Last week I had the chance to reconnect with a former colleague and friend to get caught up on life over a brilliant sushi buffet. Heading into the meal, little did I know that our soon to be conversation would forever change my perspective on leadership. For the purposes of this article we’ll refer to my friend as King Salad. (weird to say this but he’s got impeccably styled hair [aka salad], and if you’ve seen a picture of me you’ll know why I’m saying this as I’m a bit lacking in this department)
Eventually conversation with King Salad drifted into the inevitable “how’s work coming along this year so far”. King Salad’s first comment both surprised me and caught my attention as he said, “I’m focusing my energy in 2016 on ‘Managerial Courage’. Not to say that I wasn’t interested in the conversation prior, certainly not the case, but without knowing it he had just triggered something in me which made me ultra-alert and increasingly interested to learn more about his perspective of Managerial Courage. As I sat on the edge of the booth listening to King Salad share with me why he was focusing on Managerial Courage a thought jolted my brain which hit me like a lightning bolt. King Salad never saw any of this but he was probably wondering why I was so enthusiastically engaged in the conversation, no longer even eating. What was the lightning bolt that stopped me from eating my precious sushi? I realized something that I had never thought of before: Managerial Courage is the linchpin, the cornerstone, the apex for all things related to leading successfully. It was so clear in that moment! In the absence of Managerial Courage all other leadership qualities and characteristics suffer as without Managerial Courage we can only hope to be mediocre at best when it relates to leading and influencing others. What is Managerial Courage anyways? Simply put – it’s doing the right things as a leader, especially during tough times. Seems simple, yet it’s devilishly difficult to act on consistently. A deeper look into Managerial Courage and we find that it can be further described as a set of actions and beliefs a leader possesses which define who they are and how they go about leading and inspiring others. These actions and beliefs include:
The more I thought about it the more I realized that all this time I’ve missed the bigger picture as it relates to successfully leading others. I even laughed at myself because the notion of Managerial Courage has been in front of me for years yet I had failed to connect the dots leading to my current awareness on the matter. I always knew to lead successfully you had to care about those you supported as well as come to grips with the fact that the decisions you make won’t always be the right ones. I knew leading was an art, not something to be achieved at a moment in time, but something to work towards continuously throughout an entire career as a student of the game. What I didn’t realize until this past week was that the genesis of leadership, the very foundation that exceptional leadership stands on, comes from Managerial Courage. It takes great tenacity, strength, fortitude, mental determination and care to be a leader and do so successfully. You can’t fake leadership, you can’t say one thing then act another. People see right through that. Sure, anyone can be a leader, but those who do it successfully stand head and shoulders above their counterparts. It’s worth mentioning that few people fall into the category of great leaders which is why the concept of Managerial Courage is so important. Courage is the very essence of what leadership is all about. I am beholden to my friend King Salad for the awareness he brought to me over our sushi meal, it was an invaluable learning opportunity one which I’m thrilled to share and pass on. What does Managerial Courage mean to you?
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If you’re hiring or plan to hire this year it’s important you know two truths about present day hiring:
After a decade of working in the technical services and recruiting industry I’ve had few experiences, less than I can count on one hand, with companies that had onboarding programs which I would classify as amazing. Most companies fall short, way short, when it comes to providing a good onboarding experience to their new employees. There’s an important note to be made here. When people hear ‘hiring’ and ‘onboarding’ they have a tendency to think that those responsibilities fall on our partners in HR. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. The leaders who make the actual hiring decision have much to do with this process and good leaders know firsthand that their involvement can make or break the success of that new employee. Employees, regardless of age, are looking for an ‘experience’ at work. Of course having a job is important to them but increasingly important, arguably more important, for a large majority of the professional workforce is the need to work at a place that provides an experience of comradery, meaningfulness in work, giving back, etc. and the list goes on. Part of that experience is a company’s onboarding program and these programs shouldn’t be taken lightly. Does your current employee onboarding program communicate the right message to the best candidates in the market? Forbes estimates as high as 20% of employee attrition occurs within the first 45 days on the job as a result of poor employee onboarding. In fact, new employees who attended a well-structured onboarding orientation program were 69% more likely to remain at a company up to three years. That’s a huge impact! According to iCIMS, a software company specializing in recruiting systems and software, identified that new hires meet their first performance milestone 77% of the time when a formal onboarding program is in place versus only 49% of the time when one ceases to exist. What that tells us is that when a good employee onboarding program exist BOTH individual performance and job tenure improve dramatically. I would also dare to say that the employees’ happiness and appreciation for the job are improved as well. What do you do if your employee onboarding program lacks an experience to capture the best of the best? Look no further – this article provides a complete overview of the only onboarding program you will ever need. Be prepared. There’s some work to be done here before you can just go hire someone and plop them in their bean bag cubby, or dungeon, whichever you’re working with. For the purposes of this article the ‘onboarding experience’ refers to the entire spectrum from when a job posting first gets released straight through to the new employees sixth month on the job. The SQR1 Six Month Onboarding Program: Step 1: Candidate Identification This is the employees’ first glimpse into your company, their experience during this time matters greatly as to whether or not you will have an employee for years or for a matter of months. - Job Posting – make them friendly and exciting; talk less about performance expectations and more about the opportunity and experience they will have in the role; create enthusiasm in candidates by sharing with candidates exciting things to come like new technology, new services, positive changes within the company, company culture or philosophies, etc. - Call Backs - ensure people receive call backs to their application; there’s nothing worse than when people apply to a job opening and don’t hear anything in return; automated responses acknowledging the resume submission are at a minimum a necessity, at which point an acceptance or notice of decline is appropriate and certainly better than not saying anything at all and sending people into a black hole. For the rest of the article click here... Graduating from college is a great life accomplishment. You’ve worked hard for years and now have the chance to finally put your knowledge to the test along with your wonderful self out there for the professional world to enjoy.
