Category: General

If you’re like me, you may be a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there just waiting to be absorbed.  And so much of it is free! It’s exciting to think that so much potential for learning is just a click away, but it can be daunting to think about where to start in consuming the knowledge that may be of interest to you.

Before launching into an in-depth search for learning material based on that in which you are passionate, challenge yourself to discover how you learn best and then find mechanisms that help you maximize your learning based on how you are wired.

Three basic learning styles are:

1. Visual- Learn best by reading, looking at visual images and forming images in ones mind or paper to save to memory
2. Auditory- Learn best by hearing information and committing it to memory
3. Kinesthetic- Learn best by doing, touching and creating to learn in a hands-on manner and then committing how to do it to memory

Want to discover your learning style? Here are two free learning style quizzes here:

Vark Learning Style Quiz

How to Learn Quiz

What were your results?

My good friends at Red Sage posted a fun quiz on Facebook this week- Are you right brained or left brained? Intrigued by all things personality related, I partook in the quiz, which told me I was 78% right brained. Going on the premise that your dominant brainside is the opposite of which hand you write, I have always considered myself a confused-brainer. I write with my right hand, but ask me to do anything else with my right side like throw a ball, shoot a ball or slalom ski and your out of luck. My left side wins.

My late mentor, who was a management professor at the University of Alabama, had a wonderful presentation that he gave frequently about the need for the world to think right-brained. In this presentation, he stated if people wanted to be competitive as individuals, if colleges wanted to turn out competitive graduates and if the United States wanted to remain creative, something had to be done to stimulate and cultivate the creative,innovative side of the mind. His premise: this kind of thinking is what produces long-term competitive advantage. The logical, methodical left-brain mindset does not.

But while taking this quiz, I was sitting with my husband who was watching Moneyball (again). To my Red Sage friends, you will love this movie if you haven’t seen it- he makes reference to the island of misfit toys.

This is this the story of Billy Bean who takes Nate Silver’s (@fivethirtyeight) advice and turns the world of selecting baseball players upside down by employing the logic of economics instead of scout’s intuition to select players. The premise: look at one number- on base percentage- to select players. And they win with it, with players the league has completely undervalued.

So I ask, is this left-brained or right-brained thinking? The bent towards logic and numbers would lead you believe it’s left-brained. However, I would state the idea was very right-brained. It is a true example of outside the box, challenging conventional left-brained structure, choatic thinking. However, the method to implement it, creating complex formulas and crunching numbers, is very left-brained and structured.

The point? Successful leaders use both sides of their brain with ease. After all, we have one organ as a brain, not two. I imagine the great creator designed it for both sides to work together in a way that optimizes human performance and results. Using the right side of your brain to come up with ideas may require the left side to implement.

Challenge both sides of your brain by engaging in activities that stimulate both sides. However, in a world that still seems to gravitate, or place higher value on the conventional thinking of the left side, I’ll defer to my mentor. Maybe we do need to work harder to get more out of our right side in order to fuel long-term competitive advantage. Billy Bean did.

A key to creating career and personal success is to realize that in order to live your mission, there are many things in which you have to say “no”.

 

If you have worked through the Power of 3 Worksheet, you will notice that there is a section for you to note three things that you need to stop doing in order to live your mission.

 

I think these things we need to say “no” to come in two categories:

 

1. Bad habits- Things like not exercising, eating unhealthy, drinking too much, playing Candy Crush for four hours a day (I haven’t tried it yet, I’m afraid my semi-addictive personality will lead me to end up being one who plays it four hours a day!), etc. These things keep us for being our best selves and distract us at the least and prohibit us at the most from our purpose.
2. Unproductive activities that don’t align with your purpose. These things aren’t “bad” they just don’t align with living out personal missions. They may align with someone else’s mission, but do they align with yours?

 

The best example I have of this is never saying no when you’re asked to be on a committee or serve on a board even when the board has nothing to do with anything that aligns with your purpose. Similarly, accepting a job or work assignment that does not fit with your purpose can be extremely detrimental to living your mission.   Whereas we can participate in things like this in the short-run (especially if we need to put food on the table for a job) committing for the long-term that is counter to your purpose will lead to all things undesirable including unhappiness, feeling overwhelmed, and even resentment. They may be “good” activities, but you participating in them just because you can’t say “no” leads to you to “bad”.

When you say no to things that don’t align with who you are, you end up saying yes to your mission. And when you say yes to your mission, you give light to us all.

Last week, we discussed how leaders might be limiting hiring pools and therefore potential competitive advantage by being too stringent on the hard and fastskills required for a job.

I think one of the main reasons we do this as leaders is because we don’t want to take the time to train people.

We hire people, assume they are up to speed on day one (and we make this assumption because they met our requirement of five years of experience in such and such), and then we throw them into the fire and expect them not to burn.

Want people to succeed long term with your organization? Here are some ideas for doing so:

Set up a training plan for them before they arrive. Connecting them to the people they need to learn from in order to do their job well and communicate to these trainers that their most important responsibility during that period is getting the new hire trained.

Allow time for training. And that doesn’t mean a day.

Document processes and procedures that are critical to the job and share with new hires. Set up a time after they have reviewed them to be able to ask questions.

Use the model: I show you how to do it, you ask questions while I’m doing it, then you show me how to do it. Retained knowledge and ability to apply that knowledge is best assessed by whether or not someone can teach it back to you.

Be available.

Remember, real leaders make more leaders. This can’t be done without a leader taking training and development seriously. Meaning, it is his or her top priority.

How specific are your job postings? You post a job and that job has specific knowledge, skills and/or abilities that the person needs. These things can be acquired in a variety of ways. Some postings are very specific on requirements, while others are vague and open to interpretation. I’ve seen many that require at least five years of experience in a specific role before a candidate will even be considered. And the truth of the matter is, more times than not specific requirements aren’t even validated as needed. It just sounds good.

While I echo Ben Eubank’s advice to job seekers from his post Be Able to Do the Job, especially the emphasis on candidates not lying about their experience or knowledge, I wonder if as leaders we are limiting our hiring pool and potential competitive advantage through people by being too restrictive in the requirements advertised in job postings.

You see, hard and fast skills are much easier to ask for in a job posting. It’s easier to say five years of experience in accounting or a degree in accounting, than it is to ask and assess for things that are “fuzzy” like motivational characteristics or ability to get along with others.

Are we missing out on people who have the will (desire and appropriate personality) to do the job at the sacrifice of just finding people who have the hard and fast skills? In my opinion, will is much harder to assess and quantify, but much more valuable in the long run.

Are your job postings too restrictive?

Check back next week to see the real reason I think most people hiring for skill over will…

 

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Selection 101: Skill vs. Will