Category Archives: Friend

3 Ways Your ‘Cool’ Boss Is Killing Your Career

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My wife and I have saying in our house:

“We never want to be the ‘cool’ parent.”

You know why?  ‘Cool’ parents are the ones you let their kids do things they shouldn’t be doing as kids.   It’s not my job as a parent to get my kids to like me – it’s my job to raise responsible adults who do better for their family and the world in general.  That means we say ‘No’ a lot.  No, you can’t got the movies at midnight. Yes, I’m aware the Brown’s allow this – they also allow their 17 year old son’s girlfriend to sleep over, and the teenagers to drink.  I would rather you shoot me in the head.

You know what’s funny?  I don’t think my kids hate me. (Kids – please don’t comment on this post!)  Kids like having boundaries.  They don’t tell you they like this, but when they have boundaries they act like better people. If you leave them without boundaries you end up with Lord of the Flies.

I’m not saying that being a leader/Boss/Supervisor is like being a parent. Okay, yes I am, it’s very much like being a parent!  Everyone wants to be the ‘cool’ boss when they first start out in a managerial role.  It’s very normal to think this, and go down this path.  What you find out quickly is that employees, much like children, don’t perform as well without consistency.  Things at work are going great, you’re the ‘cool’ boss, all of sudden times get hard, you lose a big client, and you have to make tough decisions, and your employees lose their minds.  This happens because you begin acting in a way you never have.  You begin hearing things like: “You use to be so cool.”; “You seem stressed all the time.”  These are signs that your subordinates think your friends.  Let me tell you a little secret — Friends don’t fire friends.  You are not friends with your subordinates.  You might be friendly, but that doesn’t make you friends.

‘Cool’ bosses who believe they are friends with you, also rarely tell you the truth about your performance.  Why? Because they don’t want to hurt a ‘friends’ feelings.  They hint at it, they run all around the bush, but they’ll never really tell you what you’re doing that is holding you back in your career path.  Here’s an example: “So Tim, tell me what does it look like for a promotion?” (I’ll be Tim the Cool Boss!) “Well, Mary, you know I back you 100%!  If anyone deserves it, it’s you, but it’s not my call.  I’m sure you’ll get it.” No, she won’t.

A ‘Cool’ boss can ruin your career faster than almost any single thing you run into in the corporate world.  While you might think the cool boss is great, the reality is your executive team knows.  They know this person lacks what it takes to move the organization forward, so they are probably stuck in middle-management for life.  A ‘cool’ boss lacks the credibility needed to influence decision makers.  This makes it very hard for your ideas to be seen and heard at an organizational level.

So, what are the 3 Ways you ‘Cool’ boss is killing your career:

1. They aren’t helping you get the most out of your talent

2. They won’t be honest with you and what you need to change

3. They don’t have the influence to move your career forward

How does it sound being the cool boss now?

Do you follow terminated employees on Twitter?

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Did you see what Mike Tomlin, Pittsburg Steelers Head Coach, did last week to the players who didn’t make the final cut of the team?

Here it is from Deadspin: ”

This is pretty much the perfect 21st century NFL story, pairing the coldly impersonal nature of personnel moves with the vapidity of social media relationships. After the Steelers made their final roster cuts, head coach Mike Tomlin promptly unfollowed them on Twitter.”

First, let me say, I love this!   As a fan of most sports, there is nothing more I love than to see a coach go all in with his team, and that’s exactly what this is!   I’ve got 53 on the roster — I’m following 53 on Twitter.  That’s my team.  We live together, We Tweet together!  Whether it’s athletics or business, you want your team to focus and support the team you’ve got.  If that means making a gesture like unfollowing someone a social network, so be it.  We want to win!

Leadership is all about signs and symbols.  While this might seem small and insignificant in the larger scheme of running an NFL team, I love the detail of it!

So, what about you?  Do you unfollow (FB, Twitter, etc.) past employees who leave your organization?

 

2014 Career Paths: Prison, Military or College

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My gun-loving Democratic friend, Laurie Ruettimann, sent me an article last week about the plight of Americans from the Washington Times basically saying 4 out of 5 Americans are at or near Poverty. I sent a message back ‘joking’ that it was another attempt by her to convert me to Democrat.

