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Volume 5, Issue 8      In This Issue:   Steve Jobs calls family of teenager killed for iPod   Personal courage and conflict resolution at work   How to build powerfully successful work teams   Read, learn, and think your way to success   You can make their day: Ten tips for motivation and morale   Training: Your investment in people development and retention   Job offer letter   Stewart's home confinement extended   The 100 most powerful women   How much exercise is enough for women?   To grill or not to grill?   The 5 best islands to live on   Anatomy of a dilemma   Networking: What not to do   Job interviews: At ease, soldier   Mugged by a meddling manager   The skill that separates   HotJobs move seen as threat to paid listings   Faced with high turnover, retailers boot up e-learning for quick training   Fool vs. Jerk: Whom would you hire?      Retaining skilled staff is top of executive agenda      Executive discipline      Spendthrift nation Steve Jobs calls family of teenager killed for iPod As Errol Rose made preparations on Monday to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was killed last week in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod, he received a telephone call from a stranger. The man spoke in tones that the grieving father said had momentarily quieted his anguish. The stranger, Rose soon learned, was Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, the company that makes the iPod. "I didn't know who he was," Rose said yesterday. "He called me on my cellphone, at 4 maybe. Or maybe it was 5." Rose said he had stopped noticing the passage of time since his son was killed... Read the article.  Back to top Personal courage and conflict resolution at work Practicing personal courage is necessary if you want to really resolve conflicts at work. It is much easier and much safer to ignore the necessary conflict and play ostrich. Unfortunately, unresolved conflict tends to escalate. It never really disappears because it simmers just below the surface. Think of water that is coming to a boil. It burbles up in the pot sporadically and then finally reaches the boiling temperature. At that point, a full blown rolling, constant boiling is seen on the surface of the water. Conflict behaves similarly. The water may seem calm, but every once in awhile, usually at the worst possible times, the conflict burbles up to the surface once again... Read the article.  Back to top How to build powerfully successful teams How to create effective teams, team work, and team building is a challenge in every organization. Work environments tend to foster rugged individuals working on personal goals for personal gain. Typically, reward, recognition, and pay systems single out the achievements of individual employees. Appraisal, performance management, and goal setting systems most frequently focus on individual goals and progress. Promotions and additional authority are also bestowed on individuals. Given these factors, is it any wonder that teams and team work are an uphill battle in most organizations? Here is the information you need to develop team work and effective work teams in your organization... Read the article.  Back to top Read, learn, and think your way to success Bill Gates doesn't have to know everything. He recognizes that he has employees who do. But, he appreciates the importance of taking the time to learn what they know. He takes time to listen to their ideas. He takes time to think, to ponder the direction of Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal highlighted Gates' bi-annual Think Weeks in a recent article In Secret Hideaway, Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft's Future by Robert A. Guth. (You must be a subscriber.) The concept took hold of my imagination. Essentially, for many years, Gates has gone into seclusion for two, one-week "Think Weeks" a year. Family, friends and Microsoft employees are banned from his retreat. Alone, he reads manuscripts from Microsoft associates on topics that range from the future of technology to speculation about the next "hot" products. Some papers suggest new products or different versions of current products. Any employee can write up ideas and send them for Gates' perusal. He says he may read 100 papers during a Think Week and his record is 112 papers. Not just reading, Gates takes the time to... Read the article.  Back to top You can make their day: Ten tips for motivation and morale You can make their day or break their day. Your choice. No kidding. Other than the decisions individuals make on their own about liking their work, you are the most powerful factor in employee motivation and morale. By your words, your body language, and the expression on your face, as a manager, supervisor, or leader, you telegraph your opinion of their value to the people you employee. Feeling valued by their manager in the workplace is key to high employee motivation and morale. Feeling valued ranks right up there for most people with liking the work, competitive pay, opportunities for training and advancement, and feeling "in" on the latest news. Building high employee motivation and morale is both challenging and yet supremely simple... Read the article.  Back to top Training: Your investment in people development and retention The right employee training, development and education at the right time provides big payoffs for the employer in increased productivity, knowledge, loyalty, and contribution. In The Human Capital Edge: 21 People Management Practices Your Company Must Implement (or Avoid) to Maximize Shareholder Value, Bruce N. Pfau and Ira T. Kay state that "U.S. corporations are spending unprecedented amounts - anywhere from $30 billion to $300 billion, depending on which study is cited - annually on internal training programs. The most common figure cited is about $60 billion." With this amount of money invested in training, organizations need to make certain their investments are wise... Read the article.  Back to top Job offer letter The job offer letter is provided to the candidate you have selected for the position. Most frequently, the candidate and the organization have verbally negotiated the conditions of hire and the job offer letter confirms the verbal agreements. Generally, the candidate has indicated that he or she will accept the position, under the stated terms, prior to the drafting of the letter. Do regard the position acceptance as tentative, however, until the offer letter and the confidentiality agreement, if you use one, are signed... Read the article.  