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Tag Archives: Rose Coaching
How to handle jealousy in the office
I received the below great question a few days after my Art of War for Product Managers and High-Performing Professionals. I thought you might be interested in the answer as well.
Q: Many senior employees work under my lead. In this case, many other senior employees think that what a lucky me. Jealousy is coming up from them. Do you have any tips for me as new entrant in product management to face this kind of condition?
Thank you for writing me. And congratulations for getting such an amazing position! You deserve it.
I do understand about jealousy. Jealousy is more about your senior employees’ confidence level in themselves. If one is competent, well-balanced and talented – there is no need to be jealous or even feel a need to defend ourselves. Even understanding this, you still may have some conflicts in the office.
3 tips to reduce:
- Take on the attitude of service. They are senior employees and know a great deal about their area of expertise. Give them their due respect in their field. Acknowledge that, even though you feel they are working under your lead, you are actually in a service position. They know way more about their jobs than you do. But you know way more about directing traffic than they do. Acknowledge that without their piece, there would be no product release. Acknowledge that their position and experience is very valuable and critical to the product success. Continue to openly appreciate their position in the stream of things (tell them how much you admire what they do). Continuously remind them that the purpose of your position is to be of service to them. (All great leaders take on the attitude of service.) Continue to ask them what they need from you to help them achieve their goals. Explain to them that you admire what they do (they are the drivers that will get the product released). And that you see yourself as the traffic cop whose job is it to keep the traffic moving smoothly, in the right direction, and avoid traffic jams to get the product out the door on time.
- If someone seems particularly envious or jealous, maybe they want to be a product manager. Ask them if they really want to be a product manager? Do they want you to put in a good word for them in your department? Help them get the job that they really want. If they really want to get into the product management arena, start introducing them to the staff and management of the team. Share the type of tasks and experience that they need to do the job. Share what a day in the life of a product manager looks like. Take them to lunch with some of your department staff. Keep that service attitude – and ask them what you can do to help.
- Sun Tzu (author of Art of War) would say: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. Make these people your friends. Periodically bring in breakfast or snack treats to their staff meetings or labs (where ever they gather in a group), make public announcement of appreciation when they do something that you have been asking the team for; write thank-you email to them and their managers – when they turn in their status reports early, show appreciation when they are doing what they are supposed to be doing (and make sure their managers get a copy of these things to show that you are on these people’s side); and acknowledge acts that make your job run smoother and easier. Keep your manager and their manager aware of the good things that are going on in the group (this shows the individuals that you are on their side to get them a good performance review). Take the most troublesome folks out to lunch and ask them for their advice on some things OR -better yet – say that you want to understand better what they do. People love to talk about what they do and give their opinions on things. Asking about them is another way of showing respect and interest in them. The more time you spend understanding them, the more they will take the time to understand you. The more you understand how they work, the better you can devise processes that naturally blend with the way they already work. Treat them with the respect that senior employees are due. Consider their insight, feedback and advice. Choose the path that feels right for you (which probably will include some of their ideas and your ideas). Don’t do what they say, just because they say it. But use their insight to improve your product process so that it better fits into what they are already doing. The more things you implement that naturally fit the way things work – the easier your life with be.
You can’t change how people treat you. But you can 100% control how you treat others. Make your “service attitude” more public – to show them that you’re there to help them achieve their goals. Continue to remind them that you know that they are doing the significant, heavy lifting in the product design and implementation. Your role is to help the team achieve their common and shared goal. If you approach this with the service-attitude, you are more likely to reduce much of the negativity.
p.s. Keep all your “thank-you” notes and notes of appreciation in your Achievement Folder….so that if something comes up in your performance review, you can show tangible evidence that your intend was not to agitate. Document everything as you go along — so that at the end of the year (performance review time) – you don’t have to remember what you did all year.
Try it and let me know what you think.
Follow-up Q&A to the Art of War for High-Performing Professionals
Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – and I enjoyed our Art of War for Product Managers and High-Performing Professionals.
Below is an abridged list of Q&A that I collected during that presentation.
Feel free to contact me at LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info for any follow-up questions or presentations.
Q: What does “never compromise with honesty” mean?
This means to keep the “real reason” for the task in mind at all times. Don’t use the singular focus on numbers and dates distract you from the real reason for all your hard work.
For instance, even though your task is to get this product out the door on a certain date, the real-reason of the task is to release a high-quality product that customers will actually use. The team was running late and the delivery schedule was in jeopardy. To bring in the schedule, the product managers moved all the customer-review of the early design phases. They also compressed the time between the Beta Release and the general release. By by-passing usability studies, focus group prototypes and taking early demos to various trade-shows in order to save time; the product managers actually lost the opportunity to make sure the product will actually be used by the clients. At the Beta Release, it was discovered that the customers like the idea of the product, but the implementation was not how they actually do their work. The idea behind the tool was to assist clients to get their work done more efficiently. This product was making the customer to fit the product instead of the other way around. The team had to go back to the drawing board and the company cancelled the product release.
