Free Agents

Company loyalty 50 years ago was a dominant force for the global economy. My father and grandfather were very loyal to their companies and almost felt a obligation to stay with their companies regardless good or bad. Today that is not and option and employees are really becoming "free agents" just like athletes going to the highest bidder. The problem with this concept is the most money does not always translate into the largest opportunity. Here are a couple of things to think through when you have filed your papers for free agency.

• What is the responsibility and scope of this role
• Will I be challenged both professional and intellectually
• Is there opportunity to change roles and if so how fast
• Who will I be working for and what type of a leader are they
• Is the business growing or focused on efficiency

The reality is companies cannot count on an employee staying for a significant amount of time. If they hire the right people for the right roles the have a better chance at staying, but not a guarantee. However most people leave roles because of their manager so regardless of pay if you are not treating people right they are going to leave. Since employees are not loyal there is no reason not to be honest as it is too costly for a company to have attrition.

Sales

There is a reason a majority of the CEO's have a former sales background. This is because they likely value the ability to build relationships, deliver presentations and take risks that have high rewards. Most people do not take a sales job thinking "I Want To Sell." In my case I was SOLD on the idea this was a starting point to a larger role. I have no regrets!

Sales is what makes the world go round. Politicians, Attorneys, and Teachers are all selling whether they believe it or not. They are trying to get their point across and hoping that others will follow their lead. However if you asked either of these professions if they are sales people they would all say no.

Sales does not have to be brutal and the most effective sales people in the world have an ability to build a relationship and rapport quickly. Does this sound like some of the same characteristics a leader has, it should. There are some people that are very data driven, process oriented and technical and they do not think they have sales ability. I would argue everyone has a sales ability ultimately to be successful in sales it is not rocket science. You have to have passion and knowledge of what you are selling. If you have each of these and you can build rapport you will be the next rainmaker.

Talent Upgrade

I have worked in some very aggressive corporations in which talent upgrade was a constant theme. Almost to a fault in some regards as the bottom 10% was constantly forced out of the organization or into a different role. However in some companies today this is not the case. There is nothing worse for a young aggressive talented person to join a corporation that is built upon tenure.

I have worked with some extremely talented people in my career. These are the people that if I were starting my own business I would want them on my team regardless of the business venture. In my opinion successful people are successful regardless of the task at hand. However when developing talent especially at the management level the manager demographic should mirror the employee population. For example if the organization is built with a sales force under the age of 30 does it make sense to have some one leading that group who is 50? I would argue there is little in common and the relationship might struggle. The same goes for all forms of demographics. Once you have found talent you will find it is colorless and does not have gender as anyone can be successful.

Talent upgrade does not come easy and there are a couple questions you need to think of:

• How are they performing today vs their potential?
• How do they fit into the business plans for the future?

If either of these questions have negative responses it is likely this is an area to upgrade the talent at this position. If you want to grow as a leader you have to surround yourself with talented people. If you decided not to make these tough decisions it is likely you might fit into one of the 2 questions above.

Show Me, Dont Tell Me

An area in business that is lacking is the ability to teach and coach people to higher results. In many organizations today leaders gather together and come up with ideas without gaining feedback from the peoples that it will be impacting. The other challenge is if the leader is not willing to step up and lead by example there will be absolutely no buy in.

As a leader you need to be able to show people how to accomplish the goal before you can hold them accountable. In most cases manager hire people and hope they can figure it out. The problem with this approach is the employee immediately will begin to feel they are on an island without help. Furthermore if their leader has never proven they can do the job (ex. make sales calls) they will not think the goals are realistic. If this continues results will decline and belief in the leader will diminish.

If you want to make an impact trying doing your employees job for a day. Show them you can do the role and be successful. Regardless of the end result you will likely build a relationship with your employee and build trust. On the other side of the coin if you need help and you ask your supervisor to show you rather than tell you. If they cannot deliver or worse refuse to try might be a good time to ask why?

Vision

Each and every day a leader must think about the vision that he/she is creating. More importantly what are they going to do to inspire, engage, and motivate people around them toward the vision. As a leader you have to have a clear vision for where you see the direction of the business or organization and remain firm with the vision.

