Tag: career development

Become the Manager Employees Want to Emulate

Scott Asai4 Comments

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Being a boss is easy- all you need is to hire someone. But becoming a manager that employees willingly follow and respect can be challenging. Fortunately, managing is a skill you can learn. 

Transformational leaders are inspiring, positive, and empowering. Some of the qualities associated with great leaders include intelligence, adaptability, and assertiveness. For some people, these traits are acquired naturally, while others have to learn. 

Use these tips to learn how to be a great leader that employees would emulate. 

Treat Employees Fairly

Treating workers fairly and equally in the workplace is necessary to ensure optimal company growth. Maltreating employees decreases employee morale, resulting in low productivity. Workers may also file a lawsuit against your organization for discrimination and unfair treatment. 

Avoid “lording” and showing prejudice towards certain employees over others. What applies to one worker should apply to others. Avoid discrimination based on age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or religion. 

When it comes to promotion, do so based on performance and qualification, not on personal relationships. Ensure job postings are open for all employees instead of verbally telling some workers about an opening. 

Provide all employees with an employee rule book or handbook to help them understand rules. It would be unfair to discipline a worker who’s unaware of the rules. Remember, if it were not for the workers, you would not have that job. 

Your managing title should inspire and not be a symbol of harassment. 

Motivate Employees

The best manager understands that motivating employees is a holy grail of any business. Giving your staff a peaceful working environment inspires them to work harder. The break room, the outdoor space, and even bathrooms can affect your worker’s motivation. 

You should, therefore, design the working space thoughtfully and curate it to inspire. The color scheme has a profound impact on the productivity and mood of the company. You can get an instant feel of a room as you enter. 

According to color psychology, blue is among the productive colors to choose from. It can be soothing or vibrant with a calming effect on a hectic working environment. Green represents nature, plant life, or fresh air. 

Green is also associated with creativity and broader thinking. A softer shade has a calming effect. Red is a vibrant, energizing color that boosts brain wave activity, heart rate, and blood flow. 

Understand the color that will bring out the best in your workers. You may also involve them when choosing the office colors.

Maintain a positive attitude to have a profound effect on employees’ motivation. Positivity can help you view problems as grand opportunities to get creative and innovative. 

Encourage Career Development

An employee with developed and advanced knowledge is a great asset to the company. That’s why you should value their career advancement. Making talented workers feel undervalued kills their morale and can affect productivity negatively. 

Know how to communicate effectively with employees. Interacting with workers on a one-to-one basis helps you stay attuned to their career expectations and aspirations. Help workers outline a potential career path to visualize their future. 

Consistent, direct, and clear communication from a manager makes the employee feel valued. Ensure you establish a formal mentoring program for workers’ professional and personal growth. For instance, you can encourage the engineering team to get more training from reliable engineering recruiters for advanced knowledge. 

More so, assign smaller side tasks that are not aligned with workers’ careers to boost their skills. Give your team members a chance to work in different departments for a day to enhance their skill set. 

Be a Role Model 

Remember, you’re a role model to your workers. In short, you’re the magnifying glass. Have the model behaviors, which can be termed the big three- integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness. 

  • Integrity- As a leader, you need to do the right thing all the time. No taking advantage of others or playing favoritism. 
  • Honesty – Being straightforward is out of the question. You must be honest with all the decisions you make in the company. Let employees know why the decision was made and how it can affect the company’s going concern. 
  • Trustworthiness– As a manager, learn to live up to your commitments, respect confidential information, and keep all promises. 

Correct Problems 

No one is perfect, so learn to correct mistakes. In the business world, you cannot progress without fixing problems. Learn to give feedback- both positive and negative- and resolve issues as soon as they happen. 

Having empathy doesn’t mean you hold back making decisions. Correct a worker who’s doing a task wrongly, but give them a chance to rectify their deeds. Even a minor error can cost your business big time. 

Ensure you gather your professionals and personal courage and speak up. Letting the problem continue is a recipe for disaster. It can ruin your company’s reputation and ruin the morale of other employees. 

