of female leaders’ progress in business than women do. For example, more men (65 percent) than women (44 percent) reported an increase in the number of women holding leadership positions in the past five years. The reasons for this gap are as diverse as the people surveyed, but it may be fair to surmise that women’s outlook stems from firsthand knowledge of and experience with their employers’ attempts to support them. Further, women also may hold higher expectations about how effective — and how immediate — those efforts should be. Men, on the other hand, may know that these efforts exist, but may be less familiar with the details or efficacy of these efforts.

A similar argument could be made about the perception gap found between C-suite executives and lower-level managers. C-suite executives may be more aware of the efforts their organizations are taking to develop female business leaders. For example, 45 percent of C-suite executives cited new efforts to encourage mentoring for women, compared to only 24 percent of managers. C-suite executives may have more experience mentoring than managers, so their perceptions are closer to reality. Managers’ misperception can lead to dissatisfaction or worse. However, the opposite may be true. C-suite executives may fall into a rose-colored glasses scenario because if they are not involved in daily mentoring efforts, they may not know firsthand if these efforts are effective.

To overcome this perception gap, talent leaders should start with organizational strategy and link all talent development efforts to specific business goals and a measurable ROI, using metrics and data to guide decisions.

Mentoring and coaching can be effective activities to develop female leaders, but how individuals view these efforts can vary. Leadership programs designed specifically for women also can be valuable, but misperception can cloud program success. Negative perceptions among women can lower participation, and have a broader impact on employee engagement, satisfaction and retention. Talent managers need to be aware of these differences and take steps to ensure that perceptions match reality in their organizations.

There has been a fundamental shift in the composition of the workplace, and employers have been slow to react. Today, women comprise 61 percent of the labor force, are attaining college-level degrees at a faster pace than men and are the primary decision makers when it comes to purchases. Companies must reassess their efforts to recruit, develop and retain this key demographic, taking into account the perception gaps identified in this survey.

Better business leaders — men and women who can get things done and lead people and organizations — are needed today more than ever before. If organizations cling to a one-size-fits-all approach, their efforts to appeal to a broad spectrum of potential talent — including women — may fall flat and they will lose good talent to their competitors.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Kip Kelly is Director of Marketing and Business Development for the UNC Executive Development Institute. He is also director of the Women in Business program at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School and responsible for the portfolio of non-degree programs available through UNC Kenan-Flagler. He can be reached at Kip_Kelly@unc.edu.

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 12/10/12)

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

BOOK REVIEWS

Turn the Ship Around!: How to Create Leadership at Every Level
L. David Marquet

The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution
Charles R. Morris

Selling to China: A Guide to Doing Business in China for Small- and Medium-Sized Companies
Stanley Chao

X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed
Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman

Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History
William Safire

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica

Creating the Strategy: Winning and Keeping Customers in B2B Markets
Rennie Gould

INTERVIEWS

Toby Lester
By Bob Morris

Matthew May
By Guy Kawasaki
Google+

Cynthia A. Montgomery
By Bob Morris

Betty Sue Flowers
By Art Kleiner
strategy+business

Paul Smith
By Bob Morris

COMMENTARIES

“12 Jobs on the Brink: Will They Evolve or Go Extinct?”
Heather Dugan
Salary.com

“Where the Jobs Will (and Won’t) Be In 2013″
Susan Adams
Forbes

“How to Be Assertive While Being Yourself”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR

“The Collected Wisdom of Warren Buffett”
Michael Moritz.

