Co-Managing with an A–hole!

Posted on September 14, 2018 by Tim Sackett

In the modern work world, we are often tasked as leaders to co-lead, co-manage a team, a function, a location, etc. The challenges to this are many, but none is more difficult when you have to do that and the other person is a complete a-hole!

What I find is that most a-holes have no idea they’re an a-hole, or they know they’re an a-hole but some broke in their brain to make them believe their actually a better person/leader as an a-hole versus a normal person.

What are the jerk, a-hole leader behaviors? Being condescending to the employees they lead. Talking behind the back of those they lead to others on the team that are a peer of that person. Not supporting their co-leader on things that were previously agreed to, etc. You know what I’m talking about!

I’m lucky that I haven’t had this issue for a while but I see it happen all the time in organizations I support, and it’s one of the most talked about issues I hear from friends and peers that work in corporate gigs. Here’s some of my advice for co-managing with an a-hole:

– A–holes hate being put in a box. Put them in a box. Get agreements on things, then get written confirmation of those agreements. I find a-hole leaders will work not to confirm via email or written communication, especially if they don’t really agree with the direction and plan to screw you later!

– Always stay above the line in front of those who report to you and your peers. “Above the line” means you never allow yourself to do or have the same bad behaviors as your co-manager. You take the high road, always. Trust me, in the end, you’ll benefit greatly from this!

– Be brutally honest in your assessment of your a-hole co-manager. I find most a-hole leaders are never told by a peer that they’re being an a-hole with real specific examples. Most if told, will actually try to change those behaviors. Some are truly just a-holes and they won’t change, but it will make you feel better to address it. Also, don’t stop addressing it! Every time it happens, call them out. That is actually an “above the line” behavior by you calling them out!

As a leader dealing with this situation will probably be the most challenging you’ll have in your career, but ignoring it, complaining to your boss, to matching their behavior are all losing propositions that take your career nowhere.

I love killing a-holes with kindness! It doesn’t happen often to them, they are used to getting the opposite reaction from their behavior, so extreme kindness to them really throws them off guard and unsettles them which can be quite funny!

Career Confessions from Gen Z: 20 Ways to Work Better with Gen Z!

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Tuesday is one of my favorite days of the year: my birthday! Ever since I was little, I had trouble falling asleep the night before my birthday because I was so excited, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it isn’t any different this year. This year is a pretty big transition as I move on from my teenagers year and enter my third decade on this planet.

Pretty cool, pretty terrifying.

So, in honor of my 20 years, I compiled a list of 20 tips and tricks in order to work best with your Gen Z friends, employees, co-workers, nieces/nephews, or whoever else.

Try to limit/reduce your questions about our days/events etc. to as few as possible, especially early in the morning or late at night.
Talk to us as little as possible in the morning.
Be encouraging.
Call us on the phone instead of having us call you. (Recruiters – are you hearing this!?)
Try to accommodate our insomnia by allowing later wake-up times/work times.
Provide caffeine – for free! (good general rule for all people)
Be open to any ideas, no matter how wacky they may be.
Provide non-traditional spaces to get work done.
Be patient.
Bring food whenever a really hard/annoying task comes up that needs to be done.
Don’t be afraid to push us.
Provide guidance without completing the job for them.
When we have headphones on, it most likely means that we are focused/don’t want to be talked to.
Encourage activities that limit our constant phone use.
Give us space.
Acknowledge a job well done, but criticize when necessary.
Don’t stalk their social media profiles (at least not all the time 🙂
Embrace the youthful spirit as much as possible.
Try to give as much detail because although we may have questions, we’re probably too stubborn/scared to ask them.
If you just can’t with the hormone filled moments of rage, step away, roll your eyes, and try to move on. Chances are that’s exactly how’d we react too.

Young people are weird. But, we all were young and weird once. So, try and take that weird and turn it into something awesome.

That’s what I’m going to try and do in this new chapter. Here’s to the next 20.

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a Gen Z? Ask us in the comments and I’ll respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for me? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with me on LinkedIn.

You’re Uninvited!

