Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
My friend and colleague Natalie Goldfein is leading a Culture of Kindness Challenge (link here) for this month; I encourage you to sign up, as I have, to better your kindness skills – including to yourself – in September. It’s free and it’s impactful in many positive ways.
Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. Affection, gentleness, warmth, concern, and care are words that are associated with kindness.… Read the rest
Do job titles matter?
And if so, what should you do to make sure you get the one that’s right for the role you’re seeking?
In an ideal world, a job title or “role” – words that are sometimes but not always synonymous – would connote scope of the person’s job and level of responsibility. Externally it give you a sense of who you’re dealing/working with, and internally signals relative position and responsibility in an organizational hierarchy for those who put importance on those sorts of things things. … Read the rest
The trick to assessing competence – the ability to do or be something successfully – is to observe what people do, not simply what people say.
When you ask a job candidate for example a hypothetical question, you mostly get a hypothetical answer, an outcome backed up by decades of research. People think they know what they’d do; given a chance they are pretty inconsistent in what they actually do. … Read the rest
Self-awareness, like a good GPS device, keeps you centered and on track.
Good self-awareness means you know who you are, and how you relate and impact the people around you. Even if you don’t care what people think, like driving a car fast, you’d like to know how the road maps.
And poor self-awareness?
Research (Center for Creative Leadership) shows it’s one of the key significant competencies that when underdeveloped – along with emotional self control, empathy, and influence skills – is a leading and predictable job derailer for leaders and execs.… Read the rest
“Change,” as my mentor Jack Hawley once said, “can take forever or happen in the twinkle of an eye.”
Becoming the person we want to be – our aspirational self – is challenge and opportunity.
It’s encumbered or advantaged in part by who we are, our real self, who we’ve been – our past self, and who we think we ought to be – our should self. … Read the rest
The much ballyhooed “Talent Wars” are back with a vengeance. Talent is scarce; good talent is really scarce.
Restrictive immigration, baby boomers phasing out of the workforce, an option of flexible work in the gig world, a strong economy for many, and relocation / mobility at an historic low (see Richard Florida’s piece America the Stuck) all mean that employers have a smaller pool of talent. … Read the rest