Archives for July 2021

How to Foster Useful Communication

Ever notice how the same people tend to talk a lot in meetings and those who are usually quiet never speak up?

Quiet COOs against intense outspoken CEOs are a common example of how communication in most top-level meetings is quite lopsided, with one party doing all of the talking.

So, what can you do about this?

Notice the Value Others Can Have in a Conversation

As the Chief Operating Officer, or as another leader, you might often feel as if you could have added good value to the conversation, if only you were given the chance to speak up. This applies to all of your employees as well.

In other words, if you are a COO who has to remain quiet when the C-Suite team meets, then the least you can do is encourage the quieter employees who report to you to speak up in meetings and join the conversation. Why? Because you know what it feels like to be stuck being silent, so try your best to make sure others don’t feel that way.

If you’re a CEO, you need to seek other people’s knowledge and opinions. You are essentially second in command to no one, meaning that you have no outside perspective if you don’t encourage others to speak up to you.

Engage with All Participants

In order to run successful meetings, you must engage with every single meeting participant, especially the ones who typically remain silent. With some encouragement, these people could really add value to the discussion.

During meetings, foster dialogue with the newcomers or quiet employees first, and then move around the table, moving up in seniority as you solicit feedback.

Leaders should always give feedback last so that they don’t sway the group one way or the other. This is actually one of the key employee management tips that are taught in CEO, CFO, and COO training seminars to help executives build a more cohesive team.

Try the Post-It Note Strategy

Another way to encourage others to share their ideas is through the Post-It note strategy. It’s easy: simply give every meeting participant some Post-It notes and instruct them to write down five to ten ideas, one per note.

Then, get everyone to put their ideas up on the wall and get them to read them aloud. It’s an opportunity for everyone’s ideas to be out there and listened to and if everyone is doing it, it’s a lot less nerve wracking.

“Your employees are going to be much more invested in the ideas this way because they feel as if their voices were heard. If they feel this way, they’ll work a lot harder to make the ideas come to life.” – Cameron Herold

Eliminate Distractions

To foster useful communication it is essential that people aren’t distracted by emails or tests. Sometimes it can be useful for people to bring their phones or laptops to meetings to make notes, but emails and texts distract others and yourself from the task at hand.

If you suspect that someone is emailing, ask them to stop and show everyone what they’re doing. If you catch them emailing, they owe $10 to the company’s entertainment fund or company charity. It works like a charm!

If you call someone out on it and you’re wrong, you owe them lunch instead. It’s a fun way to enforce meeting etiquette without rebuking and insulting employees. Plus, it encourages people to pay attention to the moment. It’s hard for people to want to speak up if they think that no one is going to be paying attention anyway!

Communication is essential in any good company, so it’s important for leaders to know how to encourage it in others.

How do you foster useful communication? Any good tricks? Let us know in the comments below.

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send an email, and my team will get in touch with you!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2017 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

The Secret to Successful One-on-One Interviews

“What’s your biggest fault?”

“Tell me about a time you disagreed with a supervisor.”

These are just a couple of traditional interview questions asked all the time by highly trained HR insiders. The problem is, traditional, wishy-washy interviews suck.

Sticking to the typical, pre-approved interview script means that the interviewee only says what they think you want to hear. Because of that, you end up missing out on asking a lot of questions you wanted, and needed, to ask.

So how do you have successful one-on-one interviews?

Interviews Should be Serious, Personal, and Intense

Does this mean you should hang a bare light bulb and polish up your waterboarding skills? Certainly not, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be intense. Staffing your company is too important not to push for the best.

Avoiding an intense interview and therefore avoiding questions that could create potentially awkward situations can come back to haunt you. Besides, once the person is hired, things are going to get a lot more intense than the interview, so you’d be better off seeing how they deal with it in the one-on-one interview before offering them a contract.

“Ask unexpected questions. Get your applicants to tell you about the time they disagreed with a customer and how they handled it. Ask them their top three workplace accomplishments. They’re all great, tried and true interview questions. You’ll be surprised by how much more you can learn with these!” – Cameron Herold

Find a Balance

The secret to a successful one-on-one interview is balancing a professional, respectful approach and also getting what you want.

One of the most important things to know before going into an interview is that almost everyone lies, or at least exaggerates. The key is to listen to your gut and dig deeper when it tells you that something is fishy. It’s easy for someone to claim they’re good at a skill, but when you ask them something that requires them to prove it, that’s when you catch them in a lie.