Another example: You know what the executives want to hear, so you put a slight spin on your status report to avoid conflict and disapproval. You didn’t tell “a lie” – you merely didn’t tell the entire truth. Your solution is for the team to just work longer and harder to catch up. This strategy doesn’t work because the team is already working longer and was burnt-out. The issues got worst and not better.
Another example: The quality reason for retesting all the defects by a certain date is to allow the development team enough time to find, fix and retest the defects found by more testing. In software development, any code change generates a 10% chance of creating or finding new defects. By enforcing multiple deadlines in the product schedule to have all the teams retest all the accumulated ‘fixed items’ in their queue – allows those hidden defects to become visible with enough time to fix and retest. A test group allowed their retest queue to get out of hand. The 0 defect deadline was the next day and they realized that they would not be able to retest their 100 fixed items. Since the developers said these items were fixed and the testers didn’t want to be called out on their defect counts, the testers closed all their defects without testing. The consequence was that a significant number of defects were left in the product, the product quality suffered, customer complaints rose, technical support hour’s increase, and a costly emergency maintenance release was schedule.
Another example: In an interview, you’re trying to figure out what the interviewer (or your executives) wants to hear, instead of expressing who you really are (or the true status of the product). Although you want to stay focused on answering the exact question that the interviewer is asking, don’t try to figure out what answer they are hoping to hear. They need to hear who you really are (and visa-versa). Answer as honest as makes sense – and don’t try to mind-read. After you have answered, ask them how they would have handled the situation. Then you can better comment on the way they handled the situation. Many situational and scenario-based interviews have really no right or wrong answers. By feeling comfortable finding out more about how their organization works, you can decide if this organization is a good fit for you….(versus spending a lot of time force-fitting the partnership).
I go into the: who, what, where, when and how in the IT Professional Development Toolkit.
Q: Who can you use as accountability partners in the professional realm?
Your manager, mentors, coaches, HR representatives and even clients can be used as both accountability partners and reasonable forcing functions.
You can use Reasonable Forcing Functions and Accountability Partners in your performance goals as well as your product goals. In this discussion, we are not only focusing on your company “product” work but the work that you do on your product or “YOU, Inc”. We all do well when we make external commitments to others at work. But we may fall short to the commitments and tasks that we have only ourselves as the audience. Incorporate the reasonable forcing functions and accountability partners in these tasks as well.
Sample of how to use an accountability partner: Tell a coworker, manager, mentor or coach about your individual career goals, your deadlines and milestones for certain individual projects, and status/progress. Document these goals in your personal business commitment and individual development documents (signed by your manager). Make your manager, mentors and coaches your co-conspirators in your career success. If they know where you want to go, they can keep an eye and ear out for you. . They can see, hear and go places that you don’t have time or access. You have now made them your secret agent and have increased your spying ability
Sample of how to use a Reasonable Forcing Function: One of your committed goals is to be better exposed to client perspective, bring in new business and to become known as an expert in this field. You know that attending a technical conference will provide you the opportunity to talk to prospective clients, bring in some new customer leads, and learn more about your field of expertise. Your company doesn’t have the funds to give everyone a trip to technical conference, but if you are selected as a speaker at a conference – they will send you. A reasonable forcing function is to commit to submit 3-5 abstracts to the various technical conferences (they all have submission deadlines). You get the approved list of technical conferences and start submitting 3-5 abstracts to each conference. If you submit enough abstracts to various conferences, one of your abstracts will get accepted by one of the conferences. You don’t have to have submitted the paper or outline until one gets accepted, so you aren’t spending time on the presentation until one is selected. Now that the abstract is selected – you have a reasonable forcing function to achieve your other goals.
Reasonable Forcing Function IS NOT a term from Sun Tzu’s Art of War book. Rather is it a time management technique. You all do it today in your normal life. For instance, you tell your children that you can’t watch TV until your homework is done. Your home is a wreck but you can’t seem to get motivated to clean it up; so you invite people over for next Friday night. That forces you to make the house more presentable. You love to paint and sculpt but you don’t seem to make time for it. So you sign-up and pay for a sculpting class every Wednesday night. You actually already do this. We’ll just use it more deliberately and liberally.
I talk more about reasonable forcing functions and accountability partners in the professional development toolkit.
Q: Question regarding the comment that only 36% of a product is used by the end-user:
The Usage of coded features data was presented by the Standish Group at the XP Conference
Q: Being overwhelmed on the number of products you are to develop? Here are some suggestions:
Recommend that you take more of an ownership of your own calendar, schedule and profession. You are the one accepting those tasks. Remember that all MUST DO products will get done, but they don’t have to be done by you. Anything that doesn’t get funded or resources are simply not a MUST DO (by definition). If it’s important enough, they will find someone to do it. It is the executives role to properly fund and sponsor the things that really matter.