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I’m not terminating anyone ever again.

I can’t terminate anyone, because I don’t hire anyone. I do invite people to join me. Join me on this journey, on this path. It’s going to be a great trip. I invite them to be a part of my family. Not my ‘work’ family, but my actual family. I spend more time with my co-workers than I do with my wife and children (in terms of waking hours). So, when I invite someone to join us, it is not something I take lightly.

That’s why, from now on, I’m not terminating anyone. From now on, I’m just uninviting them to continue being a part of what we have going on. Just like a party. You were invited to attend, but you end up drinking too much and making a fool out of yourself, so now you’re uninvited. You can’t attend the next party. I don’t know about you, but when I throw a party, I never (and I mean never) invite someone I can’t stand. Sometimes a couple has issues with this, where one spouse wants to invite his or her friend, but their spouse is a complete tool and it causes issues.

Not in my family, we only invite those people we want to be around, life is too short.

Here’s the deal. When you invited someone into your family, you usually end up falling in love with them. It’s that way in business. It’s the main reason we have such a hard time firing on bad performers. We fall in love with those people we hire. “Oh, Mary, she’s such a nice person!” But, Mary, can’t tie her shoes and chew gum at the same time. So, we give Mary chances, too many chances, and pretty soon Mary is part of the family. It’s hard terminating part of the family.

I would rather just not invite Mary to attend work any longer. “Hey, Mary, we love you, but look, we aren’t going to invite you to work. We’ll still see you at 5 pm over at the bar for drinks.” Sounds so much easier, right!? It happens all the time. I use to get invited to stuff, but somewhere down the road, the group stopped inviting me. I might have been a little upset over it, but it didn’t last and I’m still friends with everyone. Termination is so permanent, it’s like death.

Being uninvited sends the same message, but there’s a part of being uninvited that says “you know what, maybe it was you, maybe it was us, but let’s just face it, together it doesn’t work.”

You’re Uninvited.

It’s Going to be Hard, but it’s Going to be Fair.

Posted on August 24, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I heard this quote recently, it was used by an old football coach to his players:

“It’s hard, but it’s fair.”

He wasn’t the first to use this and probably won’t be the last – but the line stuck with me because of how I don’t think many people in today’s age really think this way. Many want to talk about what’s fair, few want to discuss the ‘hard’ part. The football coach’s son described the meaning of what he feels the phrase means:

“It’s about sacrifice,” Toler Jr. said of the quote. “It means that if you work hard that when it’s all said and done at the end of the day, it will be fair based on your body of work. It’s about putting in the time, making sure that you’re ready for the opportunity.”

I think we all think our parents are hard on us growing up. I recall stories I tell to my own sons of my Dad waking me up on a Saturday morning at 7 am, after I was out too late the night before, and ‘making’ me help him with something, like chopping wood or cleaning the garage out. He didn’t really need my help, he was trying to teach me a lesson about choices. If I chose to stay out late at night, it was going to suck getting up early to go to school.

He shared with me stories of his father doing the same thing, one night my Dad had gotten home late, so late, he didn’t even go to bed, just started a pot of coffee and waited for my grandfather to get up, figuring that was easier than getting a couple of hours of sleep and then hearing it from my grandfather the rest of the day.

As a HR Pro, we see this every day in our workforce. There are some who work their tails off, not outwardly expecting anything additional, they’re just hard workers. Others will put in the minimum, then expect a cookie. It’s a tough life lesson for those folks. Most usually end up leaving your organization, believing they were treated unfairly, so they’ll go bounce around a few more times.

Eventually, they’ll learn to put in the work, put in the time and more times than not, things work out pretty well. Sometimes it won’t, so you go back to work even harder. It’s been very rare in my 20 year HR career that I’ve truly seen a really hard worker get screwed over. Very rare! Now I know a ton of people who think they work hard, but they don’t, and they’ll say they get screwed. But the reality is they don’t work hard, they do the same as everyone else.

Do some idiots who don’t deserve a promotion or raise sometimes get it? Yep, they sure do, but that doesn’t happen as much as you think. The hard workers tend to get the better end of the deal almost always.

