Swimming Past the Drop Off

I decided to take a refreshing swim at my town lake this afternoon. While I was swimming, I noticed that on one far end of the swimming area, the depth only went to about four feet. Being 5"9", I kept stubbing my toes while trying to swim and found I was limited to what strokes I could try. I finally reached a point where I could not touch the bottom. I decided to tread water for a while while watching a few kids stop at the point where the bottom dropped off. They kept talking how they didn't want to go past the "drop off" because they didn't feel safe in doing so. I on the other hand, was quite content swimming past the drop off and giving myself room to experiment.

In what ways are you giving your employees the courage to swim past the drop off? Do you encourage your employees to try new ideas or discourage them because of the risks involved? What tools do you give them to help mitigate the risks? What rewards do you provide for success or simply for just working through their ideas?

The Satisfaction of Meeting Tough Challenges

Recently, I've become involved in a group of cycling enthusiasts. The plan was to meet and ride 24 miles from Ayer, MA to Nashua, NH. At the last minute, the leader cancelled the ride due to the windy and nippy weather. I and another member, Jerry, did not get the message. While waiting at the trail head, many things were going through my mind: "It's too cold and windy, should I just head back home?", "What if I only cycle for about 30 mins and then go home?". You can imagine how much debate I was having with myself about the situation. Instead, my new found friend Jerry suggested we go and ride the full trail anyway and make a day of it. It was chilly and the wind seemed against us for most of the ride. Towards the last 4 miles my legs were aching! I was pleased that I met the challenge head on and felt such a great sense of accomplishment. I was thankful to Jerry for nudging me into doing what I thought was beyond my physical abilities.

How do we nudge others at work to go beyond what they think they can do? Do we offer them a safe environment in which they can implement their plan of attack without consequence? Think about some of the tools that helped you get past a challenge. What advice can you offer that might help someone else beyond a challenging situation?

When the goal is accomplished, celebrate the success! Talk about what went well and lessons learned from the effort. All of us learn through others and by doing what may seem to be the impossible.

A Leader's Influence on Job Performance

What if you had a team that loved coming into work every day and constantly performing past your expectations? Is that a pipe dream or a plausible reality? How would this scenario improve your own performance and perception in the workforce?

Leaders have quite a bit of influence on an employee's performance on the job. What they do to understand the motivations, strengths and weaknesses of an employee helps to tailor an employee's ongoing development and career goals. Two ways that a leader can accomplish these goals is to establish a working relationship and communicate expectations of learning before and after sending an employee to a learning event.

Establish a Working Relationship
When working with a new group or employee, establish a common understanding on how you are going to work together. Either in a group or individually, set some time aside to get the employee(s)' perspective on the following:

1. What do we already know about our manager? 
2. What don’t we know but would like to know about our manager? 
3. What are our concerns about our manager?
4. What do we want to know about our organizational goals and related critical business objectives?
5. What recommendations would we make for addressing our organizational goals and critical business objectives?
6. What do we want most from our manager?
7. What does our manager need to know about us as a group?
8. What can each of us do to support our manger’s success?
9. What are the major problems facing our managers?
10. What are our suggestions for dealing with these problems?
11. (For new managers to company) What does our manager need to know about the company’s organizational culture?12. (For new managers to company) What general recommendations for success in our company we can offer?

Keep revisiting these questions with your employees to make sure that they continue to be clear on the goals and objectives of the organization and your specific unit. Check back when there are significant organizational changes that effect the goals of the unit.

Communicate Expectations of Learning
Before your employee is to attend training, sit them down privately and discuss the importance of the training they will be participating in. Review the the class details and confirm with them that learning is a part of what they are paid to do at work because it is part of their work. Engage them on what they would like to take away from the training and have them write down three things they are going to do to use the skills they learned while in class. Let the employee know that you will be expecting them to meet with you after the class to discuss what was covered and what they have committed to practice from their learning. Confirm with them that it is o.k. if what they implement does not produce results that they would have expected. Additionally, reassure the employee that the only way to fail is not to try.


Lastly, continue to communicate with employees as to what they would like to learn and the direction they would like to take with their career. Give them opportunities to attend project meetings that might interest them and to job shadow areas of the organization that would interest them.


While currently the economy will steer many good employees for looking elsewhere for employment, good employees will be able to find alternative places to work in any environment. The more that an employee feels like they are a valued member of a team and that they enjoy the relationship they have with their manager, the more the employee will want to stay.