Be a Good Communicator

Your subordinates are not your slaves. You only happen to be slightly elevated above them. Although being a manager gives you power, you should never be rude to employees. 

Communicate your vision and let your workers understand what you want. You can enhance your communication skills through practice. And to be a good communicator, you must practice active listening. 

Pay attention to what employees are asking or sayings. Through active listening, you’ll understand what the person wants and respond appropriately. Your eye contact, tone of voice, and hand gestures can also convey your message. 

When communicating to workers, just say enough- not too little or too much. Be short and precise. Whether you’re communicating via email, phone, or in person, be clear and direct. 

As you communicate, be friendly to encourage your employees to open up. It’s important to be polite and courteous. 

The Bottom Line 

Great leaders are inspirations to employees. And you can also become one of the leaders’ workers would love to emulate. These traits and priorities will set you apart from other leaders. 

And you’re not only limited to these qualities. As a leader, set the pace, behave ethically, and practice adaptive leadership. Communicate with positive mental health and compassion.

3 Personal Traits to Develop When Planning a Big Career Move

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There are all sorts of different careers out there you could choose to pursue, and it’s now arguably more of a possibility than it’s ever been before for the average person to make a big career move, if they feel properly motivated.

But whether you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur and want to start a tax business or something similar, or whether you are comfortable with the industry that you currently work within, but want to take a major step up and change employers at the same time, there are some useful things to keep in mind.

Perhaps first and foremost, the personal traits you nurture and develop can have a big impact on the success of any major career move.

Here’s a look at some of the personality traits you’ll want to develop.

Work to optimize your physical and mental energy levels

First things first; you need to work to optimize your physical and mental energy levels as much as possible. This is a good general rule that always applies, but it certainly applies when you are trying to make a major move in your career and need to be even more dynamic than usual.

Many ambitious people often put themselves in an unfortunate bind, by burning themselves out, working around the clock, sleeping too little, and not getting adequate nutrition. On the surface it may seem that these are all just the natural sacrifices that need to be made for success, but the reality is that living in this way will undermine your effectiveness and quality of life, across the board.

Get your routine as organized and simplified as possible

If you’re going to change industries, start a new business, or make a concerted effort to rise within the hierarchy of your current company, one of the most certain reliable facts is that you need to be highly efficient, and structured.

Part of this will naturally involve having to simplify the flow of your everyday work life, so that you can dedicate the majority of your time, energy, and attention to the priority areas which will have the greatest overall impact.

You also need to ensure that you are highly organized and on top of your various tasks and projects.

So, do an audit of the routine and structure of your everyday working life, and adjust as required.

Develop your ability to remain calm and focused under pressure

Stress, pressure, and uncertainty are all bound to develop whenever you are venturing out into the unknown, or are otherwise “putting yourself out there” in a conspicuous way.

The ability to remain calm and focused under pressure is of vital importance, as it will not only directly influence your performance, but also the impression you make on those around you. Being able to remain calm also reduces the stress that you experience, directly – meaning it will make you more resilient.

So, consider making changes to your diet, getting more sleep, taking up a regular yoga practice, and any number of other things that might make a significant difference in your ability to remain cool under pressure.

Career Development Ideas all Millennials Need to Know

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If you are looking to improve your career prospects, it is important to take action and be decisive. There are so many ways for Millennials to improve their approach to business these days, and 2020 is the perfect time to be able to achieve this. It is important to look at what you can do this year to help improve your career options, and this is something that you need to be getting on with right now. 

Make sure you focus on doing as much as possible to improve and enhance your experience, as well as making the most of the opportunities you have. Use these ideas to help you develop your career prospects this year, as well as allowing you to improve and enhance your existing career and business as well.

Become a Better Boss

Becoming a better leader is one of the most important things you can do to develop and further your career. There are a lot of factors that play a role in this, and it is something that plays a part in helping your company grow. You are going to need to do your best to find out about the best leadership skills and use them to try to improve your career. This is so important in so many ways, and it’s crucial that you get this right moving forward as a business owner.