I hope I can teach my sons this lesson: Life is going to be hard, but if you keep at it and put in the work, it’s going to be fair. I think that is all we can really hope for.

Is employee experience really all about your manager? #Maslow #Drink!

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Tim Sackett

So, I’m sharing a post I wrote over at EXJournal.org (EX = Employee Experience). It’s site started by some brilliant people from all over the world and they invited me to write to bring down the overall quality of the site! I wrote this post and immediately thought, “Hey, I just leveled-up from my normal poorly written stuff!”.

I thought this because it’s an idea I’m passionate about and truly believe. I think we get lied to a bunch by HR vendors who are just trying to sell their shit. We’ve been lied to for a long time on the concept – “People leave managers, not companies” – that’s actually not true…enjoy the post and check out the new EXJournal site!

“Employees don’t leave companies. Employees leave managers.”

How often have you heard this over the past decade? A hundred times? A thousand times?

We love saying this in the HR, management consulting, leadership training world. We use it for employee engagement and employee experience, to almost anything where we want to blame bad managers and take the focus off all the other crap we get wrong in our companies.

The fact is, the quote above is mostly bullshit.

Employees actually care about other things more

The truth is, employees actually leave organizations more often over money than anything else. We don’t want to believe it because that means as leaders we have to dig into our budgets, make less profit, and pay our employees true market value if we want them to stay.

Managers might be the issue if you’re getting everything else right. So, if you pay your employees at the market rate. Ifyou offer market-level benefits. If you give them a normal work environment, then yes, maybe employees don’t leave your company, they leave their managers.

But you forgot all that other stuff? Maybe the ‘real’ reason an employee left your company wasn’t the fact their manager wasn’t a rock star. Maybe it was the fact you paid them below market, gave them a crappy benefits package, and made them work in the basement?!

The dirty little truth about Employee Experience is that managers are just one component of the overall experience, and we give them way too much weight when looking at EX in totality. We do this because we feel we don’t have control over all of the other stuff, but it’s easy to push managers around and ‘train’ them up to be better than they actually are.

Rethinking Maslow for EX

There is a new Maslow‘s Hierarchy of Employee Needs when it comes to Employee Experience and it goes like this:

Hierarchy of needs Level I – Money – cash!

Level II – Benefits – health, fringes, etc.

Level III – Flexibility of Schedule – work/life balance

Level IV – Work Environment – short commute, great design, supportive co-workers

Level V – The Actual Job/Position – am I doing something that utilizes my best skills?

Level VI – Your Manager – do I have a manager who supports my career & life goals?

We all immediately jump to Level VI when it comes to EX because that’s what we’ve been told is the real reason people leave organizations. Which actually might be the case if all of the other five levels above are being met. What I find is that rarely are the first five levels met, and then it becomes really easy to blame managers for why their people leave.

Managers aren’t the difference maker

When I take a look at organizations with super low turnover, what I find are that they do a great job at the first five levels, and they do what everyone else does at level six. The managers at low turnover organizations are virtually the same as all other organizations. There is no ‘real’ difference in skill sets and attitudes; those managers are just managing employees who are pretty satisfied because most of their basic needs are met pretty well.

I think the new quote should be this:

“Good employees leave companies that give them average pay, benefits, and work environment, that don’t utilize the employee’s skill set, and that make them work for a crappy boss.”

(Tim note – Why the #Drink? It’s a game that my fellow HR/TA speakers and I play. We hate when someone uses the Maslow pyramid in a slide, so we make fun of it by claiming every time a speaker mentions “Maslow” or shows the pyramid the entire audience should have to take a drink – like a drinking game for bad speakers! The more you know…)

How Can You Become a Great HR/Talent Professional?