You are a great product manager, therefore – Product Manage – yourself. Companies and managers are much like blind waiters. They will continue to pour until YOU say “when”. It is your responsibility to review the priorities, ROI, and which products are most in line with the company’s vision and mission statement. Companies are in the business of making money. High performing product managers can quickly determine which product will bring in the money and which are not. Excel in putting your time and effort in high-revenue products and recommending end-of-life to those that are not making the build. In today’s market, technology is changing so rapidly that if you continue to put effort in a product that’s just not cutting it; the chances are high that when it finally does make it to market, it will already be obsolete. Don’t fall in love with the product, just because you’re assigned to it. Always, look at your products objectively. Not all products deserve to be released. And the quicker you can pull the plug on the duds, the more money you are saving your company as well as effort on yourself.
Q: What’s the best way to handle overwhelment?
Transparency and communication is key to smoother releases. Managers and executives often don’t care who does what. They care about the important things getting done. If you continue to blindly accept projects and tasks (merely because people are handing them to you), then you run the risk of not delivering any quality products at all. I always recommend frequent and regular one-on-one meetings (at least twice a month), with your manager. If you only speak with your manager when something is wrong or during your performance review, then you are always anxious. If you regularly have these meeting (already scheduled in your calendar) – you are well-practiced in these meetings; your manager will be well-informed and you will know exactly where you stand (in performance metrics) at all time.
Your manager is responsible for handling and properly distributing the workload so that it gets done properly. If you are honest with your status and realistic with your own time-management and project management schedule, he has the opportunity to re-assign before it’s too late. By keeping it to yourself, you are tying your managers’ hands because he is unable to properly manage the situation after the train leaves the station.
ALSO – In these global and distributed times, it’s important to have a Communication Plan for various issues. Some people only communicate via text, some folks only via phone, some people only do email, some people are on different and conflicting time zones. By outlining your significant stakeholder’s communication preferences (time zones and contact information), you can be assured to get their attention when you need them. Remember the real-reason for contacting them isn’t to just cross-off the item “send this information to xxx”. The real-reason for contacting them is to make sure they receive the information, understand it and discuss the consequences. Sending a quick email to check off “I sent him the information so I have done my part” doesn’t accomplish your real goal.
Having a communication plan and structure for your significant stakeholders will grease the wheels of communications. For instance, you and your stakeholder may decide to:
1) Merely update the internet wiki with regular status information and have an auto-responder that automatically email the link to the stakeholders weekly.
2) Send an email with the subject header convention: CALL TO ACTION xxxxx DUE yyyy for requests or action items
3) Call or text when a high-priority problem is encountered (and be armed with options and alternative solutions). And setup a follow-up phone or in-person meeting for a longer discussion – keeping time zones in consideration.
4) Person to person meeting or phone meeting for mentoring and coaching meetings.
5) Frequent one-on-one meetings with managers on all status, future plans, business strategies and performance discussions.
I talk more about communication plans, one-on-one meetings, and performance evaluation strategies in the IT Professional Development Toolkit.
Q: Any tips for getting buy in from higher ups when trying to block out time?
It’s been my experience that ‘higher-ups’ don’t really have that much interest in your individual calendar. You are the one in total control of your calendar. You are totally responsible for your own career and professional development. Expecting others to somehow make the time or allocate money for your individual professional and career development is a limiting state of mind. You are the most influential person TO YOU. You are the only one that can make a change in yourself. It’s more empowering to acknowledge that it’s your responsibility. You should certainly appreciate any and all support that you do get from your company. But – in my opinion – you are not entitled to this from your company. The company is in business to make money. If it’s worthwhile (business wise) to invest in your professional career – the company will do it. And it’s really, really nice if they help you in your career. And you should really appreciate it. But it’s really not their responsibility. The more you can illustrate that it’s to their advantage to assist you (by aligning your career development to the company’s vision or bottom line), the better it will be for you. But it’s really up to you. I talk more about taking more ownership in designing your own professional career in the IT Development Toolkit.
Therefore, – simply start blocking out time for your career development (10 minutes a day is a good start). Make your best judgment on what’s the best time to block out time. (For instance, if you know that your team has a weekly staff meeting on Monday’s at 2:00pm – avoid that time-slot for your blocked time). Tell people in advance that you have a standing meeting at that time. Publish your calendar (with the blocked time clearly visible). Use the ‘Do NOT Disturb’ functions during that time. Send an authorized representative to meetings that you don’t feel that you really need to be there. Make liberal use of the meeting notes and other meetings to stay on top of things. Train and mentor others to attend selected meetings (and certain tasks) that both help them in their careers as well as off-load you with your time. Use the 4 Ds (delete, delegate, diminish, and delay) from my IT Professional Development Toolkit series) to block and get more time.
Q: How does this work in an interrupt-driven company?
In interrupt driven companies – the idea is NOT TO COMMIT to many things and incorporate buffers between tasks to accommodate for this environment. In my IT Professional Development Toolkit – I talk about this as well. If you know that your company is interrupt-driven – then you can project manage it appropriately. You know you will be constantly interrupted so you don’t commit to many items. You use my Sprint and Buffer method that is designed specifically for interrupt-driven environments.
I show the: who, what, where, when, why and how in the IT Professional Development Toolkit.