As the college parties and farewells subside new college grads inevitably come face to face with a sobering reality... ...the fact that finding their first career job isn’t easy!Ideally, students should start focusing on their careers and entrance into their industry of choosing in their junior year of college, but more than likely you’ve waited till the very last day of school to think about it. Regardless of the situation you are in as you start to look for work it’s important to head into the process of finding a job armed with the right mental attitude and a winning game plan. Before you start looking for a new job it’s important to understand how these common new grad thought processes below can hurt your chances of landing a job:
Now that you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and understand a bit more of how the professional workplace functions you’ll need to do the following:
Why Patience Pays Off, Literally5/20/2016 Patience is a skill I’ve struggled with my whole life. Many years ago my then boss brought to my attention that in order to get ahead in my career I would have to face my shortcomings with patience head on and make some significant changes to the way I went about things at work and at home. This is where I learned the valuable saying, ‘seek to understand before being understood’.
Improve my patience? This definitely wasn’t going to be easy. The more time I spent building awareness around why I struggled with patience the more I began to realize that my issues with patience were rooted in a way of thinking which I had developed over a life time. My thought process was an unyielding focus on things always being perfect and when they were anything but perfect my issues with patience would soon coming roaring center stage. Naturally, I applied this thought process to myself constantly along with the people I worked with and who worked for me. As in life, there are always moments of challenge, let down and dealing with the unknown so my thought process on a utopian way of life where nothing ever goes wrong, everything is perfect and everyone performs to expectation and beyond, was quite absurd. My lack of patience played a key role in this thought process because I wasn’t comfortable living in the ‘gray’ and dealing with ambiguity, my thought process was always black and white. When you lack the skill of patience you seek immediate resolve, regardless if that’s the right answer or not for the given moment. Many times it isn’t. As time went on I came to realize that one of the best ways to improve patience was to simply do nothing. When I would be faced with a challenge, a tough conversation, a moment of “what the hell were you thinking”, rather than act I would simply do nothing and observe. I credit this lesson to an incredibly powerful book on the subject of patience called 4 Seconds by Peter Bregman. As you may have guessed from the title of the book, four seconds is all it takes according to Bregman to quell the need for immediate responses while giving yourself a chance to breathe and think things through. Four seconds doesn’t seem like a lot of time but when you put it into practice it’s amazing how effective it can be. In fact, this book was so impactful I consider it one of my top 10 reads! Recently I had a personal experience which served as a keen reminder on how patience is vital to a balanced lifestyle; in fact it can also lead to you making more money. Our family made a decision to sell a car with the idea of getting a bigger one to accommodate the volume of stuff we tote around thanks to our little daughter. I’m continually amazed at how much crap one little kid can have, which is probably my fault, but that’s another article in itself. So we’re upgrading vehicles for the sake of making our lives easier. I’ve sold many cars in the past so this certainly wasn’t my first rodeo however I would soon find out that the experience and results would be very new to me. As my wife and I made the decision to sell our car the easy solution was to just go trade the car in at the dealership where we were going to buy the new car. As we were meeting with the dealership coming close to finalizing the deal all of a sudden I thought to myself, “wait, why sell the car now just because we can, we don’t need to sell it immediately and perhaps waiting (welcome to the stage our friend ‘patience’) will bring about a better option that pays us more of what the car is worth”. Well, let’s be honest here, my wife said that and I was sitting there saying, “why didn’t I think of that”. Here’s how things went down… Our car’s private party and Kelley Blue Book (KBB) value was about $24,500. While KBB is a useful tool it isn’t always accurate but does provide a good benchmark. As we spent more time searching our options here’s what we came across: - Dealership Trade-In: $19,600 ($4,900 below value) - CarMax: $21,000 ($3,500 below value) - Beepi (online version of CarMax, just better): $23,500 ($1,000 below value) After we carefully reviewed our options it was apparent that going with Beepi was the easy decision. We were impressed with their customer service, straightforward approach on how they value cars and business model, with the best part being they came to us. We never left our home and the car sold for a price that we were happy with. We’re all confronted with opportunities to practice patience on a daily basis. From this experience I’ve learned that when I'm considering to make a decision which could be hasty or impatient I now think of this experience selling our car and think to myself how much money could I be leaving on the table by acting now? Do you struggle with patience sometimes? If so, test it out. Go through this week and take four seconds before you respond or make up your mind on something. What you may find out is that the four seconds you take to think something through could result in you making more money down the road, or just simply being happier with the outcome of whatever it is you’re faced with. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ― Aristotle About the AuthorTravis Smith is the founder and managing director of Square-1 Engineering, a medical device consulting firm, providing end to end engineering and compliance services. He successfully served the life sciences marketplace in SoCal for over 15 years and has been recognized as a ‘40 Under 40’ honoree by the Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce as a top leader in Orange County, CA. Categories
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