The Dreaded Meeting

Have you ever heard someone say to you at work, "I have a meeting this morning and I can't wait to go!"? You are most likely to be struck by lightening than hearing these words. The fact of the matter is, many meetings are poorly planned, lack constructive interaction, never start or end on time, and lack follow up items to be completed with solid deadlines. Many times those that are being invited don't know why they are there and what is expected of them. These skills aren't born with us, we have to learn them. Yet, there are few companies who offer meeting management skills. Its just expected that employees have these skills.

What can meeting leaders do to assure a constructive meeting? Here are just a few tips:

Before the Meeting. Make sure that those that are coming are clear on why they were invited and what they can contribute. If it's a meeting to assemble a business team to work on a project or resolve a work issue, approach the team member and their boss face-to-face (preferably) and explain why the team member's expertise is needed and how much of their time will be needed for the project.

• Create an agenda with objectives of the meeting and the items to be addressed. Set clear expectations on how much time is allotted for each item on the agenda. Plan a 10 minute "stretch" break if the meeting is to last more than three hours. Make sure that this agenda is sent out to those that are attending a week in advance.

• Include in your meeting plan ways that you can engage the attendees in the topics that are being discussed. Limit the amount of time the meeting leader will be talking--their purpose is to lead the meeting and facilitate the discussion, not be the sole contributor. Use brainstorming to get others to contribute ideas to the meeting topic. If this is an ongoing team project meeting, ask a member of the team to volunteer to facilitate the next meeting (with the team leaders' guidance).

• Address any road blocks or hidden agendas with individuals separately before the meeting.
  

• Create meaningful flip charts to use during your meeting. Don't leave it up to chance that this will happen during the meeting because you know it never does!
  

During the Meeting. Bring copies of the agenda and start on time. If you are still missing attendees,  they will arrive shortly and will learn very quickly to show up on time at the next meeting. Review verbally what will be discussed and provide an opportunity for attendees to introduce themselves. Ask all attendees to turn off their electronic devices if possible, at minimum have them place them on vibrate. Assure the attendees that there will be a break for them to address any pressing issues.

• As a meeting leader, make sure that you are practicing good listening skills. Summarize what you heard and ask the attendee if that was correct. Give positive feedback when you can to encourage more discussion. Make sure to take good notes on what is being said and who's committing to do what in order to help you plan for the followup meeting.
• Set constructive ground rules for meeting engagement. For example: respect confidentiality, avoid squelching others ideas prematurely, give everyone a chance to speak, and no side conversations.
  
• Establish a "parking lot" for issues that come up during the meeting that weren't part of the meeting discussion to be addressed separately off-line.

After the Meeting: Follow up immediately with the minutes of the meeting and date and outline for the next meeting. Make sure that all attendees of the meeting understand what they committed to and when it's due. Ask for feedback from the attendees on the meeting and how it can be improved. Follow up with the attendees on the recommendations and what will be implemented to make it a better meeting.

Meeting management skills are valuable skills that every employee can use. If you are interested on coaching your employees on effective meeting management skills, I would recommend the book "101 Ways to Make a Meeting Active" by Mel Silberman. I'm sure there are other great ones out there and this is a good start!

Why is Social Media a Legitimate Tool for Employee Development?

The topic of social media gets a lot of coverage these days! People who you know well (and some not so well) want to “friend” you, others want to “link up” to you, and then they would like to send you a “tweet”. In today's world, being connected through social media is becoming as important as having an email address. Many use social media to share information about themselves or discuss a topic or issue that is important to them. Interestingly enough, there are many business who have decided that allowing access to social media during business hours will tempt employees to waste time rather than to “work”. These same businesses thought the same way when the internet was widely used. While there will always be employees who will abuse services, the majority of them used the internet to gather information to use for work purposes. The internet was not only a means to educate the employee, it also made them more productive at work! Social media can also educate and help employees to be more productive.

Wikipedia describes social media as supporting “....the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers”. A simple way to develop employees is by empowering them to share their knowledge and experiences with others. Here are some ideas on how social media tools can be used for employee development:

A group of employees you manage just went through training together. Pick an objective from the training program and ask your employees how they will be using that aspect of the training in there work using Twitter.

1. 
   
   Form a group on Linkedin for your employees based on a theme, say Customer Service. Post typical customer scenarios and ask employees to respond on how they've handled similar scenarios in the past successfully.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Create a blog site for your department. Feature a guest blogger, one of your employees, on a topic of interest to the department or company (employees choice).
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Create a short video clip on a business topic and post on YouTube. Link the video to Facebook and have employees weigh in (movie review) on the topic being discussed.
   
   
   

Not all topics can be shared in this manner (company sensitive data should not be put on public domains), however, these are ways to engage employees in soft skill development and on topics that are relevant to the industry.

How do you see social media being used for employee development?