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Ownership of Your Employment Status

What is is about perception and reality that influences what we see, what we think and our subsequent choices?

This question can be applied to many aspects of life, including job security, employability and self-awareness. We do not always see things clearly. Assumptions, partial facts, bias and other traits can add value to decision-making however can also skew and negatively impact our choices. The things that motivate an individual do change over time. Circumstance, educational opportunities and advancement of knowledge, personal situation, economic environment and other factors are taken into account when weighing up the options between seeking or taking on a new role and remaining with their current employer.

Many of these aspects are intrinsic, driven by the person from within and others are extrinsic, influenced by external factors. It is the intrinsically driven motivations, beliefs, attitudes and choices that we all have control over. But, they are different for each of us. Keeping a ‘real’ attitude and preparing for the future based on fact, not assumptions helps if the situation arises that a job change is required, no matter the incentive or reason.

There’s a disconnect between managers and employees about why people want jobs

CoachStation: Creating A Vision For The Future

Leaders remain one of the greatest impacts on the level of comfort employees have within an organisation. The leader is often the face of the business, providing opportunities and relationships that either grow or hinder the perspective of employees. Clarity regarding what each employee values the most is one way to build this relationship and related elements such as trust, accountability, role structure and advancement.

Bosses think people are attracted to new jobs primarily for career advancement but over the past two years money in the bank has become the biggest motivator for people to change employers. Five years of financial shock, redundancies, business collapses and frightening headlines have taken their toll and Australian workers now just want to pay down debt and find a haven to ride out the storm. Opportunities for paid time off, bonuses and flexibility have been pushed aside for a preference for large base pay.

According to the Towers Watson Global Workforce study 2012, the top global “attraction drivers” (or what encourages people to work for an organisation) are, in order of importance:

  1. Base pay
  2. Job security
  3. Career advancement
  4. The convenience of location
  5. Career development

What employers think they are is:

  1. Career advancement
  2. Base pay
  3. Challenging work
  4. Job security
  5. An organisation’s reputation as a great place to work. (1)

The above data reproduced from a recent BRW magazine has some merit, however is not the whole story and neither does it apply the same way to everyone. Additionally, the picture presented in the article has not always been the case. It was only a short while ago that many of our Gen Y employees were unaware of what it was like to work during a time where job cuts and redundancies were frequent; roles of choice were difficult to find; and it was predominantly an employer’s job market.

I have several family members and friends who are working through their employment options right now. Each person and situation is different. Each person has their own beliefs and needs and are at various stages of acceptance of their situation, financial requirements and employability. Being clear about what you want from life, including as an employee, helps an individual make appropriate decisions based on want, values and need and not simply situation and opportunity. Even when current roles appear stable, understanding of yourself and focusing energies on the next step or options is a worthwhile exercise. Seeking a coach and working through this detail can be valuable.

Knowing what you want and how it fits into the real labour market is important

This may not be a clearly defined promotion or future role defined by a position or title, but may include features, traits and expectations that a role should include to be of interest.

None of us know what the future holds, but being prepared for what could be, whilst balancing the needs of ‘now’ is a sensible approach. Where does this sit with you?

(1)   Business Review Weekly: Issue August 23-29, 2012

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Leadership Can Be Painful…And Very Rewarding
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Leadership Can Be Painful…And Very Rewarding

Leading people and influencing business can be a great challenge…

…but can also be one of the most rewarding aspects of your role and your life.

CoachStation: Leadership Rewards

Being a leader is difficult and occasionally, we sometimes wonder if it is worth the effort. The challenges that emerge all too often cause us to contemplate on the performance of others and sometimes that of ourselves. We start to question our ability to maintain a high level of influence and whether we can ‘get the job done’.

When situations such as these occur the best course of action and thought-process is usually to stop and genuinely reflect – not react to the current situation and high level of emotion.

I have found the two aspects below to be particularly relevant in both my time as a leader and in coaching and mentoring others. The points may trigger a reaction for you and add to your leadership thought processes.

  • Don’t immediately seek to blame – either yourself or others. When we blame, it is taking away from the necessary focus on the issue itself. Blaming can become personal, focusing on the individual, not the point at hand. In this type of discussion it is often referred to as how we blame others. In my experience, after the dust settles a little, a leader is just as likely to blame themselves and over-react to both the inputs that caused the situation and the apparent impact of the situation overall. Blame has little value, however gaining a full understanding of what and who contributed provides the opportunity to develop and coach accordingly. I have worked with some managers who avoid understanding the contributing factors altogether, claiming ‘there is no point in a witch-hunt’! Unfortunately this reflects more on their leadership style than a genuine desire to engage and seek improvement. Rectifying processes, understanding, skill gaps etc. is critical to ensuring issues and mistakes are not repeated – an important aspect of leading people and businesses.
  •  Share the details of the situation and current circumstance with someone who you trust. Challenge yourself to succinctly detail the key points without bias or emotion. You may find this harder than you think! It is best to select a mentor, coach or person who you know will be objective and provide conflicting viewpoints. They should be impartial and challenge the situation as much as they are willing to challenge the norms, beliefs and biases that exist in all of us. Although difficult in the initial phases of relationship-building, this type of discussion can be a key contributor in developing trust and respect between you both. Sharing is not to vent, but rather to seek solutions that may not be apparent to you. Being too close to a situation can add blinkers. I have been there many times and continue to challenge myself to think more clearly and broadly as required.

