Mamma Maya

Archive for the ‘Management + More’ Category

The economic has shown a significant deficit of jobs with no shortage of workers looking for employment. This has left companies with a high demand for jobs and not enough HR employees to verify the employment applications. This has opened the door for Employment Verification companies to see a push in clientele. Outsourcing Employment Verification makes sense now than it ever did. Outsourcing employment verifications allows companies with a recent shortage of workers due to layoffs to continue focusing on the task at hand while someone else worries about verifying new hire applications. And with the typical employment verification process being lengthy and overwhelming, the margin of error is smaller when the employee is not concerned with overtime.

Human Resource departments spend much unneeded time on the phone verifying employee work histories. The tedious and time consuming job of conducting Employment Verification is not effective for an in-house Human Resources department in a large corporation. However, there has recently been a new growth of an innovative service that a savvy company who hires a large number of individuals, can now utilize to outsource the burden of having to personally making calls that inevitably which waste invaluable hours that could instead be spent servicing the needs of their current employees as opposed to being used for verifying others for possible employment. At conservative fees, there is no reason even the smallest company needs to do this menial task for themselves.

All organizations have access to more or less the same resources. They draw from the same pool of people in their markets or geographic areas. And they can all learn about the latest tools and techniques.

Yet not all organizations perform equally. There is a huge gap between high- and low-performing organizations. What accounts for this huge gap is leadership.

Leaders develop and bring out the best in people. This dramatically expands the performance capacity of an organization. With a strong leadership foundation, management systems and processes, as well as technology and technical expertise, expand to their full potential.

That’s why coaching has become such a key management development topic in so many organizations. Too many managers are bosses, technicians or even bullies. They kill team spirit, arouse mediocrity and suck the energy out of the room. The results are poor morale, loss of talented people and low performance.

Effective leaders, by contrast, develop people. Rather than running around solving problems, while overflowing e-mail and voice-mail boxes suck up huge amounts of their time and energy, strong leaders empower and enable others to solve daily operational problems.

Of course, successful leaders also direct and control when needed. But mostly they teach and engage people throughout their organization to reach ever-higher performance levels.
Strong leaders don’t just see people as they are. They coach people into becoming what they can be.

Here are the best practices of leaders who provide the best coaching to the people in their organization:

Clarify roles and goals

There’s an old saying that teaches, “the clearer the target, the surer the aim.” It’s common sense: We can’t achieve top-level performance if we’re not clear what it looks like.
However obvious this critical coaching strategy may seem, many managers fail to practice it. Unclear roles and goals is a primary cause of job dissatisfaction.

Effective coaches are masters at helping people set the performance bar very high by aligning organizational, customer and team needs with the individual’s personal goals. While jobs may be shifting and roles evolving to meet changing conditions, a strong leader will get everyone involved in a continuing process of redefining and resetting roles and goals. Strong leaders build upon successes and string together small wins to boost confidence about what can be achieved.

Build on strengths

Abraham Lincoln once said, “It has been my experience that people who have no vices have very few virtues.” Dwelling on our own or another’s weaknesses rarely improves them. And it sure doesn’t do much for self-confidence, passion or commitment. Like a good hockey coach who has specialty players or lines for specific situations — such as power plays or penalty killing — a strong leader finds people whose strengths most closely match the requirements of the role (and whose weaknesses are less important) in a given situation.

Rather than defining the ideal role and trying to find a perfect person to fit it, effective leaders find someone who meets most of the key criteria. He or she then tailors the responsibilities to align with the individual’s strengths. Strong leaders give people a chance to do what they do best every day.

Confront poor performance

When performance problems arise, they need to be confronted. Like porcupines in love, such discussions can be painful for both parties. That’s often why managers avoid them.

Leaders, however, know that poor performance is like a highly contagious disease. The longer it goes unchecked, the more everyone suffers.

Confronting performance problems is generally more humane than letting the individual and his or her co-workers suffer. An underperforming team member is often unhappy and likely mismatched to his or her job.

