Time to train?

In a recent conversation with an amazingly enlightened client: "Our business is really slow right now. This would be a perfect time to train my people, because they have time to learn." You don't hear this very often, do you? Doesn't this make more sense than what most people do...which is cut training during challenging times?

The “away-from” personality and 2012 goals

Lots of people set goals. But did you know that not all goals are things someone is trying to achieve? Some people talk about goals that are things they want to AVOID!

Instead of a goal to “achieve a 30% profit margin”, it might be a goal to “avoid slipping below the 32% margin we had last year”. A purchasing agent might focus more on reducing costs instead of giving her attention to on-time delivery of parts even though both are important.

People who think like this have a mindset called an “away-from” personality. They focus on avoiding things. They want to stay “away-from” problems or undesirable outcomes rather than pursue or run toward desirable outcomes. In brainstorming sessions, these are the people who talk about problems that may need to be avoided or negative consequences that must be anticipated. They will say, “We certainly don’t want that to happen. We need to plan how to prevent that from happening.” These are also people who are energized by finding problems to solve rather than celebrating goals that are achieved.

To influence such a person, it is important to state your value in terms of what problems are avoided or solved. Instead of saying, “we can increase your sales”, say, “we can shorten your sales cycle”. Instead of “We can help you hire people who fit your organization,” you need to say, “We can help reduce your bad hires and surprises.”

Look at your goals for 2012. Are they “away-from” or “toward”? This might help you better understand your natural orientation and give you some ideas for how you may need to adjust your approach to some people to increase your effectiveness and reduce the times you fail to have an impact.

Think about how you present your value to a customer or prospect or even an employee. State your value in two ways. First, look at what your value adds to someone. Second, say what your value helps someone avoid or prevent or solve. In this way, you can appeal to both the “away-from” people as well as the “toward” people who are moving toward a desirable goal.

Sales success traits

Like the holy grail, interviewers are always looking for the characteristics in a candidate that will tell if the person can sell. Two that I particularly look for are 1) Social monitoring and 2) Control.

Social monitoring is much like empathy. It means the person has a good radar for how others are feeling and acting. When done well, it fits the definition of emotional intelligence. But for sales people, it primarily means that the seller is noticing his/her impact on the prospect and can make adjustments as needed. In NLP terms, it is the ability to take a 2nd position and see the interaction through the prospect's eyes by noticing what the person is doing or saying.

Control is seen in two ways. First, the individual tries to control the interview, whether it is with you or with a customer. Conversations are forced back on track and toward the seller's purpose. Second, once an order is received, the seller controls the process inside. He/she rides that order and sees that people process it quickly and accurately. Often, the seller is seen as an irritant by inside people due to this control, but most good sellers show this trait.

Employee Engagement

"Employee engagement" is a popular buzz word lately that I keep seeing in articles and blogs. It refers to how committed individuals are to the their work and organization. Researchers have often shown that engagement is related to productivity and quality of work. As a result, there is a big push for organizations to measure group engagement and seek to increase it through a variety of actions.

I think this is misguided advice.

I suggest that "engagement" stems from individual passion and optimism and drive. These come from within an individual. Yes, an organization can encourage engagement by having opportunities for individual involvement and decision-making. It can fuel and focus existing passion; it can reward performance. But I seriously doubt any company can create engagement and work-related passion within any individual.

I suggest, instead, that passion, optimism, work engagement or drive must be assessed in the hiring process. Listen for it in what the candidates say about past jobs. Engagement is something the candidate brings to the job. It is not something the job should be expected to give to the candidate.

What is the person's passion? Purpose? What is important to this person? Does this person truly believe that problems can be solved and setbacks are external and temporary? Is there a history of achievement? How has the person worked in the past? Was there passion and a sense of accomplishment, regardless of how menial or narrowly-defined the actual job might have been? What was the individual able to add to the job (rather than vice-versa)?

The right person will feel engaged at any job, at least for a while, whether working as a short-order cook, a bundler in a box factory, or a pizza delivery driver. Someone who has passion for work will find a way to feel engaged in whatever he or she is doing. That is the kind of person you want in any job. Engagement--hire it; do not try to create it.

Duane Lakin, Ph.D.

Consulting Psychologist

Willing to fail?

Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Suppose you don't know what to expect? Should you try, or is that risk of failing too much of a risk for you? Someone wrote, "As soon as you are willing to fail, you can accomplish anything." I recently heard about a team-building exercise to build a structure to hold a marshmallow (www.marshmallowchallenge.com). Kindergarten kids scored better than MBAs. Why? Because the kids were willing to try something, and if it failed, they simply tried something else. MBAs wanted to plan and create the perfect solution, only to run out of time when that solution failed. Maybe Kindergarten really was the source of all we really need to know to be successful. We weren't so afraid to fail then.

How can we help America?

How can we help America? As children of the 60's, we saw that "we" somehow could punish Johnson and get rid of Nixon, but we saw no victory for leaving Vietnam and no world peace emerging from Woodstock. (Altamont taught us that quickly.) Now Gen Y kids are even more cynical about being able to impact anything (since everything is a conspiracy or can't be changed...so why vote). We see anger everywhere but where is the responsibility...and the path to pursue to help America? I'm afraid I don't see it. I wish I could start a new "Independent Republican" party to recapture some gov't values consistent with the original Republican beliefs and without the self-serving and anti-"liberal" obsession or the hidden "we-know-best" socialism of the Democratic fringe. We cannot let the extremes set policy for either party, but how can we make a difference?

Trust is a correlate not precondition for an effective team

Lencioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, does an outstanding job of identifying the components needed for an effective team: ability to engage in and resolve conflict, commitment to team decisions, accountability to team members, attention to results, and trust of one another.

However, I disagree when he says that TRUST is the foundation for a successful team and leads to the other results. Instead, I suggest that TRUST is the outcome of the other behaviors that enables the team to excel. Successful experience with conflict, commitment, accountability, and attention to results LEADS TO trust. Only that history will enable trust to grow. In the absence of trust, initial "faith" may be the right word for what is needed. Members must have faith that others will engage in positive practices. If that faith is rewarded with the right behaviors, trust develops. If people see their faith in others violated, trust will not develop and the other components of a good team will not develop. I think that concentrating on the other behaviors will lead to trust, and not vice-versa. When a team lacks trust, the focus should be on one of the other key components and not on trust per se. Trust is the goal, because it implies the presence of all the other pieces. When a team has trust, it is probably an effective team. They go hand-in-hand. Lack of trust is a symptom and the real cause needs to be addressed.