Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Beyond Work

Beyond Work is our line of resources for people and community leaders looking for something new and innovative outside, be it a new job, career change, or personal development outside of work.

  • Why a Decline in Teens Working is Bad For Them and Bad For Business

    Why a Decline in Teens Working is Bad For Them and Bad For Business

    The diamond on my ringer finger I can thank in part to a teenager engaging in summer work. My husband worked during the summer every year starting at age fifteen. And although I wasn’t even on his radar at age 15, nor do I think marriage to anyone was at that point in time, his hard work and savings from that hard work led to a lovely diamond on my hand that he paid cash for.

    He worked painting schools, mowing grass, driving a forklift at a lumber yard and building tree stands while in high school. His college work experience transitioned from labor-intensive endeavors to work related to his college major and ultimate career goals.

    My husband was fortunate that he didn’t have to pay for college. His parents saved for it and paid for it as did some scholarship money. And he was fortunate that he didn’t have to buy his own car. His grandmother did. So, you can say he was fortunate that he had money saved from summer work that didn’t go to pay for things that most kids use summer earnings for.  But in my opinion, it wasn’t so much about the money he gained from summer work, it was what he learned from it that created value.

    But according to a report by the Brooking Institute, “all school and no work becoming the norm for American teens”:

    From 2000 to 2018, the labor force participation rate of 16- to 64-year-olds fell 3.6 percentage points. In previous work, we have shown that declining labor force participation among young people contributed substantially to this decline. In this analysis, we describe how teenagers (16–19-year-olds) have shifted away from working or seeking work and the impact this shift has had on the aggregate labor force participation rate.

    The lack of labor participation from teens is contributing to the overall lack of labor supply in the United States.  This is a problem at the macro level.

    But a bigger problem I see at the micro-level is that teens are spending so much time on school and other endeavors that they aren’t learning the value created from first jobs at an age where that learning is truly more valuable than what can be learned in the classroom or in trying to pursue two more points on an ACT score.  And this is actually hurting the macro picture more by affecting the ability of teens to transition into the labor force successfully full-time and contribute in meaningful ways.

     

    This is because work at an early age teaches:

    1. The value of a dollar.  In a workplace where financial stress is an increasing concern, early work could help students understand earning their own money, saving, and how far their earnings actually go. You never know when you are going to want to buy a diamond. Thank goodness we didn’t start out our marriage strapped with a loan to pay off the ring on my hand.
    2. Showing up on time and being present is more than half the battle. My husband often says that his summers were more demanding than his school year.  He had to be at football workouts at 5 AM in order to be at work by 7 AM.  Having to maintain a full work schedule and juggle other activities is an important learning step and is one in which a lot of teens may be learning too late.  And one in which I fear school and sports/extracurricular activities don’t accurately mirror in the real world.
    3. An understanding and exposure to different things that can help teens best discern what they want to be when they grow up. My husband learned really quick the value of education (much more than focusing on it directly like a lot of teens do now) sweating in 100+ degree heat building tree stands and working at a lumberyard for minimum wage.  When he was older and working in the field he thought he wanted to pursue, it helped to confirm a connection to the work and the types of role(s) and work environments he’d like to pursue.  For example, he realized that even though he was good at it, he preferred operations over financial areas of health care administration, and discovered he desired to work in a not-for-profit setting as opposed to a for-profit one.

     

    We’ve got to stop and think for a moment as individuals and as a society, what are the best means to an end?  In the end, I think we as parents, teens, teachers, and business leaders want to help young people engage in things that lead to long term success and allow them to define what that success looks like for themselves.

  • 7 Pieces of Advice for Becoming a Great Speaker

    7 Pieces of Advice for Becoming a Great Speaker

    Spending the last week at the National #SHRM19 conference with 20,000 plus people provided the opportunity to see and hear a lot of speakers across a diverse group of topics and styles.   

    As I reflect on what made some stand out over others, I find this list of advice helpful to myself as a speaker and hopefully to you too, regardless of the size of the audience or the subject you may find yourself addressing: 

    1. Pictures and stories are worth 1000 words. If you can illustrate with a picture or a story, don’t put the words on a slide. No one reads a bunch of words on a slide.  The fewer slides and the less content on the slide, the better.  
    2. Establish your legitimacy and expertise through your content, not through bragging on or touting yourself.   I heard one guy say to begin his presentation, “I have thousands of clients, both national and international.  I consult all over the world on this stuff.” I almost tuned him out there and then ended up walking out of his presentation because the delivery of his content was mind-numbingly boring and the slides had so much jumbled information on them, it was impossible to follow. 
    3. Don’t sell your topic during your presentation. People have already shown up for the topic. Give them what you’ve promised you’d deliver by sticking to the topic you advertised you’d be speaking about. 
    4. Get to the point. Talk about what people came to hear, but make sure you give background info to frame your point when needed.  There is a delicate balance of making sure you provide context to people who may not know much about the topic compared to those who may be in the room that is seasoned on the topic.  Balance providing context without boring the experts.
    5. Engage the audience in some way through discussion, social media activity, writing and or personal reflection exercises with a partner. 
    6. Provide tactical things people can actually go back to the office and do/apply. 
    7. Follow-up with resource materials and slides to your audience via email or through the appropriate conference channels. 

