Category Archives: Life Lessons

The First Question Every Leader Needs to Ask Themselves!

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I’ve been blogging now for ten years. Writing every day for eight years. If you go around writing and telling people you know something about something, guess what? They’re going to ask you to tell them about something, specifically as it relates to their circumstance.

So, I get asked my advice quite a bit about talent and HR issues people are facing.

There is a bucket of questions I get asked that fall into the same type of category.  These questions all have to do with how do we ‘fix’ something that isn’t working well in their HR and/or Talent shops.  How do we get more applicants? How do we get managers to develop their people? How do we fix our crazy CEO? Etc.

I used to go right into how I would solve that problem if I was in their shoes.  Five-minute solutions! I don’t know anything about you or your situation, but let me drop five minutes of genius on you for asking! It’s consulting at its worst! But it’s fun and engaging for someone who came to see me talk about hugging for an hour.

I’ve begun to change my approach, though, because I knew as they knew, they weren’t going back to their shops and doing what I said.  The problem with my five minutes of genius was it was ‘my’ five minutes, not theirs.  It was something I could do, but probably not something they could do or would even want to do based on their special circumstances.

Now, I ask this one question: Do you really want to get better?

Right away people will quickly say, “Yes!”  Then, there is a pause and explanation, and sometimes from this, we get to a place where they aren’t really sure they really want to get better.  That’s powerful. We all believe that ‘getting better’ is the only answer, but it’s not.  Sometimes, the ROI isn’t enough to want to get better. Staying the same is actually alright.

We believe we have to fix something and we focus on it, when in reality if it stays the same we’ll be just fine.  We’ll go on living and doing great HR work.  It just seemed like the next thing to fix, but maybe it actually is fine for now, and let’s focus on something else.

Many times HR and Talent leaders will find that those around them really don’t want to get better, thus they were about to launch into a failing proposition, and a rather huge frustrating experience. Better to probably wait, until everyone really wants to get better and move in that same direction.

So, before you go out to fix the world, your world, ask yourself one very important question: Do you, they, we, really want to get better?  I hope you can get a ‘yes’ answer! But if not, the world will still go on, and so will you, and you’ll be just fine!

Do you remember your first time!?

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I was twenty-six years old.  At the time, I was living in Michigan and working in my first job right out of college.  I had been doing pretty well for myself and began moving up in the company.

I had just got put into a position where I had a couple of people reporting to me, and I had to hire a new person to report to me as well.  I hired this smart, young person right out of college. Their passion and energy immediately attracted to them.

Oh, wait, you think I’m talking about…

Okay, let me start again.  This post isn’t about sex! This post is about my first termination!

Can you remember yours?

In my career, having to terminate individuals are some of my most memorable experiences.  I think if you have half a heart, you’re probably the same.  When I talk to upcoming HR graduates, I always try and forewarn them about this part of our job.

Terminating employees leads HR pros to heavy drinking or other forms of stress relief. That is a fact.

From time to time I hear HR pros talk boastful about firing someone, and it makes me sick to my stomach.  While I’ve had to terminate individuals that clearly deserved it, I never took pleasure in doing it.  It’s the one thing that really sucks about having a career in HR.  We get to see people at their weakest moments.

Most of us pray that no one ever has to see this side of ourselves.  Let alone, be in a position, where you frequently get to see this side of humanity.

When you terminate someone, there is a good chance you’re going to see this person’s biggest fears.  I have enough of my own fears. I don’t need to carry around the fears of others!

My first time?

I had to fire the young kid I hired with all the passion and energy, hoping they were going to change the world, fresh out of college.  This person just couldn’t come up to speed as a recruiter. It happens. I worked with this person, encouraged them, but eventually this person was ‘dead-employee’ walking.

Their body kept showing up for work, but their mind and heart had given up.  No matter how hard they physically worked, it wasn’t going to happen for them.  So, I pulled them into the conference room and told them it was time.

No real emotion to make this termination more memorable than any other. The person was upset, and you could see this was not something they had written on their bucket list.  They stood up, walked out, and my life went on.

Nine years later, I’m working at Applebee’s in HR.  I was responsible for seventy restaurants, and I happen to stroll into one of the locations and there is my first termination working behind the bar!  I saw him before he saw me, but once he saw me he froze.