If training, developing or some of the other coaching approaches don’t appreciably improve performance, helping the individual find new work inside or outside the organization will put everyone out of their misery.

Servant leadership

So much of what is done by a mediocre (or worse) manager makes it difficult for people to get their work done. “I am from head office and I am here to help you” sends the snicker meter over the red line in many organizations. Too often managers have made it harder for people on the frontlines to get their job done.

Strong coaches start by building agreement or buy-in to roles and goals. Then they flip things around and serve their teams and organizations.

In his book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, University of Southern California president Stephen Sample writes, “If a would-be leader wants glamour, he should try acting in the movies. However, if he in fact wants to make a consequential impact on a cause or an organization, he needs to roll up his sleeves and be prepared to perform a series of grungy chores which are putatively beneath him, and for which he’ll never receive recognition or credit, but by virtue of which his lieutenants will be inspired and enabled to achieve great things.”

Give good feedback

Effective leaders are effective communicators. And an essential part of this skill is the ability to deliver useful feedback.
Good feedback nourishes growth and development. Without it, the leader as coach is unable to clarify performance targets, develop skills and abilities, reinforce progress or build on strengths. Strong, relevant and useful feedback shows how much leaders care about the growth of people on their team.

A core element of corrective feedback is to objectively focus on the problem, issue or behavior and not the person. Through guiding self-reflection or giving behavioral observations, good coaches provide balanced feedback that helps people clearly see what they should keep doing, stop doing and start doing.

Ask and listen

Asking and listening are fundamental to strong leadership. They are learnable skills. Whether we choose to develop them or not depends upon our values.

Managers will claim they care about people in their organization. But their failure to seek out and really listen to other views or ideas tells the real tale. What comes across is, “If I want any of your bright ideas, I’ll give them to you.”

Many managers feel that the people in their team or organization have misguided views or petty issues. “That’s just their perception,” is a common response to input that they don’t agree with. “We need to show them the reality of the situation,” they’ll often counter. Attitudes are something to be adjusted rather than probed for underlying improvement opportunities. Weak managers often believe that customers’ perceptions are to be changed rather than better understood and learned from. Often, internal or external partners (such as distributors, other agencies or departments and suppliers) are classified as whiners who just don’t get it.

Asking probing questions and listening attentively to the answers is a key sign of a strong leader. Mediocre managers do all the talking. They would rather be wrong than be quiet.
Leaders, on the other hand, listen. They know that coaching and developing people is impossible without paying attention to others.

The old bromide, “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” illuminates the base of mutual respect so fundamental to good coaching.

Cheerlead

It has been said that there are only two types of people who thrive on being recognized for their achievements: men and woman. We have all experienced the incredible energy of getting recognition or appreciation from people whose opinions we respect. We cherish notes, cards, awards, trophies or the warm afterglow of a compliment.

A common complaint of people in low-performing organizations is that they don’t get recognition and appreciation from their boss. They feel like a piece of furniture. It’s a huge contributor to declining levels of morale and self-motivation. It’s one of the reasons people leave an organization to work elsewhere.

Effective coaches understand the power of sincere recognition, genuine appreciation and celebration. These are what provide the atmosphere of encouragement that develops confidence and builds on strengths.

This encouragement needn’t come from the leader. It can be just as meaningful coming from peers, customers, team members and other partners.

But it’s the leader who sets the emotional tone and atmosphere for recognition, appreciation and celebration in his or her organization.

Originally appeared in The Globe & Mail, adapted from Jim’s bestseller, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. View the book’s unique format and content, Introduction and Chapter One, and feedback at http://www.theleadersdigest.com. This book is a companion book to Growing the Distance: Timeless Principles for Personal, Career, and Family Success. Jim Clemmer is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. His web site is http://www.clemmer.net/articles.