She replied with “No, it’s my attempt to get help. It’s employers like ‘you’ who can help this, not government, not Democrats, not Republicans…”

Here’s segment of that article:

“Here’s a snippet of what the American dream has become in the past few years: Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., said the economic trend is only going to get worse.

“If you do try to go apply for a job, they’re not hiring people, and they’re not paying that much to even go to work,” she said, AP reported. The youth have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”

The American Dream is a nightmare for the majority of Americans. Our government can’t help. Let’s face it: the brightest people in our society aren’t in government; they are in private industry because that’s where the money is. Our government is mostly filled with narcissists who like to think they are really important while doing nothing but spending our tax dollars on band-aid programs and trying to stop the bleeding of a broken system. That’s just reality. 

No one, on either side of the political fence, has the brainpower to stop what’s going on.  They just jump on the bull and hang on with no control over where the beast wants to go.

I use humor in most situations. It’s my defense mechanism. When you grow up in the inner city — white, short and red headed — you either get your ass kicked or become funny. I didn’t like getting my ass kicked, so I got funny. Over the past year I’ve come up with what I think the career path is for my own three sons in today’s world. It’s what our government and public education system now provide to every American child.

What Career Path Will You Choose?

There are three concrete paths:

1. College

2. The Military

3. Prison

Realistically, those are the only three career paths a middle-class American child has today.

If you are a smart white kid with some money in your family, you have options. You can go to college. You can go to Europe. If you are a smart minority kid, the government will pay for you to go to college.

But most kids from the “lower-middle” or “lower classes” will either go to military or prison, regardless of race. A few will make it through the Community College ranks. 

(One caveat, super smart kids can go to college on scholarship no matter what race.)

But the broader point is this: if you are of average-to-lower intelligence, your career path narrows. College isn’t an option. Let’s face it — if High School kicked your ass, college probably isn’t a good bet. So you are left with the Military, which is actually a great option for many young people today who are lost.

Or you have prison.

This is what our society is showing our young people. College is the only way to move up. And if you don’t go to college, you have to go to the military or you’ll end up in prison.

We no longer have skilled trade programs. Service jobs don’t pay enough for you to actually live. Any decent hourly wage job will eventually be sent overseas or technology will be invented to make it obsolete.

Our President wants to start a Community College program that will allow most Americans to attend. I actually like this idea — but it’s really just taking the old programs that high schools use to provide and moving them into ‘High School II’ — aka community colleges. I think high schools could do most of these ‘non-professional’ programs better and cheaper than community colleges — but at least it’s a start.

Corporations, ultimately, will have the final say with all of this. If American companies want and need a trained workforce, they will make it happen regardless of what our government does. If they don’t, the career paths I’ve laid out will remain.

I am not trying to be pessimistic. If anything, I am being pragmatic in my views of our current situation.  Four out of five Americans are within reach, or in, poverty. That’s real. 

What is your company doing to help out this situation?

 

Top Recruiter Lies

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So, last week, I wrote a little HR blog post called – ‘Top Candidate Lies‘ and it got a rather large reaction.  LinkedIn’s What’s Hot picked it up from TLNT (ERE’s HR website which re-blogs some of my work) – and in a little over 8 hours, over 75,000 people read the post, and over 500 comments (at TLNT’s site)!  Cool for me, right!?  Well, let’s just say there were a ‘few’ folks who didn’t agree with my post – so I took a bit of beating – as did the Recruiting Profession in general.

Basically, from the Top Candidate Lies post, there three camps:

1. Recruiters – where about 99% agreed with the lies, and found it funny

2. Job Seekers – who honestly had one of these things happen to them, now understood that some recruiters might see these as lies, and wanted help in how they should address (I got over 50 person emails like this – which was cool and made for a busy weekend)

3. The Haters – these folks assumed all ‘candidates’ were out of work people, and they weren’t lying or had to lie to get a job.  There’s really no logic in addressing these folks, like: many candidates lie and are actually employed, candidates lie because they just don’t want to tell the recruiter the truth (more on this later) or candidates lie because most candidates lie! The Haters also pointed out that Recruiters Lie!  For which I say – “yes, yes they do!”

