Talking Story

Starting new conversations in the workplace!

Along with your talent, bring me Fresh You

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You may be surprised to learn which I’ll value more. As an employer, I desperately want you to dazzle and surprise me!

Giving up is not an option

I’ll back up. I’m thinking about work, and about jobs (so what else is new”) and in particular about unemployment, and how so many people who still want to work are giving up. They’ve stopped looking, and have stopped trying to get hired, and I wish they wouldn’t. I get that it’s been hard on them, but what are they waiting for once they stop?

If you’re one of these people I’m talking about, I think you have to keep looking (assuming you don’t want to start a business of your own; that’s different.) Go for the job you want, and when you’re sitting with the person who can hire you, have a Fresh You conversation with them. Turn into a hot prospect.

Bosses aren’t necessarily the ones who define jobs

Not all the jobs they think they can offer, and not all the jobs they should be offering.

And every hiring manager I know will admit that when they have a “hot prospect” and “super attractive candidate” sitting in front of them, they make some kind of hiring work-around happen. Those get to be the most exciting, and satisfying days they work within their job!

Yeah, you have a lot of competition. So…

BE the competition

There has been enormous shift in The World of Work due to the Great Recession of recent years, and as a result, scores of people still struggle to find their place. Age and generation don’t much matter: They know it will be a new place. Even if they secure a job title similar to one they’ve held in the past, it is highly likely the work itself will differ, for expectations will differ.

That difference has both good and bad associated with it, however you still have so much choice, and you still must know this: So much spun from both good and bad will depend on you. You (i.e. your Ho‘ohana) can be the catalyst of whatever work will follow, and whatever Work’s Worth will be created in the future.

Hiring is happening. I notice that news programs have been presenting the employer’s viewpoint lately, and in doing so they continually stress talent, and their need for skilled, educated labor as opposed to entry-level employees. These needs can be unfulfilled, much to the disappointment and dismay of many employers, and reasons vary. The one I’d like to focus on for the moment is fear and intimidation; people who have been out of work for a while (or who remain too comfortable in an existing job) fear they are simply not good enough, and they haven’t the talent the employer is probably looking for.

‘Probably?’ How in the world do you know? You can’t be sure of what someone else may, or may not be thinking. To guess is a cop-out. If you’ve already had a bad experience or two, that employer wasn’t a good match for you to begin with, and it’s a good thing you didn’t get sucked into a workplace that is beneath your worth.

What’s For Sure trumps Probably

You cannot stop yourself from re-entering The World of Work — or stop yourself from trading up to a better opportunity — by guessing about The Probablies. You have to have the conversation and find out What’s For Sure. And why not give them a Fresh, Enthusiastic You to think about?

Education and experience is highly subjective

On the other hand, innate talent and enthusiasm is definitive. Fresh You is distinctive, and highly attractive.

Tim Burton-ness in Bright Blue

Unless someone has been immersed in a consistently value-driven work culture for a very long time (itself pretty rare), the worth assessments of talent, education and experience barely match up between people’s definitions. That, after all, is what most of a job interview is about, isn’t it; it’s a determination to learn if both company and candidate speak the same Language of Intention, or have the best potential to do so in the shortest amount of time — the 90-day probationary period is designed to answer all remaining questions about your match (at least it should be. If you’re in one now, have a LOT of values-based conversations whichever side of the table you sit!)

When employers say they are looking for ‘skilled workers’ they’re taking a shortcut: It’s a deliberate move with screening out those who aren’t hungry enough, enthusiastic enough, and self-assured enough to demonstrate that they bring way more than just their education and past experience to the table: They can learn whatever will be required of them. Even the greenest high school graduates bring those two e’s with them; education and experience are simply tangibles they need help articulating in workplace language. All people (and I mean You) also bring talents that are still to be explored, and talents are flexible and pliable; your talents can be molded to a company’s needs and expectations. What must match from day one however, are your values (for that course, turn to Managing with Aloha!)

Get back out there! The world is waiting

Along with your talent, bring Fresh, Enthusiastic You to an interview, and believe me, you will get hired. Employers will invest in helping groom your talent and skills because they know you’ll be a bankable investment and not a gamble.

The workplace is changing, and it always will. That means you need to work on your self assurance and sense of confidence way more than anything else: Education and experience have a much shorter shelf life. You, on the other hand, can be forever fresh and new.

Time to Take 5? Related posts in the Talking Story archives:

Management is What and How

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Aloha,

This article is a follow-up to this one: Leadership is Why and When. I recommend you start your reading there if you have not seen it yet.