“Where the Jobs Will (and Won’t) Be In 2013″
Susan Adams
Forbes

“How to Capture Your Audience Right Away
Management Tip of the Day
HBR

“Innovate by Looking for Problem Patterns”
Clayton Christensen
HBR

“Have you heard any good paraprosdokians lately?”
BOB

“Always Question Assumptions about Talent”
John Boudreau
Talent Management magazine

“How great leaders inspire action”
Simon Sinek
TED

“Authentic Leadership”
Scott Weiss
A16Z

“Are you willing to invest about 19 minutes to nourish your brain?
Sir Ken Robinson
TED

“My favorite church marquee messages”
BOB

“Bennett & Vivian Levin Honor America’s Heroes On Special ‘Liberty Limited’ Train to Army Navy Game”
Ronnie Polaneczky
Philadelphia Daily News

“Five Secrets to Business Success”
Sir Richard Branson

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To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 11/26/12)

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

BOOK REVIEWS

The Complete Executive
Karen Wright

Harder Than I Thought
Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, and Shannon O’Donnell

HR Strategic Project Management SPOMP
Leon M. Hielkema

INTERVIEWS

Matthew E. May: Second Interview, Part 1, by Bob Morris

Sandra L. Kurtzig (Kenandy) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
New York Times

Matthew E. May: Second Interview, Part 2, by Bob Morris

Holly Weeks: A second interview, by Bob Morris

Erika Andersen: An interview by Bob Morris

COMMENTARIES

“Your Most Pressing Management Concerns: What You’ve Told Us”
Andrea Ovans
HBR

“The Indispensable, Unlikely Leadership of Abraham Lincoln”
Gautam Mukunda
HBR

“Best Business Books of 2012″
strategy+business magazine

“Leadership and the art of plate spinning”
Colin Price
The McKinsey Quarterly

“Surviving Disruption”
Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen
HBR

“The Essential CIO: Insights from IBM’s Global Chief Information Officer Study (2011)”
IBM Institute for Business Value

“Fighting the Fears that Block Creativity”
Tom Kelley and David Kelley
HBR

“Does Management Really Work?”
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen
HBR

“Resilience Quotations: Part 2″
BOB

“Innovation lessons from Pixar: A conversation with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird”
Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb
The McKinsey Quarterly

“Expanding the Use of Assessments”
Mollie Lombardi
Talent Management magazine

“Seth Kahan on getting change and innovation right”
BOB

“What’s your training schedule?”
Josh Linkner

“How Children Succeed: A conversation with author Paul Tough”
Emily Huizenga

“Three Ways to Stop Procrastination”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR

“Valuable business lessons about talent management to be learned from George Bradt and Mary Vonnegut”
BOB

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To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Closing the Great Skills Divide

Catherine Farley and David Smith are managing directors in the Accenture Talent and Organization practice. Susan Cantrell is a research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance. Cantrell and Smith are co-authors of Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization.

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Susan Cantrell, Catherine Farley, and David Smith for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Organizations are struggling to fill mission-critical positions with the skilled talent they require.

Here are seven strategies to help close the skills gap.

Many companies are surprised to learn that the skills they need already exist somewhere in their organization.

As the effects of the global recession linger, organizations are reporting great difficulty in finding the skills they need. The skilled talent is out there, but organizations are having trouble finding it.

One reason a mismatch has occurred is because to hold down the jobs which make up today’s knowledge-driven economy, individuals must develop not just one or two functional skills, but an increasingly diverse portfolio of skills. Assembly-line positions, such as auto production workers, for example, now require proficiencies in technology, communication and problem solving.

At the same time, take any given skill in a portfolio and chances are organizations are demanding it be more sophisticated. One-size-fits-all leadership skills, for example, no longer make the grade. In today’s global economy, successful leaders tailor their methods and styles to specific countries and cultures.

Further, in the face of fluctuating customer demand, companies can drive new products and services to market faster by tapping workers on-demand, pulling in skills wherever and whenever needed. This can be difficult in an era when competition for talent has grown not only cross-industry, but cross-border as well.

In short, finding and keeping talent is more challenging than ever. Many organizations are pursuing a strategy that involves making, buying and borrowing talent — or going beyond those three approaches. There are seven strategies available that organizations can use to close skills gaps more quickly, thus providing a competitive edge.

[Here's the first strategy. To read the complete article, please click here.]

One: Look Beyond Specific Skills

By focusing too narrowly on specific skills, an organization may miss out on hiring top performers. Organizations may complain they can’t find someone with experience implementing a specific accounting software package, for instance, but that mindset might cause them to overlook top-performing candidates who don’t have keywords on their resume but who could readily perform the job.