I went over to say ‘hi’, and catch up.  It was awkward and clunky, but I’m an HR pro, I was trained to do this.  After me letting him go, he bounced around for a few years, and finally decided to go back to school, and had taken the bartender job at Applebee’s to make ends meet.

I saw this person a number of times after, and on one visit, he asked to talk.  He said that the day I walked into the Applebee’s, and he learned who I was, in my new position, he assumed I was going to fire him again.  I said, “For what?!” He said, “I don’t know, just because.”

It hit me hard.  This wasn’t about terminating a poor performer and moving on.  This person carried that termination around like a backpack for nine years, and as soon as they saw me, all that fear and feelings of failure flooded back to him.

Welcome to the show kids. Sometimes working in HR sucks.

I’m Afraid of Being Me Too’d!

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For the last ten days, I’ve been at HR and TA conferences. It was the longest, consecutive run of speaking I’ve done in my career. Basically, in ten days I did a total of 14 sessions. I now want to crawl into a dark sensory deprivation chamber for a week!

If you haven’t seen me speak, I do some hugging!

At one of my stops, I had a fellow come up to me during a private moment and ask me if I was afraid. “Afraid of what!?”, I asked. “Well, you are doing this hugging thing and I’ve seen you hug people outside of the sessions as well, aren’t you afraid of #MeToo? (I added the hashtag, he just said Me Too’d) I’m afraid if I did that, I would be #MeToo’d!”

I might be super naive, but I said, “No, absolutely not.” I hug in a context around my speaking. It’s about rules, and rules of hugging. It’s not me, drunkenly throwing myself at HR Ladies, trying to hit on them. In fact, it’s the opposite of that, I’m telling them we have rules about this kind of thing! (half making a joke about us HR pros and our rules!)

He persisted. “Doesn’t matter, Tim, it only takes one who feels like they might want to make an example out of you!”

Yeah, still, hard No. I’m a hugger. I’m an equal opportunity hugger. I hug all pronouns, very comfortably.

I think someone who is afraid of being MeToo’d is probably doing some stuff that they shouldn’t be doing. I’m not saying that someone couldn’t take a hug from me and spin it, but I hope with all my being someone wouldn’t do that. I also hope I’m smart enough not to put myself in a position where anyone would even consider that a hug from me was inappropriate!

I’ve had a career in HR and I’ve investigated some pretty nasty stuff where people were willing to do some pretty bad stuff to each other, for a million different reasons, mostly around hate and anger. So, I think I know what someone, improperly motivated, is capable of. I still was uncomfortable with the conversation, because it made me feel like somehow this person was trying to lessen the power of #MeToo.

“Well, someone could lie!” Of course, ‘someone’ could, but we would need to ask ourselves, why? And in 99.99% of those cases, there isn’t a why only some dude doing something stupid.

I’m going to keep hugging. I like hugs. I love the feeling of hugging someone who hugs me back for real. It makes both of our days a little better. I’m going to keep asking those I hug if they actually want a hug. That’s one of the rules!

It’s Okay to Tell Your Critics to Suck It!

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In the corporate world, everyone is a critic!  Everyone!  We’ve gotten really good at a learned behavior. No longer can we send out a final product the first time. Why?  Because everyone wants to trash it and change it so it can be this really nice piece of vanilla crap!  Welcome to Corporate America. But you know what, this isn’t new, critics have been around since Jesus and critics have been wrong since before Jesus!

I wanted to share with you some famous things that critics got wrong:

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1824)

What the critics said in 1825: “We find Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to be precisely one hour and five minutes long; a frightful period indeed, which puts the muscles and lungs of the band, and the patience of the audience to a severe trial…” –The Harmonicon, London, April 1825

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)

And the critics’ response: When Melville died in 1891, Moby-Dickhad moved a grand total of 3,715 copies…in 40 years! The below was typical at the time of the book’s release:

“…an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition…Our author must be henceforth numbered in the company of the incorrigibles who occasionally tantalize us with indications of genius, while they constantly summon us to endure monstrosities, carelessnesses, and other such harassing manifestations of bad taste as daring or disordered ingenuity can devise…” -Henry F. Chorley, London Athenaeum, October 25, 1851

 

Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1945)

What the critics said about the book we all had to read in high school: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.” –Publisher’s rejection

 

Here’s what I know, true creativity and innovation in what we do, does not come from running our ideas through everyone and their brother for approval.  If your organization wants your employees to be truly creative and innovative, stop pushing teams.