Does your interviewee claim to be great at time management? Then ask them what their time management strategies are and how they put them to use in the workplace. Make sure they give concrete examples. Vague answers are an answer themselves — the answer being that they’re lying.

Yes, the interview might get awkward, but that’s the cost of finding the perfect candidates. If you simply stick to a traditional interview script, it’s easy for people who only exaggerate their skills to sneak their way into the job.

Use Pregnant Pauses

Another good technique for one-on-one interviews is to use pregnant pauses to your advantage. Sometimes it can be useful to count to ten in your head after an interviewee finishes an answer to see if they volunteer more information into that pause.

Sure, it definitely creates some extremely awkward silences, but the information you can garner not just from the additional information they’ll volunteer, but also from how the individual responds to the pause is so valuable to you in the interview process.

Don’t shy away from the intense and the awkward. It’s a job interview. Sometimes you have to get intense to find the best people you can for the job. It’s worth it.

Do you have any other interview strategies that you use? Let us know in the comments below!

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send an email, and my team will get in touch with you!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2016 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Your Company Needs a Better Office and Here’s Why

If you are trying to create a fun and fostering environment in your office, the kind that will inspire your employees to creative brilliance, you have to think a little outside of the box.

Okay, maybe a lot outside the box.

Dreary Offices Stifle Creativity

A good leader needs to go out of their way to create bright, colorful offices for themselves and their employees. Do everything you can to avoid stuffy offices and dreary boardrooms in your workspace. If you’re not excited about working in that environment, then why should your employees be?

Nothing stifles creativity more than a drab, boring old-school office. Those cliché motivational posters on your wall are doing quite the opposite. More likely than not, those are only motivating your employees to rip them to pieces.

“Driving for success is much deeper and more individual than these “slogans for the masses”. Motivational phrases and beautiful photography does not get people closer to that goal. In fact, displaying these kinds of posters is really a mistake for the small business owners and can become a point of ridicule.” – Forbes

Dreary Doesn’t Attract Top Talent

You better have a crazy compensation package on your dreary, white table if you think you are going to attract any top talent to your little, beige office. These top talents read enough blogs and watch enough TV to know what kinds of environments the best, cutting edge, start-up companies are offering.

“Google is arguably the best company to work for in the world. Their offices are renowned for their funky design and cutting-edge amenities. The level of autonomy and focus on innovation is legendary. And, yes, their above-average compensation and stock options don’t hurt their chances of finding top-tier talent either.” – Cameron Herold

Think about ReThink

ReThink is one of the top advertising agencies in North America. To keep their place at the top, stakeholders have gone a little crazy when it comes to their office space, to say the least. Unless using a ping-pong table for a boardroom table or installing artificial turf for carpeting sounds normal to you?

ReThink is using a brilliant strategy. They’ve created a physical embodiment of a corporate culture that insists on doing things differently.

It’s also quite brilliant because it didn’t cost them thousands as you’d expect. You don’t need fireman’s poles or foosball tables to compete with these people, either. Bright paint, funky furniture, and an open concept can go a long way in establishing a unique working environment.

Name Your Office

One of the easiest ways to show how quirky you are is to let go of tired naming conventions for your offices and boardrooms. Some offices have named their meeting rooms after planets, the farthest and smallest aptly being named Pluto (not officially a planet, but you get the idea).

Have your employees brainstorm ideas for names or make it a contest to see who can come up with the best options. Who doesn’t like a fun, little contest?

“Of course, an office is more than simply the place where people work. It is now seen as a visible manifestation of a company’s brand and culture, and in being so says something significant about the employees there.” – Annual Leave

Socialization, Food, and Naps!

Some people balk at the idea of making your offices and workspace more fun and easier to socialize in, but leaders that know its benefits are huge proponents of it. One of the easiest and most authentic ways to build a world-class culture is to bring in a barbeque and use it often. The break from the grind is welcome, the conversation flows naturally, and who doesn’t love a free lunch?

It’s also a great idea to stock your lunchroom with fresh fruit and healthy snacks, as well as build “nap rooms” into your offices if you can. If you expect your employees to work long hours to help you build your business, then you have to provide amenities that make it easier and healthier.

You aren’t an old-school company, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need an old-school office.

Do you do anything interesting with your workspace? Let us know in the comments below!

