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.

  • Building Culture When There’s No Building: Remote Workforces

    Building Culture When There’s No Building: Remote Workforces

    Even with today’s technology, many people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the concept of a virtual company. When someone asks me where Horizon Point’s office is located and I respond that we are a virtual organization, I often get some puzzled looks.

    Their first question is usually “If you don’t have an office, where do you work?” And that’s often followed up with something along the lines of “Don’t you miss interacting with other people?”

    Truthfully, I’m always interacting with people, including co-workers, clients, fellow HR professionals, and other members of the community. I just don’t do any of that from a central location. Depending on the day my office is at home, at a client site, in my car, or even at Panera Bread.

    Virtual organizations have unique challenges when it comes to creating a sense of company culture. How do you get your employees around the water cooler when the water cooler doesn’t exist and even if it did, your employees aren’t there to congregate?

    1. Clearly define your company’s mission and core values. Make sure employees know the organization’s mission and core values, speak to them often, and ensure your employees actions are guided by them. Recognize employees when they exemplify your organization’s mission or core values.
    2. Take opportunities to bring your team together, whether in-person or virtually. If your employees are all local, hold regular meetings with the entire team to talk about what’s going on in the company or plan social events to bring them all together. If they are spread out, hold virtual meetings regularly. Give them opportunities to get to know each other and build a sense of teamwork. Come together at conferences, workshops, or other work-related events.
    3. Recognize employees for a job well done. Remote employees still need feedback and recognition. Give them a call to congratulate them or thank them, send them a card in the mail, or even send out regular recognition emails to your staff.
    4. Be there when they need you. Virtual employees can’t just come knocking on your office door when they need help, but you can ensure that you’re there when they need you. Be prompt in responding to their calls or emails. Take the initiative to check in with them regularly. Don’t ever make them feel like you’re too busy to give them your time and attention.
    5. Encourage them to lean on each other. Another way to help build teamwork is to encourage your team to support each other. If an employee comes to you with an issue and you know another member of your team has expertise in that area, connect the two and encourage them to work together to resolve the issue.

    Communication is key to building company culture, whether your employees are all under one roof or spread far and wide.

    For more on remote workforces, read our blog It Doesn’t Matter How and Where Work Gets Done. The Death of Office Space, Office Hours and the Employee-Employer Relationship.

  • REPOST! Don’t Want to Wake Up With Regrets? Create a Mission Statement

    REPOST! Don’t Want to Wake Up With Regrets? Create a Mission Statement

    This post was originally published on August 30, 2013 and has been updated.

    Mission statements are critical to directing success.  Companies have them, why don’t individuals?  Having one can help you focus and reach what you want to accomplish in life by answering the who, what, why and how of you.  Its not a mission statement unless it is written down. Whether or not you are trying to make career or college decisions in your life, everyone needs to have a personal mission statement.

    The exercises focused on identifying finding your talents, passions and values, for career purposes are a good starting place to help you discover your mission.  Just as the best place for shining your light for your career is at the intersection of these three things, so is your personal mission.   If you haven’t taken the time identify your talents, passions and values, I would encourage you to identify your top three in each area by looking at the resources here on the blog that have focused on talents, passions and values throughout 2018 and looking toward 2019. When you define your mission, you should be able to live out your talents, passions, and values through it.

    Don’t want to wake up with regrets?

    We use a workshop called The Power of 3 to walk people through creating personal mission statements, goals and success strategies for themselves in order to help them insure they are living life to the fullest. They help people not wake up one day with a whole list of regrets.  Mission statements also help people say no to things that aren’t inline with their mission (more on this here).

    You can download the worksheet to this workshop here: Power of 3 Worksheet.

    Here are some other tools for creating a mission statement for yourself:

    What is your personal mission?

  • 2 Keys to Being a Successful Leader Instead of a Doer

    2 Keys to Being a Successful Leader Instead of a Doer

    A production line worker is promoted to line supervisor, yet he is still running the line like the rest of his team.

    A department Vice President is still solving day-to-day issues and is drowning in a to-do list that has nothing to do with leading the people in her department.

    At every level of the leadership hierarchy, I see it often.  Leaders not leading.  Yes, they are busy doing, but they devote little to no time leading people.   And if they just led more, it would actually shorten their to-do list!

    They were stars at their functional roles, so what do they keep doing even when promoted?  The functions that they do well.

