Category: Leadership Development

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 in your own leadership development (or if you’re looking for resources for someone else).

  • Jump start your 2018 professional growth now!

    Jump start your 2018 professional growth now!

    Have you ever wanted to start your own business?
    Jump start your 2018 professional growth now!

     

    Introducing new coursework available,
    Getting Off the Ground: 7 Steps to Developing a Successful Business

    Entrepreneurship is one of our passions.
    First taught at Professional Development Institute (PDI)
    at the NCDA Conference Summer 2017.
    Customized for Career Development Facilitators.

    Take advantage of this opportunity now!

    If you missed it at PDI, you can now benefit from the course at your own convenience at an even lower cost. The course is set-up on Udemy.com for easy processing, payment, and participation.

    Get here: 7 Steps to Developing a Successful Business

    Use coupon code: 7STEPS 

  • 3 Things to Consider Before Your Employee Rewards System Goes Bad

    3 Things to Consider Before Your Employee Rewards System Goes Bad

    She looks like a precious angel doesn’t she?  They both do, actually, but that’s my three year old, loving on my niece before her baptism.  Picture perfect.

    Flash forward to lunch after the baptism at my brother and sister-in-law’s home.  My husband and I refused to make a special lunch for our kids, telling them that could eat what was prepared. Beef tenderloin, homemade rolls, green bean and roasted potatoes. For this 30 something, the lunch was a major treat. For a three year old, who just wants a peanut butter and jelly, not so much.

    But, if we had possibly succeeded for a split second in parenting by not giving in to our kids’ desires, we failed with our motivation tactic to get her to eat it (which we do quite often). We provided a carrot or should I say, ice cream and cookies. If you eat what’s on your plate, we told her, you can have dessert.  

    She fought us on it, tried to negotiate with us on it, and tried to hold out longer than we could. But we stuck to it, and she eventually brought her plate to me clean.  

    “Can I have my ice cream and cookie now?” she asked.  She looked about as precious of an angel asking this as she did in the picture.

    Fooled me.

    A few minutes later, my brother’s good friend comes in with handful of small pieces of beef tenderloin in his hand and throws it away.   

    “I found this under the baby bouncer,” he said.  “Did someone drop it?”

    Angel turned devil. She had hidden her food, not eaten it.  And downed her ice cream and cookie in record time less she be found out.

    Total backfire.

     

    Are you incentivizing bad behavior with your employee rewards system?

    How many times have the rewards and recognition programs at your company backfired?   

    At the least, they just don’t motivate people towards the results you are trying to achieve.  

    At the most, it causea people to lie and cheat.  Three year olds do it for ice cream and cookies. Teachers and educational leaders have been known to do it achieve bonuses and improved reputation.  Just ask Atlanta.

    So before you go incentivizing certain behaviors at your company, think first about the following:

    1. Do you really need an extrinsic reward to motivate behavior? In most cases, intrinsic motivators- things that are naturally satisfying to someone- instead of a extrinsic motivation- things that people do to receive a reward or to avoid punishment- are better long term motivators.  The best way to do this is to link employees to a bigger purpose and mission and hire people that naturally link their purpose to the organization’s.  A really good example of this can be found in Adam Grant’s study related to call center employees.  (If you’d rather skip the scholarly journal article and get right to the point, The New York Times Magazine article sums it up well or grab a copy of Grant’s book, Give and Take.)

    2. If you think an extrinsic reward is needed, think through possible outcomes before implementation. I’m not sure if I could have found a developmentally appropriate way to intrinsically motivate my three year old to eat her food. Of course that begs the question of whether a reward is even needed or justified for getting a kid to eat. Probably not.  We could have just let the hunger naturally run its course.  And in many cases rewards probably aren’t needed in the workplace for a lot of things we implement a rewards system for.  So, you need to think about these things before implementing:

    • Is a reward even needed?
    • If we don’t implement a reward or punishment, will natural rewards and/or punishment happen?
    • If we don’t implement some type of reward and/or recognition will people leave?
    • Does the reward motivate some but demotivate many?  Google’s $1M Founder Awards are a good example of this.
    • And to that point, does your reward system fit with your culture? Maybe you want to reward only those high achievers and demotivate the ones that don’t perform right out the door.
    • Can you afford it?

