Tag: talent management | Page 2 | Mariposa Leadership

June 29, 2015 / Articles We Like / Leadership

On “The Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders”

Trust is a key ingredient for creating an engaged and productive workforce. Yet competing priorities, daily pressures and sometimes a lack of self-awareness can get in the way of effective communication and leadership. When we read the survey results in this article, the list of complaints employees have about their leaders seemed all too familiar to us as executive coaches. But by bringing awareness to the power of meaningful connection with employees, we know leaders can make a huge impact on productivity in the workplace.

We share the Harvard Business Review article, “The Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders“, by Lou Solomon, to help raise awareness of your communication and connection with employees. Try implementing the suggestions to build more trust!

Tell us: What communication practices do you find most effective for connecting with your employees?

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June 29th, 2015|Categories: Articles We Like, Leadership|Tags: communication, effective communication, Harvard Business Review, HR Leadership, HR management, lou solomon, talent management|

May 29, 2015 / Book Reviews

Book Review | Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader

Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader
By Herminia Ibarra

Head: (3 out of 5)
Heart: (4 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

At the root of many traditional leadership development methods lie self-awareness and the promise of change through reflection and introspection. This inside-out model can be helpful in identifying your leadership style, defining your purpose and authentic self. But according to the author, these methods fall short of changing the deep-seated ways of thinking which keep us from behaving differently. A new approach is needed: the outsight principle.

The outsight principle is fairly easy to understand: Branch out beyond your routine work, your networks, and current ways of defining yourself, and by doing so, these new ways of acting will begin to change how you think about your work and yourself, and expand your leadership horizons. Instead of thinking about how you will behave as a leader, new behaviors will emerge organically by experimenting with the unfamiliar and interacting with different people. This approach allows us to challenge existing notions of our capacity to lead.

This easy-to-read book offers interesting insight on how change really works. The information is backed by research, exercises and case studies to help readers understand and apply the outsight principle and bridge the gap between where they are today and where they could be. Leaders interested in new ways of thinking about developing their talent, and professionals who want extra motivation to step up to lead will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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May 29th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: executive development, executive leadership, herminia ibarra, HR Leadership, HR management, talent management, wise talk|

May 15, 2015 / Articles We Like / HR / Talent Management

On “5 Dos and Don’ts of Talent Development”

Effective talent management processes balance internal talent development with the introduction of new talent into an organization. The blend of existing high-potential talent and the qualities and experiences fresh high-potential talent can infuse into your culture is what enables innovation.

Leadership guru, Louis Carter’s recent article on Human Resources Online, 5 Dos and Don’ts of Talent Development, highlights five ways to effectively recruit and develop high-potential talent. From developing a common language to discuss potential through allowing process ownership, these five suggestions combined with five tendencies to avoid, remind us all of the importance in balancing tradition with innovation.

What are some ways your organization strikes the balance between tradition and innovation in your high-potential talent management processes?

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May 15th, 2015|Categories: Articles We Like, HR / Talent Management|Tags: hiring, innovation, recruiting, talent management|

April 23, 2015 / Book Reviews

Book Review | Demystifying Talent Management

Demystifying Talent Management: Unleash People’s Potential to Deliver Superior Results
By Kimberly Janson

Head: (4 out of 5)
Heart: (4 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

All companies aspire to get the most out of their employees, yet often stumble along the way. The results of annual employee surveys often offer the evidence, such as a lack of development, a lack of feedback and coaching, and a lack of direction. But according to the author, good talent management doesn’t need to be as hard as a lot of companies experience it today. It just needs commitment, as well as the will and skill from managers, to be able to unleash the potential in their employees.

In this easy-to-digest book, the author, Kimberly Janson, lays out a simple framework for understanding what talent management is and how managers can get the most out of their employees. While there are two major components of talent management – managing performance and developing employees – she defines all key talent management terms, and helps readers understand how they all fit together. In understanding the interconnectivities, organizations can truly get the most from their talent as drivers of business strategy. The section on talent management stakeholders and their perspectives can be useful in this regard.

Leaders, managers and human resource professionals who aspire to be excellent at managing and developing their talent and want to improve the quality of their talent management practices will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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April 23rd, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: hr leaders, HR Leadership, HR management, kimberly janson, talent management|

April 8, 2015 / HR / Talent Management / Wisetalk

WiseTalk Summary on Hiring Top Talent

On March 30, 2015, Sue hosted Lou Adler, CEO/Founder of The Adler Group, a training and search firm which helps companies make hiring top talent a systematic business process, and author of the books, The Essential Guide for Hiring and Getting Hired: A Performance-based Hiring Handbook and the Amazon best-seller, Hire With Your Head. Lou explained why the wrong talent strategies hinder the ability to hire the right talent, and shared an overview of how performance-based hiring can bridge that gap.

