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| Volume 9, Issue 1 |
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In This Issue:
 It can be done: A raise in a recession
Making the most of a negative review
How to spot résumé fraud
 Laugh a little, innovate a lot
The accidental career
 Reinventing yourself: The ultimate balancing act
How to manage with fewer people
 Six tools to help tackle overflowing email
The top jobs for 2009
 Why new managers encounter trouble
How to turn ON Generation Y
Mentoring your way out of recession
 Top 10 insider secrets for motivating a multi-generational team
Don't be a blamestormer
Speak persuasively with Aristotle's appeals
Malbec beckons -- Heed the call
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It can be done: A raise in a recession
With raise season under way, many employees may be stumped about whether they should ask for a salary increase this year.
During a recessionary period, people often find themselves working harder but wonder whether it's realistic to expect to be compensated for bearing the extra burden when many companies are facing losses. The answer is, probably, but with a catch. It isn't unrealistic to expect a salary increase, but the general consensus among management
experts is that if you want a raise, you're going to have to justify it more than in previous years. And, you'll need to pare down your expectations, as companies -- especially financial firms and others directly affected by the downturn -- have less money to dole out. "In general, we're going to see things from a flat compensation
standpoint, but certain segments may find the ability to reward their top performers," says David Smith, managing director of talent and organization performance for Accenture, a global management-consulting company. Still, getting more than a token
raise in 2009 is possible, if you take a few important steps. First off, most raises will be reserved for...
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Making the most of a negative review
News of the worst unemployment numbers in 16 years is enough to create plenty of job jitters for most workers. But, with performance-review season in full swing, some people are bound to hear negative comments.
In a tough economy, a bad review can seem insurmountable. But you can recover if you are "willing to self-assess and be open-minded to what is being told" to you, says Barbara Mohl, president of HRConnected, a human resources consulting firm. Here's how to bounce back:...
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How to spot résumé fraud
How can managers catch résumé fraud? As more people look for jobs – and become increasingly desperate -- hiring managers need to be on guard, experts say.
"Survey after survey shows that people lie and mislead on their resumes," says Lee Pomeroy, president of Executive References LLC, a background-checking firm in New York. During the downturn after the Internet bubble burst, "as people were unemployed more, the accuracy of the data fell off," he says. Managers should review résumés with
a skeptical eye, verify credentials, and ask the candidate specific, detailed questions about claims...
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Laugh a little, innovate a lot
When looking for a big idea, you don't necessarily want to hear "Eureka!" but laughter.
How much fun are you having at work these days? Let's face it. Having fun isn't as easy as it used to be, even for the most courageous, creative, and curious. Today just reading the headlines can turn an optimist into a fearful pessimist. The stories all seem to make you worry the very real possibility of losing your job. Here is a
critical insight for you. It is impossible for teams to innovate effectively while they are afraid. Impossible. Nothing kills great ideas like fear. The good news is that fun is the antidote to fear. So if you are an innovation leader in a company that has become fearful, your people are on the road to failure unless you can change your
culture. Cue the music, it's time to infuse some fun into the workplace. The place to start? With you...
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The accidental career
Lots of people just stumble into a line of work. But the folks who get hired fast today are the ones who chose their particular field.
The newest message in my in-box is a lot like the one I read 10 minutes ago—and plenty of others I have read recently. "Dear Liz," it begins, "I'm 48 years old and working as a director of [X] in a midsize company. I don't love the work, but I fell into my function through a series of events in my 20s, and as it turns out I'm good at it. I
earn six figures and have been promoted twice. Now, my job is being eliminated, and I need to figure out a career direction, fast, with the complication that apart from what I've been doing, I don't really know which sorts of opportunities to consider. Thanks. —Gary." Gary, like many of the other people writing me, has had what I call an
accidental career. They would all be the first to tell you they never really planned to end up in purchasing, or corporate finance, or HR or marketing. It just sort of happened. That's nothing to be ashamed of, of course. The education available to young people about possible career paths in Gary's day (and mine) was woefully scanty. It's
no wonder that many of us tried one thing and then another, found a niche that was O.K .and paid the bills—and we stayed put. Having Direction Gives You the Edge The problem is, the job market has changed. The folks who get hired most quickly today and for the best jobs are the ones who...
