Month: April 2013

April 29, 2013 / Blog / HR / Talent Management

Five Lessons from a CEO on HR

In a unique turn of roles Les Hayman “retired” from a long tenure as a CEO to leading Global HR for SAP. In a recent guest blog post, Les summarizes five key lessons that he dubbed: “What I Wish I Knew as a CEO That I Learned Later in HR.” The five lessons were:

1. Spend more time on making recruitment a core competency in the entire organization. I especially agree with his point that hiring for attitude is more important than hiring mainly for skills. The costs of weak hiring practices are enormous, and while HR should lead the way – it is every leader’s responsibility to be good at recruiting.

2. A large number of people who move into management are not comfortable when they get there and should be given the opportunity to move back out without being penalized, or better still, can stay in a professional role rather than being pushed into management. Les was surprised at the number of reluctant managers he came across, and advocates for valid vocational career paths for professionals. I agree with him wholeheartedly, AND I believe that sometimes these reluctant managers can become highly passionate and effective managers given the right coaching.

3. There are no such things as HR problems, only business problems that HR needs to help resolve. Couldn’t agree with this one more – HR leaders need to see themselves as business leaders before others will.

4. Spend more time on underperformers. While I agree with this, I also believe the right recruitment has to be in place first. And that the “move them up or move them out” approach does not have to be a lengthy, painful process.

5. Put less value on formal performance reviews and more on managing behavior as a moment by moment way of business life. Hallelujah on this one, and the ITM Coaching approach is a great skill for leaders to enable this moment-by-moment way of business life!

To check out the full article: http://seapointcenter.com/what-i-wish-i-knew-as-a-ceo-that-i-learned-later-in-hr/

To check out other writings by Les Hayman: http://leshayman.wordpress.com/

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April 29th, 2013|Categories: Blog, HR / Talent Management|Tags: business, effective leadership, HR Leadership, HR management, ITM Coaching, Les Hayman, Mariposa Leadership, recruitmen, Tawny Lees|

April 23, 2013 / Wise Talk Teleconference

Reinventing You

WISE TALK April 2013: Sue hosts branding expert and strategy consultant, Dorie Clark. Listen in as she discusses her new book, Reinventing You, and provides insights on how to think big about your professional goals, take control of your career, build a reputation for more opportunities, and live the life you want.

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April 23rd, 2013|Categories: Wise Talk Teleconference|

Ask Mariposa: Top 4 Executive Coaching Focus Areas

Daniel asked: Can you share the most frequent areas that you help clients improve on with coaching?

Regan Bach, Executive Leadership Coach, responds:

Great question Daniel and you are not alone in wondering what actually occurs during a coaching engagement. There is a great deal of customizing that occurs with each client’s needs, but here are the Top 4 most frequent areas of coaching focus:

1) Vision/Strategy/Execution

Whether it be for CEOs or new managers, setting a clear vision for yourself and your team is mission critical. From there it’s all about articulating that vision to others, identifying an “actionable” strategy to execute on the vision, mitigating roadblocks, and tweaking the roadmap/trajectory given inputs over time. A good coach helps leaders to a) get very clear on strengths and areas of opportunity to improve, b) articulate personal/team/company vision, and c) helps identify action steps to begin executing on a trajectory for success.

2) Going Slow to Go Fast

In today’s fast paced work environments, leaders jump from task to task, project to project, and initiative to initiative. Rarely do they take time to slow down, unplug, assess the Big Picture, and reflect on what’s working, what’s not working, and what they want to do DIFFERENT moving forward. Coaches act as a forcing function to help support leaders in unplugging, assessing themselves and their environments, and then identifying areas that need their attention. What’s critical is helping today’s leaders not only identify where to show up, but also how to show up.

3) Influencing

This is an area where almost everyone can improve. I have found that individuals, regardless of title, greatly underestimate (and thus under-utilize), their ability to influence others. I spend a great deal of time working with clients to help identify effective and efficient ways to influence both vertically and horizontally throughout an organization.

4) Feedback, Communication and Relationship-Building

Organizations exist because humans create them. Thus, many leaders continually struggle and are challenged by behavioral and/or human-centric issues. At the core, business is all about communication and relationships. Coaches help leaders create clear lines of communication, implement durable feedback loops into their work, and get clear on how and when they message things to others.

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April 23rd, 2013|Categories: Ask Mariposa, Coaching Skills, HR / Talent Management, Influencing Skills, Strategy|Tags: answer, ask mariposa, coaching, coaching engagement, communication, effective leadership, executive coaching, feedback, HR Leade, influence, influencing skills, initiative, leaders, leadership, Mariposa Leadership, questions, Regan Bach, relationship-building|

April 17, 2013 / Blog / Design Thinking / Creativity / Innovation

Products Are Hard Conference Recap: Design Thinking Process and More!

