August 3, 5:42 pm

Take time off because it’s the smart thing to do, not because the government says to.

I recently watched a video on BNET entitled Take Back Your Time, with the guest advocating mandatory two weeks paid leave after one year of employment in the United States.  The guest on BNET’s The Live One vidcast was Joe Robinson, author of Don’t Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now and also Work to Live. Robinson was a driving force behind the Paid Vacation Act of 2009 (which failed to make it to the floor of Congress).

Robinson says many people agree with him that there should be a law forcing people to take two weeks of vacation annually (employer paid).  He cited his own youth when his dad took the family for two weeks of vacation but then as an adult Robinson found he wasn’t taking that time off like his dad did.

Robinson also cites various studies that back up the health benefits of taking two weeks off each year (there are many).

Lindsay Blakely, a senior editor at BNET, questioned whether a mandatory law was the best way to achieve this Robinson’s motive, which is (apparently) to help people live more balanced lives.

Robinson responded by pointing to successful CEO’s who felt totally worthless two days after they retired. He stated that people need time to get more balanced in their life and not just let their work define who they are.

While I agree with Robinson’s perspective that we need balanced lives and I believe his data about the many health benefits one gets from taking two weeks off work, I prefer to educate people and let them take responsibilities for their own lives.  Robinsons approach turns the government into a nanny, forcing people to do things “for their own good.”

In the BNET vidcast, Robinson pointed to countries such as France (with five weeks of mandatory paid time off each year) and says these places have seen the wisdom and have gotten it right.

What he doesn’t say is that in France, most people are self-employed and have no employees because they don’t want to be forced to pay people five weeks vacation each year PLUS all the value added taxes on top of it. Think “independent contractor” and you’ll understand how most of the work gets done in France.

Robinson has an excellent message — We need time off! But unfortunately, he continues to push for the Paid Vacation Act.  I applaud him for being an advocate for living a balanced life and educating people along those lines, but I’m against giving the government more nanny powers, burdening us with yet more regulations. So enjoy Robinson’s books and yes, take time off; but do it because it’s the smart thing to do. It’s not the government’s job to mandate what we do with our lives.

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August 1, 1:29 pm

A training conundrum: How to lose money when you’re saving money

If you shortchange new employee training you’re throwing away a lot of money. I’m talking thousands of dollars – possibly tens of thousands – slipping away unnoticed.

The mistake comes when managers think they’re saving money and time by providing only a minimal amount of training when someone gets hired … just enough to get a person acquainted with their job responsibilities. They know that new employees will eventually learn the rest of their job requirements, but they overlook the expenses involved when using that approach.

Here’s an example: Julie (not her real name) was hired into the payroll department of a mid-sized company. When she first started her job her boss spent two hours showing her how to use the software she needed to perform her unique duties. Then he left her to learn the rest on her own, telling her that she would pick up the rest along the way.

That seems reasonable enough, but over the next few days whenever Julie had a question, her boss told her to “just play with it – you’ll figure it out.” After three days of asking and getting the same response, Julie figured out that her supervisor wasn’t going to provide any more help. And, because her position was unique and used a specialized software program, nobody else in the department knew how it worked. She was on her own.

Julie says it was more than six months before she felt competent. Along the way she made hundreds of mistakes, irritated dozens of employees, and spent countless hours fixing all the mistakes she’d made – much of which wouldn’t have happened if she’d had just a little more training.

Today, after being in her position for three years, Julie looks back and realizes how much money was wasted when her boss wouldn’t provide that extra training. “Over those six months I was way less than 50 percent efficient,” she says. “That means that over one fourth of my annual salary was wasted because of my inefficiency, which equated to over $8,000. That doesn’t include the dollar cost of the mistakes I’d made, some of which were huge,” she said. Overall, she estimated her lack of training to be an expense to the company of more than $20,000.

I asked how much it would have cost for her boss to provide her with extra training. “The cost to train me like I wanted would have been less than $3,000” she said. Then her eyes opened wide as she realized that the company wasted at least $17,000 by not providing her with enough training for her to do her job correctly.

As a Train the Trainer specialist, I work with hundreds of managers, leaders, trainers, and supervisors each year teaching them how to create and deliver training. Each one is asked to tell me about a time when they weren’t trained properly, and to calculate the costs involved.  As a result, I literally have hundreds of similar stories as the one you just read, and in each case the person realizes how much money is LOST by not providing sufficient training.

So what’s your story? Think of a time when you weren’t trained properly for some job, and then calculate the costs.

Then ask yourself: Is your company trying to save money by taking shortcuts on training? If so, you might want to rethink that!

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Comments (2) Filed in Training, Motivation, Management, Corporate Culture

 

July 8, 9:35 am

5 Skills for Being an Effective Manager

by Dan Bobinski

If you’re going to be an effective manager, you better be able to make tough decisions. You also need to be good at communicating appreciation, taking initiative, delegating, and following through with your promises.