Q: Shouldn’t I wait for the company to define what a “good product manager” means?:
I disagree on making your company responsible for creating your definition of what makes a good product manager – to you. You should incorporate their definition into yours. But you are empowered to define who you really want to be. If you have chosen the Product Management field, you should have your own definition of what it means to you. It should exceed the definition of the company and fit your individual principles and goals. Why make others responsible for defining who you really want to be?
What if two product manager colleagues disagree on something and can only agree to disagree and cannot come to a resolution, what do you do afterwards?
One recommendation is to find the common-shared goal among the three product manager. Continue to bring the discussion to a higher-level until you get some type of agreement. Oftentimes people are arguing over a detail or specific solution. When people of like-minds and professions are arguing – it simply means that they are talking ‘at’ the wrong level. It’s merely an indicator that the parties are looking in the wrong place for the answer. When you pop-up the discussion to the next higher level, things tend to work out.
One example: One product manager (Product Manager 1) states that this release needs to have a Drag-n-Drop feature in this release. The other product manager (Product Manager 2) is adamant that it cannot be included in this release because the code is from a 3rd-party company. There simply isn’t enough time to get the legal authorization to change it on our own, or get the 3rd-party folks to change it. Product Manager 1 knows that a high-profile client will leave the company and product – if we don’t but this feature in this release.
This is what I did:
1) Paraphrased our common product goal: Release the product with high-quality, on-time and with significant enhancements that clients will be very pleased with.
2) Get everyone agreeing to the high-level common goal. Get everyone on the same page with the company vision and mission.
3) Try to kick-up the discussion by understanding “why” this change is needed in the first place. I asked the team ‘why’ this change is needed. Product Manager 1 says – “The client needs create a project plan from some of his other project folders. He doesn’t want to start from scratch. He wants to drag-n-drop his selected folders to create the new project. He doesn’t want to re-invent”
4) I paraphrased, “So, let me restate to make sure I understand. You’re focusing on what the client really wants, which is what we all want. And what the client wants is a method to import files from a previous project into his new project file. He doesn’t want to start from scratch. He wants an import function.” (First understand and then be understood — from Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).
Product Manager 1 – “Yes – they want an import function”
I asked Product Manager 2: “I think we already have an import function, don’t we? It’s not using the drag-n-drop feature. But it accomplishes the essence of the goal. It gets the job done, doesn’t it?”
Product Manager 2 nods, “YES – it’s called IMPORT. You can browse your directory and click on the folders to drill down. You can even drill down to the documents and specific lines to import. Once you have highlighted the areas that you want imported, you just hit the IMPORT button. You can even include everything and then mask-out things you don’t want to include (which are a faster way to important large amounts of data).”
Product Manager 2 is happy, “Really? That’s even better than what they asked for.”
Product Manager 1. “And it’s already in the product that they have today. They don’t have to wait until the next release….”
The stale-mate was caused by getting too caught in the details. Product Manager 1 wanted to give the customer what he/she was asking for; customer was asking for a specific solution (drag-n-drop) to answer their problem; Product Manager 2 was narrowly focused on the impossibility of that one solution (drag-n-drop).
By disengaging from the specific details on HOW something will be accomplished, and focusing on exactly what is trying to be accomplished – most people can find a common, shared goal. I talk more about how to use paraphrasing, listening techniques, negotiating techniques and finding the common ground in the IT Professional Development Toolkit.
Q: Do you have a good business case and/or justification? Where I work I can’t pull resources from other teams unless justified
This is a great use of the Recovery Protocol (detailed in the IT Professional Development Toolkit). Every company is different. Every product is different. That is why you create a recovery protocol chart before your project is started. If people agree to accept the fact that you cannot add resources, then that becomes the unyielding attribute. The group now agrees that the other legs need to change: scope of the product, the release date of the product and the quality of the product. If your group decides that something else is NON-NEGOTIABLE or inflexible, then they have agreed that resources will change. The key is to get this agreement upfront so that you are not wasting time during the fire.
Another suggestion is to be creative with your resource definitions. I had a 10-3 developer to tester ratio. The testers were not able to keep up with the output of the developers. So I got creative with my resources and looked into areas that wanted to get early versions of the product.
1) The documentation team needed early versions of the software. They also needed customer scenarios for the features. So I gave them all our test-case user-scenarios. They were responsible for testing the user-case scenarios as well as using that as their foundation of their manuals. They also created new test scenarios for our test cases and their manuals.
2) Tech support needed to understand the new release, so they were happy to retest several of their customers reported defects on the software. Even though the Tech Support team only focused on the defects their clients reported, this off-loaded the retesting that our testers needed to do.
3) Sales teams needed to better understand the product and create demos for their trade shows. We gave them test cases so that they can automate in their demo. They ended up testing the software while they were creating their trade-show demos and presentations.
4) Training team used and tested our test-case scenarios as part of developing their training materials.
5) The usability and customer focus groups needed early versions of the product, so they became our early deployment labs of the product. They tested the installation and configuration of the products in their usability labs.