Favorite Quote:
“If you want to hire a great person, you need a great job. It’s not a bunch of skills. Skills and competencies describe a person, not a job.”

Insights:

When it comes to hiring the A-team, Lou has seen many companies use the wrong strategy. It starts with an assumption of a surplus of talent. Then, a boring job is posted, candidates are interviewed and companies hope they can hire someone from that pool quickly. According to Lou, this is fundamentally a bad strategy. A top person is not looking for a lateral move and not looking for speed. Companies are too focused on the cost of hiring rather than on the impact of hiring good people. Instead, they need a strategy that goes after the A-level person.
Because top people are looking for career moves, a generic job description, with a generic listing of skills and competencies, does little to attract the talent companies are looking for. Instead, Lou says to focus on the work, make the work impactful and customized to the person. Tell them what they’re going to do. For example, “build a team of accountants to go IPO in 6 months” has more impact than “5 years of experience with CPA from Big4 accounting firm.” Stop trying to force fit people into generic job descriptions.
Performance-based hiring is impactful because it starts with a mindset of talent scarcity, and is a systematic business process. Job descriptions reflect the work to be done. A talent-centric sourcing process establishes an ideal candidate profile of the person taking the job at the onset to identify passive candidates and build a talent pool. Interviewing questions are tied to related performance objectives. According to Lou, this method leads to no more than four candidates for interviewing. It’s a quality over quantity approach.

Try It:
Try reframing your typical job descriptions into performance-based jobs. Ask your company’s hiring manager these questions:

What does the person need to do to be successful doing this job? What would they need to do within 30 days to indicate they’re on point to get there? Once you understand the objectives, then process the steps to get the final objective.
Alternatively, look at job description language, i.e. 5 years of X or X personality, such as “must be aggressive,” and ask, “What does this look like on the job?” Here, you are converting important skills and experiences to how they make an impact on the job.

What we found most interesting:
Many companies still use behavioral interviewing to hire. However, Lou said there is lack of research to prove it predicts performance, that technique only minimizes mistakes. He believes generic competencies are not universal, due to many situational issues that determine if someone will be successful or not in a position. He went on to say, “Few people are motivated to do every type of work, under every situation, in every circumstance, for every person.”

To learn more about Lou’s experience, listen to the WiseTalk recording.

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April 8th, 2015|Categories: HR / Talent Management, Wisetalk|Tags: hiring, job performance, lou adler, talent management, wisetalk|

March 27, 2015 / Articles We Like / HR / Talent Management

On “How to Hire the A-team”

The war for talent in Silicon Valley is real. Many of the companies we work with have been focused on recruiting only the best, but may be experiencing mixed results. Much has been said about the need to disrupt outdated recruiting and hiring practices so it’s not surprising that companies are challenged, especially as the war heats up. This month, we share this article because it offers insights on why companies may not be able to find top talent, and ideas for re-engineering your hiring processes so that you can.

According to Lou Adler, author of the Inc. article, “How to Hire the A-team,” companies are challenged because they are using the same methods to hire the A-team that they use to hire everyone else. In working with companies, he encounters five common challenges that they face, such as a need to rewrite job descriptions, prepare career-oriented messaging, and an ability to recruit passive candidates. Get tips to address these (and more) by reading the article.

How has your company been able to find top talent?

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March 27th, 2015|Categories: Articles We Like, HR / Talent Management|Tags: hiring, lou adler, recruiting, talent management|

March 3, 2015 / HR / Talent Management / Wisetalk

WiseTalk Summary on Disrupting Talent Management

On February 26, 2015, Sue Bethanis hosted Steve Cadigan, a Silicon Valley talent, people and culture expert, founder of Cadigan Talent Ventures LLC, a Silicon Valley-based talent strategies advisory firm, and former Vice President of Talent at LinkedIn. Steve helped us understand why traditional talent sourcing and hiring methods are in need of disruption, shared his vision on how disruption can benefit both prospective employees and employers, and shared innovative ideas for changing the way employers source talent.

Favorite Quote:
“If you want to win the war for recruiting, you have to change the game.”

