January 12, 10:10 am

Don’t force diversity in your entrance exam

By Dan Bobinski
Director, The Center for Workplace Excellence

Not much good comes from trying to look good. You must actually be good, too.

Unfortunately, someone needs to remind the Chicago Police Department of this truism. A recent article by Steve Bryant on nbcchicago.com (Police May Scrap Entrance Exam) states that the Chicago PD is thinking about doing away with their entrance exam because they don’t employ enough minorities.

If you have half a brain, you’re saying “What?”

But it’s true. Apparently the department is overly concerned about achieving racial parity. Only 25 percent of their rank-and-file officers and 8 percent of their lieutenants are African-American, but the 2000 census shows that blacks make up about 37 percent of Chicago’s population. It would seem that someone doesn’t think those numbers look fair.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather make sure the people hired to serve and protect are the best available at serving and protecting—regardless of their skin color. If the best cops are 4 feet tall with green skin from Antarctica, “hire em!”

It so happens that I grew up in a Chicago suburb near O’Hare airport and my father was a policeman in that town for 28 years. I can tell you from close observation and interacting with these men and women on a regular basis that they don’t have an easy job. The stresses on policemen and women are enormous.

Put yourself in their shoes

For a moment, put yourself in a police officer’s shoes. It would be pretty unnerving as a highly qualified officer to be surrounded by people hired because of their skin color and not because they were the best possible people to be backing you up.

Quality hiring makes a huge difference. When I was contracted to do management coaching at Qualcomm, Inc. in San Diego, California, I noticed they had an intense application process to identify the best possible applicants. As a result, the company created much of the cutting-edge technology we use today in our mobile phones, along with other nifty inventions that most of us never hear about.

But Qualcomm wouldn’t be the successful company they are if they merely hired people to balance their employees’ skin-tone palette.

If this kind of logic doesn’t sit right with you, think about your current place of employment. Regardless of your specific career choice, if the professional hurdles you had to clear were suddenly discarded and unqualified people were hired (for whatever reason), I imagine you might feel a bit ripped off and cheated.

‘Opportunity’ and ‘Outcome’ are different

I’m all about equal opportunity, but equal opportunity doesn’t mean equality of outcome. In other words, everyone who wants to apply themselves should be given the chance to do so. But true fairness says that people are to be evaluated based on their merits, not on their race, color, religion, gender, national origin, veteran’s status, political affiliation, or the existence or non-existence of any disability.

Hiring (or not hiring) people based on any aspect of the above-mentioned list is not only unethical and immoral, it’s illegal.

Sadly, the Chicago Police Department is giving us an example of how to substitute perceived fairness for true fairness.

Share This

Add a comment Filed in Opinion, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Job Seeking, Interviewing

 

December 21, 9:21 am

Is Target Off-Target?

Today’s business section in the Buffalo News (NY) has a story that seven Target employees were fired for buying Zhu Zhus, one of the hottest selling toys this Christmas season. According to the story, these employees were following policies they knew about, but were terminated for a new policy they were not aware of.

I encourage you to read the article, and then think about how you notify your employees about new company policies. Yes, the story has its emotional factors: You may not agree with Target’s policy (I didn’t) and you may also think Target’s management has their heads firmly planted in a place where Christmas lights can’t be seen (which I believe they do).

But for workplace implications, we can learn from Target’s mistake. Again, one question for employers and managers could be “how do you let people know about new company policies?”

The next question could be “Do you enforce your policies by using the letter of the law or the spirit of the law?”

In the comments following this article, some readers are so disgusted they say they won’t do any more shopping at Target. When one considers that loss of business and the costs involved in replacing and training new employees, Target’s actions here were just plain DUMB. But in the bigger picture, Target is a large company and will survive the financial hit.

Still, what can we learn? Granted, your company might survive a similar mistake, but is it worth it to take financial hits for being unwise or undisciplined when issuing or enforcing policy?

With that last question in mind, one of my Christmas wishes just became “I hope that managers strive to be intellectually honest when creating and notifying people about policies, and that they use fairness and flexibility when enforcing them.”