Sure, there’s more, but these were ranked as the five most important soft skills for middle managers in a survey conducted by the Center for Workplace Excellence. Input was collected from 268 hourly workers, middle managers, and senior management working in manufacturing environments.

Almost everyone ranked “making tough decisions” at or near the top of their list, but not surprisingly, viewpoints differed after that, depending on where people were on the organizational chart. For instance, front line employees thought it was important for managers to be diplomatic and communicate appreciation, while middle managers placed that skill in the lower 25 percent of their rankings. Conversely, middle managers ranked “customer service” much higher than did the hourly workers.

Senior managers added a different perspective, believing that middle managers needed to be flexible and good at goal setting. Neither the hourly workers nor the middle managers placed either of those skills in the top 50 percent of their rankings.

One skill ranked high by middle managers but low by hourly workers and senior management was coaching and training employees. Greg Sigerson, owner of Wisdom Factor in eastern Idaho, says this skill is vital. “Not only do managers have to communicate clearly what needs to be done, they have to help people understand how they’re going to get it done.”

Sigerson says that people often try to accomplish things but fail because they rely on the same problem-solving skills they’ve always used.

“After people fail at something, they commonly believe they can’t do it,” Sigerson says. “In basic terms, if an employee has five different types of hammers as his favorite tools but the task he’s working on requires a screwdriver, none of the five hammers are going to work for him. As a manager, you must help him see that screwdrivers are available and help the person learn how to use them so he can get to a solution.”

Sigerson is quick to add that once a task has been delegated, the manager may need to step into a teaching / coaching role, but the responsibility and accountability for completing the task stay with the person to whom the task has been assigned.

For more feedback on this list, I contacted Jeff Schmitz, a friend of mine who’s a manager in a company with offices in several states. His perspective added yet another dimension. “A manager must be plugged into the organization’s politics and have the cooperation of senior management,” he said. “If you don’t, you might be effective on the tactical side, but you’ll be lacking on the strategic side.”

He also said an effective manager knows how to make career opportunities happen for his people, or they will seek opportunities elsewhere.

“If a manager lacks the trust, backing, and support of senior management he’s not going to keep his people happy,” Schmitz said.

“This can be hard, especially in a down economy. For example, a manager may go to his boss and say that he found a great person he wants to hire who can really get the job done. But in today’s economy, it’s common for senior managers to say ‘people are screaming for jobs – let’s get him at a bargain, offer him three-fourths of what he’s asking.’ You can’t really blame the owner because he wants to be competitive and is watching the bottom line. The problem, though, is that if the person takes the job he won’t really stop looking for a job because he knows he’s worth more.”

Schmitz stated that such turnover eats up any savings a company may realize by offering the lower salary.

“In my business it takes six months from the time new hires walk in the door to where they’re making money for the company. If you’re not careful, you wind up in a self-inflicted perpetual cycle of training and you’re actually losing money.”

In my 22+ years of training managers plus drawing from my own experiences in management, I find that most companies promote people into management without providing training on how to manage people. Unfortunately, without these core skills, too many managers fail to achieve what they’re capable of.

It seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? After all, managers are responsible for making sure that tasks get done so shouldn’t companies provide training in project management instead of people skills? My response is we shouldn’t focus on one at the expense of the other. Perhaps ensuring that managers get trained in people skills is just one of those “difficult decisions” that effective managers need to make.

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June 29, 8:17 am

Feeling smothered by government regulations?

Buckle in, here comes yet another bend in the road.  The “Interim Final Rules” (an oxymoron by itself) for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) have just been amended.

According to a newsletter by Anne Wilde, an employment and ERISA employee benefits attorney and principal at The HR & Benefits Advisor, the amendment was announced on June 22.  In her Workplace Advisor newsletter (read it here) Wilde tells us “the U.S. Treasury Department, the Department of Labor, and Department of Health and Human Services collectively released an amendment to the original interim final regulations.”

Oh, goody.

If you’re in business, you already know that much of the well-intended government “help” we get is really hurting American businesses.  It would be beneficial if the policy wonks setting up the rules they foist upon us had a bit of business experience, but instead we are “managing up” and having to teach policy-setting bureaucrats the nuts and bolts of reality … while suffering with their policy blunders along the way.

This is evidenced in Wilde’s report, in which she states the aforementioned agencies “amended the rules after numerous commenters argued that the original rules included unworkable requirements and inadequate timelines for compliance by plan sponsors.”

Both my blog and my syndicated column are about workplace issues. Granted, the topic above is more of a business issue than a workplace issue, but the spillover is impossible to ignore. Over the past two decades I’ve watched my clients’ workplaces become increasingly burdened with compliance on business regulations. Personally, I’m glad we have people like Wilde to interpret things for us, but I’m seeing more and more business owners feeling smothered, and I think it’s time to speak up.

Interim final rules?  Amended interim final rules? How many more qualifiers will be added? How many more burdensome regulations will be added? Given our recent history, the “final rules” will never be final, and complying with the increasing influx of business regulations is nothing but expensive overhead and a wet blanket on the economy.