    If you are making the transition to a leader of people,  or if you are a part of HR trying to help facilitate successful transitions for people to be good at leading people, here are some things that can help equip you/your team to make the transition successfully:

    1. Engage in/Provide leadership coaching and training. Pave the way to do this before making the transition to leader if possible. This will help equip you with mindsets and insights to practice before being placed in the role. When seeking someone to help you improve your performance, what should you look for? Here are 4 key things to look for in a coach.

    Books: If you are taking the self-directed approach to this, start by picking up some great leadership books.

    Classes: Enroll in a leadership classes that focuses on successful leadership principles and practices.  These come from all types of providers and in all types of formats, costs, and time commitments.   For a large organization, your company’s LMS should have a variety of resources and potentially structured, pre-arranged classes.  For smaller organizations, reach out to peer organizations in your community and see what they would recommend.

    Coaching: Reach out to a leadership coach internally or externally to arrange regularly scheduled coaching through your transition.   For more on vetting a coach, check out this post.

    Mentoring: Seek out someone who is already established as a strong leader of people to meet with regularly. Your natural tendency may be to gravitate towards a mentor that is good at what you are- functional responsibilities. Resist the urge and find a mentor that truly is the best at leading people. We would suggest meeting at least twice a month to begin with and then less frequently as you transition successfully. Read more about mentoring here.

    2. Practice Leadership Habits:  There are certain things that almost, if not all leaders do, and that is spend a substantial portion of their time equipping others to be successful. Your calendar should reflect that you are a leader by how you spend your time.  Habits should include:

    Regular one-on-ones with each person that reports to you:  These should be scheduled meetings that take place at intervals you feel are most appropriate.  I’ve seen some work effectively as infrequently as quarterly and some occurring weekly in order to be effective.  The frequency most often depends on how much development and guidance the person needs from you.  If you are leading effectively, the amount needed should decrease over time. These meetings should be booked in advanced and only cancelled/rescheduled in an emergency.

    Availability to everyone that reports to you:  Meeting the needs of your people should be your first priority (as long as you aren’t equipping them to allow you to be their crutch).   You should pick up the phone when they call or return their call as soon as possible.  You should also be responsive to emails and/or text messages. Going MIA to your reports breeds a feeling of not feeling valued. Be available.

    Be a career agent.

    And finally, read this post about how to move your goods to greats in order to be a leader

  • Does Your Team Talk in Metaphors?

    Does Your Team Talk in Metaphors?

    One of my favorite things to do for companies is to help them understand what distinguishes high performers from average and/or low performers in their organization. The purpose of this could be for a variety of reasons, but oftentimes, it is to help companies create a profile and tools to select the right talent.

    We ask the clients to provide us with the opportunity to talk to high, mid and low performers.  We ask them a series of job analysis questions and watch them work for a bit.  While we watch them work, we ask them questions about what they are doing, why they are doing it and ask them to explain what is going on in their head to understand what mental processes they are engaging in to complete their work.

    Recently, we’ve been working on this type of project for a client.  And we’ve uncovered one of the most interesting things I think I’ve seen so far in doing this kind of work.

    Overwhelmingly, the high performers talk in metaphors.  They explain things, often complex things, through metaphors instead of direct or literal language.

    For example: “So, when we do this, it is like we are headed out on a trip from here to Nashville, and we decide half way through that we need to change our tires and our oil.”  This was used to explain how poor planning hurts the company.

    Another way this came out was high performers using song lyrics to describe what they were doing, how they were doing it, or why.

    In this particular example as well as in other workplaces, people who talk in metaphors seem to be better teachers. (Think Jesus, arguably, regardless of your religion, one of the best teachers ever.  How did he usually talk to his followers?  In parables, which is simply another word for metaphor.)

    Metaphors help us:

    1. Make more than one point with less language. There is often the points and THE POINT that can only be expressed through metaphors instead of specific or descriptive dialogue.
    2. Describe often complex things in simple terms.
    3. Commit things to memory. We remember the song lyrices or the analogy more than we remember the work instructions.

    In this instance, the behavior of talking in metaphors will be related to the overall competency of teaching.  Teaching will be one of three to four competencies we will design selection criteria and assessment around for this client.  The ability to teach in order share knowledge across employees is a critical competitive advantage for this organization.

    So how can we assess for teaching ability?  Well one way is to see if candidates talk in metaphors. Do candidates engage in the behavior that the high performers use?