I love The Haters passion, though, so I wanted to go down that road of the Top Recruiter Lies – Here you go Haters!

– Send Us Your Resume, Even Though We Don’t Have a Job Lie – this was pointed out by a few people – I would say this is a ‘semi-lie’  (how do you like that haters!).  While the recruiter might not have the opening currently, they’re asking for a resume because they frequently have those openings and they never know when one is coming. The recruiter, though, is wrong by not telling you this up front, so you know what to expect.

– The Hiring Manager Hasn’t Gotten Back To Me Lie – This is a lie and not a lie – potentially!  For Corporate Recruiters this is a lie or lazy – you pick.  If you’re a corporate recruiter and tell the candidate that the hiring manager hasn’t gotten back to you – get your butt up from your desk and walk over to the hiring managers desk.  If they’re in a different location and won’t get back to you – you have an influence problem you need to work on.  Agency-wise it’s the one frustrating things recruiters have to deal with – Hiring Managers will get to ‘us’ when they feel like it, and usually after they’ve exhausted every other opportunity internally to fill the position.

– The Never Call Back the Candidate Lie – this really isn’t a lie – but The Haters pointed this out happens all the time!  For the sake of Recruiters everywhere – if you do this – please quit this profession – we (all Recruiters) Hate you as well.  You give all of us a bad name.  It takes 10 seconds to call back a candidate you spoke to a job about, and tell them “Sorry, you were not chosen – stay in touch, don’t call me again, etc.”  10 seconds!  Haters – bad Recruiters don’t call you back because they have major conflict avoidance and don’t like telling people negative stuff like – “You’re not good enough, we found someone better” or just a simple Lie “we filled it internally”.

– The You Didn’t Score High Enough On The Assessment Lie – The company you’re trying to get into might actually have cut-off scores they’ve established – the lie comes into play when a hiring manager presents someone they’ve worked with previously and that person scores the same as you – but still gets the job.  If they really like you – the assessment won’t stop them from hiring you.

– The We’ve Decided To Go Another Direction Lie – This comes along with the ‘We really liked you, but” Lie.  This is Recruiter training 101 – to not get yourself into trouble when telling a candidate they didn’t get the job – give them a reason that legally can never come back and bite you in the butt.  “We really, really, really liked but have decided to not fill the position.”  Two weeks later a job posting comes out that seems very similar but with a title change and a few description changes.  They didn’t like you.

The biggest reason Recruiters lie?  They have major conflict avoidance and are not willing to tell you the truth, which is usually there is something wrong with you – based on what they are looking for and don’t want to hurt your feelings.  Unfortunately, many candidates would actually be helped by a little Recruiter honesty – but recruiters are afraid of candidates who get told the truth – and then get charges from the EEOC, other state or federal agencies, or just get flat out sued.  Candidates have a hard time with feedback like – “you’re really creepy”, “you’re annoying” or “your personality is grating”.  So, the lies come – because Recruiters have found Lies are easier than the truth.

Ok, Haters – your turn – which Recruiter Lies did I forget?  Hit me, not literally, in the comments…

Save Tincup!

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It’s been one day, well one business day where I actually pay attention to social media, and I can’t take it any more.  I’m going to start a Protest, or a march, or one of those things you do when you really don’t have any say or power but it feels like someone should do or say something.  I can’t take a social media world without William Tincup. For those who don’t know – William has decided to turn off all social media and take a summer vacation – no Blogging, no Twitters, no Facebook, no lunch-time internet radio show (Drive Thru HR), no Instagram (which might hurt him the worst), etc.

Like most of what William does, I envy him.

William will still take email, phone calls and texts – so basically he’s now Amish!

Here’s my plan:

1. Starting today – Text “Save Tincup” to 469-371-7050 (That’s William’s cell phone number) – if I know anything – he is a very curious fellow – he’ll want to know what all this means.

2. Email or Text William this Photo:

Save Tincup

 

3. Call and leave him this voicemail: “I want my Tincup!”

Let’s face it – a social world without William is a world I’d rather not be a part of.