White Floral Tops

Last time we had started with a Quick Say “Alaka‘i” contextual review, and I would like to do that again today, but this one is specifically in regard to the skill set and discipline of management:

Today, let’s start with that last bullet point.

The Secret Sauce to Getting Work Done

I say “the secret sauce of our work together will be our shared values” because at the most basic level, our values are in the driver’s seat with any work being done at all.

Values are a big deal, because our values drive our behavior. They give us this emotional grounding, and they put us on automatic pilot in a way. We will naturally behave in ways we believe to be right, and our values stem from those beliefs. We will then forge our best habits by building them on the foundation of our values.

Our values have also served us well before: They are our good history. They have played out just fine in our past experiences, when we were behaving in the way which our values had impelled us to do. Therefore, they will continually reinforce themselves in our psyche. Simply said, our values have proven to us that they work, and we have no good reason to abandon them.

Values and Predictability

When managers feel they understand the people they work with, they will say, “I can read them. I kinda know how they think by now.”

Managers are not mind readers: What they mean is that they can pretty accurately predict how a person will think, and then how that person will act (if they follow through on their real thoughts) when they have identified and “read” that person’s values.

For example, a manager who knows his or her people well, would say things like this about them:

 

Malia believes in honesty being the best policy, and so she will always find the best way to reveal the truth, and all of the truth, even when it might get uncomfortable for the rest of us at first, for she knows we will eventually arrive at the best place with it.

Ikaika believes in holding people accountable, and so he will always take personal responsibility with his part of the work before he shifts any blame to someone else, but he will hold them to their responsibility as well.

Our values will cause our behavior to be very consistent. All managers need to do is pay attention.

This attentive “reading” of people’s values is an extremely useful skill for a manager to have. For ultimately, managers get the work of mission and vision done through other people, in the place they share while engaged in that work.

Sound familiar? We mentioned those same words above, when we said managers are stewards of what must be a healthy organizational culture. We said they focus on 1) people 2) place 3) mission and 4) vision.

Management is What and How

So let’s assume we’ve taken care of this part already: Leadership is Why and When

Leadership skill and discipline has come into play with the clarity of an idea turned into vision, and aligned with company values (WHY). Leadership has also dealt with any fear of change, and infected everyone else with the same sense of urgency (WHEN). Now it’s management’s turn to take over.

Again: We are referring to the manager’s self-discipline with choosing leadership actions (and using those skills) at certain times, and with choosing management actions at the other times those skills have become necessary.

Management skill and discipline has to do with getting the job done.

  • We know the WHY: We agree, we buy in.
    Now WHAT must we do? WHAT is our mission needed to achieve the vision?
  • We know the WHEN: We agree, we buy in.
    Now HOW do we connect all of these variables, and actually cause this change to happen, owning the vision ourselves as well, and being the ones to execute it?

A Healthy Organizational Culture Adapts Well

When the organizational culture is at its healthiest best, this is the attitude of everyone now involved:

“The baton has been passed. We don’t need those doing management OR those doing leadership to micromanage us. The baton is in our hands now, we can do what it takes, and we will.”

Remember those colorful ribbons of imagination and that dazzling big bow of innovation?

 

These kinds of ideas are called “visionary” because they are usually tied up with colorful ribbons of “what if?” imagination, and topped with a dazzling big bow of “we can do this!” innovation: The gift itself ”“ and it IS a gift, much more spectacular that its wrappings ”“ is what we will start to call the vision of the idea.
— Leadership is Why and When

Great managers will bring those things into reach, because they know their people well. They also know their people are much closer to understanding the actual work which must get done ”“ work associated with that change we now agree we must undertake, getting us from point A (now, today) to point B: The future where we open the vision box and make it present day reality.

What does it mean, to “adapt well?” I think of it as a kind of experimental weaving that occurs. For imagination and innovation to happen, great Alaka‘i managers make the work creative and collaborative, playful and fun, safe and relatively risk-free. The work being done is pilot-proposed to initiate change, and it is project-contained for measurement, while still exciting, edgy and energetic. As they engage others, Alaka‘i managers ask questions which will facilitate progress:

  • WHAT are the missing pieces we must now identify, and make part of our culture for our mission to happen?
  • HOW do we weave these new pieces into the design of the work we already do? Are we only adding, or are we replacing something else in our systems and processes, and retiring the old way?

They also ask, “”and what about us?”

And just as I’d summed up leadership’s WHY and WHEN this past Tuesday, you know the answers.

All that is left to do, is Ho‘ohana: Ho‘o and make them happen.

Ideas Got Very Practical

So let’s sum up the week on Say “Alaka‘i:” What we’ve actually been talking story about is what you do when you think you’ve come up with a good idea. You need never let any good idea die again!