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send an email, and my team will get in touch with you!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

The Best Strategy to Engage Your Team and Save Money

One of the biggest questions that CEOs and other business leaders ask is, “What can I do to quickly engage my team around saving money now and do the same with profit?” It seems like a big, complicated question, but the answer is much easier than it seems. The best part is, it’ll take you 60 minutes or less! So how do you do it?

Give Them Post-Its

The first thing you want to do to engage your employees is to give them Post-It notes. Sounds odd, but it works and this is how:

Gather all of your employees in the boardroom and then give them each 10 Post-It notes. Ask them to write down specific ideas, one per Post-It, on what the company can do to save money, increase sales, and increase margin.

Good ideas take time, so be patient. Give your employees at least a full five minutes to come up with their ideas before you move on to the next step.

Share

Once all your employees have finished writing down their ideas, have each person stand up and read what they have written on their Post-It notes. Then, ask them to put them all up on the wall.

After all the notes are up on the wall, have your employees vote on them. You can vote by putting a tick mark at the bottom of the Post-It notes. The number of Post-It notes divided by the number of people equals the number of votes each person should get.

Eliminate and Implement

Once the voting is complete, count up the tick marks and eliminate the Post-It notes with zero or very low votes. Then, pick out the Post-It notes with the most votes and act on the ideas that are easy, fast to do, and cost little or nothing at all.

See? In less than an hour, ideas were found, voted on, and chosen to be used. Alone, you’d never have the variety of options you’d get this way and by allowing your employees to participate, they feel a lot more connected to the ideas.

“When employees are engaged, they are more likely to invest in the work they do which leads to a higher quality of work produced. Engaged organizations have double the rate of success compared to less engaged organizations” – Social Chorus

Your employees are going to be much more invested in the ideas this way because they feel as if their voices were heard. If they feel this way, they’ll work a lot harder to make the ideas come to life.

Do you have any other strategies that you use to gain ideas and/or engage your employees? Let us know in the comments below!

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send an email, and my team will get in touch with you!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2016 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Why You Shouldn’t Hire for Attitude and Train for Skill

The old adage of “hire for attitude, train for skill” doesn’t work anymore, if it even ever did. A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills no matter how upbeat and charismatic they are. When you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need people that will get the job done right away.

Faking It

A good attitude can be faked, skills cannot. This is not to say that you shouldn’t hire based on attitude, it means that you need them to provide the skills on top of that to ensure they’re not all bark and no bite.

To test if they’re faking it, ask a variety of questions beyond the basic ones that everyone knows to prepare for. Ask questions that switch it up and make them think on their feet, such as the Best Interview Question. You have to make sure the good attitude is honest if you’re going to let it partially influence your hiring decision.

It’s not impossible to find people that have both a good attitude and the skills for the job, so why listen to the hire for attitude adage?

You Might Miss Out on the Best Employee

People often associate different attitudes and personalities with different jobs. So, if you’re looking for a specific attitude for a specific job, you’re going to miss people that may not traditionally fit that description, but have all the skills and motivation to succeed in the job.

“People with different attitudes and personalities are often successful in the same job. That’s one reason hiring for attitude often falls short in identifying top performers; it causes you to overlook highly capable people who might not fit a specific hiring profile.” – Employment Technologies

So, what should you do? A good attitude doesn’t make up for a lack of skills, but having the skills and also having a bad attitude is just as bad. You need to find a balance of both attitude and skill, but how?

Topgrading

Brad and Geoff Smart wrote a fantastic book called Topgrading. It’s one of the best systems for interviewing candidates and determining why you should bring someone into your organization. So, what’s Topgrading?

Topgrading recommends ‘leaning out’ two years into the future with every prospective candidate and determining what they have to achieve for you to be happy that you hired them at the end of those two years.

Once you’ve started this ‘scorecard’ for the role, then construct your job description around the milestones your candidate needs to have achieved after two years. That provides you with a tight and specific job description. Once you’ve got that, then you can interview against it to make sure that candidates have what it takes to achieve these things in a timely manner.

Assessing both the attitude and the skill of your candidates is the only way to truly find the best people to hire. It’s not as difficult to hire for both as the adage makes it seem.

How do you assess skills and attitude? Do you value one over the other? Let us know in the comments below!

If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send an email, and my team will get in touch with you!

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2016 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.