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Give Back Feature- Ben Eubanks

Making HR Better- One Pro at a Time is Ben Eubank’s mission. Ben, who started his career in Human Resources in 2008, has a passion for his field that gets him up at 5 AM on the weekends to blog and develop other content to help HR professionals become better at what they do. He does this in addition to holding down a full-time HR role himself and raising three young children with his wife (and he runs quite a bit too!).

The results of Ben’s efforts have led to national speaking opportunities, recognition for his efforts in global publications and an audience of over 15,000 monthly readers. “I firmly believe that without this deep passion to help my audience succeed,” Ben says, “I would have given up long ago!”

As an HR professional, Ben is a believer in assessing candidate’s passion for the field. “Passion is one of the most telling things in an interview,” he says. “If it is lacking, I discard the candidate immediately. I can teach you HR law, how to recruit, or what to do if an employee is misbehaving. I can’t teach you how to be excited about your job. People who are passionate are typically doing things outside work to keep them plugged into the community, from volunteering to side jobs and other activities.”

Ben exemplifies this. He is engaged in the HR professional community and is a connector with people in person and through his blog. I’ve never once asked Ben to do something or to explore an idea with me when he hasn’t been more than willing and excited to do so. His passion for the field is contagious and therefore his advice and guidance is desirable and readily used.

Ben sees how passion drives productivity (and profits) in business. “Aligning personal passions with organizational mission is a critical need in the business world today, and it’s a key differentiator for those that due it well.”

As an leader in HR strategic thinking, Ben does this by using corporate culture built on shared values to help drive behaviors in people. “I create behavioral targets I expect to see with regard to culture/values. For example, instead of saying ‘We have integrity,’ I’ll tell them (a candidate) an example of a time when someone exhibited integrity, even when it was painful. That helps to make values real to our employees and not just a sheet of paper with words on it.”

Why does been give back tirelessly? Because he is so appreciative of those who have given back to him. “When I was studying to pass the HR certification exam back in 2008, I was completely in over my head. I reached out to a few random strangers for advice. The help they offered was invaluable, and I passed the exam a few short months later. I promised myself that no matter how busy I got or what I ended up doing, I would always and forever help those that were preparing for the exams. That led me to create several courses for the PHR and SPHR that have both been very helpful and popular in the HR community.

Whether you are an HR professional or not, we all should be in the business of helping develop people and the organizations in which we work. Ben’s blog and his resources can help us all do just that. Check him out at:

-Website link http://upstarthr.com

-Twitter http://twitter.com/beneubanks

-LinkedIn http://linkedin.com/in/beneubanks

-Others YouTube http://youtube.com/upstarthr

March 26, 2015
Realistic Job Previews
3 Reasons to Make Realistic Job Previews a Part of Your Hiring Process

What’s the best way to determine if a person is right for the job? What’s the best way for a job candidate to know they are accepting the right job? Traditional methods for employers tell us to screen resumes, interview candidates and make a decision. In the case of hiring recent college grads, traditional wisdom tells us to look at their G.P.A. and their major to predict success. That’s the way most companies do it; it must work.

For job seekers, traditional wisdom tells us to take any job (a still recovering economy tells us this), and if you have multiple offers, pick the one that pays the most.   And make sure you strive for a 4.0 if you are in college and want job prospects.

But data tells us that the traditional methods aren’t producing results for the employer or the employee. Recent employee engagement statistics indicate only 13% of the worldwide workforce is engaged at work and data shows G.P.A. and major don’t predict job performance. Just ask Google.

Is there better way to hire where both employer and potential employee benefit?

Yes. Do a Realistic Job Preview

Why Do A Realistic Job Preview or Request One as Candidate

Although realistic job previews may not be, well realistic, for all industries and jobs, they are extremely helpful to both employer and potential employee because:

They tell you if the candidate can do the job/if you’ll like the job.   Quite simply, it demonstrates whether or not the candidate can perform the tasks for the job and if you are the job seeker, it helps determine if you would actually like doing the tasks of the job.

They tell you if the candidate has the “soft” skills to succeed/ if your potential boss is someone you would want to work for. Things like time management, communication, problem solving, etc. are hard to measure in an interview even though behavioral based interviewing is the best way to do so. Giving assignments, setting deadlines and leaving people to do the work gives a true picture of these soft skills. Realistic job previews also help you as the candidate understand how your potential boss communicates and if you would like to work with their style of leadership and personality.