By developing a more open mind, hiring managers can increase the odds of finding people who, with a little additional training, can meet a job’s highly specific skill requirements.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Catherine Farley and David Smith are managing directors in the Accenture Talent and Organization practice. Susan Cantrell is a research fellow at the Accenture Institute for High Performance. Cantrell and Smith are co-authors of Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management Through Customization.

To read my review of Workforce of One, Please click here.

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris: Week of 10/22/12

Here are some recent posts that may be of interest:

REVIEWS

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
William N. Thorndike, Jr.

Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others
John Daly

The Trust Edge: How Top Leaders Gain Faster Results, Deeper Relationships, and a Stronger Bottom Line
David Horsager

Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing Is Still Key to America’s Future
Ro Khanna

Paid to Think: A Leader’s Toolkit for Redefining Your Future
David Goldsmith with Lorrie Goldsmith

How Remarkable Women Lead: The Breakthrough Model for Work and Life
Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston with Geoffrey Lewis

INTERVIEWS

Kevin Liles (KWL Enterprises) in “The Corner Office”
Conducted by Adam Bryant
New York Times

COMMENTARIES

“Can’t We All Just Get Along?”
Mike Prokopeak
Talent Management magazine

“Listen up, biz leaders: It’s time to rethink everything”
Geoff Colvin
Fortune magazine

“Why Rooster Cogburn would probably get into Harvard”
Blogging on Business

“The most valuable lessons that CEOs can learn from the U.S. Navy’s five-star admirals”
Blogging on Business

“A New Game Plan for Planning 2013″
Andrea Kates
Business Genome website

“David Ogilvy on effective communication”
Blogging on Books

“Why Command-and-Control Leadership Is Here to Stay”
Herminia Ibarra
Harvard Business Review

“Jedi Mind Tricks: 17 Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People”
Peep Laja
Conversion XL website

“Winning the $30 trillion decathlon: How to succeed in emerging markets”
Yuval Atsmon, Peter Child, Richard Dobbs, and Laxman Narasimhan
The McKinsey Quarterly

“How to Put Failure in Its Proper Place”
Whitney Johnson for the Harvard
Harvard Business Review

“Big Data: The Management Revolution”
Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfss
Harvard Business Review

“How and Why Frameworks Improve Performance When Adopted at Any Level of an Organization”
APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center)

“Quotations from and for lovers of books”
Blogging on Business

“20 Lessons Internet Marketers Can Learn from Warren Buffett”
“Tyler”
seohosting.com

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To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

A New Look at Engagement

Here is a brief article featured by Talent Management magazine in which Barb Krantz Taylor identifies and discusses nine intangible elements of work that employees rank much higher than salary or perks on engagement surveys. To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Engaged employees perform at 100 percent of their ability, but the most highly engaged employees perform at 122 percent. This was an assertion made during a Towers Perrin — now Towers Watson — webinar called “Leadership Drives Engagement and Retention” a few years ago.

Let’s do the math. Every employee who’s elevated from engaged to highly engaged is expected to add 22 percent more productivity, potentially resulting in the equivalent of one more full-time employee for every five new highly engaged employees.

Employee engagement has always been of interest to talent leaders, and the need to drive engagement is only growing in importance. During the tumultuous economic downturn, people were happy just to have a job, but now companies are seeing signs of movement in the market as recruiters come knocking.

There’s a high cost to low engagement and burnout. A Families and Work Institute report titled “Overwork in America” noted in 2005 that people are overworked more than ever, and react badly to stress and longer hours. Organizations with low engagement will also experience higher turnover, lost productivity, transition chaos, loss of critical knowledge and skills, disrupted succession plans and less profitability and business value.

Traditionally, companies have used carrots or sticks to motivate or engage employees. They offer raises, bonuses and other perks as carrots. They also try sticks such as performance quotas tied to disciplinary action, demerits and loss of privileges. However, these things don’t drive engagement. Sticks tend to create resentment rather than top performance. Compensation and other carrots are good, but highly engaged employees expect more.