Hire the Right People

Hiring the right people is one of the most important and essential moves you can take to improve your business. A company is only as good as the staff it employs, so it is important that you do what you can to try to get this right as much as possible. Think about the different elements that play a part in allowing you to bring the company more success and the people you hire play a major part in this. 

Increase Efficiency

Trying to improve efficiency is one of the best ways of being able to make the right career decisions moving forward. There are a lot of things you can do to achieve this, and it is important that you think about what it takes to improve your company’s efficiency moving forward, and this is so important to get right. Modern businesses should be looking to utilize things like batch printing in order to gain access to information is a faster and more efficient way, and this is something that you need to think about. 

Save Money

As Millennials know, taking care of your money has never been more important, and this applies strongly when it comes to your career. Investing in yourself is an important step in the process, but you also need to think about the best ways of being able to set money aside. Come up with ideas that are going to allow you to budget for the running of the business more effectively. 

As you might imagine, there are a lot of considerations for people looking to improve their business prospects. There have never been more career opportunities for Millennials than there are today, and it’s important to make the most of this. Make sure you do what you can to improve these ideas and try to make the most of your career right now.

How to Keep Your Employees Happy

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Every manager faces staffing issues and human resources is a hard nut to crack. You will need to make the most out of your relationship with your employees, and still get them to respect you, instead of treating you too casually. Keeping your staff happy makes financial sense, as they represent your business in front of customers. Happy employees are also more productive. Find a few tips below on how to keep them happy and engaged with your business.

Nurture Their Talent

Once you have put in all the effort to find the right employees, you will need to ensure you can keep them. You will save money on recruitment services, and create a long term relationship based on collaboration and helping each other. You should train them to empower them to do their job as efficiently as possible. Nurturing talent in the workplace can involve giving out extra responsibilities, collaboration, or coaching.

Align Your Mission with Theirs

The best way you can engage with your employees is aligning your organization’s mission with their personal aspirations. From holding regular meetings to sitting down to find out more about their career goals and struggles in their personal and professional life, there are several approaches you can use to align your mission and vision with theirs and make sure that all your employees are a good cultural fit for your brand.

Reward Them

It is also important that you create a reward and recognition system in your company, so you can make your staff feel valued and appreciated. The rewards can be monetary or simply praise, promotion, or a trip away. If you look at some of the schemes network marketing companies have set up, you will get a few great ideas to implement. You can tie the rewards to customer feedback or general performance.

Make Your Office a Second Home for Them

You can also transform your office to make it feel more like a second home or community hub than a boring place where people earn money. You can create a chillout area where your employees can collaborate, but you have to cover the basics first, such as getting the lighting and temperature right. Check out Retracom for some great insulation solutions for your office.

Offer a Career Progression Plan

If you have talented employees, you will need to give them something worth staying for. If you don’t have a career progression plan yet, it might be time to get it up and running, so your best workers can plan long term and don’t have to look elsewhere when trying to get a promotion. If you make it clear in the beginning that you will support them in their career journey, you can keep them happy long term.

Keeping our staff happy is  a challenging task. You need to make the most out of your personal strengths and get your employees involved with your projects and values. Show your appreciation and they will be more committed to your business goals, too.

Is Career Planning Possible in 2019?

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The nature of work as we know it is changing almost faster than we can master our current roles. The rapid advances in technology and its impact on both the job market and the economy have made it more difficult than ever before to confidently map out career advancement.

When you don’t know which jobs will even exist in five years, how can you strategize to get ahead? Despite the obstacles though, career planning is in no way dead. Instead, young professionals need to adopt a new method of career planning. The very components that make modern career planning possible are oftentimes those that are also invaluable within the current and future job market: flexibility and adaptability.

Don’t Rely on Experience Alone

Traditionally, experience has been the foundational piece of career planning. You put the time in on lower rungs of the career ladder, and that allows you to move up. But modern professionals would be remiss to simply rely on their level of experience. In a world where things are changing rapidly, roles have to be filled by individuals who don’t have direct experience.

