Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Leadership

Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).

  • 5 Things To Consider in Pursuing Passion in Work

    5 Things To Consider in Pursuing Passion in Work

    I always seem to get the best insights into my children’s minds from the front seat of the car when they don’t think I’m listening.  It usually comes in the form of backseat dialogue between themselves and a friend.

    One particular day driving to baseball practice, a friend of my son’s was with us and he out of the blue stated, “I want to be a lawyer when I grow up.”

    My son responded, “Why?”

    “So I can make a bunch of money,” he said.

    I guess my son saw this as an invitation to declare what he wanted to be when he grew up as well.

    “Well, I want to be a Pokemon collector when I grow up,” he said.  “And, also, I’ll work at Target where I can help people find Pokemon cards they like.”

    I resisted the urge from the front seat to insert myself and say, “What?!?” Then, I realized, he’s eight.  No need to argue about his current passion being his career.  It will change (his passion and his career choice) I’m sure, no less than a dozen times before he is really old enough to be employed.

    But it does beg the question, should we pursue passion in our work? And should we encourage our kids and others to do so?

    Does our passion lead us to work or does work lead us to our passion? 

    Passion is one of our values at Horizon Point, so you might find me hard pressed to argue against pursuing passion at work, but some recent reading and listening have provided some context for these questions.

    The Passion Paradox and Adam Grant’s WorkLife Podcast: The Perils of Following Your Passion are both great things to check out on the subject.

    I think I can sum up  both the book and the podcast best with the thought Angela Duckworth shared on Adam’s podcast and that is this: We often use “follow” your passion when it should really be “develop” your passion if we want passion to guide us in a healthy way. It’s not the noun “passion” we get wrong, it is usually the verb we put with it.  Fleshing this out means:

    1. Following seems to convey that passion is already inside us and we know exactly what our passion is.  Most of us are unsure of our passions and how they can or should translate into work.
    2. Following also seems to convey something that we do with blind devotion. As The Passion Paradoxpoints out, this kind of myopic thinking can lead us to do really bad things.  There is a dark side to passion whether it is in work or in any aspect of our lives. 
    3. Developing your passion, instead leads us to seek out opportunities for exposure and learning where we can grow and discern what we like and don’t like.
    4. Developing leads to growth and expertise.  In order for passion to be something we can make a living at doing, we most likely have to be somewhat good at it.
    5. Developing emphasizes the journey, not the destination.  When we are only focused on the destination number two above, the dark side can kick in.

    As was pointed out on the WorkLife Podcast episode, it makes sense that passion is also a word used to relate to relationships.  

    Is passion a component of dating and marriage?  Yes, it usually is a spark that starts things and hopefully shows and sustains itself over the course of a lasting marriage.  But is it present all the time?  If you’ve been married for any length of time, my guess is you would easily answer, “No”.   And if a relationship is only about passion, my guess is your response would also be “No” if I asked you if that relationship is sustainable.

    Passion is the pursuit of that which fulfills and sustains in a way that is more often than not, bigger than ourselves.  It is unselfish at its core.

    So, although my son thinks that he can make a living working at Target selling Pokeman cards to others, at least he isn’t picking it for the money.   As his interests and passions develop, I hope doing something greater than helping himself stays core to what he wants to be when he grows up.

    Like this post?  You may also like:

    More from Adam Grant: Stop Asking Kids What They Want to Be When They Grow Up

    The Point Blog Posts on Passion

  • Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?

    Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?

    Picture this: There is an employee at your company that you’ve had multiple complaints against. They treat other employees with a total lack of respect and maybe even the treat customers the same way. They have created a hostile work environment in which other employees dread having to work with them, go out of their way to avoid them both in their tasks and just around the office in general, and customers refuse to deal with them. But they are one of your company’s top performers or they have a knowledge base that no one else in your company has. They exceed every performance expectation, get the job done faster than anyone else, and they are a subject matter expert.

    You go to leadership and voice the concerns you have and the complaints you have received regarding this employee and their toxic behavior and the response you get is “we can’t lose them, they are one of our top performing employees and we couldn’t possibly lose their expertise.” And so nothing is done. Maybe your told to have a conversation with them regarding the feedback you’ve received, but if they fail to change their behavior, it is allowed to continue and expected to be tolerated.

    I recently came across a video from Gary Vaynerchuk, Chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia, in which he talked about why you might need to fire your top employees (warning: he uses very colorful language to get his point across!) I found myself nodding my head repeatedly during the three and a half-minute clip.