If your vision is to be the best supplier of widgets then every decision you make for the organization has to have a correlation with this vision. In some cases leaders fail by creating a compelling vision and then 6 months later change the vision or focus. As this happens you will lose momentum and eventually lose productivity and efficiency.

Creating a vision is not as difficult as many organizations make it out to be. The process of implementing the vision is highly complicated but the vision itself should be simple. "We want to be a global leader in technology" great vision the question the leader then has to ask is how and why? After you have created a vision that is understandable remain consistent to not deviate from the vision. You will have to make changes to the process but the vision should remain consistent.

Acting the Part

There are times when leaders have to "Act the Part." What does this mean? Well in my opinion it is the responsibility of a leader to build a network of people and strengthen his/her internal community. When I think about the word community I am not stating the zip code in which you reside, this might be part of the community, but I am thinking about the people that you can have an impact on each and every day. As a leader there are going to be times you have to "Act the Part."

People want to be led and if at any given moment they do not feel you are a capable leader you will have lost trust in your community. For example in business their are many after hour social gatherings and most times these include alcohol and appetizers. It is the responsibility of the leader to set the tone if the leader begins to do keg stands the group were certainly follow. Sure people might have a great time but what type of reputation has been set? In these situations it is great to think about your people and how would they appreciate you spending time with them. Time is so valuable and we rarely have enough of it to "act the part." There are times in which everyone has to let loose but this should only happen in the confines of your closest of companions.

"Acting the Part" does not mean changing who you are or what your values might be. It simply means treating people with dignity ad respect at all times. If this is something that a person really has to work at odds are they are not a leader and will never be one. Leadership is not easy; it is challenging, but if you genuinely care about people you are likely to have success. Remember to "Act the Part" because whether you like it or not everyone is watching!

Strengths

So much is written about people's strengths that it can be very overwhelming. How do you manage to someone's strengths if you are not able to identify them or uncover them. It has been my experience that you have to dig deeper than knowing the person on a professional level you have to know them on a personal level. Who are they? What are their core values?

For myself as an example I have spent my professional career in sales and sales management. However one of my personal strengths is the ability to build relationships with my staff quickly and develop them as leaders. If you looked at my resume you would probably say this person is a pure sales person and how would they fit into our organization?

As a leader you have to find out what makes people tick. In my example I would rather spend 10 hours a day working with people, reviewing strategies, implementing ideas however a majority of my time is spent working on sales and business development. Leaders need to build a relationship with their staff and engage in these conversations on a regular basis. As people's lives change so do their goals and aspirations. A very good friend of mine was a high level executive who had all the perks (company car, expense account, large salary, and bonus) then he had a child and all of a sudden these were not as important. He decided to leave this role and satrt up something on his own to spend more time with his family. I guess the morale of the story is if you are engaged with your team you will know when these changes take place. You will be more likely to make proactive changes than reactive changes. As a leader it is not enough to hit the numbers you have to build deep relationships that can stand the test of time.

Influence

Influencing is an area that a leader will have to master to be effective when it come to making decisions. Most managers try to influence others but their problem is their personal interest seems to always show through. So how do the greatest leaders influence others? The first step they do is to set a clear task or goal that each person can see value in. If there are people that do not have value in the project they will likely try to read deeper into it and wonder what the underline cause might be. Leaders have an outstanding ability to influence others to think they way they do in order to achieve goals. As a leader is trying to influence others they will need to make sure people understand the entire part of the puzzle. In other words we are trying to do this to improve efficiency, increase profits, drive and increase in sales. If this is clear than influencing will be much easier. Therefore leaders are outstanding communicators.

So how do you practice this to see if you can begin to influence others. Here are a couple of things to try:

• Create a contest that changes a lifestyle change (weight loss, quit smoking, etc)
• Begin using a word associated with success often to see if people will pick it up and use it (fantastic!)

Sure these might seem like little things but leadership is about starting small, building trust and then making changes. Influencing and leadership go hand and hand, however you have to be able to balance influencing as it can quickly become brainwashing.

