Awakening the Company of One

Leaders should lead with a purpose.  They should lead their organization with a purpose and they should lead themselves with a purpose.  This starts with a frame of reference of ourselves as a company of one -- "Me Incorporated."  As a leader with a purpose, would you be better engaged? If you were focused on deliberate intentions that were aligned with your purpose, would you make a difference in the lives of the people you interact with, the people that you lead?  What do you need to do to awaken this company of one person so you can have a positive influence?

My friend, Kathleen Zurenko who's been a guest blogger for us, shared some thoughts from Gregg Braden's book the Divine Matrix about awakening ourselves to begin changing our consciousness.  Awakening ourselves positions us to be a better leader.  This will allow us to awaken others and lead them to do their best!

1.  Every day take time for silence, stillness and solitude.  The world’s is a noisy place.  Being alone in a quiet, peaceful place is supportive of the awakening process.

2.  Be mindful about what we allow into our daily lives by paying close attention to what we read, watch, listen to, and eat.

3.  Move more, sit less.  Movement viscerally connects us to the earth and restores our vitality.

4.  Acknowledge the beauty that surrounds us.  There are natural and human-made wonders just waiting to be discovered.

5.  Teach and support others as often as possible.  Volunteering in our community, even if just for a few hours a month, gives us the opportunity to make the world a better place.

6.  Nurture our tribes.  Community is an integral component of caring, guidance, support, friendship, and companionship.

7.  See the bigger picture.  Take classes, join discussion groups or find something to research.

8.  Live simply and deliberately.  Clear out the clutter and make room for what we need and enjoy.

9.  Embrace the challenges life presents and find ways to challenge ourselves.  Even the most exciting job, the most exciting lifestyle, can become routine.

10.  Stay in touch with ourselves.  Mindfulness, practiced through yoga, meditation or journaling can support us in learning about our emotions, reactions, likes, dislikes, dreams and fears. Having a solid sense of self gives us a firm foundation for living in this world and being fully awake.

Clean Up Your Own Act

Several months ago I heard a business coach talk about leadership – not your ordinary leadership program talking about how to enhance your organization through your leadership qualities.  Rather, his focus was on how to lead yourself.  He started by challenging us to define our individual culture by asking: “Who are you—your core values, your behaviors, how you interact with others, your level of social awareness and social intelligence.”  Then he challenged us to clean up our own acts to become a better leader in our organizations and communities, pointing out that anyone can be a leader regardless of title – you can lead from any seat!

Several things about his session caught my attention right away.  No PowerPoint – handout or slides on a screen.  Rather, he facilitated a discussion and only provided a two-page handout that prompted a discussion among the participants.  I was immediately drawn to the handout because the first group of words listed had the caption “Possible Intentions – Desired Changes That Stick.” 

Just then, he asked us to review the words, identify two or three intentions and discuss them in the group.  Here’s a sampling of the words and phrases:  successful in business, more family time, learn French, make a big difference, growth of knowledge, rest more, creative endeavors, new relationships, mental challenges. 

Now that you’ve identified your intended state, how do you get there?  That’s the challenge we explored next.  It takes commitment, awareness and deliberate intention to accomplish your desired intention.  Why is this a challenge?  Well there are systems already present in you that have conditioned you over time to be who your are.  The unconscious part of our brain dominates what we do, our actions and reactions, and that is what we must overcome in order to change. This gets in the way of being who we want to be.

Yoga Nidra I thought.  Okay, what’s Yoga Nidra?  Yoga Nidra means yogic sleep, a state of conscious deep sleep for extreme relaxation and subtler spiritual exploration.  I practice yoga and my instructor often leads the class through Yoga Nidra, and as part of this practice we are asked to state our intention – desired state (to ourselves), and to state it in the present and not the future, as in I am versus I want to be.  For example, “I am physically fit” rather than “I am going to exercise regularly.”

The next exercise was inevitable.  Look at the next group of words containing identifiers of the raw material of your human system – your personal default “culture” – the way you act or habits you have to overcome to get to that desired state.  Here’s a sampling of those words and phrases:  Emotional energy, limiting beliefs, distractibility, perseverance, fears, intuition, pessimism, optimism, proactive, reactive, blind spots.  Our brain wants to do what’s familiar, what keeps us safe.  Our brain is afraid of threats.  We act without noticing what we are doing.  We don’t witness nor are we aware.  What you do comes from who you are—the unconscious part of our brain.

Imagine my surprise when he guided us through a Yoga-Nidra type of exercise – not a state of sleep but a state of relaxed consciousness.  The intent was to experience being mindful, to be present to what is and what is happening around us, to be curious and interested without judgment, to exercise a beginners mind, a zen-like mind.  It’s all part of the evolution of ourselves.  If we force ourselves and others in our organizations to evolve in a mindful way, think of how much our organizations will evolve.