    According to Vaynerchuck, “If you tell your people that you care about them, but you ‘look the other way’ when certain employees are mean to everyone else, you’re sending a very clear message.”

    In today’s world, company’s are built on their culture. If your actions or the actions of your employees do not match your core values, your company culture will suffer and in turn so will your bottom line. Employees will spend more time lamenting over how unhappy they are in their jobs or the company and less time being productive.

    Retaining an employee because they are a key performer or a subject matter expert may seem like the right decision, but the consequences of doing so may cost the organization more than that one individual is worth.

    According to SHRM, the cost to replace an employee is between 90-200% of their annual salary. Imagine how much it would cost your organization if five employees resigned as a result of your decision to keep one toxic employee. In addition to the cost of replacing them there is also the cost of lost productivity caused by their departures.

    Do you have a top employee that is toxic? Are they single-handedly destroying your company’s culture?

  • The Most Popular Emerging Employee Benefit is…

    The Most Popular Emerging Employee Benefit is…

    I remember thinking, how am I going to do this?

    I had just started my first full-time job out of college, and I was getting married that year.  I had been given two weeks of vacation for my first year that I had to earn throughout the year.

    If I wanted to take a honeymoon and be off a day or two before the wedding, I really had almost no time left to take off.  And a couple of my good friends were getting married that summer too, and I was in their weddings out of town.

    Was I going to have to lie and fake sick to be able to take enough time off to be in attendance for these events (since sick time was a separate time off bank at the time), or was I going to have to choose and miss something in order to be at work?

    And these decisions did not take into account whether I even needed to be present to get work done.  I could actually report to work missing something important to me, and quite possibly not have much work if any, to get accomplished if I was wise with my time and worked efficiently.

    According to a survey out by MetLife (click to download the full survey for this information), the most coveted emerging employee benefit is unlimited time off.

    Seventy-two percent of those surveyed said that unlimited time off is the emerging benefit they are most interested in.

    I could understand this in my early twenties when a benefit like this would have been unheard of, and I can certainly understand it now with my life involving time off needs that don’t just revolve around me but also the needs of a growing family.

    The survey states: “Emerging benefits help employers create the kind of culture that demonstrates a deeper level of care for employees, communicating that their needs are valued and their employer is committed to their success.”  

    In addition, and possibly more importantly, unlimited time off communicates trust to employees.  Trust that they know when and how much is appropriate to take off and for the right reasons.

    It also demonstrates a level of trust in leaders who are managing employees’ time to be able to utilize this benefit in a way that leads to company and individual success.

    So in a day and age where unlimited time off is an actually possibility, would it be your most coveted benefit offering?

    And if you are an employer with the ability to provide this benefit, what keeps you from doing so?

    Full disclaimer:  We offer unlimited time off at Horizon Point, and I have found that our people have never abused it.  If anything, there is not enough time taken off when needed.

  • 4 Training Facilitation Tips Gleaned from a Five-Year-Old

    4 Training Facilitation Tips Gleaned from a Five-Year-Old

    “Mommy,” my five-year-old said from the backseat of the car on the way to school one morning, “What do you do for work (pronounced more like wurk)?”

    I wasn’t sure where her question was coming from, but in trying to think about how to describe what I do to so her Pre-K mind would understand, I quickly thought that “consulting” wasn’t going to make sense.

    So, I chose instead to describe what I do in the context of what I was scheduled to do that day.

    “Well, today, I’m going to train some people on their first day of work. I get to help my client get new people excited about where they work and what they are going to get to do.”

    “So, you’re a cunductor?” she said.  Her short u that always seems to replace her short o confused me.  

    “A what?” I asked.  

    “You know a cunductor,” she said with mild frustration.  “Like you help people on and off trains.”

    “Oh, a conductor you mean?” I asked.

    “Yes, she said.”

    I had to chuckle.  In trying to pick a word she would understand opting for training instead of consulting, she used the train to make a connection to actual trains.

    I tried again.

    “I’m like your teacher at school kind of, but I get to teach adults and help them learn at work.  There are no trains involved,” I laughed.

    To which she replied, “So who is your principal?”

    This is just one example of conversations we have as her inquisitive mind processes everything around her in a cute, but also thought provoking way.