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Reinventing yourself: The ultimate balancing act
Meet successful people who have relaunched their lives because of a challenging change in fortune.
With hundreds of thousands being laid off across America, people in all walks of life are struggling to figure out what to do next. How will they pay the mortgage and feed the family? How will they get the personal fulfillment that comes only from being gainfully employed? At such a tough time, it can only help to look at the lives and
choices of people who have been there before, who have reinvented themselves in the face of personal life crises. Here are three of them. They discuss their work on Forbes.com video...
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How to manage with fewer people
You've laid off half your staff, but there's still just as much work to get done. How do you handle it all with such a shrunken workforce?
The office can be a pretty bleak place in the aftermath of layoffs. Survivors feel guilty because they got to keep their jobs while friends they worked with for years lost theirs. There's a ton of extra work and no pay increases for the smaller staff that remains. Just coping can be hard. What they need is a great manager. To be one,
first of all make sure you don't ignore the emotions your staff is going through. They need to mourn the loss of their co-workers. Give them that time--"but not too much time," says Manny Avramidis, senior vice president for global human resources at the American Management Association. Help them move on by...
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Six tools to help tackle overflowing email
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Cheers. Literally, cheers. When I speak at companies like Cisco and implore employees to find email alternatives, they erupt.
That's how much corporate America hates email. I'm not surprised. We're drowning in it. The average worker receives 200 a day, according to the research firm Basex. What's worse, there's a lot of important stuff trapped in those messages, but if you're armed only with Microsoft Outlook, which treats all messages the same, good
luck plucking out the pearls. Not all email is created equal. Newsletters, status updates, and so forth aren't nearly as relevant to us as a personal note from the boss. What we need are tools that add context and make the inbox less a dumping ground than a jumping-off point for managing our most important projects and relationships.
Thankfully, there are a raft of very exciting tools -- many of them free -- that can help you prioritize email and even avoid it altogether. (Yes, really.) [Here they are]...
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The top jobs for 2009
In 2009, the job market will be full of contrasts: some industries will be eviscerated while others face shortages of workers.
The good news is that despite the recession, there are still real jobs to be had. The bad news is that you may have to change fields to find one. The trick to job hunting in 2009 will be to figure out how your skill-set can translate across industries, says Elaine Varelas, a managing partner at Boston-based outplacement firm Keystone
Partners, so that you're not confined to searching one sector of the economy. "People are frustrated because it's taking them a while to assess the job market," she says. "They'll have to figure out other things they can Đ and want Đ to do." Successful job-seekers will be the ones who can figure out how to take skills learned in one kind
of job and translate them into assets in others. Here are the top eight areas where work can be found in 2009:...
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Why new managers encounter trouble
Before placing someone in the role of a supervisor or manager, a few questions must be answered. Is the person you're promoting ready for the position? If not, are you willing to do what it takes to equip that person for the job? If you answer "no" to both questions, you're asking for trouble.
Managers wear many hats. First, they have the difficult job of being a translator. When those at the leadership level are flying at 40,000 feet, they've got the big picture in front of them. They're looking around at the forests and looking out at the horizon. After deciding the best direction for the company, they set goals and
communicate those goals to the managers. Managers must not only be able to interpret those goals accurately, they must be able to translate them and dice them up into specific action-items for the front line employees working among the trees in the forest. That's not always an easy job. Many leaders forget what it's like to work
among the trees. And, most front-line employees have not been up in the leadership airplane, looking around at 40,000 feet. For that matter, most managers don't spend much time flying at that level, either. Still, managers must correctly interpret the
vision told them by those in leadership, translate it into manageable pieces, and delegate tasks accordingly. To make their job even more challenging many managers remain responsible for large amounts of non-managerial work. So here's a suggestion:...