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I met an aspiring HR college student recently. The question was asked, “Tim, how can I be great at HR?” I told them to buy my book and read my blog and that’s really all there is to it! Just kidding, I said something after that as well! 😉

It’s a great question that ultimately has very little to do with HR or Talent Acquisition. To be great at HR, or anything, rarely do you have to be great at that certain skill set. For some things, it’s important: doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. But most professions you can learn the skills, so it’s about these other things that I told this young Padawan:

– Go deep on a few things. The world needs experts, not a generalist. Don’t kid yourself to think being a generalist is really what your organization wants. People say this when they are an expert in nothing. Be an expert in something and a generalist in a bunch of stuff.

– Don’t be super concerned with what you’re going deep on, just make sure it interests you. While it might not seem valuable now, at some point it probably will be. I’m not in love with employee benefits, but someone is and when I need help with that I’m searching for that person.

– Consume content inside and outside of your industry. Those with a never-ending appetite to learn are always more successful.

– Connect with people in your field outside of your company. We are in a time in the world where your network can be Pitbull Worldwide! Use that to your advantage. There is someone smarter than you a thousand miles away just waiting to help you.

– Just because someone older and more experienced than you might think something is unimportant, don’t give up on it. We all get used to what we are used to. Older people think Snapchat is stupid and it might be, but it also might unlock something awesome in our employment brand. Experience and age are super valuable until they aren’t.

– Constantly make stuff and test it. Some it will fail, most of it will be average, some of it will be awesome. Give yourself more chances for awesome! Don’t let someone tell you, “we tried that three years ago and it didn’t work”. Cool, let’s do it again, but this time change the name!

– Take a big chance early in your career. Find a company that you absolutely love and just find a way to work there in any position, then be awesome for a couple of years and see what happens. Working for a brand you love is beyond the best career feeling you’ll have.

– Don’t expect to be “HR famous” overnight, but the work you do right now will make you HR famous ten years from now. Do the work, fall in love with it, the fame will come down the road. “I want to blog and speak just like you, Tim!” Awesome, I started doing this a decade ago. Let’s get started right now!

– Don’t discount social skills in the real world. You can be the smartest most skilled person in the room, but the one with a personality is the one people will pay attention to. This is a skill that can be learned and constantly improved upon if you work at it.

– Spend time with Great HR and Talen pros. No one is really hiding their secret sauce, you just aren’t asking them questions. The key in spending time with others is not asking them to invest more in helping you than you’re willing to invest in making it happen. I get asked weekly for time from people who rarely are willing to help me in return.

Okay, as internships are concluding for the summer let’s help these aspiring professionals out! Give me your best advice in the comments!

Career Confessions from Gen Z: Bathrooms matter to a great Employee Experience!

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Tim Sackett

In my opinion, there are few places that are worse than a public restroom. There have been very few times in my life where I’ve been happy to use a restroom in a public area. I strongly dislike any bathroom that is not a private restroom or one that is in my home.

I have 2 main reasons for my strong distaste for public bathrooms: cleanliness and privacy. I can thank my Mom for my concerns about germs, and 9 times out of 10 a public restroom will be dirtier than my nice and tidy bathroom at home. My main problem with using public bathrooms is privacy. Even if I just went in to fix my hair, I don’t want anyone looking and judging me for doing it!

Although I really would prefer if I could just use my bathroom at home 24/7, that is not realistic especially when I’m working every day. I’m going to at least have to pee a few times. So, if I have to use a different bathroom than my own, I want it to be as nice as possible.

The bathrooms at Quicken Loans(where I’m doing my summer internship! Hey, guys!) check almost all of my boxes. They are extremely cleanly and I see cleaning staff work on the bathrooms a few times a day. But, the best part is the almost completely private stalls that they have! The walls in between the stalls and the doors go all the way from the ceiling to the floor. It’s my dream honestly.

No one wants to poop at work, and if they have to, it might as well be in almost complete privacy.

In addition to the cleanliness and the private stalls, the restrooms on my floor have baskets of toiletries; toothbrushes, stain sticks, lotion, hairspray, basically anything you could need to make you comfortable and fix any problems you may have. It’s so comforting to know that if I ever spill something on my clothes or have bad breath, I have a quick fix just a few steps away.