    But her questioning helped me to think about some best practices for facilitating training that may help any of you who are “cunductors” aka training facilitators and leaders, helping adults learn at work:

    1. Word choice is important. Consider your audience- age, skill level, position, part of the country or globe, etc.  when deciding if the way your explaining things and your word choice makes sense.  I’m the world’s worst at this but try to avoid catch phrases and sayings.  For example, using “beating a dead horse,” may make sense to some as a way to say we’ve gone over this way too much, but if taken literally and/or being translated into another language, it could cause a lot of confusion.

    In addition, avoid using words that are vague and may cause confusion.  For example, “We will break in a few minutes.” As opposed to, “We will break at 10:15 am.”

    2. Explain things in more than one way and in more than one medium.  Not everyone learns the same way.   Analogies may help in describing something in a way that may make sense as long as it doesn’t violate recommendations in number one above.   In addition, engaging people in listening, writing, drawing, reading, small and large group discussion and individual reflection activities helps to ensure that content is internalized.  Once internalized, it can then be used to help shape and change behaviors on the job.

    3. Slow down when you talk. This may actually be what I’m the worst at in my southern way of talking, but this really hit home for me while facilitating a training this week where everything I said was being translated into another language for about half the participants.  Inserting pauses and breaks in your discussion is helpful.  In addition, inserting a variety of activities helps to break up the speed and prevalence of talking.

    4. Gauge your audience’s understanding.  Watching the facial expressions and body language of your participants, as well as questions they might ask, can help you know if they understand what you are saying.  If you are talking too fast, not explaining things in a way that makes sense or using words/phases that are confusing, facial expressions and body language will cue you to this.  I learned quickly in my training this week that the interpreters would look at me funny if I said something that wasn’t easily translatable or unclear.   

    In addition, participants would stop me to ask clarifying questions, and some were of the “So who is your principal?” nature which showed me I was off the mark in my analogy or explanation of a topic and needed to try again.

    How do you ensure that your “conducting” facilitates adult learning in a way that impacts job performance?

  • Creating a Teaching Culture

    Creating a Teaching Culture

    My twelve-year-old son had his first experience with interviewing this week. He is applying to a special program for high school and as part of the application process he had to participate in a panel interview with members of the program administration. Naturally, he was nervous. Luckily the interview was scheduled on very short notice so he didn’t have too much time to overthink it.

    As I sat in the waiting area with him and his best friend before their interviews, I put on my recruiter hat and gave them some basic interviewing advice. They were both very receptive to what I said and I think they both took my advice to heart during their interviews. (We find out if they both made it in to the program in a few weeks, so fingers crossed!)

    As I went over the basics with them (eye contact, open posture, speak clearly, don’t fidget), I heard another mother say to her child “you know how to interview.”

    My first thought was “how does a twelve-year-old know how to interview when so many adults struggle with it?” Then I started to think about the deeper impact of her statement.

    How often do we as leaders assume that those we lead already know what we want or need them to know? And how many of us get frustrated when we find out they don’t know it, often only after they tried on their own and made a mistake?

    By making that statement to her child, that mother was assuming he had the knowledge and didn’t help to ensure her child was set up for success. Same with leaders and their employees. If you set an expectation for your employee with the assumption that they know how to meet that expectation, you may be setting them up for failure or at a minimum, added stress when they struggle on their own to get it right.

    According to a study published in 2015 by Willis Towers-Watson, over 70% of high-retention-risk employee said they would leave their companies to advance their careers.

    I recently held a workshop for one of my clients in which I asked employees to tell me where they thought the company needed to make improvements. One of the top themes that I saw in their feedback was training and providing employees with the knowledge they need to be as successful as they can be.

    It’s human nature to want to succeed.  

    Providing employees with the opportunity to grow in their roles is a great way to ensure that they will want to stay with the organization. And it’s a great opportunity to strengthen your organization’s succession plan.

    Studies show that most on the job training happens in the form of informal learning. I have challenged the leaders at the client mentioned above to ask themselves each week to pinpoint one thing that they taught someone. I’ve also challenged them to think before they perform a task “is there someone who would benefit from knowing how to do this?” If the answer is yes, I encourage them to pull that person aside and show them when the opportunity presents itself (just like I did with my son and his friend).

    The interview skills I presented to the boys were very basic, but also very important skills to know for the future. My hope is that when they are old enough in a few years to start interviewing for their first job, those tips will pop into their heads and help them to have a successful interview.

    The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. -Harvey S. Firestone

    Are you living up to your calling as a leader?