Back to top Stewart's home confinement extended Celebrity homemaker Martha Stewart talks to reporters outside her home in Katonah, N.Y., on March 4. Reports suggest celebrity homemaker violated terms of house arrest. Martha Stewart will have to remain a domestic diva a little while longer. The home-and-hearth marketing queen, who was due to complete five months of house arrest Aug. 10, has agreed to extend the sentence by three extra weeks, her lawyer, Walter E. Dellinger, said in a brief statement Wednesday... Read the article.  Back to top The 100 most powerful women Our second ranking of the World's Most Powerful Women illustrates how fleeting power is. Megawati Sukarnoputri, the former president of Indonesia who lost her reelection bid, dropped off the rankings. Gone, too, is Carleton (Carly) Fiorina, booted from Hewlett-Packard. The scandal-plagued president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo (No. 4), could soon be off as well. Among the newcomers: Yulia Tymoshenko (No. 3), prime minister of Ukraine. Power requires influence in the global marketplace, as well as economic and cultural clout. To rank these leaders, each of the women received a "power scorecard" based on her résumé, the size of the economic sphere in which she wields power and global media exposure... Read the article.  Back to top How much exercise is enough for women? For the first time, researchers have established how much exercise women should be able to do for their age and found that their capacity is slightly lower than men's. It also declines a bit faster than men's as they grow older. Women whose exercise capacity was less than 85 percent of what it should be were twice as likely to die within eight years, the researchers found... Read the article.  Back to top To grill or not to grill? The cancer risk from grilling is real, but it changes dramatically with what you grill and how you do it. Many Americans still do not know that grilling can be unhealthy. The cancer risk from grilling, however, is real, but it changes dramatically with what you grill and how you do it. The problem with traditional grilling comes from the combination of meat with intense heat. Whether you are using red meat, poultry or seafood, substances in the muscle proteins of these foods react under high heat to form carcinogenic compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs). HCAs can damage the DNA of our genes, beginning the process of cancer development... Read the article.  Back to top The 5 best islands to live on The sun sets near Playa Norte on Isla Mujeres, an island off the Yucatan Coast, Mexico. On the island, it's possible to enjoy a luxurious remoteness and local flavor, at a relatively low cost. Ditch the watch. Forward your mail. And don't worry about the bank account. If moving to an exotic island has been one of those things that you have (big sigh) always dreamed about, here's some good news: It's not that hard to do. On these five islands, you can still buy a bit of paradise for less than it might cost for a summer rental in the Hamptons. Internet access is (fairly) reliable, the natives are friendly and the governments are stable. If you do get island fever, there are cities less than 60 minutes away. So what are you waiting for? The hardest thing might be choosing which island to call home... Read the article.  Back to top Anatomy of a dilemma My friend Bill got a job offer not long ago and called me for advice. I was glad to hear from him -- happy to have a ringside view and help him negotiate. I'm always surprised by the odd behaviors that companies display in these situations, and Bill's case proved no exception. The offer was excellent -- a better job and a nice jump in pay. Only one thing creeped him out. He asked the human resources person to put the offer in writing, and she said, "Not until we have a verbal acceptance." O.K, now that's just weird. Think about it. To get the written offer, all Bill has to do is say: "Okay, I accept." So the lady is encouraging job seekers to give spoken acceptance of jobs they're not totally sold on, simply in order to receive the offer in writing. Problem is, a job offer is complicated. It has several moving parts -- salary, title, reporting relationship, benefits -- that a candidate must consider. You're saying, "I don't get to look at the thing in my hand until I say yes? What is the employer afraid of, wasting paper?"... Read the article.  Back to top Networking: What not to do To cultivate job-search contacts, follow a few simple rules. The most important: Mind your manners-or else. A decade ago, "networking" meant calling former workmates to tell them you were job-hunting. Today networking ranges from routinely making new contacts to online community building to managing transcontinental multiplayer relationships. Business networking has advanced light-years in the last decade, in other words. But in my experience, not everyone has caught up. Some networking amateurs risk damaging their relationships, and their own reputations, thanks to off putting behaviors that range from the slightly annoying to the truly heinous. So for those of you who wish to make contacts without making enemies, here are some advanced networking tips... Read the article.  Back to top Job interviews: At ease, soldier I don't get some HR people. They love to talk about interviewing techniques that make job candidates sweat -- to see how they'll react under pressure. "Stress interviewing," it's called. This can take several forms, such as asking job-seekers a string of demanding questions without a pause or otherwise trying to create anxiety to make them stumble. Aside from the fact that these are mean tactics, they strike me as lousy ways to gain insight into a person's true nature or thought processes. I go the opposite direction... Read the article.  Back to top Mugged by a meddling manager There's no stopping the boss who swoops in to scrap your carefully crafted plans. A partial solution: Better lines of communication. A friend writes to me: "Dear Liz, my boss loves to second-guess my decisions. When I'm ready to choose a supplier for a project after much consideration, he has a favorite vendor who gets the work. When I'm about to move forward on a major decision, he jumps in and changes direction. "It's too much. I feel like I can't make a move without being stomped on and undercut by the tyrant. What do you suggest?" I'm reading my friend's message, and I'm urging every part of my being to show some empathy. I try to prime the pump: You poor thing. That sounds miserable. How can you stand it? Your boss is awful. But it isn't working. Too many of my brain cells recall this situation from the other side of the desk -- from the perspective of the underinformed boss who is brought up to speed 10 minutes before some big trigger is about to be pulled. But I don't want to be cruel to the writer. So I'll address the issue in this column, where I can explain my lack of sympathy in some (hopefully, helpful) detail... Read the article.  