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Get the Mentoring Equation Right - Whitney Johnson

Get the Mentoring Equation Right - Whitney Johnson
by Whitney Johnson | 5:01 PM October 25, 2011 This post was co-authored with Bob Moesta. While it’s written from my perspective, he was central to the development of the idea. My quandary has led to a considered, lengthy discussion with Bob Moesta, a demand-side innovation expert, about how to decide whom to mentor. Bob sees mentoring as the balance of two worlds that overlap for a period of time and a certain amount of effort. The mentee side of the equation describes: How badly does the mentee want to advance his/her career and how much ground do they feel they need to cover to get there? Drive = How motivated is the mentee? The mentor side asks: Can I help and how much effort will it require? Gap = The amount of experience the mentor has compared with the mentee. To assess both the Drive and Distance of an aspiring protege, we’d ask two questions: What is it that you would like to learn? To date, I have gauged drive simply by whether someone shows up and asks.

TEN - Top Executives Net Group News by Daniel Goleman | 3:19 PM October 14, 2011 “We hired a new CEO, but had to let him go after just seven months,” the chairman of an East Coast think tank complained to me recently. “His resume looked spectacular, he did splendidly in all the interviews. But within a week or two we were hearing pushback from the staff. They were telling us, ‘You hired a first-rate economist with zero social intelligence.’ He was pure command and control.” The think tank’s work centers on interlocking networks of relationships with the board, staff, donors, and a wide variety of academics and policy experts. Why does social intelligence emerge as the make-or-break leadership skill set? As I’ve written with my colleague Richard Boyatzis, technical skills and self-mastery alone allow you to be an outstanding individual contributor. That was brought home to me yet again reading “Making Yourself Indispensable,” by John H. So how do you spot this skill set?

How to Manage a Perfectionist - Amy Gallo - Best Practices by Amy Gallo | 12:13 PM October 19, 2011 Do you have a perfectionist on your team? The good news is that your direct report has high standards and a fine attention for detail. What the Experts Say Many people claim to be perfectionists because they think it makes them look good. Appreciate the positives while recognizing the negatives Working with perfectionists can be frustrating. Give the right job Perfectionists are not a good fit for every job. Increase self-awareness Even in the right position, perfectionists can cause trouble — slowing progress or demoralizing colleagues. Coach, if possible Not every perfectionist is coachable but it pays to try. Be careful with feedback Every employee needs feedback. Principles to Remember Do: Recognize that there are both positives and negatives to having a stickler on your teamExplain the behavior you’re noticing to try to increase their self-awarenessHelp perfectionists see that their behavior may limit their career Don’t: *Not their real names

A butterfly goes to a coach « THE COACHING BLOG October 10, 2011 Telling someone exactly what the difference is between coaching and the other four helping professions (consulting, mentoring, counseling and therapy) is one of the many challenges I face as a coach. Doing that in a clear and accessible way has been one of my constant pursuits. While reading page 11 of Coaching with Colleagues (de Haan & Burger, 2011) today, I felt inspired to write about butterflies that go to the five helping professionals in order to tackle four questions they face. The four questions are (Witherspoon & White, 1997): the desire to learn new skills,the desire to perform better,the desire to develop itself,the desire to reflect on itself or on what it does. My attempt to clarify the differences in the approaches of each of these valuable professionals has resulted in a chart with 20 different stereotyped reactions which, in my opinion, exemplify how each professional works and what one could possibly expect from them. Here they are: Like this: Like Loading...

The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key The elements that make up a truly innovative company are many: a focused innovation strategy, a winning overall business strategy, deep customer insight, great talent, and the right set of capabilities to achieve successful execution. More important than any of the individual elements, however, is the role played by corporate culture — the organization’s self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking, and believing — in tying them all together. Yet according to the results of this year’s Global Innovation 1000 study, only about half of all companies say their corporate culture robustly supports their innovation strategy. Moreover, about the same proportion say their innovation strategy is inadequately aligned with their overall corporate strategy. This article is featured in the strategy+business app “Don’t Blame Your Culture,” available for smartphone and tablet devices. To download, select your device: This disconnect, as the saying goes, is both a problem and an opportunity.

Excellence in Management: 6 Strategies to Bring Out the Best in Other People January 25, 2012 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Management Excellence in Management: 6 Strategies to Bring Out the Best in Other People By Rick A Conlow Abigail Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1790, “These are the hard times in which a genius would wish to live. Great necessities call forth great leaders.” These are also hard times in which managers of today face unprecedented challenges such as: Governmental budget deficits/cutbacksWorld political/economic instabilityEnergy issuesEnvironmental problemsShortage of skilled laborHigher taxesPrice competitionPolitical scandalsBusiness scandalsCulturally diverse work forcesTakeoversMergers and acquisitionsJob displacement due to technological advancesShrinking local marketsOverseas competitionWork ethic concerns Excellence in Management is in demand today although it is found in short supply. Famed consultant Peter Drucker said, “Don’t worry about doing everything tight, just do the right things.” No comments yet.

