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| Volume 9, Issue 8 |
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In This Issue:
 The best managers are the best listeners: 4 steps
Interviews: The legal way to ask 5 risky questions
Free handout for managers: 25 off-limits interview questions
I'm having health problems': 7 steps for handling the interactive conversation
 Increase your influence tenfold
How to excel at your job and be home for dinner
Why jerks are bad decision-makers
 [Are you] the introverted leader[?]
Smart presentations: So what do you practice?
 Why we only listen to what we want to hear
Believe, and help others see why they should, too
Rudeness hits the bottom line
 Pay scales for 20 different job descriptions
 Training that starts before the job begins
 How to do performance reviews right
 What layoffs do to a marriage
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The best managers are the best listeners: 4 steps
Managers spend a good part of their workday listening to other people. But bear in mind, there’s a big difference between “passive” and “active” listening.
In many cases, managers are too busy thinking about their response rather than listening to the employee’s full statement. In a business setting, this lack of attention can result in costly mistakes, wasted time, poor service and management failure. By listening fully and in a way that shows understanding and respect for
the speaker, you develop a rapport and build trust. That’s the true foundation from which you can manage and influence others. Effective listeners use a four-step process to ensure understanding:...
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Interviews: The legal way to ask 5 risky questions
Employee lawsuits tend to increase during recessions and this one is no exception.
Job discrimination claims filed by U.S. employees and applicants are running at record-high levels in the past two years. Managers and supervisors are at the front lines of making decisions that often trigger those lawsuits—promotions, pay raises, terminations and job assignments. But the most legally dangerous of all those
situations is interviewing job candidates. One misguided question could cause an applicant to think he or she was rejected due to one of the federally protected categories (race, gender, disability, age (40 or older), national origin, religion or pregnancy status). Even your most well-intentioned questions (“So how did you get
that broken arm?”) could be interpreted in a discriminatory way. Managers usually land in trouble when they ask for information that’s irrelevant to a candidate’s ability to perform the job. That’s why managers should make sure every question relates to this central theme:...
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Free handout for managers: 25 off-limits interview questions
Employee lawsuits tend to increase during recessions and this one is no exception.
Job discrimination claims filed by U.S. employees and applicants are running at record-high levels in the past two years. Managers and supervisors are at the front lines of making decisions that often trigger those lawsuits—promotions, pay raises, terminations and job assignments. But the most legally dangerous of all those
situations is interviewing job candidates. One misguided question could cause an applicant to think he or she was rejected due to one of the federally protected categories (race, gender, disability, age (40 or older), national origin, religion or pregnancy status). Even your most well-intentioned questions (“So how did you get
that broken arm?”) could be interpreted in a discriminatory way. Managers usually land in trouble when they ask for information that’s irrelevant to a candidate’s ability to perform the job. That’s why managers should make sure every question relates to this central theme:...
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'I'm having health problems': 7 steps for handling the interactive conversation
When faced with an employee who may have a physical or mental disability, a manager's legal antenna should go up right away.
The ADA requires employers to engage in an interactive dialog with employees to determine whether a disability can be accommodated. Do it wrong, and you're probably looking at a lawsuit. Here's how to handle the conversation...
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Increase your influence tenfold
Joseph Grenny is the co-author of three immediate New York Times bestsellers: Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. He is cofounder of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance, and a consultant to the Fortune 500
The key is understanding behavior. If we attribute the wrong causes to it, then attempts to change it won't be successful.
"That's it. If they're going to act like children, I'll treat them like children." I was sitting in the office of the CEO of a financial services company when he said this. He had asked his senior executive team to cooperatively develop a capital spending plan for the coming year. He had challenged his team to take off their
functional hats and propose a plan that put the enterprise's interests above their local needs. But the budget proposal he got back called for 150% of available capital and was loaded with low-value investments more suited to building fiefs than to creating shareholder value. The CEO's face flushed as he summarized his theory of
behavior: "These guys just flat out don't care about anyone's interest but their own." This lament was caused by the CEO's lack of influence over the behavior of his executive team. His hope was that a logical and sincere plea for change would evoke profoundly different behavior than the team had exhibited in previous years.
Obviously, he was wrong. But the kind of hope and subsequent disappointment he felt is extremely common. Over the past 25 years, my colleagues and I have repeatedly heard similar laments and conclusions—and not just from businesspeople. The "Fundamental Attribution Error"...
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How to excel at your job and be home for dinner
A former Goldman Sachs executive shares her tips for balancing professional work with your personal life during a recession.