Research has demonstrated that one’s propensity to career adaptability is a primary indicator of one’s likelihood of success not only professionally, but also in other areas of life. To ensure you’re doing all you can to remain competitive within you field make sure you are:

Stay informed: While you may not know exactly where you want to land down the road, you should still be making an effort to stay informed and up-to-date within your industry. Read publications, watch other companies, and ultimately, don’t lose the handle you have on the direction and priorities of your industry.

Unlearn the old: A recent survey found that the primary concern of employees is that their job will be obsolete in the near future, and half believe their specific skill set will be unneeded. The key to dealing with that reality is to be willing to let go of the former methods and processes that got you where you are when they become antiquated.

Refine your skills: The career planning master is also a skill refining master. Knowing what’s coming next for your industry and unlearning the old is only the beginning. There’s value in pairing experience in your field with insight and a clear understanding of where the future of your industry as a whole lies.

Remember Your Connections

In many fields, networking is a fundamental part of getting the job you want. In a pile of cover letters, having a connection can be the only thing that gives you a competitive edge. As you consider your networking connections there’s value in seeing two, distinct sets of relationships.

The Old: The pre-existing connections you have are likely to be swept up in the changes of the marketplace right along with you. In that case, there’s value in continuing to build the relationship, even if you shift directions.

As the president of the New York Stock Exchange told Fast Company, “It doesn’t matter if someone is inside or outside of your industry, if they are interesting and influential, be willing to commit time and/or resources to meet, connect or help that individual.”

The New: What is equally important in the rapidly evolving professional climate of today is that the connections you have are also evolving so that they continue to be a helpful component of your career planning. If your connections aren’t refreshed they will fail to accurately align with your interests and priorities.

Thus, there’s value in networking in the area you’re hoping to head. When doing so the business professionals at Rutgers University recommend, “If you don’t have experience in an area, expertise with a particular type of software or other qualification, don’t try to make it sound like you do. Being truthful about, both your weaknesses and strengths will prove that you are willing, to be honest, and humble and can communicate a host of attractive characteristics to a potential employer, partner, or contact.”

Constantly Reassess

As we noted at the beginning, a key to success as we move into the future will be fostering adaptability and flexibility and leveraging them to move into new positions. There’s value in proactively making sure that your skills, experience, and connections all work together to give you the best possible chances of achieving the career goals you plan.

Additionally, it’s crucial to constantly reassess your progress and use that information to steer your career in the right direction. Are you doing what you can with the understanding that the things that have gotten you where you are, are unlikely to get you where you want to go?

If there are areas of your career development that are growing stale or lack any recent changes, brainstorm on ways to foster growth there.

Lastly, in the interest of a reassessing your competitiveness in relation to your plans, actually set goals. Make plans for the next quarter, year, and three years and reassess your progress and attitude towards those goals on a consistent basis.

Certainly, the day when seniority meant you were essentially a shoo-in for the corner office is gone. Today rapid changes in technology are impacting virtually every industry under the sun, and the jobs that make up those industries are evolving at rapid rates.

However, the key for young professionals seeking success is not to allow themselves to be drug along by the rapid advances, but to proactively participate in them. The new age of job creation and retention has provided new opportunities. Because there’s often a need for people who don’t have direct experience, the individuals who land the jobs are often those who worked hard on what may have traditionally seemed like secondary things like relationships, soft skills, and flexibility. The good news is that those things are there for the taking.

Keeping Your Millennial Workforce Happy

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Guest post by Faith MacAnas

hi-five

One of the key features of the millennial generation is their focus on job satisfaction and life fulfillment is a lot higher than their predecessors. Happier employees have a better and higher quality output; this has made the necessity for employee satisfaction strategies more important than ever. These following examples are just a few areas where adjustments can be made that will motivate your millennial workforce and optimize your business.

