I find that the trouble most people have with “networking” boils down to two things: It scares the-you-know what out of them. Someone recently came to me seeking advice on how to advance his career. This happens a lot, but his response was interesting. I told him to start networking. He responded that under no uncertain circumstances was he going to do that because it just wasn’t his personality. He went on to say that if he had to be someone he is not to get ahead, then he shouldn’t do it. He wasn’t going to try to kiss you-know-what
I was in the gym the other day, trying to mind my own business while doing sit-ups (well attempting to do them), when I overheard a conversation between a personal trainer and the trainee. It went something like this: Trainee: “Has your husband found a job yet?”…as she pulls on some ropes doing some exercise that made no sense. Trainer: “No, he’s still looking.” Trainee: “What is it that he does?” She stops her workout. The trainer said something about some obscure field of physics that made no sense to me. (There is a theme developing here….) Trainee: “Really? We
By Kris Dunn It’s one of the unwritten rules of management. It’s also one of the hardest things for new managers to wrap their heads around. “It’s not your fault, but it’s your problem.” Let’s deconstruct that a bit. New managers were often very high performing individual contributors (ICs). The great thing about being an IC is that you only have to worry about one person – and that person is you. But your performance as an IC convinced us that you’d make a good manager of people. For the most part that’s true. One point that sneaks up on
By guest blogger: Scott Mayo Schools love to measure things. With accountability being the buzzword in educational circles, measurement has become an even greater priority. However, we often fall trap to measuring things that are easy to measure, not because they are the most important things. Leadership is one of those important things – we all want it – that has been notoriously hard to quantify. How do I know that I have a teacher who is a leader? Kris Dunn, HR professional and blogger, has suggested we consider the ideas of Leadership Gravity and Leadership Birth Rate to
“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” What departments and/or managers do people in your company clamor to get into? What drives this clamor? I’ve seen it before. No one wants to work in finance, but everyone wants to be in marketing. Or everyone is trying to figure out a way to work for manager A instead of having to report to manager B. What is driving the popularity of the department or the person, and should we pay attention to it? Is the number of people who want to