Training Tips for Entrepreneurs It may surprise you that entrepreneurs need training. Well, they do. Here are some tips that can improve how you function each day, as you work toward changing the world. Mindset 5 ways to kill a brainstorming session. In creative organizations, brainstorming has been and is still the source of the creative juices that fuel the new great ideas. Four personality types of entrepreneurs. Operations Steve Stoute: Get paid. How to delegate anything. Social Skills Entrepreneur on the road to wellness after firing. Sometimes it’s the customer that needs firing. Self-development What is an accidental entrepreneur? Don’t worry about opportunities missed.

Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People The automation of more and more work once done by humans is the central theme of “Race Against the Machine,” an e-book to be published on Monday. “Many workers, in short, are losing the race against the machine,” the authors write. Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Indeed, they were originally going to write a book titled, “The Digital Frontier,” about the “cornucopia of innovation that is going on,” Mr. The authors are not the only ones recently to point to the job fallout from technology. The M.I.T. authors’ claim that automation is accelerating is not shared by some economists. Technology has always displaced some work and jobs. But Mr. Faster, cheaper computers and increasingly clever software, the authors say, are giving machines capabilities that were once thought to be distinctively human, like understanding speech, translating from one language to another and recognizing patterns. Corporations are doing fine.

How To Start a Tough Conversation at Work One of the questions I’m often asked is how to start a difficult or challenging conversation. It might be a sensitive topic, performance matter or personal issue. In my experience, managers often want to either: Tap dance around the topic with “small talk” – conversation about football, movies, pets, etc. and then launch into the coaching discussion. This can send mixed messages to employees about why they are there. Finding the right words can be a challenge. to start meetings, conversations, and discussions. Now some of you might be saying…really?! I also found myself thinking of the new consultant trying to strike up conversations with potential clients at networking meetings. If you know someone who is looking for suggestions in the best way to start a conversation, this book could be valuable. I’d like to ask your permission to raise a sensitive subject.I have some things to say that I imagine will be hard to hear. inShare74

Riding the Waves of Personal Development A Case for Using Social Media with Learning Culture Flickr:Anna Briggs Educators are finding ways to leverage social media sites like Facebook with learning. By Aran Levasseur We are witnessing the emergence of something profound: Humans, historically divided by geography, culture and creed, are beginning to connect and collaborate on a scale never seen before. The driving force behind this creative wave are digital tools and networks that allow new forms of collaboration and knowledge creation. What starts out as social networking is evolving into social production. In spite of all the potential to innovate surrounding blogs, forums, wikis and social networks, there are legions of detractors. Granted, not every use of social media is remarkable. “Educators ought to be asking what social dimensions of learning might be enhanced by using these tools and networks?” Writing initially emerged as a form of record keeping in Mesopotamia. Related Explore: Social Media

It’s a performance review, not an ambush At Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada, the oft-dreaded performance review is seen as a good thing – from both sides. According to a yearly in-house survey, employees rate the company’s bi-annual performance reviews very highly. That’s mainly because Deeley’s, the exclusive Canadian distributor for Harley-Davidson and Buell motorcycles and parts, takes performance reviews seriously, not only as a measure of performance tied in with raises and promotions, but also as an important opportunity for employees to discuss their career paths. “It’s formal because it’s a formalized process, but not necessarily tense,” says Mike Harwood, Deeley’s human resources director, from their Concord, Ont., office. “You set the right tone. The company, which has about 150 employees in offices and distribution facilities located in Concord, and Richmond, B.C., was named as one of Canada’s Top Employers for 2011. There are four basic questions that they begin with at both their mid- and full-year reviews, Mr. Mr.

The Online Community for the 50 and up Adults - LifeAfter50.com | WHY WE MAKE MISTAKES AND HOW TO REDUCE THEM None of us are immune to mistakes, and the one universal truth of making mistakes is that we all hate that moment when we realize that we just screwed up. “When it hits us that we’ve made a mistake, we always have that instant of ‘Wow, that was stupid, what was I thinking?’ before we move on and try to solve the problem we’ve inadvertently caused,” said life coach Peter Demarest (www.axiogenics.com). But Demarest believes that we can go further than just preventing mistakes. The co-founder of an executive life coaching institute called Axiogenics, and co-author of the book "Answering the Central Question," Demarest invites people to start thinking better by asking themselves what he calls The Central Question of life, love, and leadership. “Fundamentally,” Demarest teaches, “success in life is not about the value we get, it’s about the value we create.” “You see, most of us, most of the time, act out of habit.

How to Avoid the Innovation Death Spiral Consider this all too familiar scenario: Company X’s new products developed and launched with great expectations, yield disappointing results. Yet, these products continue to languish in the market, draining management attention, advertising budgets, manufacturing capacity, warehouse space and back office systems. Wouter Koetzier explores how to avoid the innovation death spiral. Compounding the problem, fewer resources are available to invest in other initiatives that may prove far more innovative and fuel profitable growth. We call this the “innovation death spiral,” a cycle in which far too many firms find themselves today. Balancing innovation In contrast, companies taking a bolder, more far-sighted approach to innovation are on the opposite trajectory: becoming a high-performing organization. Financially, companies simply do not generate the growth premiums with incremental innovations that they do with platform or breakthrough innovations. Inside the death spiral Strategic impact

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