Julie Winkle Giulioni on employee development

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When you were a kid, did you ever complete a paint-by-number set? Whether it was recreating a picture of your favorite animal, or bringing to life a colorful race car, it was fun to see the image come to fruition.

But it was also limiting. What if you wanted the cat’s ears to be purple, not gray? And what if, while painting that race car, you decided what you really wanted was to paint a spaceship?

Although paint-by-number sets offer the advantage of structure, consistency, and immediacy, they are inherently limiting. And in that way, they are like the complex and colorful career development systems that many organizations create. In an attempt to systematize and create a structure for time-starved leaders, there is an inevitable reduction in creativity.   

As a result, many managers and employees are “painting by numbers” when it comes to career development. They do what’s expected of them. They complete the forms. They meet deadlines. And they continue to complain about the lack of authentic career development in their organizations.

Responsive organizations, dedicated to the engagement and well-being of employees, are struggling to address these issues and meet the needs and expectations of today’s workforce. But the inconvenient truth is that today’s environment is very different from the environment that established these expectations decades ago

A CHANGING DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT

  • Baby boomers are living longer and occupying key roles longer than expected, stemming the historical tide of upward opportunities.
  • Flatter, leaner structures translate to fewer leadership roles—the roles that individual contributors have typically looked to for growth and development.
  • More fluid structures mean that former career paths are less stable and predictable. The chess game many career strategists successfully won in the past now frequently ends with moves toward roles that are no longer necessary. Or there’s suddenly a new and unexpected space on the chessboard—a new role for which they aren’t prepared.

Despite these fundamental shifts in the workplace, some organizations are trying to make career development—as it’s been understood in the past—somehow work. But many engage in unproductive and organizationally unnatural acts like:

PAPER PROMOTIONS

This “creative” approach to meeting employee expectations for growth involves gaming the org chart. A sizable service organization in Asia recently promoted several individuals by changing the title of “senior manager” to “assistant director.” Same customers. Same work. Same pay.

SILLY SUPERVISORY SCHEMES

Given the very few supervisory roles for the many individuals with an appetite for them, a technology firm in India has begun promoting tenured staff to supervisors. Most of them have one direct report (or an open headcount), creating a 1:1 individual contributor to supervisor ratio.

DEVELOPMENT DECOYS

Other organizations are getting on the “promotions aren’t the only way to grow” bandwagon. They recognize that additional projects, stretch assignments and similar development opportunities in the role are the ideal alternative to promotions and moves that aren’t available anyway. The problem is that too frequently this takes the form of dumping great volumes of work on already overburdened employees. As a result, savvy employees — the ones you want to engage, grow and retain — have developed a well-honed “nose” for extra work masquerading as “development opportunities.”

While well-intentioned, these efforts are not going to move the needle when it comes to career development. And here’s why. Most organizations responded years ago to wildly new workplace conditions with significant structural and organizational changes. The new employer/employee contract (or some may argue the lack of a contract altogether) has changed every dimension of human resource management from recruiting through compensation—except career development.

Somehow, employees and leaders alike have held onto the expectation—and hope—that career development could continue unscathed. But it’s simply not possible. As challenging as it was to establish the new workplace reality that included the loss of the lifetime employment guarantee, it’s time to establish a new reality around career development.

Does that mean that organizations must abandon career development? Absolutely not! But they must redefine what it means and how it really works today. And that requires a dose of creative career development planning. It’s not enough to provide paint-by-number templates; organizations must also give their leaders the latitude to formulate personalized plans unique to their teams’ needs. It’s time to allow access to the entire color palette for career development. 

ABOUT JULIE WINKLE GIULIONI

Julie Winkle Giulioni helps organizations enhance learning, engagement, retention, and the bottom line.  Named one of Inc. Magazines top 100 leadership speakers, Julie is the co-author of the international bestseller, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Organizations Need and Employees Want, a respected speaker on a variety of topics, and a regular contributor to many business publications. Julie will be presenting her insights for IMS members in 2020. Learn more about Julie at: https://www.juliewinklegiulioni.com/

Author Hendrie Weisinger

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These days, I often think of one of one of my graduate school professors. His name was CR Snyder and I doubt you know the name unless you are schooled in positive psychology.  Through long discussions and being under his supervision, I got to know him well and when I graduated, my impression was he was an arrogant guy.  Forty years later, I think of him as a brilliant guy.