Here are nine key drivers of engagement as identified by The Bailey Group. Most organizations have at least some of these, but are missing a few. These intangible elements of work rank much higher than salary or perks on employee engagement surveys. Individually, these drivers can indicate strengths or concerns, but all nine must be considered to determine a complete picture of engagement. Notice how money isn’t even mentioned.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Barb Krantz Taylor is a licensed psychologist, co-principal and executive coach with The Bailey Group. You can reach her there.

How to Manage Difficult People

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Valerie Pelan for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Half the battle in dealing with tough office personalities is identifying their individual quirks. The rest requires a cool head and a sound, customized strategy.

Imagine the following office scenario. Bill, the engineering manager, and Mary, the accounting manager, are discussing an interdepartmental meeting where nothing was accomplished because of two other managers who tried to derail the meeting with negative actions and comments.

Sam, the operations manager, walked out when no one agreed with his “it won’t work” attitude. Jonathan, the vice president of marketing, tried to delay the project by not making a decision on the marketing collateral and suddenly disapproving of a well-positioned supplier.

“It was good you decided to end the meeting and reschedule it for tomorrow,” Mary said to Bill. “I want to hear your solutions on how to manage these two. The project needs to stay on timeline and in budget.”

On the way back to his office, Bill recalled a communications workshop he attended last year. It helped improve the accounting team’s cohesiveness and understanding of different people’s communication style.

The facilitator used DISC assessment, which focuses on behavior and how a person communicates. DISC is a group of psychological inventories developed by psychologist John G. Geier and is based on the work of William M. Marston. From the assessment report participants learned how to recognize four different communication styles and how to effectively communicate with types different from their own.

Communication is critical for leaders and employees working on global and diverse teams. When employees understand their communication style, they can modify and adjust to improve their situational effectiveness.

DISC is about how a person behaves and prefers to give and receive information. It does not offer information on how intelligent people are, their background or experience. There are no good or bad styles, and people can be a blend of more than one.

The DISC Assessment is known for these communication and behavior types: D (Dominance), I (Influence), S (Steadiness) and C (Compliance):

•  D: How a person responds to problems and challenges. This style is a bottom-line organizer, forward-looking, challenge-oriented, initiates projects and is innovative.

•  I: How a person influences people and contacts. This style is optimistic, enthusiastic, creative at problem solving, team oriented and can negotiate conflict.

•  S: How a person responds to pace and consistency. This style is dependable, team oriented, patient, empathic, logical, loyal and will support a leader and a cause.

•  C: How a person responds to procedures and compliance. This style maintains high standards, is conscientious, clarifies information and tests out directives, asks the right questions and focuses on task completion.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Valerie Pelan is president of Integrated Focus, a management and leadership consultancy. She can be reached at her firm.

Nine Ways to Make “Superstars” Effective Managers

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Derek Finkelman and Jonathan Corke for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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Top-performing individuals don’t instantly become top-performing managers. To succeed, new managers require time, training and guidance.
 
It’s a common scenario: A managerial position becomes available and is filled by a top performer with minimal or no previous management experience. Yet it makes sense. Shouldn’t a top performer be able to easily make the transition to manager? Shouldn’t that person be able to guide others to his or her same level of productivity? The answer is a 100 percent, absolute maybe.

While top performers likely have solid domain skills, coupled with a strong motivation to succeed, there’s a good chance they have not been afforded sufficient opportunity to develop effective management techniques. For some, these skills can be learned on the job. For others, the consequences of a poor managerial fit can be significant in terms of lost productivity and morale for the new manager and his or her direct reports.

Therefore, prior to promoting a top performer with minimal or no managerial experience, assess the candidate’s strengths and forward-looking potential in nine core areas of effective management.

This analysis can ensure consistently smooth management transitions and keep a company operating at peak performance as it identifies whether a top performer is ready to lead now, is better-suited for some limited managerial experiences and additional training, or perhaps has a skill set and disposition that will only thrive in an individual contributor role. Consider: Can the new manager execute these nine core skills?