Insights:

The process of recruiting and building an organization is still in its infancy of what it can be and could be. The traditional model is “I have a need”, put a job description together, hire a recruiter, and the recruiter hunts for talent. Steve thinks the reason this model perpetuates is due to priority and ownership. He believes talent drives value creation but rarely sees the right investment of priority, attention and time from executive teams. It’s the last thing on their agenda, the people systems are an afterthought bolted onto an ERP solution, and boards of directors rarely have people serving on them who have a strong understanding of the powerhouse muscle of talent. He believes ownership of talent belongs with the whole company, not just human resources, especially in Silicon Valley, where the biggest thing a company needs to be great at is building a great team. It should be a core responsibility and the biggest muscle being working on.

Steve believes the employee-employer relationship is changing, and power is shifting to employee, particularly in Silicon Valley. Potential employees have more information available to them, more choice, and can decide where they want to go to. He argues that an employer brand in a company that’s growing is almost as important if not more important than your product brand. Consumers want to buy from someone who treats their employees well and is providing a good work environment. Brand can’t be spun anymore. It’s the collective voice of Glassdoor, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, bloggers, all of which is the manifestation of the voice of your employees.

In an increasingly transparent world, instead of investing in a huge recruiting team, Steve argues the better investment is to try to make your organization the desired destination for the best people in the world. This is different from needing a few hours to source and interview every week. This is about what kind of environment, culture, organizational structure, communication plan, relationships, how the workspace is designed, etc., which contribute to a differentiator in answering the question, why does someone want to come work here? Steve believes if companies do that well, and they know what kind of person they’re looking for, they’ll create a magnetic pull for talent. Hunting for talent in the traditional sense won’t allow a company to scale fast enough.

What we found most interesting:

Inherently, Steve thinks recruiting is broken because, as has been proven time and again, the traditional hiring process is not the best indicator of job performance. The best hires he’s made were those hired through internships, where the candidate is interviewing the company and the company is interviewing the candidate.

To learn more about Steve’s experience, and hear some of the innovative ideas for recruiting, hiring and building company culture, listen to the recording here.

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March 3rd, 2015|Categories: HR / Talent Management, Wisetalk|Tags: communication, company culture, disruption, hiring process, HR management, innovation, job performance, recruiting, steve cadigan, talent management, wisetalk|

On “5 Unconventional Ways To Keep Your Most Talented Employees From Leaving”

In Silicon Valley and beyond, many companies are engaged in a battle for talent. Winning is not just about hiring the very best; companies need to change the way they think about keeping their superstars. Superstars can go anywhere, they have options, so why not innovate to keep them engaged with your company?

The Fast Company article, 5 Unconventional Ways to Keep Your Most Talented Employees From Leaving, by Chris Ostoich, highlights five creative tips to retain your top people. From identifying the informal network, how things get done and integrating new employees into it, to embracing self-formed, self-managed teams to give employees ownership and leadership, the content in this article will stimulate your thinking.

What interesting, creative ideas do you have for engaging your best talent?

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March 3rd, 2015|Categories: Articles We Like, HR / Talent Management|Tags: chris ostoich, employee engagement, Fast Company, HR Leadership, HR management, Mariposa Leadership, retention, talent management|

February 19, 2015 / HR / Talent Management / Wisetalk

WiseTalk Summary on Capturing Rookie Smarts

To kick off our 2015 Talent Management theme, we invited Liz Wiseman to join Sue Bethanis as a guest on WiseTalk. Liz is a highly regarded leadership expert recognized by Thinkers50 and author of the new Wall Street Journal best seller Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work. She is the President of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California.

Sue and Liz had a rich dialogue on the research and findings in her book Rookie Smarts. One of our biggest a-has from the conversation was about the value of the inexperienced. It could be said that those who are new to something for the first time can’t bring value, but we learned that this is essentially a myth. Those who are inexperienced operate from a “hungry state.” They lack expertise so look outward to a network of experts to get ideas and leverage their knowledge a project, much more so than experts. We also learned in the tech world, where everything is changing so fast, the value of the experienced leader is in how fast he or she can learn, not what they know.

Favorite Quote:
“When I’m quick to say yes to something I don’t know how to do, I don’t need a personal development or learning plan that tells me to go work in certain ways that are against my nature, I’m just forced to do it.”

Insights:

Liz’s definition of a rookie is being new to something important and hard, regardless of age. Whether you’re 21 or 71, it’s doing something you haven’t done before. The value of a rookie doesn’t come from bringing fresh ideas. The value comes from bringing no ideas. When one comes in and has a gap in knowledge, it puts them in a predictable hungry state. They tend to point outward, ask more than talk, they lack expertise so seek it out in others. Liz mentioned an interesting data point: the inexperienced bring in 5x level of expertise on a problem then experts. The reason is because they lack expertise, so they point outward and ask for help. Rookies mobilize a network of expertise and bring it back to bear on a problem. When they ask others how they do something, they receive a diverse set of voices that they have to reconcile. The process of reconciling is when some of our best thinking is done and is why rookies get so smart in the space of relative ignorance.