The 2013 Products are Hard Conference on April 1st proved to be rich with insights and fresh thinking on the product development process. More than 200 product designers, developers, marketers, entrepreneurs and executives were treated to stimulating talks throughout the day by various thought leaders, including Mariposa Leadership CEO Sue Bethanis. Sue presented a design thinking model that leads to breakthrough thinking and therefore has value for leaders beyond product creation. Attendees participated in a rapid prototyping exercise to get a taste of how a design thinking process can be applied to solve wicked customer or team problems, as our clients have done in our Design Thinking workshop.

We captured brilliant tidbits from the presenters. Here are a few of our favorites:

“LEAN Startups: Learn. Measure. Build.” Janice Fraser, Founder/CEO, LUXr @clevergirl
“Hardest part of product management is creating order from chaos. Listen. Learn. Think (dream). Test.” Sarah Rose, VP Product, ModCloth @sarahfrose
“Understand all your customers. Your product must produce value for all of them.” David Charron, Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Haas School of Business @d_charron
“Few things lose investor confidence more than an inability to launch. Better to launch and learn.” Charles Hudson, Venture Partner, SoftTech VC @chudson
“Product building challenge: knowing when working with opinion vs. fact. Turn opinion to hypothesis and test.” Hiten Shah, Co-Founder, KISSmetrics @hnshah
“Using design thinking for services is equally important as using it for products.” Susan Bethanis, Ed.D., CEO and Founder, Mariposa Leadership @suebethanis
“If trying to design products for global users, think about similarities in shared social and psychological rewards.” Judd Antin, User Experience Researcher, Facebook @juddantin
“Empathy interviewing requires beginner’s mind, getting off your own agenda!” Indi Young, Consultant @indiyoung
“The people who make the product need to fall in love with it first.” Chris Lindland, CEO & Founder, Betabrand @Betabrand

Products are Hard presentation slides are available for viewing.

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April 17th, 2013|Categories: Blog, Design Thinking / Creativity / Innovation|Tags: brainstorming, creativity, creativity in business, design thinking, design thinking model, discussion, empathy, Mariposa Leadership, PAH, products are hard, sue bethanis|

April 12, 2013 / Blog / Strategy

Strategic Narrative and Telling Stories

I am often asked if there is a difference between “narrative” and “story” when it comes to strategy and organization. While these words are used interchangable they aren’t the same. Story conveys insight. Narrative creates a world. Read more.

About the Author:

Dave Ancel, Ed.D., is co-founder at Emergent Solutions, Inc. (ESODL) and a Strategic Partner with Mariposa Leadership, Inc. For more articles by Dave, visit the ESODL Blog.

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April 12th, 2013|Categories: Blog, Strategy|Tags: Dave Ancel, ESODL, Mariposa Leadership, Storytelling, Strategic Narrative, Strategy|

Ask Mariposa: Balancing Team Dynamics

Maggie asked:

My company isn’t lacking for talent, but we have a difficult time with team dynamics – how can we balance the strong personalities on our team?

Sue Bethanis, CEO responded:

Wow, big question, and lots of answers. Here’s one way to look at it: Everyone has strengths, and the best leaders are able to leverage each person’s strengths (both their emotional intelligence and content knowledge/skills). Check out the StrengthFinder 2.0 and take the assessment, and see what you think. Then you can share this with your colleagues.

You may also want to check out one of our hands-on workshops that produce heightened awareness, appreciation, and new ideas to improve the way a team works: Leveraging Your Team’s Strengths.

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April 10th, 2013|Categories: Ask Mariposa, Coaching Skills, HR / Talent Management, Influencing Skills|Tags: ask mariposa, HR Leade, Mariposa Leadership|

April 4, 2013 / Ask Mariposa / HR / Talent Management / Influencing Skills

Ask Mariposa: 3 Tips for Developing Leadership Influence

Andrea asks: I am not in a formal position of power but lead several cross-functional projects and collaboration is critical to our goals. How can I develop more leadership influence?

Susan Bethanis, CEO of Mariposa responded:

You are smart to be thinking about developing leadership influence skills, even as an informal leader. Cross-functional initiatives, flatter management structures and virtual teams which sometimes include third parties have become the norm in business today. Understanding how to influence others is a skill that when honed, serves company goals and your career.