Recruitment Time-to-Fill Too Long?

If your organization has a time-to-fill average that’s too long, who gets blamed – the recruiter or the hiring manager? If you are a recruiter, you probably get the finger pointed at you most of the time, but I think the blame should be shared.

Here are the top three reasons I believe most often lead to lengthy fill times.

1.     The recruiter begins recruiting candidates for a new requisition without discussing or clarifying the true needs and expectations with the hiring manager.

2.     The hiring manager changes the specs after seeing a few candidates.

3.     The hiring manager does not make him/herself available for interviews on a timely basis.

Avoiding or minimizing these delays can be realized relatively simply by:

1.     Starting the process with a one-on-one meeting with the hiring manager to establish a complete and mutual understanding of the need, as well as the expectations and preferences of the manager can avoid many of the false steps that can arise from recruiting only on the basis of a written job requisition.

2.     If the “agreement” derived from the meeting described above has been modified, schedule a frequent (weekly?)  check-in time with the manager to allow for any needed mid-course corrections that might be overlooked or not communicated by a busy hiring manager.

3.     Establish a service level agreement at the outset that details what and when the recruiter will deliver, and when and how the hiring manager is expected to respond and act. It would seem to me that 48- to 72-hours would be a reasonable time for a hiring manager to respond to a referral from a trusted recruiting partner.

I will acknowledge that, in the people business, every situation is different. However, I believe that at least 80% of the delays are affected as described here. As always, I would welcome hearing about your personal experiences and perspectives on this subject.

Gary Cluff

Cluff and Associates

Thanks to this week’s guest, Gary Cluff.  Gary is known for best practices in recruiting, branding strategies, recruiting metrics, employee referral programs and recruitment process improvement.

Innovation—It’s More Important than Ever!

A recent study conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value surveyed 1500 CEO’s and found that creativity is the number one competency of the future, according to the respondents.  A lot of things have happened to us over the past few years to cause these leaders to see the need for creativity—none the least of which was the recent global economic downturn.  Organizations realized, if they hadn’t known it before, that we are all interconnected and to succeed, we have to reconsider some of the old ways of doing business.

The issue, I believe, is how to get organizations to shift how they manage people in order to encourage the innovation and creativity needed to stand out!  So many leaders have not owned innovation—they’ve put that off on their research and development teams or said it was a marketing challenge.  The CEOs in the IBM study who said creativity is the number one competency for the future better be taking it on at the highest levels.

How do you create an environment that encourages innovation to flourish?  Well, first of all you have to have the right people.  You have to hire people who know how to think “outside the box” and who aren’t afraid to speak up in order to challenge the status quo. Consider how Richard Branson hires at Virgin—they’ve made innovation one of six key characteristics they screen new hires for.  He says, “to get hired at Virgin, you have to demonstrate a passion for new ideas.”  So, you’d need to craft some questions to get at whether or not the applicant has that passion.  You might ask a question that Jeff Bezos at Amazon asks applicants—“Tell me about something you’ve invented.”  Another way to get at the creativity is to ask an applicant; “Tell me about the most creative idea you’ve ever had at work.  What was it? What was the reaction to your idea? What happened to it?  If it didn’t work, what did you learn from putting it forward?” 

If you are truly serious about hiring creative, innovative people, your culture must be transparent.  You have to listen to your employees, your customers, your competitors, and your stakeholders. Your rewards and recognition policies have to reward people who challenge the status quo and you most likely will need to untangle some of your long-held policies that keep your great employees from being their most creative.

A truly innovative organization encourages creativity at all levels—from the people who are on the front lines with your customers or members to your leadership team.  In other words, innovation has to be in your organizational DNA.

What are you doing to encouraging creativity in your organization?  Share your ideas with us at www.bigbookofhr.com.  From time to time in this blog, we’ll share ideas on great ideas that are working for other organizations.

Are You Doing Your Best Work?

If you are a long-time reader of this blog you know that Cornelia and I like to attend live performances including the ballet, theatre, and musical events.  From time to time we are fortunate to be invited to a rehearsal of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  It is an amazing experience to sit in the beautiful Concert Hall and be able to witness true professionals working to be even better!

The rehearsal begins with the musicians on stage in casual clothes so right off the bat you know this is not a concert—if it were, they’d be in formal evening wear—not jeans and sweaters!  They tune up their instrument which really doesn’t sound like music at all and then the conductor walks in.  He sometimes speaks to those of us in the rehearsal but sometimes he just walks in, picks up his baton and they begin the first piece.