    3. Test it before rolling out a full implementation. If you decide the reward system is needed, test it on a sub-set of your employee population before rolling it out to the whole organization. Have outcomes you want to measure it against (like productivity, revenue, etc.) This requires having a control group that doesn’t get the reward structure as well.  Then, you can effectively answer the questions above by having actual results to prove the need. It’s better to fail fast and fail cheap through testing than to have to recant a system after a lot of time, effort and money.

     

    Is your reward system driving the right results?

     

    Like this post, you may also like:

    Experiences Over Stuff: The Better Rewards and Recognition Strategy

    The Conundrum of Incentive Pay

  • Career Development: A Resource For Talent Retention

    Career Development: A Resource For Talent Retention

    Guest blog written by: Steve Graham

    In a recent study, conducted by the Work Institute, career development was identified as the top reason people leave or remain with organizations. In their study titled, 2017 Retention Report, 240,000 employees were interviewed about factors that were most influential in their decision to stay with or leave an organization.

    For decades, organizations that have invested in developing their people also experienced higher market shares and lower turnover than competitors. Despite the positive data to support career development, many organizations continue to fall short.  Lack of growth is a common reason given during exit interviews for leaving. In a study conducted by Empxtrack, reviewing data from over a number of years and involving approximately 52,000 exit interviews, the research identified lack of growth opportunity as the second most given reason for leaving an organization. The study indicated that 22% of job exits were directly related to growth.

    The good news is that with a little more focus on helping people develop their careers, organizations can reduce turnover.  Fears that investing in an employee and then having them leave the organization is one of the most common excuses for not offering training or other development opportunities. The truth is that people will leave anyway, to find an organization that offers them opportunity.  Having a well-trained and engaged workforce does not happen without an emphasis on career development.

    Career development initiatives include: formalized training programs, mentoring, internal coaching opportunities, and other opportunities. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) offers resources in integrating career development within an organization.  According to SHRM, having a designed career development path for employees allows managers to address gaps in training.  This is helpful in preparing people for promotions as well.

    Career development impacts performance. When people feel like their organization cares, and is focused on their development, it creates a deeper level of engagement. This increases the level of commitment on reaching individual and organizational goals.  Helping people become their best can help your organization stand out.  Designing a culture that supports career development also enhances your employer brand.

    Here are some basics steps in creating a career development focus:

    1. Know your people. Take time to learn them as individuals.
    2. Conduct a career path inventory and find out where they want to go.
    3. Use technology to create learning opportunities.
    4. Search for outside assistance and resources.

    Resources include, but are not limited to, workforce development programs, degree programs, mentoring, and career coaching.  The National Career Development Association (NCDA) is a great place to start.  The world of work is changing and organizations need to be in better alignment with the needs of their people. If an organization is not offering career development, people will find it elsewhere. They will seek places of employment that embrace their individuality, interest, and goals.

     

    About the Author: 

    Steve Graham serves as vice president for marketing, HR business partner and college instructor. He holds graduate degrees in management and higher education. As a life-long learner, he has additional graduate and professional education in executive and professional coaching, health care administration and strategic human resource management. Steve is also the Founder and President of Valiant Coaching & Talent Development, LLC.

    He is a certified HR professional with The Society for Human Resource Management, certified coach with the International Coach Federation and a Global Career Development Facilitator. His professional memberships include: The Society for Human Resource Management, the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration, Association for Talent Development and International Coach Federation.

  • Laughter is the Best Gift You Can Give

    Laughter is the Best Gift You Can Give

    Returning home from the HR Tech Conference proved to be a challenge when it came to weighing our bags. One bag weighed too much.  How did this happen?  It wasn’t that way coming.

    It was all the swag from vendors!

    I was impressed by the vendors’ creativity in designing their gifts. I didn’t even have to buy a souvenir for my kids. I snagged a backpack for my son, nail polish (bright purple and pink, no less) for my daughter and a coloring book and colored pencils for them both.