 

Teams don’t make masterpieces, they can do some pretty cool stuff, but pure creativity isn’t one of them.  We push “Team” so hard in HR and in most organizations it sometimes makes you think like this the only way everyone in the world must work, but it’s not.  An HR Pro that can determine the proper work structure throughout their organization is truly valuable and “team” isn’t always the answer. We should have other tools in our toolbox besides just ‘teams’.

 

You hear artist all the time say “I don’t listen to my critics”. This is valuable in that they know listening to a critic will hurt their art.  Unfortunately, in business, we don’t always have the ability/decision to not listen to our critics (since those critics could be bosses, peers, friends, etc.).

 

In business telling your critics to “Suck It” could be a big career derailer!

 

So, when do we go all “Suck It! It’s my project” in the workplace?   First, I wouldn’t suggest you approach it, beginning with “Suck It”. While you will get their attention, I think we all have the ability in our work environment to push back appropriately when you truly know you have something that will make a difference.  But, it’s about having the conviction to stand behind it and not let it get changed.  That’s your marker, “am I willing to put my career/credibility/bank of influence on the line for this idea/project/etc.?” If you are, it’s time to pull out the “Suck It” card and push forward.  For most of us, this might never happen in our work lives, maybe once, but it’s rare.

 

I think what we learn over time is that not all of our critics are bad and some actually might help truly make us better.  The key is to continue to have confidence in what you do, without it, your work critics will make your work life less than artistic.

No, really, just keep being wrong!

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I was with some HR Pros recently and one of them shared a standard HR axiom about what we do as HR Pros in the vain of maintaining consistency. If we are wrong in the beginning then we just keep being wrong!  It sounds idiotic doesn’t!?! But you see it every single day in HR. At one point someone made a decision, for who knows what reason, and no matter what the reason precedence was set and through hell and high water we will keep making that same decision!

We are HR! We are HR! We are HR! (keep the chant going!)

I’m this person.  Well, I’m trying not to be. You see in my organization we do the same stuff.  If my recruiters exceed their goals we have various rewards that get – one of those is the ability to have a flex day throughout their week, where they can work from home or come in late, leave early, etc.  It’s up to them.  In our environment, that reward is worth its weight in gold!  But (there’s always a “But”) when a holiday week happens where the person is already going to be off for a day, we have said no flex day that week.  Seemed like a reasonable plan.

But was it?

A reward is set up to be a reward it shouldn’t matter if the person has a vacation, or has a holiday, etc.  I had to ask myself why do we do this, take this away just because of a holiday? I trust my people, especially those working their butts off to exceed their goals, so why take it away? I was wrong.  So, I decided to change it and do the right thing.

Do you know what the first reaction was?  Yep, it was “Wait” that’s not how we did it before. A very normal reaction we have as leaders because we want to deliver consistency to our teams, and I agree with that concept for sustained engagement but there’s one thing that should override this. When you’re wrong!

So, do you have the courage to stop being wrong?

Most of your peers don’t. They get caught up in groupthink. They get caught up thinking they are being “consistent” and that is good. But being consistent on doing something wrong is just being consistently wrong!  You have a choice, keep being wrong or start being right!  What will you do?

Career Confessions of Gen Z | The Power of Seeing – B-roll!

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http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POGt4ZSiKMM&w=560&h=315

Hello everyone!

Thank you for joining me on this Gen Z journey. In the last episode, I talked about what verbal and spoken content can do for your recruiting methods, but I think it’s just one side of things to simply hear what a job is like. It takes it to a whole other level when you can visually capture what the processes of a job are like. So follow me into the world of b-roll!

(Don’t worry, I’ll explain it all in the video) 😉

Skyler Baty is a Videographer and Video Editor for SkillScout and lives in the Detroit Metro Area in Michigan. Skyler loves doing video work and helping organizations with their video projects. Connect with him, he’s a genius with this stuff!

 

 

 

 

IN 2025, APPLICATIONS WILL BE accepted for the job of a lifetime—literally!

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Swedish artistic duo Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby recently announced their next project which they are calling “Eternal Employment”. The project is fully funded and they have even started to write a job description for this ‘artistic’ endeavor.

What is “Eternal Employment“?

“A fair starting salary, with annual wage increases that match those for Swedish government workers, vacation time, even a pension, and the job is yours for as long as you do it. So what’s the job? Anything you want.