6) Developers were in heavy development mode in the early elaboration phases of the product, but testers were under-utilized because things were not ready to be functionally tested. Testers were repositioned to help unit test with the developers. This allowed the developers to see how the testers would be testing the product further down the line. Testers also automated the developers unit tests – so that these tests became the build-release and acceptance tests.
7) During the end-game, the developers’ loads were reduced (because their development cycles were coming to a end), they were then repositioned in system testing of the software. Because the testers had helped the developers in their unit tests, the developers were happy to help.
This is another example of focusing on the wrong item. If you allow having “NOT ENOUGH STAFF OR TESTERS TO TEST THE PRODICT” be your center, then you will not get the product out the door on time. If you focus on the common team goal “GET THE PRODUCT PROPERLY TESTED” then you can design all sorts of other resources to accomplish the testing tasks. Testing doesn’t have to be done by ‘testers’. Testing can be done by anyone needing an early version of the product to get their individual task accomplished.
Q: I work for a company that deliver an education platform, so talking to students and faculty are not easy so much of the direction we get are from the university business folks…How do you balance on what the student/faculty may need vs what the business (registrar, student services, etc) think they need?
You can create an end-user focus group that includes students by offering to go into the University to work with the students. If you couch your interest as “I want to make sure we are providing exactly what you and your students need….” the university would not see a problem with these types of visits. In my Design Partner Program, I regularly setup interviews and visits with the end-users (versus the buyer).
I often went into my clients’ software labs to see exactly how they were using the product. I tagged along with the technical support and deployment teams when they were rolling out my product. Only issues I ever had been with government security issues; and even then, they arranged a lab that was acceptable for this usability study. The clients immediately see and understand the Win/Win of this offer.
Q: My company has $0 budget for professional development, so I can’t really do this.
Once again, your professional development and career is not your company’s responsibility. Therefore, why are you waiting for your company to invest and fund your success? If you allocate a budget to hobbies, gyms and other interests – shouldn’t personal and professional development also be an important investment in yourself? The IT Professional Development Toolkit is cheaper than most hobbies and gym memberships, and takes only 10 minutes a day.
In the toolkit, I outline how you can get your company to send you to training conferences, professional association fees, and industry magazines on their dime. The key is to make it cost-effective for them do to so. Setup an in-house training program that you facilitate. Attend these professional events and bring the training back to the team; speak at the training-conference and professional organizations to illustrate that your company is a thought-leader in this space; bringing back sales leaders and meeting with prospective clients while you are at the conference; get your articles published in these technical journals, etc. Bring something to the table to illustrate the company WIN..
Q: I can’t afford to block out the time for this.
The IT Professional Development Tools are designed to be studied and practiced in ten minute blocks (the size of a work-break). If you have time for a 20 minute chat in the halls, you have time for a ten minute practice session. Whether you invest in the toolkit or not, blocking and scheduling ten minutes a day on your career is a smart goal and commitment. You can change your life in ten minutes a day.
Leveraging Links
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
Most professionals have a LinkedIn.com account and profile. They accept requests from friends, coworkers and family members that they already know. Then they stop there.
- Is your social media connections assisting you in your professional and career goals?
- Are you using your social media contacts smartly?
- Are you connecting only with people you already know instead of the people that can help
- you in your development?
We typically associate with folks of the same socioeconomic circles. Studies show that your salary and income are typically within 20% of the group of people you regularly hang around with. So, if you want to jump to a different salary or professional level, we may need to change who we hang around with. If you want to leap to the next professional rung, we may want to find ways to network with people that are of that next desired level. In other words, surround ourselves with the success we want to achieve.
We can use our social networking profiles to do this.
For a quick review of the steps, watch the video and purchase the Leveraging Links Zipinar Ebook.
To create your individual networking strategy, sign up for our free workbook at: http://eepurl.com/njCWz
Make a quarterly goal of increasing your networking circle by 10% in the right direction.
Other things to consider:
1) Invite the authors of your favorite technical journal articles to your LinkedIn.com network
2) Socialize at the cafeteria and create intellectual discussion groups. Add them to your LinkedIn.com network
3) Conduct Brown Bag Lunch series on important topics to your industry. Offer to send the presentation and whitepaper to those that connect with your on LinkedIn.com
4) Work on white-papers with your manager on items that can be shared and published. Invite your readers to link with you on LinkedIn.com
5) Select a side-hobby and invite those folks to your linkedin.com network.
Try it and let me know what you think.
Even when everyone does everything right….
Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables story shows that even when everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing, there will be conflicts and oppositions. Set in the backdrop of the French Revolution, the characters both implodes and explodes because of these diverse principles.
The story is more rich than this quick summary depicts; but these are just quick examples of how even when people are doing what they feel they must do – there are conflicts and opposition.
- Jean Valjean steals bread to feed his sister’s family, and is sentenced to jail. He was trying to do what he was supposed to do, in providing for his family. Jean Valjean completes his sentence, but is on parole forever. Because he has a criminal record and is on parole, society ostracizes him. He cannot find ‘honest’ work. He soon realizes that he cannot provide for anyone under the title of convict/parole. So he breaks parole to start a new life.