Hope Theory

Rick, as his students called him, was the creator of “Hope Theory” and if you asked him to explain he’d answer, “the perceived capability to create pathways to desired goals and to motivate oneself while thinking about those pathways.”   His three main concepts were goals, agency, and pathways. The goals represented approaching life in a goal-oriented way. The pathways were finding different ways to achieve the goals that someone creates. The agency was the actual act of believing that a person can prompt change and achieve the goals that they set out for themselves. “I know I can do this!” is a high will power belief.  Dr. Snyder basically characterizes the hopeful thinkers as people who can form goals and work towards them. 

Rick, who is recognized as one of the three founders of the Positive Psychology field, went on to do over two hundred studies that show hope has served man well.  “Hopeful” individuals show higher self-esteem, more meaning in life and happiness, cope better with injuries, disease, and physical pain, excel in academics from elementary to graduate school perform better in sports and are more productive in work.

I can list dozens of management and leadership skills but I believe the importance of all of them pale in comparison to the skill of creating hope.  If you can’t make yourself hopeful, you lack resiliency and if you can’t make your team hopeful, you can count on the fact they will come in last.

Building Resilience

So, the next time you feel down and out or your team suffers a setback and things look glum, apply these two tips and you ‘ll find yourself bouncing back, or as some say, resilient.

  1. Create  “will power” by establishing goals that provide purpose and meaning.  These type of goals are physically arousing and translate into directed energy. After a setback or in times of adversity, reiterate your meaningful goals, purpose and meaning and you will begin to feel resilient. 
  2. Create Pathways.  Brainstorm and problem solve obstacles away by creating and innovating new routes that can help you achieve your goal.  Break each down into a simple step and each one taken, will increase the individual’s will power to continue.  The individual becomes resilient because he or she is hopeful they will make it.

Remember, as Andy Dufrense told Red, “Hope is the best of all possible things.”

The Snyder Hope Framework

This is something new that I found when I was researching rainbows. Something called the “hope theory” exists, where the word rainbow is used as a symbol for representing a theory. The hope theory is defined as the perceived capability to create pathways to desired goals and to motivate oneself while thinking about those pathways (1 Snyder).

Snyder was fascinated by the concepts of hope and forgiveness. Throughout his career, he published six books about Hope Theory, and 262 articles about the impact that hope can have on aspects of life such as health, work, education, and personal meaning. His theory had three main points to it. The three main concepts he discussed through it was goals, agency, and pathways. The goals represented approaching life in a goal-oriented way. The pathways were finding different ways to achieve the goals that someone creates. The agency was the actual act of believing that a person can prompt change and achieve the goals that they set out for themselves. Snyder basically characterizes the hopeful thinkers as people who can form goals and work towards them.

About Dr. Hendrie Weisinger

Dr. Hendrie Weisinger is a celebrated, influential, world renowned psychologist. A New York Times bestselling author, he is a leading authority in the application of Emotional Intelligence, an expert in Anger management, and the originator of the highly regarded techniques of Criticism Training, and the originator of the emerging new field, pressure management. Dr. Weisinger is the author of many successful books, including: Nobody’s Perfect, Anger Workout, Anger at Work, Emotional Intelligence at Work,The Power of Positive Criticism and the New York Times best-selling book Performing Under Pressure. Dr. Weisinger’s latest book, The Genius of Instinct introduces the principles of evolutionary psychology to everyday life.

References:
Snyder, C. R. “Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind.” Psychological Inquiry 13.4 (2002): 249-75.

Dr. Alan Zimmerman

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When someone asks your employees what they do for a living, how do they respond?  With excitement and enthusiasm or with defeat and disillusionment?