  1. You get an idea, one with visionary possibility.
  2. You lead with the WHY of values and vision.
  3. You deal with any apprehension connected to change so everyone shares the WHEN of your sense of urgency.
  4. You manage with a clear understanding of all these things first, and then you turn your focus back to understanding your people, and the way they work.
  5. You identify WHAT mission is needed to achieve the vision.
  6. You allow the healthy and highly adaptable culture you have remained a steward of, to clue you in to HOW this will all come together.
  7. And together, you Ho‘ohana.

Yep, all about you, the Alaka‘i manager. I know you can do this, one great idea at a time.

Let’s talk story.
Any thoughts to share?

Photo credit: White Floral Tops by Rosa Say.

~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i”
July 2009 ~
Management is What and How 

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Seven Ways to Assess Your Personal Brand Assets Beyond A Job

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Did you just get laid off? This may be your lucky day, one of perspective capture like no other.

No, I’m not being cheeky and sarcastic. This is a time when it is much too easy for us to get stalled on the negatives we hear, and I’ve been challenging myself to be a half-fuller, consistently focused on seeing what’s still in the glass as opposed to what’s spilt out. Losing one’s job can be a big negative, but what’s the far bigger positive?

Have you been an unwitting victim of identity theft?

If you just lost your job, here’s something I still see in your glass: You have a golden opportunity to step back, reclaim your identity, and create your personal brand. Exactly who are you without that job? How do you want to be known from now on, regardless of the next job you decide to take, or better yet, in complete alignment with it (the Hawaiian value of Ho‘ohana), similar to the approach a freelancer will take?

If you have worked with a company for a very long time —or for a short time, yet completely immersed in their brand, especially in what is largely their communications network —chances are you might have been a victim of identity theft, and largely unaware that you were.

  • When you think of the people you most wanted to be an influencer for, did they know you by your name, or as “the guy/girl we call, who works for _______.”
  • Do people talk about that great idea you shared with them as your idea of varied possibility or as the feature of a service or product your old company sold?

Now you could argue you were a good “company man” or a very loyal, non-conflicted saleswoman, but if that job is no more, I urge you to think about getting your complete identity back before you leap into another job you’ll get swallowed up in yet again. Doing so will ground you in greater confidence, and give you more leverage.

Here’s a quick test: Have you always had your own email address (a personal one in your name, not a communal mailbox for the entire family), or are you scrambling to create a new account now that the one you had at work is gone? An email address at work should be for that work only, and you are so much more than your job!

I am not knocking having a job; self-employment is not for everyone. Further, there are many benefits to working for someone else, chief among them the learning opportunities and low-risk safety nets most employers finance for you as an insider to their strategic initiatives, creative brainstorming and innovative processes. Securing a job with a visionary company in diligent pursuit of future growth is akin to continuing your lifelong education.

So you’ve learned (you have, even if mostly by osmosis). Who have you become? I am asking you to focus on you. What have you still got going for you, which are assets you confidently identify with, but now without the extra weight of the job itself? Understand that when you walk away from a job, you walk away with learning ‘deposits’ which have become the assets which are yours to leverage in your future —and I’m not talking about stripping your desk or computer’s hard drive.

Those assets qualify and quantify your Personal Brand

Here’s another way to think of that question of who you’ve become: What makes you interesting? What’s your attraction? Why will people still be attracted to connecting with you and what you offer, no matter what job you’ll be doing next? You have a personal brand: Are you aware that you do? Can you improve upon it now as the first ‘job’ you next take?

I first started thinking about personal branding when I read “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters back in 1997; up until then I was a good corporate soldier. I was an executive officer, vice-president of operations, and most would say I’d ‘arrived.’ Peters’ article shook me up; I realized just how far I still had to go.

"As of this moment, you're going to think of yourself differently! . . . You don't 'belong to' any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular 'function.' You're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description. Starting today, you are a brand."

— Tom Peters, Fast Company August/September 1997

I distributed Peters’ article to all my department heads, challenging them to think about it, and then to ho‘o [make it happen for them] becoming CEO of their own Me Inc. At the time our company had a very strong brand, however I suspected that getting everyone to work on their personal brands would prove to be an even bigger win-win; I was pretty competitive back then (much more so than now” wonder why that is”) and I loved the thought of my people dominating their own niche industries (like golf, spa, food & beverage) within our larger umbrella of the residential resort business. It was a strategy completely value-aligned with Ho‘ohana (the Hawaiian value of intentional work), and mentoring them in Alaka‘i (visionary, energy-creating leadership).