Nowadays numerous companies feel that, by providing staff with training in safety in the workplace, they are sufficiently prepared to deal with an incident. The truth of the matter is that, irrespective your industry, a basic education in health & safety regulatory affairs simply isn’t sufficient. Equipping employees, providing good supervision and organising frequent drills are fundamental to the safety at work.

All teams must have a capable supervisor to observe employee performance, but this individual also needs to take another function. A supervisor is required to see the necessity of health & safety training and have the ability to get other employees feeling enthusiastic. On top of insuring conformity with health & safety regulations, a supervisory role also includes overseeing employee performance. This isn’t a easy task. It means that the supervisor must have in depth understanding of both the industry and manufacturing processes as well as a high level of knowledge of up-to-date regulations with regard to safety, risk appraisal and CPR. It just is not sufficient to send your employees on a health & safety course. They must acquire practical experience of risk assessment and the recognition of problem areas. They need to understand how to deal with problems and also understanding what to do when the unexpected happens. Your workers are only protected when their training and procedures have become second nature. Education is in fact useless without the required safety gear. When they don’t have the proper apparatus or should staff find that items are damaged when they actually need them, even the very best instruction can’t help them. You need to check each item regularly to make sure that you have all of the necessary apparatus as well as checking that it is all in good repair. When you have a fault with your safety apparatus, get it repaired or serviced as soon as you can.

Your employees need to get proper health and safety education, however they also must have decent apparatus, frequent practises, and an experienced supervisor who gets the workforce excited about being safe at work. If you take this advice you should find all the safety regulations be a normal part of life in the workplace instead of an inconvenience that staff have to make an effort to remember.

Everybody on this planet has enemies, rivals and foes. Call them any way you like, but nevertheless they exist, chasing you at every step you make. Nobody knows where they come from, but the fact of their existence was detected on the planet and still nobody knows completely the effective remedy from them. They spoil our lives; put the spokes in our wheel, making tricky endeavors to distract us. The biggest nuisance they cause is that they prevent us from reaching success in life. The only way out of this situation is to disclose them and to wipe them out once and for all.

You’ll be surprised to know that those enemies live within you.

Our greatest enemies, whom we must chiefly combat live inside of us. So, what are those crafty enemies that hold us back from reaching our goals?

Enemy #1

For 33 percents of people it is shortage of time. They claim that 24 hours are always not enough for everything they have planned. Time is of the essence, they say. And they try their best with 24 hours and manage their time vary carefully, but in any case they constantly feel the lack of time. Time is an illness causing fatigue.

Enemy #2

For 11 percents it is lack of motivation. These people feel that they don’t achieve their goal, because they don’t know exactly why they are aiming at it. As a result, they don’t know how to persuade their mind to achieve that goal. More often these people are satisfied with small achievements.

Enemy #3

For other 33 percents of people it is lack of persistence. These people just go with the stream, because they lack decisiveness and perseverance. They can’t get over the difficulties, they easily give up and refuse from their dreams.

Enemy #4

For 22 percents the major enemy is their uncertainty. They don’t know what their goals are. These people just don’t know what they want to get from this life. Their life is one big question-mark for them.

Enemy #5

For some people it is fear, because they afraid to fail and get frustrated. They get angry with themselves when they don’t fulfill their goals.

Enemy #6

For other people it is laziness. These people just idle and don’t want to make any effort to achieve their goals.

Enemy #7

Finally, for some people it is a lack of opportunity. Some people are deprived of the opportunity to exhibit their talents and gifts. Success is people-dependent factor. Often most of aspiring people are driven away form their dreams on account of opportunity factors.

A common enemy of ours is the surrounding: jealous and envy people who put obstacles on our way to success.

Now you know your enemies by their faces, so it will be easier for you to fight against them.

Yuliya Muravey is a self-employed entrepreneur and co-owner of the http://www.GoalSettingForms.com. She believes passionately in the enormous power of the goal setting and its impact on the short-term and long-term success in life.

For more information, please go to: http://www.goalsettingforms.com