Here are 3 tips:

Consult and Pre-Sell. Meet with stakeholders to share your ideas on achieving a desired outcome. Solicit their reactions and ideas as well. By inviting input and balancing it with advocacy, resistance can be minimized while gaining buy-in.
Know Your Audience, Tailor the Message. Develop clear and compelling messages rooted in short and long-term requirements. Research your stakeholders’ needs and tailor the message based on their interests.
Establish Behavioral Rapport. Match the pace and volume of your speech with that of your stakeholder. Avoid matching negative emotional states. Be conscious of your body language, including posture and facial expressions, as unintended non-verbal cues can undermine effective communication of your message.

Want more?

Read: Smart Work: The Syntax Guide to Mutual Understanding in the Workplace, by L. Marshall and L. Freedman
Inquire about our workshop: Master the Skills of Influence

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April 4th, 2013|Categories: Ask Mariposa, HR / Talent Management, Influencing Skills|Tags: advocacy, ask mariposa, business, effective communication, effective leadership, HR Leade, HR Leadership, influence, influencing skills, leadership, Mariposa Leadership, rapport, sue bethanis|

April 3, 2013 / Blog / HR / Talent Management / Influencing Skills

The #1 Leadership Communication Mistake

I have come to the conclusion that there is one pretty universal communication mistake that is the most damaging and causes the most mischief for leaders.

Are you ready? The mistake is: not preparing well. Yes, I know this is not very sexy, but it is incredibly ubiquitos. People just don’t think about preparing in advance for a crucial conversation, and they typically don’t invest nearly enough time in preparing for a high-stakes presentation or Q & A session.

Think about it this way: there are probably 5%, maybe 10% at the most, of your communications that are truly extremely important. Situations where careers, or very large amounts of money are at stake. My most frequent and important advice is, invest the time to prepare properly for these moments. The more important the communication, the more time you should invest preparing for it. More specifically:

For a 1-1 meeting, decide what you will say in advance; and role play the conversation with a skilled communicator whom you trust. Do the role play as if you were having the actual conversation–don’t just talk about what you plan to say. Do it fully in role. Then have them give you feedback, and role play it again. Practice until you’ve got it down. It will make for a better outcome, and will also greatly enhance your confidence level going into the conversation, because you have already done it!
For an important Q & A session, write down the questions that you are mostly likely to be asked, and also the questions you most fear. Then map out your answers, and practice them out loud, again with someone who can give you feedback. Practice the same question and answer several times, until you really nail it, then move to the next question. When you have them all, then practice answering a series of questions.
For a presentation, deliver the whole presentation several times, also out loud. Practicing it in your head is not the same as practicing it aloud, because you are not rehearsing the actual behavior you are preparing for. And again, if possible, have someone in the room who can give you candid feedback.

About the author:

Eric Nitzberg, is the Principal of Sierra Leadership and an Executive Leadership Coach for Mariposa Leadership, Inc. Want to read more from Eric? Visit his blog.

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April 3rd, 2013|Categories: Blog, HR / Talent Management, Influencing Skills|Tags: communication, crucial conversation, effective leadership, feedback, HR Leade, influencing skills, Mariposa Leadership|

April 1, 2013 / Book Reviews / Strategy

Book Review: Reinventing You

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future
By: Dorie Clark

Head: (4.5 out of 5)
Heart: (3.5 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

Professional branding is not just for the job seeker. At some point, executives at all stages of their careers face the need to reinvent themselves to keep up with the pace of corporate change. In Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future, author and marketing expert Dorie Clark offers a strategic road map and do-it-yourself exercises for professional branding.

Both insightful and practical, this step-by-step guide is rich with advice anchored by case studies and anecdotal tips. The exercises and reflection points help readers define their unique value and ultimately cultivate and communicate that value to others. Readers will learn how to:

Understand the starting point
Research the destination
Test-drive the path to determine fit
Develop and refine skills for reinvention
Identify and engage a mentor
Leverage points of difference to stand out
Create a narrative that makes sense
Reintroduce the new brand
Concretely demonstrate expertise and prove worth
Monitor perception of the new brand

As the author notes, professional branding is taking control of life and living strategically, by defining career goals and taking steps to reach them. The applicability of professional branding goes beyond simply landing a new job. It can aid in breaking through misconceptions about capabilities which are preventing a promotion, transitioning to a different area of a company and building a compelling case for an unusual background as an asset in a career change.

In an age in which competition for jobs is fierce and one cannot simply rely on being noticed because of hard work, staying relevant and competitive through reinvention is important to fit into the new context of work. Buy the book.

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April 1st, 2013|Categories: Book Reviews, Strategy|Tags: business, Dorie Clark, marketing, personal branding, personal strategy, professional branding, reinvention, Strategy|