Some took me up on that challenge, and they began to create their own personal brand identities, and their own futures. Amazing what they have accomplished since then. Me? I would create Managing with Aloha as a values-based operating system (the book came later) and establish three different business entities and www.JoyfulJubilantLearning.com. Some didn’t take the challenge, and I don’t think it is coincidence that they are the ones who still work for the same company, now struggling through the values shift of an ownership change, not yet starting their personal legacy work. They’ve chosen to keep working on someone else’s dreams, and not their own. However I prefer to think they just haven’t yet arrived at their ‘readiness day.’

Have you? Could this be your Brand Readiness Day? It’s never too late to start working on securing your identity and building your brand. You may not get laid off, but one day you will stop working in a ‘job’ —if it’s not the economy, it will be due to your aging. Will you have started building a legacy which belongs to you and your ancestors, tipping it toward self-propelled momentum? Or will you still be toiling on the legacy belonging to your ex-employer and their brand? It’s something to think about, and there is no better time to start than right now.

7 Ways to Quantify Your Personal Brand

Here are some questions to consider, even if you still have a job: If you were to strip that job away, what are you left with?

I encourage you to write out your answers to the questions which follow —start a personal brand seeking journal— for they will quantify your present assets in the form of ‘commodities’ that are quite marketable. These questions can help you realize your own worth whether you choose to work for profit (self-employed or as a free agent) or for a paycheck (for a new employer, but now newly confident of the cards you bring to the table).

  1. What physical property is still yours, and always will be, in the form of the skills you have?
  2. What intellectual property is still yours, and always will be, in the form of the knowledge and information you have?
  3. What mental property is still yours, and always will be, in the form of the learning approach you now apply to new studies and your reactions to changing trends, generating new ideas for you?
  4. What historical property is still yours, and always will be, banked in the form of your qualifications, and more importantly, the locational experiences bundled in your credibility?
  5. What good habits did you groom, which likely will always be your habits, forming the production ability you are fully capable of continuing in a self-contained, self-sustaining way?
  6. What were the specific activities you became known and admired for, which will always be your strengths, manifested as they are from your innate talents?
  7. What social networks are still yours, and always will be, in the form of the relationships you have created that were both personal and professional?

And since they “always will be,” what can you now do with these assets you have, fully claiming them as part of your own identity, pure you and no one else, and with no needed apron strings to any company? — Not to the old one, and not solely to a new one.

The writing out of your answers is both important to your self-awareness, and highly useful: Think of journaling your answers as a 1st Draft. If you seek a new employer, these are the things which should be on your resumé as your qualifications: Do not settle for a job which does not celebrate you! If you decide to freelance, jump into self-employment, or slowly build a new business by moonlighting, these are the assets you will translate into your calling card, and a listing of the products and services you offer.

If you can then go deeper into this self-reflection, you will begin to see how you are unique, and how you already do have the stirring beginnings of a personal brand. With a second draft, you can apply that ‘why interesting; why attractive’ question to each one of the seven questions to understand why your assets give you a magnetic quality in your personal network. You can then begin to ask yourself more self-attuned questions connected to future planning: What will be your edge, your defining glory, and the building block of your legacy to come?

Yes, I’d say your glass is way more than half full. Don’t miss realizing it is, and drink deeply.

Next time”

”let’s drill deeper into this, and into the concept of personal branding for Alaka‘i managers and leaders.

Meanwhile, you might want to take a look at this discussion in the archives: Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch.

~ Originally published on Say “Alaka‘i” ~
7 Ways to Assess Your Personal Brand Assets Beyond A Job

Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch

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2010 Update: I made the decision to bring Say “Alaka‘i” here to Talking Story in late May of 2010 when the Honolulu Advertiser, where the blog previously appeared, was merged with the Star Bulletin (Read more at Say “Alaka‘i” is Returning to the Mothership).

Therefore, the post appearing below is a copy of the one which had originally appeared there on January 4, 2009, so we will be able to reference it in the future when the original url it had been published on is no more…

Hibiscus

Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch

Today I am reprinting Sunday’s Say “Alaka‘i” blog post in total here, for some variation of this conversation is coming up quite a bit currently. While it is directed toward job-hunting for managers who now find themselves out of work, it may apply most of all to those who still have their jobs, but are feeling nervous, seeing “the writing on the wall” and wondering when your number may be up too.

This economic recession we are in, sends out this message: No job is safe. To keep it, you have to deliver just one kind of result, and that’s financing your own paycheck with profits. At the very least, every manager should be educating themselves thoroughly about the state of their company’s financial health: Are they on as solid a footing as you think they are? Many companies are surprising us right now.