Being a leader is a challenge – this is not a doubt.

As leaders, how we react and seek solutions when things go wrong can help to define our own self-belief and how we are seen by others.

The key question is whether you are looking to maintain the status quo or seeking to move forward as a leader and as a minimum, meet the obligations of your role in leading others.

Obviously this is not a definitive list, although if the points are applied in a genuine way, it will add significant value to your position and contribution as a leader. Change in self takes small steps. At the very least, this is a good starting point.

What do you think?

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When Did Leadership Start To Mean Something?

When did leadership start to mean something to you?

Was it the influence of a parent or other adult?

Your experiences with a coach or other sporting leader?

Or some other opportunity you were exposed to at another point in your life.

In many ways, when this occurred is not overly important. The fact that it did is what mattered. In reality it is more likely an accumulated effect of many examples of leadership experienced throughout your life, both good and gratifying and poor examples that were unsatisfying. View my brief video below to delve further into leadership and its opportunity for you and others.

What do you think? Can you remember when leadership started to matter to you  and why?

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The Move Towards Self-Employment: A Big Picture & "Little Picture" View

Reblogged from Work-Life Strategies & Solutions:

Nowadays you don't have to search very hard to find well-respected thinkers forecasting the decline of traditional employment and a corresponding rise in self-employment. Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working For Yourself, had been tracking the decreasing average "half-life" of organizations well before this book was published in 2001. During his time as former speechwriter for Al Gore, he was one of the first to see the information that the Bureau of Labor Statistics churned out on a weekly basis.

Read more… 511 more words, 1 more video

Lynn Patra makes some excellent points regarding technology, its history and our potential future. I recommend reading Lynn's blog and listen/view the embedded clips. In the comments I wrote, "I really enjoyed listening to Dan Pink (as always) but particularly loved viewing Andrew McAfee and his views regarding technology. I interpret his theme as – Embrace technology, be aware of the potential downsides, don’t fear it, but create opportunity through it."
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Success and Influence

You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long ~Boris Yeltsin

This quote can be interpreted in many ways. For me, it refers to progress and how we measure our own success.

How we get ‘there’ is as important, if not more so, than the end result.

How do you measure success and progress? Achieving ‘Success’ and career progression through aggression, politicised behaviour, putting self-first and stepping on others to reach great heights, has a limited life expectancy. I have found the most satisfying and rewarding outcomes mostly derive from interactions with others, along with an ability and willingness to give more than take.

The opportunities to succeed often come from your efforts to support as many people as you can through:

  • Engaging thought and conversation
  • Seeking counsel and being willing to act as counsel
  • Listening genuinely with no bias
  • Understanding your own values and how they align with others

Affirming success as a direct outcome of your influence with and through others is not only more gratifying, but is of greater benefit to all. How you are judged by others depends on many things, including how you treat people and how you make them feel. Especially those who matter most to you.

Consider the key relationships in your life and how they have supported you and whether you have been supportive of them achieving their own dreams and desires. Have you reinforced and backed in an encouraging way?

Are you genuinely comfortable in that position or are you wondering how long will it be before you have to move on – or, to put it another way, what is your throne made from?

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Drive and Motivation: 360 View Leadership

CoachStation: Motivation and Drive on Motivation Drive

I recently viewed a clip that peaked my interest regarding what motivates us as individuals. On a side note, being quite visual I genuinely enjoy the RSA animate drawings aligned to the content and topic. The author and speaker, Dan Pink, discusses the science of predictability, human nature and motivation.

Dan refers to two separate studies, one of which has a fascinating finding.

It questions the premise that, if we reward something you get more of the behaviour we want and if we punish something or someone, we get less.

The relationship of what is commonly understood between reward and behaviour may well be a series of misconceptions. Challenging!

That is not necessarily the case, with other factors such as rudimentary cognitive skills, mechanical skills and the link to reward and performance challenging the thinking that higher reward equals higher performance.

View the video now and let us know what you think.

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Roles, Structure and Instinct…Be Like a Bee

In my front garden is a small bush. As we enter the early stages of Spring, it has come into full bloom. The plant is covered in bunches of small, white, delicate flowers. I can see the bush from my office and often enjoy the view of our garden. Under my office window is a bench seat that I made last year using the original wood from a patio that we pulled down in our backyard. It is one of my favourite places to sit.