If you want to make sure your employees are comfortable and doing their best work, the bathroom is a good place to put some luxury into. Most people don’t enjoy using the restroom but we all have to do it. So why not make it a more enjoyable experience for your employees!

This post was written by Cameron Sackett (not Tim) – you can probably tell because it lacks grammatical errors!

DisruptHR Detroit Speaker Applications Now Being Accepted!!! But, you probably can’t handle it! #8Mile

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Tim Sackett

Look, I just like being honest. This isn’t DisruptHR Brentwood or DisruptHR Nantucket! This is Detroit! We do real HR in the D!

Come on, just be real with yourself for a moment, you can’t handle Detroit. It’s okay, you’ll do fine at DisruptHR Sun City. Just slow down and do some tour stops before you come to Detroit!

You see, we actually make stuff that sells for money in Detroit. We have employees who get their hands dirty. We have to live in snow and cold for six months out of the year, which tends to leave us a little less likely to be willing to consume your weak B.S. When you come to DisruptHR Detroit, you better bring it!

Alright, I hear you feeling yourself. You just might be ready to hit 8 Mile and the rap battle that is HR in Detroit. DisruptHR Detroit will take place on September 20th onsite at Quicken Loans awesome event space in the heart of downtown Detroit.

Want to speak at DisruptHR Detroit? (what you need to know)

– It’s 5 Minutes, 20 slides, the slides automatically move every 15 seconds (this is not something you can change!)

– If you’re a vendor you try selling your product in the 5 minutes, we’ll Gong Show your ass right off the stage!

– DisruptHR is about emotion – make us laugh, make us cry, make us angry, make us motivated. Just make us feel something!

– There will be over 250 HR and Talent Pros in the audience cheering you on. (FYI – many in the audience will be drinking!)

– You will get a video recorded, professionally produced copy of your presentation!

Apply to Speak at DisruptHR Detroit!

The Real Value of Conference Speaker Feedback

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I had a friend call me last week. We spoke at the same conference and we both just got our feedback from those gigs. His feedback was mostly fine, but there were also some pretty hurtful statements people made.

I took a look at mine. To be humble, I rocked my session at the conference! So, I anticipated it would be pretty good. It was, mostly. I had 165 responses that were like this (these are actual verbatim responses):

Great storyteller and engages his audience.
Great presentation. Lots of good takeaways.
The BEST session I attended!!!
This was my favorite session of the conference! Tim was awesome! (thanks, mom!)
Very meaty information that energized my recruiting battery!
Wow! I couldn’t write fast enough!

I could go on, but you get the picture! So, there were 161 of these little nuggets of love and affirmation that I’ll carry around in my pocket for a while! There were also 4 nuggets like this:

The session did not meet my needs.
Made some bold statements that I considered to be offensive and insensitive.
Left the presentation with no takeaways. Content was lacking. (With “NO” takeaways! Really? Not one? Not even, I don’t think short white dudes should wear bow ties! Nothing?!)
He bad mouthed Aerotek Staffing on four different occasions which I found tasteless. (it was only 3 times, FYI!)

One big thing conferences don’t want you to do is also sell your products or services. 8% of the audience said I was trying to sell to them! I never once mentioned my own company! I talked about my blogging, which I give away for free. I guess I was trying to sell my ideas…

When I dug into my friend’s comments, what I found was he basically got the same kind of stuff. The majority was really, really positive and thankful, but there was a minority of these people that for whatever reason just didn’t like it the presentation. It could have the content. It could have been the style. It’s probably more the commenter and the day they’re having.

This is what happens when we get feedback as adult learners. We ignore all the positive stuff and we solely focus on the negative stuff, even when the negative stuff is just a minority of the overall message.

“Hey, you are a 4.7 out of 5! Awesome! Wow! Also, could you tighten up your project timelines a bit? That would just be a bonus.” Yeah, so, well, I guess I now suck at getting my projects done on time and my boss was soooo pissed!

I know many speakers who refuse to read their conference speaker feedback comments because they’ve figured out this about themselves. They’ll overly focus on the negative, obsess over it, and basically waste hours of their life overmuch to do about nothing. It was an hour we spent together. I hope you liked it, I’m sorry if you didn’t, I’ll try to better next time.