In her research, Liz found that experience leads to success but rookies are surprisingly strong performers and in many cases outperform people with experience. Those cases are the knowledge industry, where work is innovative in nature and where speed matters. Why? Not because rookies are more skilled, but because they are more desperate. They have “no points on the board,” they are the new kid on the block, so work quickly to deliver quick wins and proof points to see if they’re on track. The most successful veterans and rookies operate in fundamentally different ways. When she looked at low performing cases, they failed in very similar ways.

Tips for capturing rookie smarts:

Individuals: Liz suggests individuals try not to linger too long in a job that you’re qualified for. Say yes to things you don’t know how to do. When we keep putting ourselves out there in rookie situations, we are forced to ask questions and seek help, because we don’t know what we’re doing. She also suggests refreshing your assumptions by practicing “naive” questions, such as, what are we doing this for? Who is the real customer here? What happens if we don’t do anything? A fun exercise to audit our assumptions is to ask, what is it we believe to be true about this? Our work? Our customer base? List out the assumptions and see if you have evidence to support them or if you have evidence to the contrary. Also, swapping jobs with someone for a day will build empathy for what others do, as well as leave you with fresh ideas that can help you innovate.
Feed a diet of challenge: In Liz’s research, she found, on average, it takes someone about three months to wrestle down a new challenge, and about three months after to be ready for the next one. The real practical way to keep you and/or your team rookie smart is to continue to feed yourself or your team a diet of challenge. Ask every three months, am I or is this person ready for a new challenge? Not more work, but harder work. Liz’s research also correlated satisfaction with challenge. As challenge goes up in a job, so does satisfaction and vice versa. If leaders want to drive satisfaction up on their teams, give them harder things to do.
Power combinations: At team level, one suggestion Liz offered is for leaders to be deliberate about how power combinations are created. There is value in the way that both rookies and more experienced talent work. Partnering this talent is important, such as reverse mentoring and being clear about giving veteran leaders a chance to learn from rookies on their team. Try pairing a team of rookies anchored by expert, or put an empowered rookie on a team with more experience.

What we found most interesting:
In Liz’s research, when she looked at high-performing rookies, she found the most valuable/highest performing of the rookies were experienced executives taken out of one domain and put into a different one. They know enough to know the good questions to ask, how to manage people, and have their “sea legs” but are placed in a different sea so don’t know all the answers. This is where she found executives are at their best.

To learn about Liz’s approach to the extensive research, the four rookie mindsets, and more interesting insights from Liz and Sue on mid-career professionals and the world of work today, listen to the recording here.

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February 19th, 2015|Categories: HR / Talent Management, Wisetalk|Tags: executive leadership, executive summary, liz wiseman, Mariposa Leadership, rookie smarts, sue bethanis, talent management, wise talk|

February 2, 2015 / Book Reviews

Book Review | Finding the Next Steve Jobs

Finding the Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent
By Nolan Bushnell with Gene Stone

Head: 3 ( out of 5)
Heart: 4 ( out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: 4 ( out of 5)

Companies want to cultivate creative thinking in employees, believing that without it, they won’t survive. And it’s true: creativity sparks new ideas and when it permeates the culture, leads to competitive advantage. Companies, therefore, need talent passionate about the present as much as about the future, and who don’t mind being considered different. A diverse and inclusive workforce is a recipe for innovation in today’s business environment.

The author, Nolan Bushnell, is the founder of Atari Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater. He knows a thing or two about finding and hiring creative talent. Drawing on his experience, each chapter offers insight and tips on how to do just that. While the focus of this book is on hiring creative talent, the innovative concepts could apply to recruitment of other talent. The ideas force us to rethink traditional recruiting and hiring practices, which many studies have shown to be flawed.

Some the ideas presented include:

Hiring for Passion and Integrity: Passion is a quality that is inherent; one can’t be trained to be passionate.
Ignore Credentials: Employers should stop using a college degree as a sole qualification for employment. Instead, ask unusual questions to test for curiosity and resourcefulness.
Look for Hobbies: Hobbies tell us about passions
Hire Under Your Nose: Observe people doing their jobs outside of your workplace. Talent can be found anywhere.
Comb Through Tweets: Use Twitter to identify talent. Twitter is a means of expression for many and a lot can be learned by their tweets.

Leaders and human resource professionals interested in building an innovative culture that thrives in the future will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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February 2nd, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: company culture, creative thinking, hiring, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, recruiting, steve jobs, talent management|