    I got a monogrammed luggage tag for me, a personalized t-shirt that states “HR Llama Don’t Want No Drama” with a cool looking llama on it, two mini bottles of champagne, two cool water bottles and the customary hugger for my husband. Why he loves to collect those things, I don’t know.

    But, by far, the best gift was at the Globoforce booth. I like their mission and mindset anyway, so I was planning to stop by their booth regardless. But their marketing took the cake.

    Basically, the way their prize worked was that two young and lively staff members where there encouraging you to spin a large wheel. There was only one actual prize on the wheel which was a paid trip to the Work Human Conference. The rest were phrases that described things that could go on in a typical workplace. They asked me a series of engaging questions to get to know my workplace, then asked me to spin the wheel.

    I missed the conference trip by one tick, but what I got was an improv skit from the two staffers based on the information they got from me and where the wheel landed.  IT WAS HYSTERICAL!

    It was more memorable and a lot lighter (pun intended) than anything I took away from other vendors.   Which would lead me to use them before I used any other vendor in their space.

    Laughter really is the best gift.  Especially when it’s so on point with your mission to make the workplace more human.

    Kudos Globoforce.

     

    What do you do to make your workplace more human?

  • What is Diversity and Why Does it Matter?

    What is Diversity and Why Does it Matter?

    I distinctly remember the first time I knew I lived in a bubble.   I was 17- a junior in high school.  I had two elective slots open.  For one, I decided to be a science lab assistant that didn’t require much work.  This allowed me to walk across the street one day a week to spend time with an at-risk elementary student as her mentor.

    Up until that point in my life, I thought most people lived like me.  Some had more and some had less but I didn’t think there were drastic differences.  As I got to know this little girl and hear her story, I realized I was wrong.  Dead wrong.

    She and her brother had been shuffled from home to home, with no one really providing for them.   She didn’t know where her next meal would come from and who would (or wouldn’t) be picking her up from school and where she would sleep most nights.

    That same year, I also had a period of my schedule where I was an aide in the developmental wing of our high school.  I spent time with students around my age with varying degrees of cognitive and physical disabilities.

    This was the beginning of the realization that not everyone’s world, even if we were occupying the same physical space, was the same as the world I was in.

    With a large focus on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, my realization that I lived in a bubble helps to illustrate that diversity and inclusion aren’t just about your Title VII criteria and other subsequent legislative catagories- sex, race, color, national origin, religion,  age and sexual orientation.

    Diversity and inclusion aren’t about discrimination. It’s about creating an environment in work and in life that proves it is valuable to be around people who are different from us. This value is added through perspective and leads to business results.

    So when you think about your workplace (and life), do you have diversity and are you open to the perspectives around multiple criteria of diversity?

    Does it include diversity in:

    1. Demographics- Title IX criteria such as sex (and sexual orientation), race, color, national origin (I would also add geographic diversity- I’ve learned a lot from people who grew up in a different part of the United States than I have), and religion.
    2. Age
    3. Cognitive Diversity including things that many would label as “disabilities” like Autism, Asperger’s, etc.
    4. Physical Diversity including things that many would also label as “disabilities” tied to physical limitations- blind, deaf, paraplegic individuals, etc.
    5. Personality Diversity
    6. Socio-Economic Diversity
    7. Political Diversity
    8. Diversity of Experiences

    A lot of these areas of diversity can’t be seen.  They come with being heard.

    As a business leader, I’d encourage you to use the Privilege Walk  to begin the conversation of allowing a variety of areas of diversity to be seen (by the positions people end up in on the walk) and then be heard by facilitating a discussion around it.

    Because “companies with inclusive talent practices in hiring, promotion, development, leadership and team management generate up to 30% higher revenue per employee and greater profitability than their competitors.” Source here.

    I read To Kill A Mockingbird in High School too.  I was 15.  But it wasn’t until I was 17, walking into that little girl’s current front yard to take her to dinner that I realized I just learned what Atticus Finch meant, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

    Climb into someone else’s shoes today.  You’ll add more value if you do.

     

    Interested in learning more about diversity and inclusion? Join Mary Ila at SHRM’s Diversity and Inclusion conference as she tackles the topic of hiring for fit AND diversity.

    See session information here.