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…).

  • 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?

  • 4 Ways to State Your Intentions in Order to Drive the Best Outcomes

    4 Ways to State Your Intentions in Order to Drive the Best Outcomes

    I’m preparing to take my kids into Target, Lord help me. I just need to get some necessities.  I park the car, turn and look them in the eye and tell them, “We are not going to the toy section.  We are here to get milk, a card for someone, and some toilet paper. You will both walk beside me and the cart.  You will not run, and you will not ask if you can go look at toys, okay?”

    I get “yes ma’am”.  And then ask them to repeat back to me what I just said and what they are going to do.

    I silently hope for mostly compliance. 

    Shoot, I should have also added, “No asking for any gum, candy or any type of anything in the checkout aisle,” before going into the store.

    If I’m thinking clearly, I’ve learned to set our intention- both why we are going to into some place and the expectations for their behavior- before we walk into a place. I’ve learned this the hard way. In other words, I’ve had my fair share of public place visits that have involved running through the aisles (the kids, not me), spending 30 minutes in the toy section and breakdowns in the checkout line over “having to have” some strange egg thing that has both chocolate and a toy in it. Oh, how I wish I’d come up with these eggs.

    It’s funny how just telling them what we are going to do and why we are going to do it actually helps. 

    And it’s no different for us as individuals and for us working as groups at work. It’s simply intention setting to regulate behavior and therefore outcomes.

    As a research article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience states:

    ….Effective strategy to reduce this intention–behavior gap is the formation of implementation intentions that specify when, where, and how to act on a given goal in an if-then format (“If I encounter situation Y, then I will initiate action Z!”). It has been proposed that implementation intentions render the mental representation of the situation highly accessible and establish a strong associative link between the mental representations of the situation and the action. 

    Some intention-setting ideas to consider in your workplace include:

    1.    For the love, have a meeting agenda and send it out ahead of time.  In other words, before you get out of the car with your kids at Target, not once you get in the store.  This should specify, when, where, how and who.

    2.    The same thing is true for post-meeting intentions.  Debrief action items post meeting- the what, when, where, how and who- verbally and then send a written follow-up with these action items.

    3.    Have an intention pep talk with yourself before you go into a difficult discussion or situation.  For example, before I got out of the car (man, I’m in my car a lot setting intentions) before going into what I knew could be an uncomfortable situation last week, I asked myself, “What do I want to get out of this?”   The answer was an opportunity to build relationships instead of destroying them. In other words, we aren’t here to look at toys, we are here to get toilet paper.

    Setting this simple intention led to me keeping my mouth shut more than once when I really wanted to say something because I knew I was right. Opening my mouth would most likely have led to my intention being destroyed. This is like the adult version of going into Target and coming out with $100 of stuff you don’t need or can’t afford when you went in to only get said toilet paper.

    4.    If your intention is really just to get toilet paper, a card and some milk, eliminate the things that keep you from doing that.  I can’t totally eliminate my kids nor do I want to, but I can find a better time through more proactive planning to schedule a trip to the store without them.  Or, I could be smart and simply order drive-up pickup.  Oftentimes we have to regroup and set unnecessary intentions because we got so far down the rabbit hole of not setting intentions in the first place. 

    How good are you at setting intentions to regulate your behavior and outcomes?

    If you like this post, you may also like:

    How Neuroscience Is and Will Revolutionize HR

    5 Questions to End the Slow Painful Death of Death by Meetings

    A Simple Goal Setting Method

  • The Office Design that Promotes Productivity, Collaboration, and Cost Savings

    The Office Design that Promotes Productivity, Collaboration, and Cost Savings

    Much has been said about the open office floor plan.  The concept arose out of Silicon Valley and became a popular way to supposedly create “collaborative” work environments where innovation happens.  Oh, and as an added bonus, companies saved a lot of money designing office spaces as open.  I’m not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg- the realization that money could be saved this way, or that “collaboration” and therefore innovation would thrive in this type of design.  

    But in many studies, including this one: The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration, it was found that “Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx.70%)” in examining two different corporate headquarters transitioning to more open office spaces. The electronic interaction increased, leading to what would be contrary to what you would think would happen. People in this type of environment socially withdrew from co-workers instead of increasing their interaction.

    In addition, the lost productivity of open office spaces has been cited empirically to reduce productivity. “An Exeter University study showed they actually create a 32% drop in “workers well-being” and a 15% reduction in productivity.” The loss of productivity eliminates any financial gain that decreased square footage provides in an open office design.

    So, what do you do? Ditch the open office? And in favor of what? Back to the cubicle farm?  The answer would be “no”.  As a recent Inc. Magazine article suggests,  working from home is one good option.  It enhances the cost savings for companies even more. In addition, the article also cites how work from home arrangements make people more productive and happier.

    We have no office at Horizon Point. We work from home and at client sites and at the local coffee shop- on our own as well as in group meetings. As we grow, I’ve considered the need to rent or purchase office space. The last time I mentioned it to my team, one person looked at me like if you make me come into an office and do all my work from there and I will quit. And when I think about it, I might quit too. 

    The truth of the matter is asking, where does the best work gets done? And the answer isn’t any one type of office arrangement. Different environments breed different results depending on the work or task at hand.

    As cited in the February cover story of FastCompany, “’People have different needs throughout their day and throughout their life. They might need to focus at a certain point and talk to someone at another point.’”

    With this reality at hand, it makes sense that the best office space is not one at all, but many. And the key is for leaders to manage in a way that gives employees the empowerment to match the type of work they need to accomplish with the environment that best suits it.

    Tomorrow my office will be at the gym where I will read a business book while I’m running on the treadmill. The one I’m currently reading relates to a new presentation I’m working on about how to implement a values-based culture. Next, it will be in my car as I return a few calls after dropping my kids off at school. Then, on to the local coffee shop where I can have some background noise but a limited distraction to revise training content for a client and create verbiage for collateral pieces for our new business. Then, I’m on to a client site for lunch and a meeting in order to finalize some training content we will use with their team in the next week or two.

    Obviously, there is some work that doesn’t allow us to choose where we do it. If you are running a multi-million-dollar press making parts for a car, let’s say, it’s not likely you can do that from your own car or the café (yet).  

    However, when we don’t assume one trend or style fits all, we begin to mold a better office environment and work culture where people can do their best work.

    Where will you be getting your best work done today?