There is value in the feedback and think it basically boils down to this:

1. Did the majority of people receive my message in a positive way?

2. Did I offend anyone, that in a normal worldly way, should feel offended?

3. If I was going to be speaking on another topic, would most of the audience be interested in hearing me speak on that topic?

I want people to get some value out of hearing me speak. I don’t want anyone to be offended, but I know some people might. I hope that number is extremely low, like one or zero. In the end, I want people to say I like how he presents and I would like to see him speak again if given the chance about another topic.

Conference feedback is about polar extremes. The people who leave comments either loved you or hated you. The person that just felt like it was ‘just fine’, has no desire or passion to leave a comment, and that would be the actual most valuable feedback a speaker could actually get!

“In Transition” Isn’t Helping You Find a New Job!

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Tim Sackett

I know you’ve seen this on resumes and profiles over the past few years! Someone is looking for work and they title their profile “In Transition”.

Quick – without taking five seconds to think about, be honest, what do you think when someone says, “In Transition” on their resume, cover letter, LI profile, etc.? Put it in the comments!

My guess is, like me, it’s not positive. If it’s not positive, you should remove it from your profiles immediately!

When I read “In Transition” my immediate thought is “why are you in transition? Must not be good! No one wants to be in ‘transition’!” A ‘transition’ can mean many things when it comes to your career. Some of those are positive, but I think the collective will see most of the reasons as negative.

I think the reason I read “In Transition” in a negative light when it comes to talking about careers, is that for me it makes me believe you don’t really know what you want. I’m not ‘in transition’, I’m making a change and this is exactly what I’m looking to do.

Reason’s you might be ‘transitioning’ in your career and now you are looking for another job:

Potential reasons for transitioning:

Retirement from your current role (which many will take as a negative because of age bias)
Completely switching careers (could be a positive, if you’re willing to start at entry level income for the career you’re choosing to go into)
You got fired
You got laid off/company closed
You had your own business, that has ended, now you’re finding your next gig
You took a leave of absence for personal reasons (FMLA, went back to school, child rearing, aging parent, etc.)

So, I’m on record saying that using the phrase, “In Transition” isn’t good for someone seeking a job.

The bigger question than becomes is there a good phrase for people who are out of job and want to get a job that TA pros won’t immediately believe is negative?

I’m not sure there is one, especially if the real reason you’re transitioning is negative! That seems obvious, but you would be shocked at how many messages I get from people ‘in transition’ that are wanting my advice on how to say ‘positively’ they were fired.

My advice is usually to tell the best version of the truth you can come up with, and try to back up that version of the truth is a lot of people who will give you a positive work reference. Ideally, from the place you just left, even if that last job ended in a termination for performance.

What experienced TA pros and hiring managers realize is that not every termination is really do to actual poor performance. Sometimes it’s just a simple personality conflict between the manager you worked for and yourself. That isn’t great, but it’s better than you just couldn’t do the job!

Here are some phrases I might use instead of “In Transition” –

– “I quit my last position because…”

– “I retired from my last position and I’m looking to work “X” number of years in “X” type of position…”

– “I haven’t worked in “X time” because…, and I’m looking for…”

– “I got laid off from my last position…” (This one seems easy, except so many people now use this when they were the only person laid off, but everyone else kept their jobs! That’s not a layoff, that’s just a nice way to get fired! So, you better be able to back this up because great TA pros will find out the truth!)

– “I started my own business. It failed (or it succeeded or I decided it wasn’t for me). I’ve got the entrepreneurial bug out of me and I want to help an organization succeed in the following way…”

So, what do you think TA leaders and pros? Does “In Transition” scare you off of a candidate?

The Talent Fix – My new book is now available to purchase! If your organization is having trouble hiring, this is a must buy!

Talent Fix Review: My mom says it’s her favorite book that I’ve written!!! (I’ve only written one book!)

The Tim Sackett Project

TA & HR Expert, Dad, Backup Point Guard on my over 40 men's team

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