Building Consensus

Building Consensus is one of the areas that a leader must do each and every day. The question to think about is how do you do this effectively if you are meeting with so many personalities each and every day? Well this is what becomes very tricky and you have to be able to make people think critically and come to the conclusions you are looking for on their own. If someone owns the idea regardless if you pushed them in the direction they will have 100% buy in in the direction the business is going. I would call this Imagination Penetration because you are penetrating peoples mind to think the way you think. This is an outstanding approach if you are going to be delivering a tough message or a new innovative idea. The main reason this is effective is most people would rather hear ideas from their peers rather than their boss. If they hear ideas from their peers they will likely adopt the idea quickly as they feel the person is trying to do something that will directly impact their role in a positive manor. Although this is tough in some regards it can help make a business operate very successfully to an extent.

This approach should only be used in the initial forms of leadership development and tough decision making as if it continues the team is really beginning to experience group think. This will then lead to lack of new ideas a culture that is wrapped up in current process and not willing to change. If a company is not willing to change they will likely fail in the upcoming years.

In order to build consensus effectively make sure you are engaged in conversation with the key players before the meeting or presentation. Make sure they are on your side and you have buy in before the meeting even takes place. From a political standpoint this will cause less distractions and the flow of the meeting will be very effective. Make sure to always conclude the presentation on a positive note and lead people to the vision ahead.

Employee 1st

As leaders you have to be able to give clear direction on where the business or project is moving and how the team is going to get there. So many times a manager is great a giving orders and giving out goals but very few are outstanding at setting up a road map of how to get there. I have seen in my career many managers who simply walk the "corporate line." The corporate line is telling every one what the company wants them to hear without being creative or innovative with new ideas. These are the types of managers that love corporate wide contests, special discounts, and new corporate marketing concepts. They love these because they are not creative to come up with something on their own.

A leader however will challenge the status quo they will create environment that is dynamic and robust. A leader has the ability to be political at all times, sometimes this means saying the corporation is wrong taking the side of the employee. At all costs they will defend their employees. They will do anything in their power to promote them although this usually means hard work for them in the future. Once a leader has built this level of trust the possibilities are endless. Although this type of leader might suffer short term struggles they will have a much longer career that will be filled with joy as they have built a team of winners. Although this concept is simple there are very few LEADERS that can actually put their employees success in front of their own.

Positive Workplace

A positive workplace is tough to define for many leaders as sometimes they feel their actions are very positive. In reality they have no idea that they are coming off as arrogant, lack of personal concern, or self absorbed. The less interaction a leader has with someone the more positive they have to be with them as this time cannot be recouped in most cases. If you are only spending 5 minutes with someone every week and the only thing the leader ever says is "we need more," "what have you done lately," "last months numbers were terrible" this is only going to transpose to a negative feeling for that employee. I believe that everyone for the most part comes to work to do a good job and at the point of contact with his/her manager is when motivation is changed in an instant. A great leader can take that same employee and build them up for the upcoming day by saying, "Good Morning, Great day yesterday I appreciate the hard work lets do it again today." Even if they had a bad day a great leader can say, "Yesterday was tough lets think about what might have went wrong and make some changes today, I know we can do it!"

The key to leadership is that it never ends, leaders are leaders 24/7. They are leaders at work, home, and the community. They are constantly trying to make others around them better and they never settle. However the title leader is not like Vice President and does not come with tenure. At any point a change in direction and focus can quickly change someone from being a leader to a manager and gaining the title of leader will be hard to regain. The best thing about leadership is it does not have to have a title, anyone can be a leader as long as others are willing to follow. If you create an environment that fosters growth, imagination, and feedback motivations will come very easy.

Hiring

Over the past 2 days I have been interviewing to build a team. This is one of the most important decisions a leader can make in order to build long term success. There are couple of areas that will help make this process effective.

• The first is to identify if the person has the talent to contribute to the organization?
• Identify how they will fit within the team. Will there be internal or external conflicts based off of personalities?
• What is the person's motivation to change career paths and what are their long term goals?