Here is a snippet of another article at The Honolulu Advertiser today: 2008 saw end to many big brands:

NEW YORK — Shoppers won’t be picking up ornate lamps from the Bombay Co. in the coming year. Or investing with Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. No flying to Hawai’i on Aloha Airlines or buying ultra-cheap tickets on Skybus, either.

All those names vanished in the past year, victims of the economy, the financial meltdown or other factors. Experts say 2009 could mark the end of even more well-known brands as the now yearlong recession puts more struggling companies on life support.


“I think 2009 is going to be a bloodbath,” said Scott Testa, a marketing professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “I think it’s going to be very, very ugly.”

Here’s today’s Say “Alaka‘i” article: Job-hunting? Don’t apply and fill, create and pitch. My intention is NOT to bring you down this morning, but to help you see what you CAN do, and should be.

~ Rosa

Preface:
Welcome to Sunday Koa Kākou. Sunday is the day I answer questions you send to me. If you have a question connected to management and leadership, leave a comment here, or email me.

From the Say “Alaka‘i” mailbox:

I was laid off recently, and while it was upsetting, I can’t say I was surprised, for it was obvious that the company couldn’t afford to keep me and the others who were let go (all of us managers). I’ve been looking for another job for about three months now and it’s been tough: I’ve just found an hourly position that will help me get most of my bills paid, but I want to get back into management and I’m going to keep looking. Any advice? The rejection has been grueling.

That sage advice of fulfill the biggest need is still the best advice I can give you.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone with the ability to hire you and keep paying you: What are they looking for, and why should they hire you, unless they are sure you’ll deliver what they need?

Fulfill the Biggest Need

There are two things business owners are focused on right now, and they go together:

a) Boosting cash flow quickly

b) Making customers deliriously happy

Said another way, cash is King and a paying customer’s loyalty is Queen.

To be blunt, these two things were not the priority for most managers before our current economic recession. Most managers were focused on making everyone else happy (employees, peers, the boss, vendors, suppliers and other partnerships). They were preoccupied with organizational systems and processes, most of which need to be reinvented right now, not maintained. Why should any business owner maintain something that isn’t working?

Business is, and has always been, about money and about the value add for a customer that results in market share (i.e. brand penetration). Those are not bad things, however this recession has made that truism blatantly real and completely unavoidable for every single person in a company ”“ you can’t departmentalize them anymore as the responsibility of the sales and marketing people, or those in customer service who “directly touch the customer.”

Job-hunting is a waste of your time and your brainpower

If a management or leadership role is what you are looking for, there really is no such thing as ‘job hunting’ now… it’s like trying to go fishing in a desert. If you want someone to hire you, (or recast or promote you) when almost no one is hiring, you have to be a) more creative and b) much more proactive. You cannot apply for, and realistically hope to fill jobs that are old news and simply not there: You have to be the one who creates a new role, a highly necessary and desirable one, and then pitches it to the employer in the best position to hire you, and give you the opportunity to test your creation and earn your keep.

Go back and read that last sentence again: You have to author a job description for yourself. It must be one that showcases your best talents with cash generation and customer satisfaction in a company. You must propose it to a prospective employer BEFORE they hire you and pay you a dime. It’s the new resume you take to an interview.

And keep this in mind: They probably aren’t even scheduling any interviews. You have to call for an appointment when you’ve scoped out and chosen the company you want to work for, by saying something like this,

“I have a proposal I’d like to discuss with you. My proposal has two deliverables: Increased cash flow, and happy customers. I am a big fan of your product and services, and I have been one of your customers: I’m very interested in helping you succeed. Do you have some time this week to meet with me?”

The only one actually ‘interviewing’ is you

What I am suggesting you do takes work on your part, but it is creative work that will burst open far better possibilities for you. So make the entire process worth your time and effort. Do your homework on a company’s values, mission and vision. Interview the company which deserves to hear your proposal. Think of them as your best-case scenario buyer of your idea, and a purchaser of you as a package deal of ready-to-hit-the-ground-running talent, skills, and knowledge.

Every savvy business owner knows that there is one thing better than buying a patent: Hiring the inventor.

Good luck to you! Pull this off, and you’ll discover there’s another huge bonus: From here on in, you’ll be working on management the way it should be done in the first place.

A bit of related reading:
If you missed it, I wrote about the best role for managers in another Sunday Koa Kākou response just two weeks ago: Staying Positive in a Negative Workplace.

Go to the sub-heading within that article titled “How will you know if your managers are up to the challenge?”

Keep in mind that this describes the role someone with a calling for management eventually wants to be filling, however in today’s recession, you must work on the ‘King and Queen’ we talked about above first.