Especially this time of year, when Grace is a large component of the Reason for the Season.

Share This

Comments (2) Filed in Work, Business, Management, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Retention

 

December 7, 5:47 pm

Train the Trainer / Manager as Trainer workshop slated for January

Back by popular demand!

On January 13 and 14, the Center for Workplace Excellence will host a two-day Train the Trainer / Manager as Trainer workshop in Boise.

Good training is vital.  The problem?  Too many managers are never taught how to train. Yet training is a core management responsibility.

It’s also a problem when employees are placed in training positions with little or no training for their new jobs. Telling ain’t training, and the ability to stand up and talk does not a trainer make.

One of the biggest complaints in employee surveys is “poor training.”  Think how much more productive your employees will be when you can give them highly-effective training!

Learn how the best managers, executives, and trainers create and deliver training for maximum results.

In just two days you will learn skills that will be useful for years – and you’ll be putting them to use the very next day! Set aside January 13 & 14 and register today.

Your facilitator for this workshop is Dan Bobinski, M.Ed. Tap into his 20-plus years of Train-The-Trainer experience in this 2-day workshop.  Dan is a past chapter president for the American Society for Training and Development, a member of the Society for Human Resource Management and also the International Association of Workplace Professionals.

Additionally, Dan holds a degree in Workforce Education and Development and a Master’s Degree in Human Resource Training and Development. (He’s also currently completing his Ph.D. in Adult and Organizational Learning).

Questions?  Contact the Center for Workplace Excellence at 208-375-7606.

Share This

Add a comment Filed in Training, Management, Team Building, Workplace, Train the Trainer

 

November 23, 5:00 pm

My List of Recommended Reads for 2009

It’s time once again for my “end-of-year list of recommended reads.”  These are books that have stood out to me as practical and useful. As always, use this list for your own personal development, or as a suggested gift list for co-workers and relatives. Also as usual, I guarantee that valuable “golden nuggets” can be found in each of the following titles.

At the top of my list this year is Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long by David Rock.  I first became acquainted with Rock’s work a number of years ago when he and research psychologist Jeffrey Schwartz wrote The Neuroscience of Leadership. In that work, they explained how most change efforts fail because they are implemented in contrast to how the brain works, along with excellent tips for how to make change happen more easily.

In his latest work, Rock takes the concept of brain function (with respect to our productivity) and makes it extremely easy to understand. For anyone who feels overwhelmed, overextended, and nearing burnout, this book will explain why. Best of all it will give you practical suggestions for what you can do differently so you regain control and confidence.

Rock’s book is easy to read and the material is organized quite well. Whether it’s to help you become more effective or help those on your team, this book earns my highest recommendation.

Second on my list (and yes, a little self-serving) is my own book, Creating Passion-Driven Teams: How to Stop Micromanaging and Motivate People to Top Performance. I was encouraged to write this book by several respected leaders who believe that too often people are promoted to management positions without receiving a blueprint for how to make their teams flourish.

Having two decades of management and leadership training experience, I looked back and identified key attributes of teams I’d worked with that had passion.  Then I took a practical approach, combining a balance of “why” and “what to do” so readers would have proven processes at their fingertips.  Included are chapters on how to prevent micromanagement, how to motivate without manipulating, and how to turn mistakes into a fervent drive for quality.

Gratefully, the book has a five-star rating on Amazon.com, and one of those reviewers says the book “goes into the aspects that work, [with] experience that has a weight to it, along with common sense.” Another reviewer says “I highly recommend it for any business owner who wants to get out of micromanaging and someday have peace.”  It’s these types of comments I was hoping for when I wrote the book.

Next on my list is a book by Jeretta Horn Nord, entitled A Cup of Cappuccino for the Entrepreneur’s Spirit. Similar to the “Chicken Soup” series in format, this book is a collection of short stories outlining the life paths of more than 50 entrepreneurs. Each story outlines what drove these people into starting their own business, along with some of the struggles and triumphs along the way.