Of course there are many other questions you can ask to identify the candidates drive, ambition, creativity, and leadership. However, one area that cannot be jeopardized is settling for a candidate. Organizations struggle with the inability to be more selective in hiring rather they view the process as filling a spot. As a leader it is important to think about the future and hire leaders who will lead and drive change. It is important to remember that tasks can be taught but talent is something that is hard to find.

Heart Felt

Leaders find themselves each and everyday making an impact on people around them. Regardless of the title they might have they can have a positive impact with everyone they meet. There is one thing that a leader can control every day and that is his/her attitude.

Granted there are going to be times that things are just not going well and these are going to be the times a leader really needs to step up. Leadership is how people perceive you whether you like it or not the way you are perceived is reality. When things are not going well this is when true leaders shine as they can make the best of a bad situation. When this happens great relationships are built that will last a life time. If the leader has not built trust these times will kill a career or a business.

Appreciate the impact you have on people and be compassionate to their needs. Leaders find a way to make others around them better. Enjoy being a leader and embrace the opportunity as it can be taken away in a blink of an eye.

Human Element

In any business there are going to be goals assigned the business plan. The key for a leader is to determine goals that are fair, consistent and can be attained. In business leaders sometimes throw a number out there with no real plan of action on how to attain the goal. This is where data can come into the discussion. Most large businesses today operate under a data driven model like six sigma. This creates the guess work out of how to come to conclusions about business the only problem with this system is it does not always look at the human element that might be involved. In other words there might be an opportunity to drive more sales through a direct mail marketing approach and the numbers look great for this venture. The only area that might be lacking is the knowledge the sales people have about the product or service that is being offered.

This is what I would call the human element, will they be able to handle in the incoming questions, will the service level drop due to lack of training. It is important for a leader to identify these areas of concern and make sure regardless of the data are you truly looking at the Human Element. I can remember a time where our company was changing to a different software system we went through all the formal training and everyone seemed to be on track. After a couple of weeks we noticed some associates were still using the old system which was slowing down productivity. After having a conversation we realized the roll out was not effective the training was not consistent and the goals on how fast to be up to speed for the conversion were not attainable. We lost some very good people because of this transition and ultimately cost the organization tremendous amounts of money. If we would have reviewed the Human Element in the beginning we would have created focus groups, rolled the conversion out in pilots and created an excitement about the change. All of which are standard in future projects.

Training

How many times have you heard of a company stress how great their training is? The question that I would ask is how do you quantify the training that you are giving to people? Is there a direct impact that can be seen after the training, (ex. increase in sales, leadership development, morale boost) and who is held accountable for delivering the training. It is my opinion most people that end up as internal trainers were not successful in their previous roles and have elected to take a path with less demands. This is why in most organizations you will find trainers that have a very long tenure with a company. Thus begging the question what are their minimum standards and how are they measured to improve each year?

I strongly feel as a leader this is a core competency that has to be present. I would say it also can be one of the areas that leaders fail to address and are not effective. A quick way to analyze if you are effective is to try a unique approach the next time you deliver training. Rather than having the employee fill out a survey at the end of the training ask them to send you everything that they learned in the training session. This can be in the form of an email or on a piece of paper. As you gather the responses you will find you might have covered 70 pages of material however the employee only retained 5% of the information. At this point it is time to redefine the training approach and material as it is not the employees fault. To put it into common sense terms we do not ask children to get on a bike and ride with showing them how to sit, balance, pedal, etc. Training should take the same approach.

Sure there are going to be some that are more advanced for the training and might not see a value to attend. In these cases I would argue if the person is not interested in the training to begin they should not attend. Life is full of choices and each person has to make a decision on how they want to spend their time. There is one guarantee if the trainer is effective regardless of the material you will find the training classes will fill up in advance.

Positioning

Positioning is important in leadership and in some regards is not talked about enough. How often do leaders put their self in a position to be successful? Do they put their teams into positions to be successful? Do they put their customers in positions to be successful? In most cases leaders think they have put their self in position to be successful however they forget the most important part of positioning is taking care of the employee, vendor, or customer.