    To do this we will train hiring managers to pay attention to these things:

    1. In interviews, using “tell me about a time” questions, does the candidate explain things or answer the questions and use metaphors to describe?
    2. In interviews, ask them to explain the last time they described how to solve a problem to someone. Ask them to actually walk through the description.  Are metaphors or analogies present?
    3. In a work sample, we will ask candidates to teach someone how to do something. We will score this work sample, among other things, to see whether using metaphors was present.

    Another way to look at metaphors is to more broadly see if people tell stories to explain things instead of simply describing what is.   Assess if storytelling is present in your candidates.

    Is your workplace full of metaphors?  If so, your organization may be better at teaching than others.

     

     

     

  • Bullying Doesn’t Just Happen at School: Workplace Bullying

    Bullying Doesn’t Just Happen at School: Workplace Bullying

    I recently saw an article about a nine year old boy in Denver who took his own life after being bullied during his first four days of school. My youngest son is eight and I can’t imagine him ever feeling like his only choice is suicide.

    When my oldest was in elementary school he was bullied by another child at his daycare. While he has always been a very headstrong child, the bullying continued to the point where he had put up with enough. Together we sat down with his martial arts instructor, who is phenomenal at working with children to tackle such hard issues, and he helped us to formulate a game plan on how to handle it. With his help, my son was able to show his bully that his words weren’t having the effect he was aiming for, and eventually the two actually became friends.

    Bullying isn’t limited to children. A survey sponsored by the Workplace Bullying Institute in 2017 showed that a staggering number of U.S. workers experienced bullying in the workplace.

    • 5 million U.S. workers reported experiencing bullying in the workplace
    • Women experience bullying, from both women and men, at a much higher rate with 65% of male bullies targeting women and 67% of female bullies targeting women
    • 61% reported that they were bullied by a boss
    • 25% reported that their employer did nothing while 46% reported that their employer conducted a “sham” investigation

    Bullying in the workplace has an impact on the organization as well, including increased turnover, loss of valuable talent, decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and even the risk of litigation. So how can employers minimize these risks?

    1. Have a well-defined Harassment Policy. Workplace bullying is a form of harassment. While most bullying may not be illegal, that doesn’t make it okay. Make sure your Harassment Policy includes workplace bullying. Train your leadership on what bullying is, how to conduct themselves to set the example, and how to handle it if an employee reports bullying. Review your Harassment Policy with all new hires, and annually with all staff.
    2. Have and follow a formal investigation process. Your policy should include information on how reports will be handled. Determine who will conduct the investigation, how it will be conducted, and make sure your findings are well documented. Do not ignore reports of bullying and do not put off investigating those reports.
    3. Take proper action to eliminate the behavior. Once you have completed a thorough investigation, determine what action needs to be taken to make the bullying behavior cease. That could be anything from a documented verbal conversation with the accused up to termination. If the accused is not terminated, monitor the situation to ensure that the actions have in fact ceased. Do not assume that it has and let it go.
    4. Promote a workplace that welcomes diversity, inclusion, and a difference of opinions. Work hard to promote an organization that encourages teamwork, uniqueness, and freedom to communicate- even when what an employee has to say may go against the grain. Pay attention to where there may be breakdowns in this and work to build them up. Host company functions that encourage employees to get to know each other. Provide new employees with mentors who can help guide them and integrate them into the organization. And have an open door, where employees feel comfortable voicing concerns or issues. And again, take those concerns or issues seriously because not doing so leads to a breakdown of trust.
    5. When needed, provide employees with outside resources to help them cope. I’m a huge proponent of Employee Assistance Programs. If you have one, make sure both the accused and the accuser are provided with that resource. If you don’t have an EAP, there are other resources available to employees that may help them. You never really know why someone bullies, or what is going on in the mind of someone who is being bullied. Sometimes it takes a trained professional to assist them.

    60.5 million is a staggering and unacceptable number. Bullying is not an inherent trait, it is a learned behavior. Just as I aim to teach my children acceptance and kindness, employers can aim to promote those values in throughout their organization as well.

    Below are some additional resources on bullying:

    www.stopbullying.gov

    https://www.apaexcellence.org/resources/special-topics/workplace-bullying

    https://www.employmentattorneyla.com/blog/2016/05/workplace-bullying-online-anti-bullying-resources-for-employees.shtml