Nord’s purpose is to inspire and energize entrepreneurialism, and in my opinion, she accomplishes her goal.  It’s an energizing read for existing entrepreneurs as well as those thinking about becoming one.

In Harvey Deutshendorf’s The Other Kind of Smart: Simple Ways to Boost Your Emotional Intelligence for Greater Personal Effectiveness and Success, readers will get a well-written (and well-formatted) “how-to” book to help them boost their emotional intelligence. In my opinion, this is must for anyone in management or leadership, as it’s been shown over the past 15 years that higher EQ is the prominent differentiator between top performers and average performers.

In other words, if you want to be more successful, boost your EQ. Fortunately, EQ is learnable, and this user-friendly book shows you how to apply EQ principles with real-life examples and scenarios. Even with the increasing number of books on EQ arriving on the market, I don’t think you’ll find a better book on the subject.

If you care to jump outside the workplace and look at the economy at large, I recommend A World of Wealth: How Capitalism Turns Profits into Progress by Thomas G. Donlan. With the world in economic turmoil, questions abound on the best path to take. Donlan does a great job of spelling out the problems with trade protectionism, government regulations, and bailing out irresponsible lenders.

The topic of economics is often clear as mud to many, but Donlan carefully explains (with good examples) how capitalism and free markets work just fine when regulations and government restrictions are removed.

As a small businessman, I’m not a fan of “little guys” getting squashed by corporate giants. This book presents 11 well-written chapters that confirm what I’ve believed for many years: Get government out of the way, and businesses of all shapes and sizes will thrive as they meet the needs of the market.

There you have it.  Five of my top recommended reads for 2009. Enjoy!!

Share This

Add a comment Filed in Work, Business, Management, Leadership, Columns, Workplace, Business Books

 

November 18, 10:53 am

A sure-fire solution to unemployment

Normally my focus is workplace issues, not business issues. But today’s post is strictly about business with an idea that would most certainly drop the unemployment numbers, and probably rev up the economy, as well.

I can’t take credit for the idea. I’m borrowing it from a similar idea I read in The Blue Blog, which I discovered following a link tweeted by Brendan Stormo, an entrepreneur out of the San Francisco area.

Quite simply, the idea is this:  Abolish employment taxes on new hires for a year. That means nix all statutory payroll taxes for 365 days.  This would be the employer side of all Federal income tax, the employer side of all Social Security taxes, and the employer side of all Medicare tax withholding.

While I think this is a great idea to boost the economy and get people back to work, the United States Congress would probably spend a lot of time debating which unnecessary strings should be attached to it. Therefore, modified versions of this idea could be adapted by states. Think about it: The employer side of state income tax withholding and any local taxes suspended for a year. States that really wanted to drop their unemployment numbers could also offer other tax breaks for each new employee.

Like the idea?  Spread it around. Contact your state senators and representatives and suggest they consider it. Contact your governor’s office and make suggestions there, too.  Just the few people I talked with about this idea agreed that they’d add people to their payroll if such incentives existed. Extrapolate that across the country and we’d see a dramatic boost to the economy.

Whatcha waiting for?

Share This

Add a comment Filed in Work, Business, Workplace, Corporate Culture

 

November 17, 6:14 pm

The dangerous ego stroke of authority

Just the other day I watched a disturbing news clip showing a Newark, New Jersey police officer overstepping his bounds, showing exceedingly bad judgment and excessive force when dealing with a TV news reporter’s cameraman. It was a very public example of what can happen when one’s authority and ego are not kept in check.

The story was ironic. A CBS reporter was covering a march by a group of parents trying to raise people’s awareness about increasing neighborhood violence, with many of the marchers being parents whose children had been killed in street violence.  But after the march, a police officer lost his cool and roughed up the reporter’s cameraman. How do we know? The camera was running and the incident was caught on film. The officer put a chokehold on the man after he was cuffed, saying “I can do whatever I want.” That is, until a city councilwoman in Newark, who was coming out of a nearby church, told the officer he was out of line.