- M. Myriel, the kindly bishop of Digne, provides Jean Valjean with the means to start a new life. Even though the bishop was ‘breaking the law’ by harboring a criminal – he was doing what he was supposed to do by saving a soul. At that point Jean Valjean committed to use the riches to enrich other people. With his new life, Jean Valjean becomes a benevolent business owner and major. He supports and watches over his entire town.
- Fantine (single mother) tries everything to provide for her daughter, Cosette. Because she is a single mother, society ostracizes her and it’s difficult for her to get ‘honest’ work. As a last resort, she sells her hair, teeth and finally herself to send money to her daughter. She was trying to do what she was supposed to do – in providing for her daughter.
- Javert, Montreuil’s police chief, is duty-bound to hunt criminals and people that break parole. His job is to capture Jean Valjean if/when their paths cross.
The character list continues as the above. Most characters have very good reasons for doing what they do. As you look at each character separately, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. Set during the pre-ample of the French Revolution (an even larger conflict), each of these characters are met with situations that challenges their core principles. The colliding of these diverse (yet reasonable) principles both implodes (by Javert’s suicide) and explodes (revolution).
This concept is great for any personal or professional interaction. Give others the benefit of the doubt in the office boardroom, meetings, and project schedule conflicts. Most people are actually trying to do the right thing. If you can pause and view the situation from their perspective, you may be able to recognize other alternatives in which everyone can win.
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
Should I hire over-qualified people?
Should I hire over-qualified people?
(or will they leave as soon as something better comes along)
Professional development series
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
In the recent interview with Steve Wynkoop (founder of SSWUG.org) we covered the “hiring” topic (don’t miss another professional newsletter tip—signup for the free newsletter here). This article covers the topic in more detail.
I recently received this question from a reader:
I currently have several positions open, and the job descriptions clearly outline the experience necessary. I’m drowning in applications from overqualified people. I know with the unemployment rate so high, people often have noticeably more experience than the jobs they apply for require.
However, I fear that if I hire overqualified applicants, they will leave as soon as a better job comes along. So I prefer to hire candidates ready to move up or laterally. Is it worth considering overqualified candidates? Or can we add something to the job description to improve our applicant pool?
You are in a great position. My recommendation is not worry about the future if you hire an over-qualified person. Focus on hiring the perfect person for the job. And let “what if” take care of itself. Let’s take the following examples:
- Some people you feel are ‘over-qualified’ are actually looking for a lower-pressure position. They want something they can comfortably and expertly handle in 5-days/8 hour time slot. Because they are (as you describe) “over-qualified”, your position is perfect for them. They may not be looking for their ‘next challenge’.
- Don’t assume you understand someone’s reason for applying for your job. They may want a slight career change. Although they may seem over-qualified for the specific task you have in mind; their interest is more in a change of industry or culture. Maybe their next challenge is getting experience in this new industry or area. Perhaps your job offers more travel (or less travel). It can be any number of things that attract.
- Understand why you are hiring. If you are in a production spike and need someone that will ‘hit the ground running’, hiring an over-qualified person is your best option. If your spike is temporarily, consider contracting or temp-to-hire, until your product needs levels out a little.
- To ease your discomfort around this topic, be explicit in your expectations. Explicitly announce your expectations and intentions (including the minimum length of expected stay). It’s perfectly acceptable to include the expectations to stay in this particular job for 8 months, 1 year (whatever your minimum expectations are). You can also include a contract penalty for leaving the position early (1 week, 2 week pay, whatever). This will weed-out the people that are merely using your job as a jobs-gap (bridge to another position).
- Continually outline future career opportunities and advancement routes in both the technical and management ladders. This helps retain the high-performance employees.
Conclusions:
Don’t wait until the top-performers leave your company to figure this out. If you don’t invest in your current employees’ career development, then you will be left with only low to mediocre performers (which make your management job that much more difficult). Avoid offering lateral positions merely to ease your discomfort with hiring ‘over-qualified’ candidates. Offer lateral position when it comes with additional promotion or skills advancement opportunities for the employee that is making that change.
If you liked this tips, more can be found at www.lauraleerose.com/blog or subscribe to my weekly professional tips newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/
The weekly newsletter contains tips on:
1) Time management
2) Career maintenance
3) Business networking
4) Work life balance strategies
If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
Why do employees continue to job-search?
Why do employees continue to job-search?
(Even when they already have a good job)
Professional development series
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
In the recent interview with Steve Wynkoop (founder of SSWUG.org) we covered the “hiring” topic (don’t miss another professional newsletter tip—signup for the free newsletter here). This article covers the topic in more detail.
Two recent surveys found that a majority of full-time workers continue searching out job opportunities, usually online and often through social media. What are the pluses and potential pitfalls of continually being on the search?
My first recommendation to employers is to not take “continually searching” personally. There are many reasons individuals window-shop. People often droop over the newest sports-car or gadget. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are unhappy with their current toys.