While you’re busy slogging through all the changes forced upon you, why not speak up about how all this “help” is really hurting your business. The governor of my state recently said the reason the federal government keeps encroaching on us is because nobody pushes back. Hmmm. Perhaps it’s time that business people be even more vocal and start pushing back.

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June 9, 3:01 pm

Toads for Sale (the book, not the critters)

Are you living Toad free? For the uninitiated, a “Toad” is a metaphor for an obstacle.

This month, I’m trying to push all my Toads out the door. That means for the rest of this month you can buy a copy of Living Toad Free (co-authored by myself and Dr. Dennis R. Rader) for ONLY $12 — with FREE shipping!

Yep - it’s a screamin’ deal. Should I say “money back if not completely satisfied?” How about “but wait, there’s more!” The “more” is I’ll sign it and inscribe it “To __(your name)__”.

It’s $16 at the stores and $12.47 (plus shipping) on Amazon … OR get it directly from me (this site only) for only $12 with no tax and FREE shipping! Just enter your name in the box below and click “Buy Now.” It’s that simple.

Read the rave reviews!   Everyone deserves to be Living Toad Free!

Sign "to" who? (ex: To Jim)

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May 24, 2:27 pm

Don’t try to learn piano if you can’t take instruction

Listen to or download this post:

Picture yourself as a piano instructor, and someone asks if you can teach him to play.  Since you’ve been an instructor for 12 years, you say “if you’re willing to learn, I’m willing to teach.”  You explain the process, he agrees, and you schedule his first lesson.

But, not long into the first lesson, the new student starts telling you he doesn’t want to study the basics, he wants to learn jazz. Judiciously, you explain that playing jazz requires learning some fundamentals first. But the student pushes back, saying you’re a lousy instructor because you can’t adapt your instructional style to meet the unique needs of your students.

I imagine if you had the patience of a saint, you might try a few different tacks to try to help the student understand the need to learn fundamentals, but if all of those failed and the student remained obnoxious, you’d terminate all further lessons in short order.

Such is exactly what happened to my friend Suzanne, a certified executive coach.

Suzanne received a phone call inquiring about her coaching services.  After explaining the process and getting agreement on the financial terms, Suzanne sent her client the standard up-front paperwork and scheduled their first session.  But, during that session, Suzanne says it was as if she’d stepped into a snake pit. She says the client was combative and challenged her at every turn. No matter how much Suzanne listened and affirmed, it seemed the client just wanted someone to tell him his bad choices were okay.

True to her ethics, my friend recognized that it wasn’t a good fit, so she suggested the same to her new client and recommended the client seek a coach somewhere else. Apparently the client then spewed forth a river of accusations, stating Suzanne was a poor coach because she couldn’t adapt to a client. She began twisting Suzanne’s words, giving them the opposite meaning from which Suzanne intended, and then insisting that Suzanne meant those things even after Suzanne stated such was not the case.

Suffice it to say the session ended prematurely and the coaching relationship did not continue.

I’ve known Suzanne for more than a decade, and based on her track record, I believe her to be a solid professional who knows her stuff. And I believe her story. I’ve conducted management training sessions in which some participants aren’t there to learn, they only want you to agree with them that what they’ve done in the past is good management practice—when it’s not.

If you’re going to put yourself under the instruction of a professional, trust that the professional knows his or her stuff—or at least give the person the benefit of the doubt that s/he may actually provide you with knowledge, skills, or attitudes that you’ve not learned before … golden nuggets that you can use to increase your value in the workplace.  They may not come in the package that you expected, but to claim at the outset that an instructor won’t give you what you want says more about you than it does the instructor.

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May 17, 11:35 pm

Train the Trainer certificate earning high praise

We’ve had a lot of interest lately in the 16-hour Train the Trainer certificate. The self-paced, 10-lesson course meets all the qualifications needed by state agencies, but better yet, EVERY participant says it’s a powerful, informative, and very helpful course — even those who have been training for years!

At a time when managers must get more from their workforce, this is practically a “must have” training. After all, it’s every manager’s job to providing training and development for his/her team, but if managers are never taught how to train their efforts will fall short.

Here are just a few of the many comments from past students:

“This course is an excellent experience; useful, effective, and money well-spent. I highly recommend it!”
- - Travis Naef, Safety Training Supervisor, Agrium - Conda

“This is a fantastic course. I was able to start applying the material immediately.”
- - Mary Fordyce, Registered Nurse and Training Director, Columbia Health Care Systems

“An extremely effective method. You KNOW the people being trained will experience quality learning.”
- - Dan Woodward, Author, Speaker, and Vice President, One Day Redesigns

Want more info? Got questions? Find the answers here or give us a call at (208) 375-7606.

PS. If you’re with a non-profit or a government agency, ask about our special discount this month!

PPS. Taking this course is totally risk-free. If you’re unhappy with it, we’ll gladly refund your money!!

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