They tell you if there is “fit”.   We all have different values and priorities.   Employees are more engaged on the job and therefore more successful when the values and priorities of the organization align with personal values. These aren’t right or wrong values, they are just preferences and personalities that people (and organizations) have. The better we are at matching individual values to organizational values, the better match we create which leads to higher job satisfaction, engagement, productivity and profitability.
March 12, 2015
New Years Resolutions 101: Don’t put the cart before the horse
It’s a new year. Have you set your resolutions or goals? Most of us do, but then give up on them by the end of January.

One key reason I see people fail at goal setting in the leadership and career coaching we do (and for myself as well) is because we put the cart before the horse. We set a goal and don’t have any method put in place for measuring progress towards it or achievement of it.

Maybe a couple of examples will help:

1. I’m so guilty of this, so I’ll use myself as an example first.   In 2013, I set a goal for my family to sit down at the dinner table and eat together on average four times a week. And as you can read about in this post, in 2013 this goal was a total flop.   One of the main reasons it was a failure was because I put the cart before the horse. I didn’t put in place a way to track it and therefore my progress towards it, which lead to no motivation and no results achieved.

I reset this goal in 2014, with a plan to track progress towards staying on track for this effort because I felt like making dinner together as a family a priority and a habit is important to my family’s health in so many ways. Thank goodness for my mother-in-law and one of her Christmas presents to me at the end of 2013. It was a simple weekly calendar booklet that had a magnet on the back.    I set out to plan our weekly meals on this, design a grocery list around it and then simply check off the days we had achieved a meal at the table. It was stuck to the refrigerator as a visual reminder all year.

As you can see here, the “5” at the top is the number of days we ate together. Not all weeks were this good, but overall, the goal was met. More importantly, I’ve established a habit that will hopefully keep this priority going without setting a goal for it (and hopefully my mother-in-law knows how much I love this simple tool and has another one waiting for me this Christmas).

2. One of the clients I love working with went about establishing an accountability culture in 2013, and created a performance dashboard to track their progress.

You can read more about their story as a company here. As I now work with this team coaching their managers, I love setting goals with them because they have already established ways to measure performance.   It is not uncommon, when setting goals with companies and individuals for one of the goals, or sub-goals of a large goal, to first put in place a way to measure and track performance towards the desired outcome. With this company, the horse is already there and it helps pull the cart.

If you are looking to set your New Year’s Resolutions or make sure they are achieved, don’t put the cart before the horse:
1. Put in place a mechanism for tracking goal progress and attainment.
2. Make the tracking mechanism visual and put it where you see it ALL the time.
3. Monitor and record performance toward the goal with your mechanism at least weekly.
4. Recalibrate if your mechanism is creating more work, thus decreasing motivation. Don’t get rid of the goal, just find a more efficient way to track it that leads to synergies in other areas.
If you need help doing this, our goal setting worksheet, which includes a section for “measurement” of each goal may help you.

How are you measuring your goal(s) for 2015?
January 1, 2015
3 Questions for Balancing Empathy and Expectations as a Leader

Quite a while ago, I wrote about the “Es of LEadership” with empathy being one of them. Not included in these essential “Es” was “expectations”. And as the article on empathy points to, sometimes managing expectations and having empathy seem to be in direct conflict.

Setting, communicating, monitoring and maintaining expectations is a critical skill for leaders. We must maximize performance of others through effectively setting expectations high and constantly pushing others to reach higher. When we do so, we provide meaningful and challenging work, which has been shown to increase worker satisfaction leading to higher productivity (and profits).

Yet also as leaders, we always need to put people first, realizing they have demands both inside and outside of work. People are our greatest asset, and we must be able to put ourselves in others’ shoes to lead effectively. In other words, we must establish an empathetic approach to leading with a genuine interest in the whole person.

So what do we do when “e” of expectation seems to be in direct conflict with the “e” of empathy?

For example, say you have an employee that is not performing their job satisfactorily. You are aware that this employee is dealing with several difficult personal issues. He/she is in the process of getting a divorce, has a mom that is suffering from cancer and has recently brought a troubled teenager into his/her home to support.

You take off your shoes and walk around in his or hers for a bit to establish empathy towards them. You feel for this person, yet they are not maintaining performance standards at work. Do you talk to them? Do you ignore the issue?

Bottom line, when do you lower your expectation bar for the sake of empathy??