There are often many reasons for job-window-shopping:
1) If workers are not satisfied with their current work environment, they will continually look elsewhere.
The advantage to this is that many people can handle a ‘bad working environment’ as long as they see a light at the end of the tunnel (a potential new position in the horizon). Conduct frequent one-on-one meetings to understand what is lacking in your employees career development plans.
2) People are always curious. This is an advantage to everyone. Employees should be encouraged to bring these new desires and new knowledge to their manager to see if there are appropriate jobs opportunities in your current company that fits. Management would be prudent to hold frequent career development one-on-one meetings, so that they understand what their talented employees are looking forward to doing.
3) Excellent employees are always forward looking. If the employee sees no ‘next step’ within their current company, they will look more seriously at their next step outside of their current company. Management would be smart to continually outline attractive and progression job roles for their best employees.
4) People need to feel valued and want to be continually challenged in their area of passion. At a certain professional level, it is not ‘money’ that satisfies. The best employees are attracted toward an increase of mastery and autonomy in the areas that they are passionate about. If management isn’t listening, they are likely to lose their most valuable employees — because it is the talented that walk and the weak that stay.
5) If management uses this opportunity to negatively affect the employee’s advancement opportunities, then management is short-sighted. The employee is doing exactly what they need to do to create the most effective and efficient match between what they want to do with their careers and what they are actually doing with their careers. The employee is acting responsibly. Management would be acting responsibly by listening and reviewing current company’s opportunities to better match their employee’s talents and passion.
Conclusions:
Don’t wait until the top-performers leave your company to figure this out. If you don’t invest in your current employees’ career development, then you will be left with only low to mediocre performers (which makes your management job that much more difficult).
If you liked this tips, more can be found at www.lauraleerose.com/blog or subscribe to my weekly professional tips newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/
The weekly newsletter contains tips on:
1) Time management
2) Career maintenance
3) Business networking
4) Work life balance strategies
If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
What we can learn from Judge Judy.
Back in the old days (when I was growing up), daytime television was composed of soap operas. Today it’s slightly different. Today there are a plethora of judge TV shows.
Is there anything we learn professionally from Judy Judy that we can use in our career advancement?
ABSOLUTELY!
Some of the things are:
- Most disputes stem from miscommunications
- Document expectations to reduce miscommunication
- Answer the questions being asked
- People get pissed-off when they think you are hiding something
To avoid miscommunication: Paraphrase everything you think they are saying back to them. This gives them the opportunity to correct you or agree with you. Ask them to repeat what you say to them. This gives you the opportunity to see if they heard what you meant to say.
Document expectations: Write down your agreement to include measurable criteria , who is responsible for what, and reasonable time line. Also include consequences on any missed goals and deadlines. Sign and date. If you verbally alter agreement, then document the changes, sign and date. (For more information on Change Management Strategies, contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info)
Answer the questions being asked: I recently asked a vendor about their status on my project XYZ. They quickly told me the status of their project ABC. That was nice, but I was interested and asked about my project. The deflection frustrated me and I had to ask again.
People get pissed-off when they think you are hiding something: The above Q&A repeated once again, until I lost patience. I imagined that they had not spent any time on my project; and didn’t have any status to report. Since I had a signed contract that identified expectations, time frames and consequences, I was able to discontinued their service without payment and found a better fit.
How can you re-use these lessons in your profession?
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How to judge appropriately
The most misquoted verse in the Bible is probably Matthew 7:1, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”
It’s impossible not to judge. Telling someone else “not to judge” — shows you have made the judgment that they are judging. Most opinions, descriptions, decisions, views, rulings, and critiques are judgments.
In the workplace, performance review and evaluations are judgments on both subjective and objective criteria. Business decisions are based on market comparisons and our judgment on ROI (Return On Investments). Project management schedules and delivery schedules are based on group opinions and past performance trends.
I’m not sure when ‘judging’ attracted such a negative connotation. But we can’t take inspired action without allowing some level of judgment within us and others.
The key is to judge righteously and appropriately.
“Great! So how does one go about judging appropriately?”
In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into these things in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
Here are a few things to consider, when making a ruling (or judgment):
- Be self-aware of any hidden agenda or expectations.
- Use accurate data from multiple sources
- Be wary of ambiguous and vague descriptions (indicators of innuendos, rumors and assumptions).
- Disengage from the results (have no hidden agenda or expectations)
- Don’t take anything personally
- Give everyone the benefit of the doubt
The above steps seem simple enough, but how would we incorporate in the real-world? Below are some common professional situations:
In my on-line coaching series, we use some typical employee complaints and frustrations. Please add your frustrations to this list for practice.
- My manager is not a people person.
- My manager has never learned people skills.
- My manager avoids confrontation at all costs.
- My manager is showing favoritism.
- My manager doesn’t like me.
- My coworker is a racist and is lying about me.
- My coworker is getting paid more than I am, and I’m doing more work than he/she.
- My coworker is always submitting buggy code and it the reason my piece is late.
- This company expects me to work 24/7.
- This company won’t give promotions or any type of recognition.