One beautiful Spring day last week I was sitting on the bench watching the bees, literally hundreds of them, flitting from flower to flower. I watched them for 20 minutes or so working very studiously collecting nectar and doing what bees do….and it got me thinking. How different are our businesses and organisations, the expectations of tasks and designated roles to that required of bees?

I imagine if I followed the bees back to their hives and was able to peer into the inner workings that I would not see:

  • Ineffective meetings being held with members unsure why they were in the meeting in the first-place.
  • Bee committees discussing outcomes like seasonal adjustments related to the weather, honey production rates and similar bee-like measurements.
  • Projects being constructed taking into account the Six-Sigma effectiveness of nectar collection and discussion about how this could be improved…and, so on.

Then how do the bees work so efficiently? How do they instinctively know their roles, understand the structure and are so effective at what they do?

Although I respect and appreciate nature, often reflecting on the miracles that occur around us every day, I am not an expert in this field. I also wonder what external influences have the most impact on the bee colonies? At another level it is also fascinating that there are so many different types of bees collecting nectar from the same bush. In fact there are over 1500 native varieties in Australia, along with the common introduced varieties. They have all learned to co-exist and in fact play a vital role in the balance of nature, especially the pollination of agricultural crops, horticultural crops and the household garden.

CoachStation: Knowing Your Role, Business Structure and Purpose

The different bees do not appear to get in each others way, are able to amicably work together, efficiently moving from flower to flower, pollinating and collecting as they go. There are significant size differences between varieties – but this does not seem to make any difference. There is no apparent political maneuvering, bullying, struggle for alignment or loss of effectiveness through too many bees congregating around a single flower. Bees know their roles and do it well  – how did they learn all of this?

Is there an instinctive drive to play their role or is there a learned behaviour such as replication or demonstration via senior roles or leadership within the colony?

My point is not to make light of the efficiency of nature nor that of businesses and organisations, but to delve into why we do what we do in the workplace. Understanding our roles, the structure and influences on choices we make is often taken for granted. Is this consistent with your workplace? There is value in stopping to think about your own role, that of your team and the structure we work within. This is important at any stage but no more so than with our present economic situation.

The general feel in the population is one where we are ‘holding our breath’. In Australia there are boom regions and sectors and industries and cities that are doing it tough. A high level of conservatism is prevalent – it is like businesses are on pause, waiting for a change and stimulus to occur – without knowing when or where this might come from. Retail spending and other financial measures are also reflecting this conservatism. As a result employees remain hesitant also. Possibly not feeling comfortable to look for alternatives if dissatisfied or worse, disengaged in their current role.

People are stretched in their roles, covering more work that previously may have been completed by others who have been made redundant and/or have never been replaced.

Employees are being asked to do more with less and ‘collect more nectar’, at ever-increasing rates with targets and expectations growing year-on-year. Structure, knowing your role and what is expected of you are crucial in times such as these, however these tasks and associated roles have probably changed significantly over recent years. The role of leadership, engagement and direction remains critical to team and individual success

Good leaders ensure that they:

  1. Focus on the tasks that matter most – they may not be the tasks you are currently doing.
  2. Communicate clearly to all members of their team what is required of them, what support will be provided and how and when the objectives will be measured.
  3. Provide opportunity for their employees to have input into their roles, tasks assigned and offer solutions to existing problems.
  4. Meaningfully engage their team, as a team and as individuals, providing context and opportunity to be involved in the direction of the team and business.
  5. Revisit development plans – their own and that of their team on a regular basis – quarterly is generally a good time-frame.
  6. Challenge themselves to learn something new and substantial during the remainder of 2012.
  7. Review team structure, capability and diversity to meet current and importantly, future objectives. What can be done now to fill any gaps or remedy a potential future issue?

It is not enough to rely on history, your gut or instinct and assume that what is currently being completed is the ‘right’ piece of work. This must be clear to all involved. For  bees, their role is vital, yet simple in practice – pollinate and collect nectar. Your team member’s may not see it so clearly. They each have different expectations, beliefs, values and willingness to apply discretionary effort. Now is the time to stop, recheck what is most important to you, your family and employer. It is a great time to assume nothing!

Set yourself up to maximise the opportunities when the economic situation improves. Start to think about your goals for next year. What does success look like by December 2013?

If working on the same things day-to-day meets your needs, that is fine. But if it does not, or is inconsistent with business expectation, issues may arise. Knowing your role and how it fits into the bigger picture is important. Without making appropriate choices, taking action and setting goals, little will change. You will simply be just another bee doing the same thing and you may not reap the future rewards (honey!) if you do not choose how growth / change will occur and take appropriate steps…today.

The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: Find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it – every bit of energy, ambition and natural ability that you have.

(John D Rockefeller III)

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