As positioning takes place it is important to understand a leaders position is defined by how he or she has positioned their team. In other words if the team is struggling with closing business how is the Leader positioning marketing for the office? If the leader positioning the marketing resources in the correct location they will see ultimate success. If you have a great market do you position your strongest team or your weakest team? Knowing the business is going to continue to drive in you might have the best customer service team however not the best outbound sales focused team.

When thinking about positioning it is key to position people around you for success. If a person is not having success but has drive, motivation and a strong work ethic what is going wrong? It might be an opportunity to reposition the person define their strengths and capitalize.

Molding a Leader

As I spoke to one of my managers we began to discuss an action plan for one of our team members. I explained that I was going to have a conversation with this person and discuss the great opportunities that we were going to be coming up. I then realized this would be a great opportunity to empower this manager to deliver this positive message. This brought immediate confidence and excitement to this manager as I then coached on how to prepare for the conversation. It not only showed I had the confidence in her as a leader but it helped her build a relationship with the team member.

As leaders it is important to empower people to make critical business decisions. If a manager is not willing to empower his/her team it is unlikely their team will grow. I feel the managers number one responsibility is to identify peoples strengths and help them achieve their goals. If this development does not take place the manager is simply doing a disservice to his/her employees. However if this does takes place you will find future business leaders that will create new process and challenge the status quo. Once they build confidence they will grow to new heights and will become the overall leaders of the business. As the legacy is being built the culture will change and the business will reach heights it never thought it could perform. This is an awesome achievement and a truly exciting time to be part of the business.

Breakthrough

Today I experienced a breakthrough with one of my team members in regards to leadership. As we began to talk we discussed the prior feedback session and what changes were going to have to occur in her leadership plan. We discussed a book that I have recommended that she begin to read so we can discuss different strategies that will result in success. As a teacher and a coach these are the times I really enjoy.

With all this being said there was one change in behavior that was outstanding. She explained to me she went out looking for feedback from her team on how she could be a better leader. Self perception is the key when identifying leadership. Breakthrough!!

As a leader these are the times you can really impact people to become better leaders. In this example I could easily have turned a blind eye to this aspect of her career as she is in the top 1% of sales people in our organization. Quite frankly she is great at what she does but will she be great at leading an organization? As this process continues I am excited to see the transformation take place. I am a strong believer that anyone can change. Sure you cannot change peoples values or opinions however you can make people understand others perception. In leadership it is not always about delivering the perfect message sometimes it is about leading people to deliver the message for you and empowering them to change.

Career Development

Today I had a conversation with an employee about career development and mapping. As a leader these are the times you can directly impact overall relationships. In today's business world we are always focused on next quarters earnings report that sometime we forget about the people that are actually making the earnings possible. I would argue that in some cases career development and being part of the larger picture is more important than compensation. Sure some might say "I want more money," my question would be are they in it for the right reasons? In my career I certainly wanted more money but I would rather be part of the bigger decisions, have a larger impact, all of which traditionaly result in higher compensation. Once you have an employee that wants more out of their current role these are the easiest people to motivate as they see the bigger picture.

As leaders it is our responsibility to sense how our employees are feeling. Employee surveys are great if they are used for mass organizations the key is to have strong individual relationships to drive these results higher. Too many times a company drives training, development and career mapping based off these results. For example if the mass survey says the group needs more training the company might react by hiring external trainers to deliver this additional training. The company feels great as they have delivered on the action item. The question is did they know one of their top performers wanted to be engaged in the training? The company might have lost this opportunity to challenge someone and develop their skills further.

When having these thoughts it is important to be honest with people and deliver on the on the promises that you make. The excitement that comes with opportunity can be crushed in a matter of seconds with a lost promise. Once this level of trust has been broken this relationship might never be restored.

Communicating

When I think about communicating I think about the one time you can really make a difference in business. This is because the way you communicate can make you better in sales, management and operations. In a world that has become driven by data and results the concept of communication will always be important.