[Here are the first three.]

•  Move from tactical to strategic. Is the employee ready to let go of his or her day-to-day responsibilities and play a more conceptual or strategic role? Some managers believe they need to understand every last detail of what their employees are working on.

•  Commonly referred to as “micro-managing,” this type of behavior can make otherwise content employees burn out and leave a company. For a top performer who excels at the tactical level, managing others to achieve the same level of success may not seem as fulfilling.

•  Is the employee prepared for this potential shock? Many top performers are capable of the transition from tactical to strategic thinking, provided they have access to the right resources, such as a mentor or applicable management training courses.

Defend the team. Is the employee ready to defend his or her new direct reports and support them in public? Is the employee ready to be a leader? Leaders absorb rather than deflect criticism. Leaders push praise downward to their employees and proactively look for ways to portray their direct reports in a positive light.

In short, leaders have a deep understanding of the phrase, “praise in public, condemn in private.” Lots of top performers have healthy, competitive egos. Don’t assume that deflecting praise and supporting direct reports is a natural instinct for new managers.

Build trusting relationships. Can the employee develop a strong, trusting relationship that engenders compassion and prudent responses to change? As a cautionary tale, “Jerry” really enjoyed working for a manager until the reasons behind some recent absences came into question.

Jerry’s son was in and out of the hospital, and thus, he needed to unexpectedly miss some work during a two-week period. Rather than show compassion and understanding, Jerry’s manager accused him of interviewing. The manager’s paranoia quickly became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Jerry decided it wasn’t worth working for someone who so quickly questioned his integrity. Jerry’s example illustrates the risk associated with promoting a top performer before understanding his or her ability to trust and respect others.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Derek Finkleman is Product Manager at CashStar, the preferred digital gifting and incentives partner for retailers nationwide. These retail brands leverage CashStar to easily and securely integrate digital gifting strategies to increase sales and customer loyalty. Jonathan Corke is Field Marketing Manager at WorkForce Software, the leader in workforce management solutions for large employers with complex policies and compliance concerns.

How to Prevent Employees from Reaching Their Boiling Point

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Mohini Kundu  for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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When employee tensions mount in the workplace, incivility can take a toll on engagement and performance. Use these tips to defuse such situations, lest things get out of hand.

Yelling, abuse and disrespect — these behaviors are becoming more commonplace in the work environment, contributing to a culture of incivility, which may lead to decreased engagement and high turnover rates.

Thirty-eight percent of American workers say the workplace has become more uncivil and disrespectful compared to a few years ago, according to a June 2011 study by KRC Research titled “Civility in America.”

“There’s a real psychological depression out there that is impacting how people are responding to each other,” said Jeff Cohen, executive coaching expert and founder of J M Cohen Associates. Discouragement and desperation that emerged as a byproduct of the unstable business environment combined with new trends in social interaction appear to be taking a toll on corporate communication.

Stress and unhappiness — much of it pertaining to the economy — are uncommonly high amongst workers today, and it is beginning to affect employee culture. “People are becoming more fearful for their jobs, even panicky, and when things go awry they do one of two things: They pull into their shell or they start lashing out at other folks,” Cohen said.

Technology may also be partly to blame for the deteriorating state of communication today. Meg Clara, director of recruiting and human resources at Caiman Consulting, criticized the disruptiveness of electronic communication such as texts and emails in forming personal and professional relationships. By conducting conversations through devices, workers lose out on person-to-person interaction and the etiquette that goes with it.

As a society we are forgetting the importance of looking each other in the eye when we speak, and old-fashioned courtesy has all but become a thing of the past. This trend is resulting not just in more frequent occurrences of disrespect, yelling, underhandedness and abuse in the workplace, but also decreased productivity and higher turnover.

In January, Harvard Business Review reported that half of employees who encountered instances of incivility at work intentionally decreased their efforts. The article also showed more than a third of them decreased the quality of their work.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

To check out the resources at the Institute for Civility, please click here.

Mohini Kundu is an editorial intern at Talent Management magazine.