• Flexibility

For the first time, young workers are prioritizing their work-life balance over their paycheck. They want to be able to travel, balance their family and social life or pick up side projects. While full remote working conditions are inadvisable, providing some level of flexibility is a great tactic. This offer could come in the form of career breaks or simply the opportunity to work alternate hours from home on occasion.

student-with-mentor-on-computer

•    Crisp Technology

Millennials have grown up at the forefront of technology; they have always had the latest editions and expect their technology to be in good working order. Companies that can’t afford the latest pieces now allow staff members to work on their own devices. While this can save money, it does also require ensuring the security of confidential company data on machines that will leave the office. You can guarantee protection by investing in a company-wide Virtual Private Network program for all staff members to use or by creating an internal system where work can be shared exclusively.

•    Career Paths

Today’s young workers live in a shaky economy, and they know it. While they worry about the promise of work, they also will quickly jump ship if their jobs don’t appear to provide them with the opportunity to progress. Give your millennial workforce a voice; allow them input into innovation ideas and company policy. Ensure feedback channels are open, and offer opportunities for training courses or department transfers. Show that you are willing to invest in them, and they are much more likely to invest in you and your company.

woman-holding-money

•    Cash Incentives

If all else fails, then there’s one language everyone speaks: cash. Nothing gets motivation going like the promise of a bonus, and there are none who don’t relish the opportunity to make more money. However, there are both pros and cons to this strategy. If, for example, you set a goal for workers to achieve to secure the bonus, and they do not succeed, it’s possible to disenfranchise them further. It’s wise to set goals that are both realistic and progressive.

Millenials are some of most forward-thinking workers around today. They naturally possess crucial knowledge and hold to the key to the future. If you haven’t already implemented strategies to ensure you keep them motivated and dedicated, then now is the time to start doing so!

About the Author: Faith is a blogger and marketing and strategy expert. She specializes in internet security. She enjoys sharing what she’s learned with other business owners online.

The #1 Reason You’ll Leave Your Job

Scott Asai2 Comments

career_lightbulb

The #1 reason why you’ll leave your (current) job is: lack of career development a.k.a. growth opportunities.

From first glance there’s an assumption that includes a promotion, but not necessarily. The need for career advice is on the rise because most people don’t know what they want to do and/or they change their mind often. Blame social media or a plethora of options, but regardless its reality. Let’s start from the company’s perspective:

Why should we invest professional growth resources into employees who might end up leaving?

First response: efficiency. Back in 2008-09 when the recession started, the first thing to go was “luxury” items such as training. Jobs were being cut drastically and our economy went in the tank. The only job that was safe was: sales (gotta make money to stay in business). If you want people to perform better, they have to be trained. Some companies take the shortcut by hiring “experienced” workers then throw them in the fire. That’s one approach, but even if they know the skill set to accomplish the work, the culture is still a mystery. The reason most leaders micromanage is because they never train people under them properly. Part of career development is training on the job (feedback included) and figuring out if the role is a good fit. If it’s not, here’s the perfect segue into the next point.

Second response: saves time/money. If you’re concerned about pouring into an employee, then having them leave, don’t. If you had someone working for you and they didn’t want to be there wouldn’t you want to know earlier than later? Hopefully this gets caught during the interview process, but if it doesn’t training only reveals it. If you’re working for a company who invests in your professional growth, wouldn’t you be more motivated to work harder for them? This may sound too altruistic, but most people’s performance starts to decline (outside of personal issues) when they feel undervalued/under-appreciated. Practically speaking, helping people navigate their career path will provide clarity for the individual as well as the company.

In simplistic terms, here’s the equation: if my company takes care of me, I will take care of their customers.

Great customer service = brand loyalty = higher profits.

The most direct way to take care of people is invest in their career growth.

This is not a futuristic concept. This is current.

Retention is tied directly to career development, or lack thereof.

Scott Asai is a speaker/coach that has been developing leaders for 20+ years – athletes, companies and individuals. His focus is helping people develop leadership skills to advance in their careers. Scott tends to attract a large audience of Millennials and Introverts to his programs/events. His professional background consists of: B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Organizational Leadership, Certified Professional Coach and Certified Strengths Coach.