They play it all the way through and to the untrained ear, it sounds perfect.  At the end of the piece, he puts down his baton but no one relaxes.  He begins to give instructions on where a particular instrument or performer could be better.  Those of us in the audience look at each other in awe—we thought it was perfect to begin with.  The professionals know better—they know there is always some way they could improve.

Sometimes they play portions of the piece again incorporating his suggestions but most of the time, he trusts the orchestra to do what’s he’s suggested later in the day when they do a live performance for hundreds of people—for real this time!

So, a question for you is--are you doing your best work right now and if not, what would you need to make that happen?  Do you need some training or maybe just some time to “practice” what you do so that you can do it better?  Do you need direction from someone like a conductor who can point out ways you might improve and can you get that help from your manager or mentor?  Are you comfortable asking for help and if not, why not?

Just as professional athletes practice for hours and hours even after achieving the highest levels of performance in their sport and professional musicians practice and take direction from their conductor, so should we all strive to be sure we do our best work to the best of our ability.

Rest and Rejuvenation

There is a commercial playing now that shows kids playing and chatting to each other. One says, “Can you believe that American workers don’t use their paid vacation days—did you hear me, I said PAID vacation days!”

I think the ad is for Mastercard and they’d like us to use their card on vacation but whatever the motivation for the commercial, I am pleased they are pointing out such a huge issue in the US and it really makes me wonder why people don’t take time off.

I’ve heard people say they don’t use their paid time off because they worry the job won’t be there when they get back or that while they are away, their boss will notice mistakes they’ve made that might have gone unnoticed if they’d been on the job.  How sad is that?

As I write this, I am sitting the in the Tulleries Gardens outside the Louvre in Paris. It is a spectacular Monday with bright blue skies and all around me are flowers in bloom.  Children are playing while parents and nannies chat nearby.  I am sitting in a café sipping a coffee.  My mind is clear because I am totally relaxed and I am not focused on the usual “to do” lists that drive my workday at home.  Today I have no deliverables, phone calls to make or book chapters to write—I am free to think and to create.

We all have experiences that feed our souls and open our hearts.  What does it for me is being in a place with beautiful artworks or listening to music.  In Paris, that means spending time on the 5^th floor of the Musee d’Orsay with the Impressionists or attending a concert in the stunningly beautiful Sainte Chapell surrounded by the most incredible stained glass windows listening to Vivaldi.  My spirits sore, my mind is free and I am renewed.

I am not suggesting that everyone needs to take a long vacation or go to Paris —I am suggesting that we all need to step out of our routine and get some rest.  I find I am most creative when I am not tired and not focused on the daily routine.  A weekend away is enough most of the year but from time to time, it is worth it to take a week or two to really unwind.

Rest and rejuvenation go hand in hand for me.  What do you do to unwind?  Are you taking time off to allow your body to rest and your spirit to rejuvenate? Take those vacation days and see what it does for you and your career!

Carrots Dressed as Sticks

A few years back The Economist published an interesting article entitled:  “Carrots Dressed as Sticks.”  This article still provides an important lesson for today’s workplace.

Tanjim Hossain of the University of Toronto and John List of the University of Chicago conducted a study that focused on the hypothesis that the value people attach to objects is affected by what they already have; people seem to hate losing something already in their possession more than gaining something equivalent that is not currently theirs.

The study was conducted in a Chinese electronics factory.  The managers in this factory were interested in exploring ways to make their bonus plans more effective.  Instead of focusing on the amounts of the bonuses, Hossain and List instead decided to concentrate on the wording of the letter informing workers of the details of the bonus plan.

One group of workers was told at the beginning of the week that they would receive a bonus of 80 yuan ($12) at the end of the week if they met a certain production target.  A second group was told they had “provisionally” been awarded the same bonus, but they would “lose” it if they did not reach their target.

The different ways of describing the bonus actually amount to the same thing.  However, the hypothesis of the study was that the second way of describing the bonus would work better.  The workers would think of the provisional bonus as “already theirs,” and work harder to prevent it from being taken away.  This is exactly what Hossain and List found.  The fear of loss was a better motivator than the prospect of gain.

Would we find the same results everywhere?  Possibly, but probably not.  What motivates employees is often surprising and unpredictable.  There is no one answer.  Every organization is different, every work situation is different, and every individual is different.

Employers would do well to remember this.  It is easy to mistakenly assume that we know what the key motivators are for our staff.  The best organizations don’t assume—they listen.  They take the time to understand their workforce.  By doing this, they are in a better position to understand what their employees truly value—and what makes them want to stay.

What motivates the people that work in your organization?  There won’t be one answer.  That’s the challenge—and the beauty—of human motivation.

Thanks to John White for this week’s post.   John is the principal of JD White & Associates an HR consulting firm that focuses on Compensation and Benefits, HR Effectiveness and Compliance, Professional Development and Communication.