     

    What have speakers you’ve seen done that made them stand out as a great speaker? 

  • Leadership Reminders From my Night in O’Hare

    Leadership Reminders From my Night in O’Hare

    Things don’t always go as planned. 

    After a great week at SHRM19 in Las Vegas, I planned to be back in the comforts of my own home Wednesday night. But thanks to bad weather and a missed connection, I spent the night at Chicago O’Hare Airport. I was exhausted and just wanted to get home. But what could have been a miserable experience turned out to be an adventure. And as I sit here watching the sun come up over Chicago, waiting for my flight home, I’m reminded of a few leadership lessons. 

    1. Be flexible. Things won’t always go as planned. Be willing, and able, to adjust to unexpected changes. Be willing to consider plan B or plan C, and sometimes Plan D. And don’t be surprised if someone else comes up with a better solution. As I stood in line last night waiting to try to get a flight home, I considered my options, which included flying into Nashville and driving almost two hours back to Huntsville. When I finally got up to the ticket counter, the customer service rep came up with a better solution for me, she switched my airline from United to American and was able to get me on an early morning flight and have me home by 10 AM when every United flight wouldn’t have gotten me home until late afternoon. 
    2. Be patient. Try to look at the situation from other perspectives and understand what those involved are trying to accomplish or are enduring. Due to the bad weather, the line at customer service took me almost two hours to get through. I was tired and not looking forward to a night in the airport, but I knew that it was due to circumstances outside of anyone’s control and the Delta customer service reps were working diligently to help fliers find a way to their destinations. Even though I stood in line for so long, the experience was a positive one and I didn’t mind the long wait. (the free fruit snacks and bottled water helped!)
    3. Seek out a mentor or partner. Find someone who has been there and done that who you can learn from, or at the least, someone who is in the same boat that you can walk the walk with. Last night while grounded in Milwaukee I met Allison on the plane. She too attended the SHRM Conference and was trying to get back to Huntsville. We decided to stick together through this adventure and that made it much more bearable, and even fun. And since neither of us has ever found ourselves missing our flight and stuck overnight in an airport, it was nice to have someone else to figure it out with. 
    4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes you just can’t figure it all out on your own. Others may have information or solutions that you need, you just need to ask. After getting our return flight figured out, walking for what felt like forever to our new terminal gate, and trying to figure out how we were going to get any sleep, we met a very nice housekeeper and asked her how we could get a blanket. She led us to the jackpot! Thanks to her help we found two bags full of fresh blankets and were able to use them to make ourselves “beds” on the floor so that we could get at least a little bit of sleep during the night. 

    You don’t have to be in a leadership role to practice leadership. How do you practice leadership at work or outside of work? 

  • Put Your Phone Away: The 1 Best Piece of Advice for Today’s Adults and Teens?

    Put Your Phone Away: The 1 Best Piece of Advice for Today’s Adults and Teens?

    I’ve been asked to speak to a group of high school student leaders this week.  I’m always open to almost any topic the organizers want me to cover that I have expertise in.  In this case, what started off as a talk about communication skills morphed into talking about building confidence. The adult leader said that she felt as though this was a challenge for most youth of today.  

    I see this point and also see where there are a variety of factors contributing to it. One factor that I see related to both challenges in communication skills and confidence is the frequency of time that youth (and adults) spend on their phones.  

    I consider this a note to myself as much as it is advice in general, but the phone has become what I call the marshmallow of our times.  

    Remember the marshmallow study in the 1970s which showed that children who were able to delay gratification and wait to get two marshmallows instead of one were shown to be more successful by a variety of measures? As stated in this article:  

    The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures. (You can see the follow-up studies here, here, and here.)