Too many employees and too many workplaces fall into the second category. But it doesn’t have to be that way, if you apply the 8 secrets found in every positive, high performing organization.

Hire right – Train right

As you well know, one bad apple can spoil the whole cart. But you also know it can be very difficult to get rid of a bad apple or bad employee.  So approach every hiring decision with the utmost discernment.

In particular, focus your energy on recruiting and retaining people who are technically skilled and emotionally competent. In fact, they had better have both characteristics or you will have a sick workplace.

When you’re in the position of having to hire someone, look for ANY signals that tell you the new job candidate may be a drag on the positive culture you’re trying to create. You cannot afford to hire those kinds of people … because they will cost you money, rather than make you money.

In fact, I’m sure you can think of several situations where you walked into a store to buy something, totally ready to spend your money there, but some employee’s behavior was so offensive that you walked out. And instead, you spent your money at a competitor’s place of business. 

Hire right.  And for heaven’s sake, if the people you hire don’t have all the people skills they need, then train them right … right now.  

Protect your positive norms

If your organization has established certain norms of respectful behavior, reinforce those norms.

If, for example, employees are expected to acknowledge every customer within 10 seconds of entering the store, make sure they do it. Or if you have outlawed negative talk about customers, call someone on his violation of the norm if he is trashing a customer.

Don’t let your negative people dismiss your positive cultural elements by saying, “That’s just plain stupid … or … That’s just the way John is.” 

Discover and share success stories

Even though your office, like every office, has some things that could be improved, you’re also doing a lot of things right. Charge everyone with the responsibility of looking for those success stories. And then share a few of those stories at every meeting. Celebrate the positive.

Surface and defuse negativity

No matter how positive, productive, and profitable your organization is, it is not perfect. There are problems and there will always be problems in your organization.

Don’t ignore them. And don’t pretend they don’t exist. As best-selling author and psychologist Dr. Sidney Simon says, “The greatest danger in any relationship is to pretend not to know what we know.”

In other words, you can’t expect to bury the problems and have them somehow magically disappear. When you bury problems, you bury them alive, and the rate of resurrection is almost 100%.

Instead, create a forum where people can safely share their concerns. Take their feelings seriously. Listen intently. And decide on one or two things that can be done to address their concerns.

Conquer one energy-zapping issue at a time

Have everyone write down the specific tasks or job situations that drain them.  Some people may not feel supported by the boss, and others may feel betrayed by a team mate who is not doing her share of the work.

Then brainstorm small immediate steps that can be taken to maintain or recapture the energy at work. And then baby-step it.

Start with a simple issue … where an easy victory is likely … such as greeting one another respectfully and professionally when passing one another, rather than ignore the people around you.

Once you’ve built some confidence and skill in one area, move on to a more challenging issue — such as having to do ten projects at once, with no sense of their priority.

Assign energy as a personal responsibility

Whatever the situation at work, you’ve only got two choices: to produce results or make excuses.  Make it clear that it is everyone’s responsibility to bring the right attitude and the right amount of energy to every task. 

Even if your workplace is somewhat de-energizing, everyone there can still choose to focus on the good, to fill their minds with positive, powerful sayings that will inspire them. It’s not silly.  Every gold-medal winner in the Olympics does it every day.

About the author, Dr. Alan Zimmerman

At the age of 7, Dr. Alan Zimmerman was selling greeting cards door-to-door. By age 14 he owned a small international import business. By age 21 he was teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the next 15 years, he was selected as the Outstanding Faculty Member by two different universities.

At age 36, Alan had retired from teaching and opened his own speaking and training company. That position has allowed him to deliver more than 3000 programs, to more than a million people, in 49 states and 22 countries. The National Speakers Association has named him a Certified Speaking Professional and inducted him into the Speaker Hall of Fame, which places him in the top 1% of speakers worldwide.

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The notion that companies need to invest in their people has been around for many years, but it’s only recently we’ve begun to realize we’ve been investing improperly.  In fact, we often unintentionally do harm.  What?