When I was a new manager at Goldman Sachs, an executive coach told me: "If you can't get your job done in 10 hours a day, there's something wrong with you—or there's something wrong with your job." I laughed. In my 16 years in finance, I found it hard not admire the 24/7 ethic and even harder to imagine that top results could be
produced without it. But this coach was an advisor to highly respected CEOs. And he forced me to open my eyes and see what really effective executives do to cut time—and stress—for both themselves and the teams they lead. Intrigued, I dug into the research. I learned how performance and judgement erode when we work too many
hours and that motivating people to spend ever-more hours at work is bad for the bottom line. I also talked to hundreds of men and women working in a wide range of executive roles—C-suite jobs, partners at big investment, law, and accounting firms, and middle managers in various industries—to learn how they manage the stress in
their lives. Today's downturn means everyone who still has a job has more work to do. Things have been so uncertain that we all have to work harder because we don't know what will pay off. While "balance" may be a term that makes executives nervous in bad times, it's merely good management to ensure that each hour gets invested in
the right things and that we cut all the waste we can. Here are five tips I've found that let executives produce world-class results and still get home for family dinner—most nights...
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Why jerks are bad decision-makers
Jerks tend to think their own perspectives are the only ones worth considering, but good decisions require serious consideration of alternatives.
There are many reasons for not working with jerks, as Bob Sutton has pointed out in his memorably-titled book The No Asshole Rule. But I think I've discovered another reason for not having them in your organization's employ: they often make bad decisions. While all jerks don't always make bad decisions, and non-jerks
occasionally decide badly too, I'd guess that there is a sizable correlation between jerkiness and bad judgment. For example, I've been reviewing some examples of bad decisions in the financial crisis; fortunately, there is no shortage of them. The mother of all bad decisions in the crisis was probably AIG's decision to...
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[Are you] the introverted leader[?]
Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, Ph.D., is a workplace and career expert and author of "The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength." Founder and president of AboutYOU, Inc., an Atlanta-based leadership consultancy, she is an executive coach and corporate speaker.
In today's extroverted business world, introverts can feel ignored, overlooked, and misunderstood. In fact, according to my research-a two-and-a-half-year national study of introverted professionals-four out of five introverts say extroverts are more likely to get ahead in their workplace.
In addition, more than 40 percent say they would like to change their introverted tendencies, but don't know where or how to begin. The good news? Introversion can be managed. The goal is not changing your personality or natural work style, but
embracing and expanding on your unique strengths. Here are 10 tips for getting started:...
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Smart presentations: So what do you practice?
When people say, "You need to practice your presentation beforehand," exactly what you should be doing to best prepare yourself may not be so obvious. Here are a few ideas to fill in the blanks:...
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Why we only listen to what we want to hear
It might help to explain why you wrap up a meeting only to discover half the people around the table have come to completely different conclusions about what they are supposed to be doing to everyone else. It's because, in a world now awash with chatter and communication, we tend only to listen to the messages we want to hear and filter out the rest.
A study of more than 500 people by corporate training body VitalSmarts has argued that problems with remote colleagues are significantly more difficult to solve and last longer than those with on-site colleagues. What's worse and even more challenging for managers is that the most common means of coping with the effects of
distance tend not only to be destructive to working relationships but can also be destructive to overall productivity, it argued. When people faced challenges with a colleague who worked in a different location, they either tended to...
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Believe, and help others see why they should, too
One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Henry Ford, who said "If you believe that you can, or believe that you can't, you're right."
Why? Because Rick doesn't have a clue about what direction his company's goals or where they are heading. Practically everyone where Rick works is kept in the dark about the company's goals. Whenever Rick asks his boss about it he's routinely waived off. As a result, his commitment is starting to wear thin. Rick wants what
most workers want. That is to understand how his work contributes to the big picture. A school teacher I know, whom we'll call Jerri, hears about the big picture on a regular basis. Jerri teaches junior high school math, and she feels totally
plugged into what's going on at her school and how her work factors in. The reason? Her principal makes it a practice too...
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Rudeness hits the bottom line
Can you put a cost on bad manners? Does politeness pay? According to a US business school professor, the answer is an emphatic "yes" – in fact the cost of bad behaviour can run into millions.
