We’ve had two young men as career coaching clients lately. Although pursuing different types of opportunities, they are both in their early to mid-twenties and are having a hard time finding a job in their respective fields- both of which, by the way, are in demand. Both have been getting called for interviews, but something seems to fail in the interview every time and they haven’t been offered jobs. So, we’ve been working with them to help improve their interviewing skills. Both of these guys are technically minded. They are smart, good, hardworking people. But they are introverts. Situations like
With a growing need to manage project based work coupled with the need to vet an individual’s leadership capabilities, organizations are assigning hi-potentials with informal leadership roles, or project manager roles, before giving them the positional and formal leadership authority over others. As a chance to prove capabilities, those given project management roles need to understand how to succeed at both the task of getting the project done and the priority to get work done through others. Often these two priorities seem to be conflicting, when in reality they are not. Informal leaders often fail when they see the only
We’ve been doing a lot of research around the idea of a match.com for employers and employees here at Horizon Point. Let’s face it; behind a person’s choice of spouse, the choice of employer (both the organization and your boss) may very well be the most important choice you make in terms of overall satisfaction. One of our key questions around this idea is: What characteristics are most important in terms of employment marital bliss? Dating sites have isolated key variables leading to marital satisfaction by matching people correctly, can’t we get better at doing the same thing for employers
We’ve been getting a lot of questions lately related to performance evaluations. Specifically, these questions center on how to structure evaluation forms in a way that supports priorities of the organization and drives individual and, therefore, organizational performance. Of course, it’s really not about the form at all. It’s about knowing what drives the performance of your organization, translating that to individual metrics, then equipping leaders with the ability to focus on constant performance feedback. 1. Make it values based. Center your evaluation form around the values of your company not individual characteristics like “dependable”, “initiative”, “communication” etc. If you
I want to round out the goal setting discussion by focusing on the importance of feedback. To illustrate, feedback has played a critical role in a current client business coaching engagement. To begin the coaching process this past summer, we employed a 360° feedback mechanism to help set priorities for the client’s development. Feedback was first necessary to set goals and priorities. Based on areas for improvement, we developed four questions that she asks herself each and every day. These are all “yes” or “no” questions. (As example, a question I ask myself every day is “Did I do something to develop new business