Consider these common examples that were designed to help but have evolved into expensive and time-consuming affairs that are no longer justified in their current form.

Employee evaluation systems.  They are ostensibly created to keep employees informed about their performance, to offer needed feedback, and to develop longer-term career paths.  In practice, they are often a nightmare, loathed by nearly every participant.  Most should be radically streamlined.

Gamification.  Possibly the most popular engagement-related trend in years, this is a clever approach to helping employee’s win “stuff.”  Stuff (e.g., points to use for coffee mugs, t-shirts, and gift certificates) really doesn’t motivate.  It does, however, create people focused on “stuff” instead of work.

Bloated human resource policy books.  Human Resources is the home for people who care about employees, right?  One wonders.  The modern digitized policy book has become a bastion of arcane rules that does nothing but add problematic bloat.  Well, at least we all know the maximum height for plants on our desks.

These practices take tons of our precious limited time.  They suck up massive amounts of resources.  They have a net neutral, or net negative, effect on motivation.  That means morale takes a hit, indirectly impacting retention and productivity. 

Let’s think about a better way.  For most of us, there are a few givens these days.  Aside from a mission that matters, environmental stewardship, and ethical leadership, there are a few categories of employee investments that make people believe in the organization.  These are investments that attract talent and spur innovation by helping employees in ways that truly matter. 

Think about these modern examples:

Culture based hiring.  Hiring has long been lopsided, focused mostly on skills and IQ.  Understandable, but not sufficient.  Remember, chemistry trumps talent.  So, you need people who fit, not just people who are smart.  That means hiring practices that leverage employee groups beyond the hiring managers, emotional intelligence testing, applied task interviewing, and honest realistic job previews.

Facilitated breaks.  The most productive people and teams don’t work 100% of the time.  For peak performance, the brain needs a few breaks.  Step one – encourage people to take a few small (5-10 minute) breaks during their work day.  Step two – give them options the might enjoy during downtime (e.g., foosball, basketball, walking trails, meditation space, a nap room). 

Employee interest groups.  People often find it comforting and informative to gather with similar others to discuss careers and life at work.  Groups based on age, gender, ethnicity, and other categories are now quite common.  In support of diversity and inclusion, these opportunities for networking within subgroups of employees is a highly valued activity.

Real vacation time.  Regardless of how many days of vacation you actually have, the more interesting question is how many do you use?  In the US, for example, about half of workers have unused vacation time each year (and we don’t have that many to begin with).  The least we can do is honestly help them use what they have.  Managers should be evaluated based on the percentage of vacation time used.  How about a rule that requires mandatory vacation time?

Community involvement.  Offices reside in very real communities.  That means they have an impact in terms of traffic, pollution, noise, and so on.  Thus, giving back matters.  This might take many forms.  Donations and philanthropy are an obvious choice, but real involvement in the form of service projects and participation in charity work are also very popular. 

Friends and family days.  It seems that work often feels immensely separated from the rest of life, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  Bringing some elements of non-work life into the workplace can make work feel far more hospitable.  That’s why companies have bring your children to work day, bring your parents to work day, and, increasingly, are trying to make work pet-friendly. 

Concierge services.  Life doesn’t stop just because you’re at work.  Many times, people really need a helping hand getting things done in life to accommodate the time they need to spend at work.  In response to this need, more and more companies are trying to help by providing onsite healthcare, dry cleaning services, and even car washes. 

I can hear what you’re thinking.  Those things are expensive!  True, but you likely have all of the money you need to embrace these practices.  You’re simply spending it on a bloated evaluation system, excessive gamification, meetings dedicated to improving arcane HR policies, and other practices that build bloat instead of productivity. 

If you want to attract and retain a truly great team, pay attention.  Your labor force is shifting rapidly, and the new kids want more than just a paycheck.  They want purpose.  It’s time to let a few practices and policies go so that you can invest in practices that directly serve what matters most – your people.