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How to turn ON Generation Y
Employers often lament that Millennials (the generation born in the 1980s) don't work hard, lack commitment, are devoid of loyalty, are pampered, indulged and require excessive praise.
They're mistaken. The disconnect arises because substantially different variables are at play in both attracting and retaining our Millennials – and so employers need to change their mindsets. Corporations that rigidly adhere to "old" ways of attracting and retaining talent will experience not only a shortage but will quickly lose the
ability to attract the best and brightest minds. First let's start off with the old boss / subordinate dynamic. True enough, respect, accountability, responsiveness and integrity all remain key levers. The critical difference is that these values are not
only expectations of those in positions of power and authority. Generation Ys have a very different mind set regarding employee engagement, retention and career pathing...
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Mentoring your way out of recession
In the current climate it was almost bound to happen. Hard-pressed employers are taking an axe to their corporate training budgets, with spending declining at its fastest rate for a decade.
But, while this means there will be less formal training and development of workers being carried out, it can also be seen as a valuable opportunity for managers to get more hands-on in the mentoring and coaching of their staff. Research by California consultancy Bersin & Associates has found that over the past year U.S firms have been
forced to cut back sharply on their spending on training spending. But this is not so say that training has disappeared completely. In its place there is now more coaching, informal and collaborative learning and increased reliance on using external trainers rather than maintaining expensive in-house training departments...
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On Top of real recognition: Top 10 insider secrets for motivating a multi-generational team
It's not easy motivating and recognizing the age diversity of employees in today's workforce.
From entry-level Gen-Ys to seniors, the four generations of co-workers can be challenging to motivate, especially if you only have one uniform program. So, how can you keep each generation engaged and motivated? Learn from these insider secrets and stay ahead in retaining your multi-generational team...
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Don't be a blamestormer
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What organizations need now more than ever are not people who are looking to place blame but leaders who are prepared to step forward and take some responsibility for how we got here, what needs to be done about it, what the future looks like, and how we are going to execute a plan to get there.
When times get tough, when people get stressed, and when they are faced with a crisis, it is interesting to observe how many people seem to suddenly become skilled in the art of blamestorming. Loosely defined blamestorming is a meeting of like-minded people who enjoy sitting around in meetings, deciding who or what they are going to blame for
their current plight. How many good "blamestorming" sessions have you had in your own organization recently? You probably know some people who are highly skilled at blamestorming. Some people are so proficient they do not even need an organized meeting to practice their art. They do it at the water cooler, in the elevator, on the
phone, and some are even skilled enough to record it on paper or send out by e-mail. In our current economic climate, it is not difficult to become a skilled blamestormer as there are so many easy targets to pick from: Wall Street; the government;
overspending home owners; greedy CEOs; oil prices; and the like. Unfortunately, though, blamestormers tend to lead their organizations on a vicious downward spiral of :...
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Speak persuasively with Aristotle's appeals
Three Tips from the Wisdom of the Ancients.
In presenting to any audience, whether it's a client group or your own executives, your goal is to persuade them.
Persuasion, defined as the process of influencing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, can facilitate anything from a slight shift to a major change in outlook and actions. The Greek philosopher Aristotle put forth the notion that there are three available means of persuasion: ethos, logos and pathos. As valid today as they were over two
thousand years ago, these methods, known as "Aristotle's Appeals," can make your presentations more compelling to your audience. [Aristotle's three keys are]...
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Malbec beckons -- Heed the call
Argentina's signature red deserves its wild popularity, offering zing and boldness for modest prices.
We wouldn't usually revisit a type of wine just 18 months after a broad blind tasting. But we were at a fancy holiday party recently, the kind where only the trendiest wines are served, and the red was Malbec from Argentina. When we mentioned the wine to another guest, he said, "Oh, my wife discovered Malbec last summer and now she won't drink anything else." Then we were on a radio show and the producer said, "Malbecs have been my husband's favorite for a year or so." In October we did a blind tasting for a law firm in Texas and the organizer suggested Malbec. The drumbeat of Malbec enthusiasm just kept coming:...
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