Here are three questions to consider for how to respond when empathy and expectations seem to be in conflict:

1. Is the need to compromise expectations for empathy an established pattern or an isolated event? In the above example, has the employee had an issue with performance before this set of personal issues arose or has the person been a star performer in the past?

2. Does acting in empathy enable a continuation of bad choices? As a leader, our job in not to take ownership and responsibility for bad choices others have made either inside or outside of work and their subsequent consequences. If you ignore expectations or lower them, will it enable the continuation of bad choices that impact not only your business but also the person? You may have heard parents call this “tough love”. And tough love is still love and empathy is a component of love. Maintaining expectations may actually be an act of empathy.

3. Does empathy for one cause you to be lacking in empathy towards the whole? If we let someone’s performance suffer and it causes others who do a good job day in and day out to take up the slack that shouldn’t be their responsibility, then we aren’t acting as a leaders. When we do this, we are communicating to those star performers that it is okay not to meet expectations. We are actually giving the person who seemingly needs empathy the green light to NOT act in empathy towards their team. Realizing that our actions have consequences that impact the greater whole is important both for us and for conveying this message to others.

If you walk through these questions and realize a person needs a break from responsibilities of the job in order to resolve situations and come back better able to perform and meet expectations, then my hope is that you allow that flexibility in your company policies for a leave of absence. As Workforce magazine points out in its feature article- “A Monumental Problem” from the August 2014 issue, mental health, stress and burnout is a major issue in today’s workplace. Sometimes the best thing to do is allow people opportunities to regroup and come back better for having that time.

However, if you walk through these questions and realize that you are just avoiding confrontation with empathy as your guise, become the better leader by tackling the difficult issue of refusing to lower the bar. Often, when we lower our expectations that we know are fair expectations given the person’s skill level and expertise coupled with what is needed for the job, lowering the bar is potentially the inverse of empathetic. It sabotages putting trust in people and empowering them to do a great job. And at our core, we all want to be valued and trusted. When we take that away from people by avoiding difficult issues, we aren’t acting as leaders and we aren’t being very empathetic.

November 25, 2014
Impacting the performance of employees when you just want them to show up, do their job and not complain
“I just want them to show up and do their job and not complain,” said one burned-out manager to me not long ago. He was struggling with how to motivate the performance of several members of his staff, and in his exhaustion to try to be a leader, had adopted a mindset of something far from leadership.

So how do leaders influence and impact the performance of employees when sometimes we just want them to show up and do their job and not complain?

1. Adopt a Leadership Mindset. First, a mindset of leadership needs to be present. Leadership is grounded in seeing people as assets and realizing that the greatest responsibility of the role is to invest in people to drive their performance. This means spending most of our time as leaders with those we are trying to develop, not wishing they would disappear into the oblivion get their work done and not bother us. My manager client is never going to be able to drive performance in his employees long-term if his mindset about what his role is doesn’t change to one of leadership.

2. Get over your own burn-out. You can’t motivate performance if you’re burned out yourself. My client was tired. On top of dealing with employee issues that were unpleasant, he was trying to run a business, meet client needs and juggle a never-ending myriad of tasks. The personnel issues were just another thing that he was barely spending enough time on to be able to see any results, and his people know from his actions that they are being seen as just another annoyance in a never ending cycle of being hopelessly behind and burned-out. If you aren’t working smarter, not harder, why would they? Part of a leadership mindset is setting an example. If you are burned out and annoyed, you’re probably complaining and that’s why they are complaining too.

If you are burned out:
1. Take some time to regroup; get away if you have to and unplug.
2. Manage your time. Consider how you can kill two-birds with one stone by empowering your people through delegation.
3. Get rid of stuff that doesn’t matter- say no. And saying no to investing time your employees shouldn’t be one of the no’s on your list. Saying no to things that aren’t important leads you to be able to say yes to your employees, who are important.
The bottom-line is leaders impact the performance of their employees by the example they create. If you want people to show up, do their job and not complain, then do the same. Adopt a leadership mindset and find ways to get over the burn-out and negativity you may be experiencing. If you can’t, then maybe you’re in the wrong role.

You’ll find that if you empower employees through your positive mindset and results, you’ll get much more than just a group of non-complainers who do their job. You’ll get a group of people who are engaged in their work and drive productivity. Start with yourself and it will rub off on those you seek to lead.
October 31, 2014

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