Email or telephone?

Do you pick up the telephone to call your clients, vendors, or co-workers? Is an email message easier or more effective? Often workplace employees will report that they typically prefer email over telephone use. Is there a generational or cultural difference in how we respond to these questions?

Many organizations are concerned about effective communication, and even more organizations report that they experience “miscommunication” too often. Should our dialog styles vary depending on the person, or only on the situation? In other words, many will say they use the telephone or face-to-face communication for more complex issues which seems to make sense; but should we consider other factors before writing that quick email or picking up the telephone?

Hiring Smart – Competency Modeling!

Many of us trust our instinct or our “gut” when it comes to making hiring decisions. Often we make hiring decisions based upon a resume or employment application and a brief interview. We tend to hire people who we like or people who give us a good feeling about their capabilities. Sometimes we make great choices and sometimes we make bad choices.

Competency modeling can help align people with the skills necessary to perform specific job duties or functions in your organization. A competency model, typically defined as a group of characteristics that drive high levels of performance in particular job or occupation, can help organizations make hiring choices based on an individual’s knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA’s) instead of based on a feeling of compatibility.

Building competency models for jobs or occupations is the first step in improving hiring practices. If your organization struggles with the costs and time associated with the hiring process, or worse yet terminations, building a competency model may help.

Harmful Conflict Increasing?

A recent LinkedIn Poll suggests that harmful workplace conflict is on the rise!

Results from a recently posted poll may suggest that harmful workplace conflict is currently increasing in organizations. The polls appears as follows:

Harmful Workplace Conflict in my Organization is:
... increasing
... decreasing
... staying about the same
... not a problem/doesn’t exist

This poll originally posted on November 27, 2009 has had the following results:


42% increasing
35% staying about the same
14% decreasing
7% not a problem/doesn’t exist

Are you on LinkedIn? Take the poll/see updated results here.

Need help with harmful workplace conflict? Coaching and training sessions are available in both on-line and traditional face-to-face formats. Visit the website or contact me directly.

www.appreciativestrategies.com
dennis@appreciativestrategies.com

Leadership Perception and Self-Deception

Perception
Few people would argue that confidence is a necessary leadership competency. When does confidence go too far and start to limit, or even worse damage good leadership and decision making skills? Leaders are sometimes labeled as having narcissistic personality traits; traits that could be doing more damage to organization growth and stability than they realize. Most leaders believe that they are in their role to make good decisions and often make them quickly, seemingly knowing the precise next move to take the organization forward or to solve a critical workplace challenge. How much of this decision making ability is based on experience? How much of that experience is based on the perception of the situation?

Self-Deception
What about self-deception? Self-deception by definition would indicate that leaders sometimes deceive themselves as they face workplace challenges. Often in the workplace employees complain about the repetitive nature of problems. The same or similar problems continue to happen over and over again. While there may be many reasons that this occurs one sometimes unforeseen reason is that the leadership continues to implement changes that are not addressing the root cause. Instead they are addressing issues that the leadership views as problems, based on their perception. Convinced that they are implementing practical, intelligent, and appropriate resolutions the leaders are suffering from self-deception. Being so fixated on a problem they fail to see other problems that are happening right before their eyes. So confident of the answers to the problems they face, they fail to realize that it is their own solution to the problems that are causing them.

Training Solutions
A recently published training program will address leadership skills and competencies in the areas of perception and self-deception. Details of this program can be found in the book The 2010 Pfeiffer Annual: Training and is available at amazon.com or pfeiffer.com.




This program can also be delivered on site at your location with expert facilitation provided by the program author.

Contact: Dennis E. Gilbert – a human performance improvement consultant and President of Appreciative Strategies, LLC may be reached at (570) 433-8286 or by email: dennis@appreciativestrategies.com.

Effort or Results?

Leadership certainly has its challenges. How we lead and perhaps more importantly how we measure results is critically important to organizations that wish to stay competitive and be successful.

Often managers discuss with me the effort that they or their employee teams put in on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. I listen with empathy as employees discuss long hours, missed family, and lack of work/life balance. While many of these stories are strikingly real, like any good story some begin to shift from fact to fantasy. Effort is very important but strong leaders should avoid comparing effort with results. Working long hours doesn’t necessarily indicate that you are getting the best results, and getting results doesn’t guarantee you have given your best effort.

Leadership Action: Create a culture that is stimulated by results, measuring effort alone will not necessarily generate success.