Back to top The skill that separates Two highly accomplished lawyers are sitting at the bar at Sparks Steakhouse in New York. One is my friend's lawyer, Tom, the other is Tom's law partner, Kevin. They're having a leisurely drink, waiting for their table to open up. Sparks is a landmark steakhouse where a handful of New York's rich, powerful, and glamorous are in attendance most nights. On this night, the A-list name is superstar attorney David Boies, who argued the U.S. government's case against Microsoft. He makes a beeline to the bar to say hello to Kevin, whom he knows from previous cases. Boies joins Tom and Kevin for a drink. A few minutes later, Kevin gets up to make a phone call outside. Boies remains at the bar, talking to Tom for 30 minutes. "I'd never met Boies before," Tom said. "He didn't have to hang around the bar talking to me. And I have to tell you, I wasn't bowled over by his intelligence, or his piercing questions, or his anecdotes. What impressed me was that when he asked a question, he waited for the answer. He not only listened, he made me feel like I was the only person in the room"... Read the article.  Back to top HotJobs move seen as threat to paid listings Just before the July Fourth weekend, and without fanfare, Yahoo HotJobs started to include in its job search results listings from hundreds of corporate sites and regional job boards--without charging employers. With that change, Yahoo HotJobs cast doubt on the future of paid job listings and breathed life into corporate job sites. It's a smart move says Peter Weddle, an HR and recruitment consultant. "Employment sites are going to have to expand what they offer, and Yahoo is doing that. I give them credit," he says. What Yahoo HotJobs instituted is called "vertical search," meaning that a job seeker is offered all the positions that match the search criteria, regardless of where the job is posted. Analysts say that while it is premature to write the obituary for paid listings, it wouldn't be wrong to say that dramatic changes are in store for the commercial job boards... Read the article.  Back to top Faced with high turnover, retailers boot up e-learning for quick training Turnover is an issue that all managers have to deal with, but in the retail industry it's an epidemic. Given that the jobs are often low-paying part-time positions that are usually filled by high school or college students, retention is almost impossible in certain retail businesses. This makes training a particularly tough challenge, says Mike Donahue, who knows the issue all too well. Donahue was once a manager of a Nike store. Every few months one employee would leave and another would start, and Donahue would have to start the training process all over again. "The intellectual capital resides only with senior people at the store, but eventually those people leave too," he says. Seven years after his stint as a manager, Donahue, who is in charge of e-learning at Nike, was asked to design an online training program that the company could offer to employees in its own stores as well as at other retailers that sell its products. He knew that he and his team would have to design a program that would convey a lot of information quickly, but also would be easy to digest... Read the article.  Back to top Fool vs. Jerk: Whom Would You Hire? You are the hiring manager with a nasty decision to make. Would you hire the lovable fool or the competent jerk? This Harvard Business Review excerpt suggests that the decision is complicated. By HBS professor Tiziana Casciaro and Duke University's Miguel Sousa Lobo. Everybody wants to work with the lovable star, and nobody wants to work with the incompetent jerk... When given the choice of whom to work with, people will pick one person over another for any number of reasons: the prestige of being associated with a star performer, for example, or the hope that spending time with a strategically placed superior will further their careers. But in most cases, people choose their work partners according to two criteria. One is competence at the job (Does Joe know what he's doing?). The other is likability (Is Joe enjoyable to work with?). Obviously, both things matter. Less obvious is how much they matter-and exactly how they matter. To gain some insight into these questions we... Read the article.  Back to top Retaining skilled staff is top of executive agenda Attracting and retaining skilled staff ranks highest on executive agendas for 2005, according to a global study by consultancy Accenture. The study, conducted annually, comprised interviews with 425 senior executives at leading organisations in North America, Europe and Asia, to identify and prioritise the issues of greatest concern to senior management, understand how their priorities shift over time, and identify key forces behind the issues. Workforce improvement issues dominated the top priorities, accounting for four in 10 of the most commonly cited concerns. The majority of respondents... Read the article.  Back to top Executive discipline It's your worst nightmare. You've become a trusted member of the CEO's inner circle, his close confidant, a true business partner. Then one afternoon, his assistant pulls you aside. Tearfully, she outlines a series of encounters with the boss that made her feel uncomfortable and might qualify as sexual harassment, if true. She's confused, upset and uncertain what to do. You feel exactly the same way. Because now you have the unenviable task of confronting your boss about these allegations in a manner that is legally defensible, practical and yet politically savvy... Read the article.  Back to top Spendthrift nation Americans have stopped saving for a rainy day. Instead, they are living paycheck to paycheck, depending on credit cards to get them through emergencies, and hoping that the rising value of their homes will give them a retirement nest egg. This personal economic chasm is showing up in the national savings rate, which has been declining for years. Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported that the personal savings rate fell to zero in June, the lowest since a one-month buying binge in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive HRWatchsm? 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