USC Marshall School of Business professor Christine Porath and co-author Christine Pearson, a professor of management at Thunderbird School of Global Management, discovered just how much bad manners can impact the bottom line while researching a new book,
The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It, which was published in July 2009. Texting in meetings, spreading rumours, taking credit for others' work, ignoring emails and not saying "please" and "thank you" are more than just annoyances. In fact Porath and Pearson claim that the stress this causes could cost to $300 billion in lost productivity as
those affected let their performance slip, lose interest in going the extra mile or just look for jobs elsewhere. Porath and Pearson's research suggests that eight out of 10 employees who are victims of...
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Pay scales for 20 different job descriptions
Talent may be cheap right now, but if that new hire works out, don't expect the bargain to last.
Even in a weak labor market, salaries rise--often steeply--as employees gain experience. Inc. asked PayScale, the Seattle-based salary and compensation data provider, to calculate the annual increase in employee compensation, based on
seniority, for 20 different job descriptions, from office manager to Web developer...
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Training that starts before the job begins
Even in a recession, some companies are still hiring in sizable numbers. Two of them—Booz Allen Hamilton and Vestas Wind Systems—start training new employees in culture and processes well before their first day on the job.
While some organizations struggle with layoffs, or at best freeze their hiring plans, others are hiring in considerable numbers, and want their new workers to be steeped in company culture, processes and community from day one—maybe even sooner. One such organization is consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which is set to add
5,000 jobs by the close of 2009. That’s in addition to a similar number of new workers brought on board last year. All told, Booz Allen’s workforce should top 20,000 people this year, with most of them based in the U.S. That rapid hiring pace necessitates a new approach to training. Eighteen months ago, Booz Allen began an
overhaul of its onboarding processes. It begins delivering training and developmental tools to new employees the moment they accept a job offer, rather than waiting for their first official day at work. It is a process Booz Allen executives refer to as “preboarding.” During preboarding, new recruits are directed to an
internal Web portal to access job information, “early learning” activities and company information, including the company’s 15 business lines and messages from senior executives. It’s also an opportunity for newcomers to begin making
professional connections with their Booz Allen colleagues. The prehire learning exercises set the stage for...
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How to do performance reviews right
Above all, don't rely on employees' self-evaluations.
With summer upon us and the year half over, many managers and employees are engaging in that oft-criticized, much maligned, but still necessary exercise: performance evaluation. Yes, formal evaluations generally happen at the end of the calendar year, but many companies require their managers to conduct midterm evaluations as
well, to help avoid year-end surprises. Be it at mid-year or year end, a common component of these evaluations is the employee's self-assessment. In some cases, these self-assessments just amount to the employee submitting a list of accomplishments to his or her manager. Increasingly, though, they're
institutionalized as part of a company's formal performance evaluation document. For every performance criterion, there's space for the employee's rating and comments as well as for the manager's. In theory, self-assessments serve a useful purpose. They give employees an opportunity to objectively reflect on their performance, to
consider what they've done well and where they've fallen short, and then to share their perspective with their manager. And, in theory, the manager captures the employee's perspective as one of many data points that shape the ultimate evaluation. But it's not like that in reality. [The good news is that there are straightforward moves business leaders can make to avoid this dynamic, with their own direct reports and with their whole organizations:...]
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What layoffs do to a marriage
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Ever since Izabela Raczynski-Bell was laid off from her human resources position last December, she has tried to keep herself busy at home.
She job hunts, works on her house and garden, bakes dog biscuits using the fresh herbs she’s grown, and watches her village’s board meetings on cable TV. By the time her husband comes home from work, she is desperate for attention. “He doesn’t even have time to decompress before I bombard him with blah blah blah,” says Ms.
Raczynski-Bell, who lives in Mount Prospect, Ill. “He gets updates that seven more blueberries ripened today, the cantaloupe isn’t doing so well, or one of the dogs lost a whisker.” On particularly lonely days, Ms. Raczynski-Bell, 30 years old, emails pictures of their pets to her husband at work. At night, she begs him to stay
up late and watch “Real Housewives of New Jersey” or “NYC Prep.” And on weekends, after being cooped up all week, she pleads with him to go out with her, even if it’s just to the grocery store. “She’s my best friend, so I feel an obligation to her,” says Jason Bell, 38, an operations support director for a water company. “But it’s a
huge stress.” We’ve all heard the jokes: “Retirement means half as much money—and twice as much spouse.” “For better or worse—but not for lunch.” Generations of retirees have chuckled knowingly at them. But now, thanks to the recession and the
millions of layoffs it has produced, many young couples far from retirement age are discovering there’s more than a little truth in the humor...
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