    I’m not one to say that any piece of technology is the source of all evil, but when used to an extreme, which is what it has become for many, the modern cell phone has become:

    1. A source of instant gratification (the marshmallow) that we can’t seem to put down or delay looking at.  
    2. It is has become a way to avoid direct communication with people. 
    3. It has become a way in which youth especially judge their self-worth through social media and other online interactions that aren’t based on reliable or useful sources for building self-worth and confidence.   
    4. All of which I believe is leading to lower confidence levels (among other negative things) in youth and adults.  
    5. Which then leads us all to fall victim to not shining our light in the way that positively reflects the talents, abilities, and gifts we have to offer, further thwarting self-confidence.  

    In the marshmallow study, the same article cites environmental factors that affect a child’s ability to have self-control and delay gratification, namely if they have been in situations where adults don’t follow through on what is promised.  This leads children to be conditioned to not believe that the second marshmallow will ever come (maybe their parents are on their phone and that’s why they don’t follow through?).  

    But the article emphasizes that we can cultivate behavioral patterns that help us delay gratification (put the phone down) and build our own confidence levels: 

    You and I can do the same thing. We can train our ability to delay gratification, just like we can train our muscles in the gym. And you can do it in the same way as the child and the researcher: by promising something small and then delivering. Over and over again until your brain says, 1) yes, it’s worth it to wait and 2) yes, I have the capability to do this.

    Building the muscle of putting down the phone when it isn’t necessary can help build confidence and patience in us all.

    Some ideas to do this:  

    1. Commit to putting up your phone in certain environments, situations, or times of the day.  Just like going to the gym at a routine time, find routine situations and times where the phone is off limits.  This exercises your self-control and patience.  
    2. Intentionally engage in face-to-face conversations with your peers and family at regular intervals. Commit as a group to put your phone up during certain times and interactions. 
    3. Take social media apps off your phone that you find yourself spending too much time on and/or ones that you can tell sabotage your self-confidence.  If you find the social media outlet as one in which you are constantly comparing yourself to others or you find yourself putting off doing more important and life-fulfilling things (things that build your gifts and build relationships) because you are constantly on the app, this is a clear sign it is eroding your confidence. Remove it. Use the time you would normally devote to your phone engaging in activities and relationships that help your light to shine. This produces a double boost in self-confidence. It removes that which is diminishing your confidence and focus on activities that build skills and abilities leading to a strong sense of self-worth and fulfillment.  This skill-building and confidence can then end up impacting others in a positive way too.

    I find it hard when speaking to youth not find a way to incorporate this clip from the movie Coach Carter into my talk.  So somehow in talking about cell phones, marshmallows, communication, and confidence, I’ve found myself back in a place where this clip conveys a most important message that we all need a reminder of from time to time. 

    Please don’t hide your light behind the glow of your phone.   

  • Sometimes You Will Fail, And That’s Okay

    Sometimes You Will Fail, And That’s Okay

    “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”

    During a recent conversation with a client, he raised a concern about his leadership team expecting him to make every decision. The previous leadership set that expectation, but he wants to empower his team to make decisions they are capable of making.

    The conversation reminded me of when my children were younger and learning new skills, like riding a bike. My youngest is very headstrong and lacks patience (he doesn’t take after his mother at all). If he doesn’t get it right the first time, he’s quick to say “I can’t.”  

    One of the best mentors I ever had, who just happened to be my first boss in HR, empowered me while still providing me with the guidance I needed as a new HR practitioner. Whenever I brought him an issue, he would ask me what I thought I should do. Eventually, I learned to come prepared with those possible solutions. Together we would weigh the options and determine which route to take. The longer I worked for him, the easier it became for me to determine what I needed to do to resolve a situation. And in the end, I learned to make those decisions on my own and simply inform him of how I intended to handle it.

    I have a client that is experiencing a high level of change in their organization and as part of that change, I helped them lead an interactive workshop with their staff. When reviewing the potential outcomes of the feedback received during the workshop, I was very transparent with the group. Their feedback will guide change and the success of that change will be measured. Some of those measurements will show that the change is effective, but some is going to show that the change isn’t effective. And that’s okay. It means that we go back to the table. We reevaluate the plan and determine if we need to adjust to get the desired results. Or we decide that the plan isn’t the right one and we start over from scratch. Many of them looked a little shocked that I admitted that we will fail.

    Failure isn’t a bad thing, as long as you learn from it and grow from it. Just as parents tell their children, as long as you learn from your mistakes, you are still succeeding.  

    By mentoring employees to assess issues and come up with possible solutions, eventually, they will take that initiative without even having to think about it. And they will grow more confident in their ability to formulate those solutions and implement them. And in turn, they will empower their own employees and the impact will continue to trickle down the ladder and the entire team will become more effective, more cohesive, and more productive.

    Do you empower your employees to create solutions? Do you support them when they fail?