Finding the ‘ego balance’

Ego is a funny thing. It’s a vital part of our drive for success, but when anyone in positions of authority (be they police officers, politicians, or workplace supervisors at any level) start thinking they’re invincible, it’s time for a reality check.  People in positions of authority can empower or demoralize an environment, depending on what role they give their egos.

Here’s a philosophy I like and advise leaders to consider – Build your social leadership skills instead of relying on your positional authority. After all, how much respect do we give people who rely on the phrase “because I said so” to motivate us?  People parading their positional authority with an air of superiority rarely command the admiration they think they’re getting.

If you’re in a position of authority, it’s probably wise to get some feedback about your management/leadership style. Just be sure to get it from people who aren’t going to blow smoke for you. Find people who will be straightforward and frank about your style. If you report to someone, ask his or her opinion about how you’re coming across. It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s healthy and mature to confront any issues that might be (or become) stumbling blocks.

In addition to getting feedback, managers and leaders should also pay attention to other factors that may indicate an out-of-check ego: High turnover, poor communication flow, and poor morale, among others.

 Finding balance can be tough for top leaders

Keeping egos in check can be especially difficult for people at the top of an organization. In his book Inside the White House, Ronald Kessler interviewed many people from the permanent White House staff, giving us an “insiders” view of many 20th century Presidents. One common thread was that Presidents often lose touch with reality because they get so separated from it. The power of the office is seductive. It not only influences the President, it influences people around the President to morph into yes-men. According to Kessler, even hard-nosed US senators have become like putty in the presence of a President. The result? Nobody challenges the President, and his decisions lose the benefit of multiple viewpoints.

With that as an example, those at the top of any organization must be careful to stay in touch and not squelch or brush off dissention. If people disagree with a leadership decision, it might be for good reason. Listening to and seriously considering all sides of an issue is good decision-making practice. This shouldn’t change for people at the top.

This is not to say that human ego is bad. Again, egos are vital for success. Without egos, people wouldn’t seek positions of leadership and teams wouldn’t strive to be their best. But when a person becomes convinced of his or her own superiority, then his or her ego becomes a dangerous detriment to an organization’s effectiveness, efficiency, and esprit de corps.

At careermag.com, in an article written by Tim Connor entitled In Management, Your Ego is a Performance-Killer, we’re told that “ego has cost Corporate America more money than any other single factor.”  I would agree.

Connor also points out that “your ego is not a part of your DNA or genes. It is man-made and be un-made or controlled if you choose.”

Some facts that will help

For anyone with authority, keeping one’s ego in check is as equally vital for success as having the ego itself. Here are some facts: Yes, you can be wrong, and yes, your subordinates can be smarter than you. Also, yes, you can reverse bad decisions, and no, you don’t have to know everything. It’s also healthy to exercise patience, share the limelight, and invest your time in others.

Bottom line: Positions of authority can be dangerous if one’s ego steps up to center stage. It’s better to keep the organization’s goals at center stage and focus your efforts on helping others as they work toward achieving those goals.

Share This

Add a comment Filed in Management, Leadership, Columns, Team Building, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Retention

 

November 12, 5:35 am

Free Ebook? You got it.

As heard on ESPN radio in Florida with RadioJus host and 2007 World Challenge Strongman Champion Tom Mitchell, I’m letting people download my one of my e-books for free.

The book is titled The Really Simple Way to Hire, Train, and Retain Great Employees. No, I’m not collecting your name or email address — I’m just giving you the book, no strings attached.

Why? Consider it my personal contribution to the country’s “economic stimulus.” That is, if companies did a better job hiring and training, they’d save themselves GOBS of money, and that means they’d have more to spend where it really counts. This ebook explains how.

You’ll find it practical and easy-to-follow …. the key will be to actually do what it says.

So, go ahead. Save twenty bucks and download my ebook. Then save tens of thousands more by selecting, training, and retaining the best applicants.

Of course, if you want to buy a copy of Creating Passion-Driven Teams along the way, I certainly wouldn’t mind. But by all means, take the e-book–it’s free!

Share This

Add a comment Filed in Training, Team Building, Workplace, Interviewing, Retention