Be self-aware of any hidden agenda or expectations.
Most of the above examples have a hidden agenda. The ‘finger’ is consistently pointing to someone else. Maybe you know the saying, “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back. And this is the case in these examples. We create our own situations (good and bad).
Regardless of the specific incident, you have contributed to your current situation. While blaming someone else provides some limited relief, it doesn’t really release you from your responsibility (your ability to respond).
Review your higher-level mission and what you can do to set things right.
“How could I have handled this differently? What can I do right now that illustrates my expert people-skills, my social skills, and my ease in handling conflicts and confrontations? This incident doesn’t depend on my manager’s people and social skills. This incident depends upon my expert people and social skills. My professional reputation is my responsibility, not my manager’s responsibility.”
Be wary of ambiguous and vague descriptions (indicators of innuendos, rumors and assumptions).
Ambiguity leaves the door open for innuendos, imagination and assumptions. When you are use words like: never, always, mostly, chances are that you don’t really have your facts together.
Use accurate data from multiple sources
As you gather your accurate data, validate it across multiple sources. Remember that each source may have their own agenda or personal perspective. Relying on one or two sources with the same personal agenda
Disengage from the results (have no hidden agenda or expectations)
When you are collecting the data, disengage from the results. When you have an idea of what you want the answer to be, you will often collect data that supports your expectations. If you enter into the discovery phase with no expectations and an open mind, you are more likely to make appropriate judgments.
In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into these things in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
Secrets to Taking Command of Your Own Performance Review Part III
What makes up a Personal Business Commitment plan? Who creates it? Who approves it? How does it fit in the performance rating process?
Professional development series
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
If you are interested in more training in these areas, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
In the recent interview with Steve Wynkoop (founder of SSWUG.org) we covered some tips to taking more control of our own performance evaluation process (don’t miss another professional newsletter tip—signup for the free newsletter here). This article covers the topic in more detail.
Last interview and article, we quickly mentioned the Personal Business Commitment tool as a great way to communicate your goals and commitments to your manager. But what makes up a Personal Business Commitment plan? Who creates it? Who approves it? How does it fit in the performance rating process?
Let’s take these questions individually.
Who writes the PBC? Does my manager or do I?
In the idea world, the PBC is a two-way street. Your manager would share his/her PBC goals with you. Then you would create your PBC and commit to your SMART goals that will support your manager in his/her goals. Your Business Commitments are just that; commitments to the business to make the business prosperous and successful. (See my articles on always ‘thinking like the owner’ for more tips on this; or subscribe to the weekly newsletter here)
What does a PBC look like?
It can be as simple as stating what you plan to do to support your manager in his/her goals. Clear state your business intentions in SMART language (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound). Plan ahead as you write your goals. Identify some Reasonable Forcing Functions and accountability partners to help you accomplish these goals. For more information on Reasonable Forcing Functions and accountability partners, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series.
Example could be:
- ¡ Be an effective leader in the organization by promoting the goals of XXX
- Grow the XXX Program from its infancy stage and gain recognition from executives
- Deliver quality programs in an on-time, and in effective manner which validates the design and market suitability.
- Manage and lead others in their efforts toward the PBC goals
- Continue to drive a more effective use of our tools in-house.
- Have a positive influence on revenue associated with XX products
It’s also important that you keep track of your own progress. Don’t depend upon your manager to remember everything that you are doing or are accomplishing. Don’t even depend upon your memory at the time of your performance review. Keep a running Accomplishment Folder throughout the year. Keep your Professional Press Kit and resume up to date with your transferable skills, technical certifications, publications, patents, etc. For more business coaching on these things, please sign-up for the continuing online coaching series or contact mailto:LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
Keep an open communication with your manager. Initiate quarterly performance review meetings with your managers, mentors and coaches. Facilitate frequent status one-on-one meetings with your manager. The more frequent your performance-based meetings are, the less daunting they will become. You and your manager’s goals are the same: To Achieve Your Business Commitments. And since your PBCs support your manager’s PBCs; your success is also his success.
What is an IDP?
My upcoming “Taking Command of Your Performance Review” Workshop will go into detail on this topic. It’s a three-hour workshop (75 minutes of presentation content and 90 minutes of actual hand-on coaching of the provided worksheets). At the end of the workshop, you will have a customized PBC and IDP started.
For more information on this critical workshop, see
https://www.lauraleerose.com/take-command-of-your-performance-reviews/
Conclusions:
Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare for your performance review. Consider everything that you do in the work environment as input into your performance evaluation process. Keep an achievement folder to continually collect your accomplishments (until waiting until the last minute to remember them). Read the follow-up articles in this series for more information. Or better yet; attend the workshop at https://www.lauraleerose.com/take-command-of-your-performance-reviews/
If you liked this tips, more can be found at www.lauraleerose.com/blog or subscribe to my weekly professional tips newsletter at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/
The weekly newsletter contains tips on:
1) Time management
2) Career maintenance
3) Business networking
4) Work life balance strategies
If you haven’t taken advantage of your introductory time management coaching session, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info