If you are not effective when it comes to communication odds are you will not be an effective leader. Regardless of the how your results are if your communication is lacking you are not maximizing performance. The key to successful communication is taking the time necessary for each opportunity. Some issues might seem small for some but could be very large for others. Unless you are willing to take the time you will not know if the issues are large or small. Once you have taken the time then think about tone, presentation, and eliminating distractions.

Annual Review

Every year in large organizations there is a time called ANNUAL REVIEW. The difference between a good organization and great organization is how they handle these situations. A good organization will review this time as a point to cover last year's performance and maybe upcoming year's goals. A great organization will talk about these same things but will have a few more clear objectives. Here are few items a great organization will do:

Year in review:
The first key is to review the numbers. This is a great time to talk about specifically what might have went well and why. In the same regard it is a great time to talk about what did not go well and how you are planning on addressing these issues in the upcoming years.

Peer Evaluation (360):
Perception is reality and the way your peers feel about us is very important for long term career development. So many times this piece is left out of a performance review especially if you are a manager of people. This is a valuable time to gain feedback about on areas that you might want to change in the upcoming year. If this is done effectively the candidate will be able to address issues and work the entire year to make behavioral changes.

Career Mapping:
Great Managers say, "Where do you want to go and how can I help you get there?" If an annual review does not cover this point the candidate will probably feel very demotivated and feel their career is in a holding pattern. This is great time to talk about future opportunities and set stretch goals for the individual. Something great companies do is map careers with additional training needs thus giving the employee the support to grow emotionally, professionally and spiritually.

Merit Increase:
This needs to match both the potential of the employee and the overall results. In other words if you have a top talent but they have not been able to contribute you might be willing to provide additional compensation. Results traditionally drive this number however it is never popular to say "we have a pool of money and this is how much you get." Remember it is no how much you pay people it is the people that you pay.

Lastly the action plan for the upcoming year should be specific and measurable with each person accountable. The manager should have specific objectives to assist in the career development of their employee. Furthermore the employee should have an action plan on how they are going to develop their career over the upcoming months and year. This is great time to show your employee you care more about their career than the hard numbers that have to be executed.

Resignation

Yesterday I was faced with an employee who had decided to resign his position within our organization. This is a really unfortunate situation as the employee has only been with us for a couple of months. The question that comes up during this time is, why? Why has this person decided to leave the organization? What could we have done differently to prevent this person from leaving?

The first decision that a business or a manager has to decide was the decision to hire this person the right decision to begin with? If the answer to this question is yes than there is going to have to be some further research about the reason for leaving. The first question would be to think about onboarding and if the onboarding experience was performed successfully. This includes the time the offer was made, the first day of employment and initial training. If all of these were done successfully than the next place to review would be the team they were working with. Did this person feel part of the team, did they feel they had the support of the leadership, and do they feel like they are valued? The last concern would be how was the communication with the employee on a daily basis and did they feel like they had a personal contact with leadership.

The fact of the matter is it is very difficult to find the right person for the right role. Once you have found this person it is important to understand they have an option to leave. It is the role of the manager to make sure the employee is happy, producing and challenged. Every manager is busy but if they do not build a bridge of communication with the employee the employee is certain to lose interest quickly. Leaders find a way to be accessible, touch base and respond when needed.

Interviews

Today I had an interview with a future candidate in which I introduced behavior based questions. I am a strong advocate on keeping the process very consistent and driving the interview with standardized questions. Too many times organizations leave the hiring process up to one person and do not set measurements for these results. Hiring the right people is the most important task a business can take.

Today I held a panel interview in which the candidate met with myself and another person. For most candidates this is a very uncomfortable situation but is very effective. The candidate is surrounded by multiple people and they will only have to share experiences and history once. There is nothing more frustrating for a candidate to explain their resume 3 times to 3 different people, this process eliminates this frustration. This process also allows the panel to have a discussion about the candidate after the interview and deliberate over the questions and answers.

Although it is important to have follow up conversations of the candidate it is important that you have 100% consensus when making a hiring decision. If for some reason you have any reservations about someone you should hold off and look for another candidate. I think it is important to remember it is not how much you pay people it is the people that you pay. Hiring is an art and attracting and retaining the best talent takes skill and patience.