Each morning, the chosen employee will punch a clock in Korsvägen train station, currently under construction in Gothenburg, Sweden, which will turn on a bank of bright fluorescent lights. Other than that, “the position holds no duties or responsibilities besides the fact that the work should be carried out at Korsvägen. Whatever the employee chooses to do constitutes the work,” reads the job description. The employee can also choose how publicly visible or anonymous they would like to be while on the clock.”

So, how is this art?

“As Gothenburg’s working class finds itself marginalized, Goldin and Senneby see a job that gives total control to the worker as an act of economic imagination.”

It’s an interesting concept, even more so as we move into the world of A.I. knowing so many tactical jobs we do now will go away and many economists are already talking about these concepts of people being given a living wage to basically just live, but not work.

This is truly art potentially mimicking life. We can already foresee a time when we don’t need most of the workers we have today, yet we still have to provide for the population and understand a new kind of productivity when ‘work’ isn’t apart of the equation.

So, what would you do in this job?

It’s a great question to think about. If you didn’t have to worry, every, for the rest of your life, about finances, and you couldn’t be fired. What would you do in this train station each day on your shift?

I want to hope that I would find ways to brighten the day of others. To welcome them to the day, to wish them the best on their way home, and everything in between, but it’s such a far-out concept it’s really hard to even imagine.  It kind of reminds me of the movie with Tom Hanks, The Terminal. While he had to stay in the airport and couldn’t leave, he basically had to figure out how to spend his time in this pass-through public space.

I have a feeling this ‘job of a lifetime’ would probably get super boring for most people. Most of us would start out with the best intentions, but eventually, fall into the trap of not really doing anything productive. Maybe that’s part of the “art” to select someone who actually would take full advantage of this opportunity. I would love to be on the selection committee!

What would you do if you were given this job? Hit me in the comments.

 

Dark Horses – Being Successful When You Shouldn’t!

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Just got done reading a really good book recently by Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas, titled, “Dark Horses: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment“.

The main author, Todd Rose, had a unique journey to becoming a Harvard Professor and graduate. He was a high school drop out with a pregnant girlfriend and no real ambition in life, going down a complete path to failing at life.

He found out you could actually go to community college without having graduated high school and decided he was interested in psychology and just started taking classes while working full-time dead-end jobs. So, when he writes about ‘dark horses’ he’s writing from something he knows very well. He was the ultimate dark horse!

We all know people, or have met people, that when you hear their story there is no reason in the world they should be successful. They didn’t have the breaks they needed. They weren’t overly talented in any one thing. But somehow they made it go through and ended up on the other side to become successful.

Rose and Ogas did a bunch of research to find out why. Why do these dark horses become successful? What is it they do differently from others in similar positions to achieve success? They found four main behaviors and traits that set dark horses apart:

1. They know very specifically what motivates them. 

It might be some video game, or weed, or stars, or sneakers, etc. It doesn’t actually matter what the ‘thing’ is that motivates them, but the clearly understand they are motivated by this one thing and they are going to follow through on it until the end.

2. They know their choices and make choices that will allow them to do more of what motivates them. 

If you’re motivated by sleep and choose to sleep constantly, well, you’re just an idiot. If you’re motivated by getting a perfect night sleep and you start really researching what makes a perfect night sleep, and then you start a mattress company to build the perfect night’s sleep. Well, then, you’re a dark horse. We all have choices. Dark horses make the choice that keeps them chasing what motivates them, every time. They don’t get pulled off course.

3. Dark horses are great at trial and error as it relates to finding the strategy that will lead them to success. 

There are a million ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes. Turns out there isn’t one right way to do anything. Dark horses will keep trying to new strategies to achieve what motivates them, eventually finding the strategy that fits them perfectly. It might not fit you or I, but it does fit them. The key is to keep testing strategies until you find the one that fits you.

4. Ignore the destination. 

Dark horses don’t focus on an end. In fact, they probably don’t even realize there is an end. They love ‘something’ and they just want to keep doing that something. There isn’t this mythical end where they cash out and retire. In their mind, they are doing what they love and they are just making the next decision to keep doing what they love, or chasing after what they love, perfecting knowing perfection will never be met.

This is who I am. This is what matters to me. This is what I’m doing next. 

That’s a super powerful mantra to life!

We are told constantly to begin with the end in mind, but for many people that approach isn’t satisfying. If I love what I’m doing and it matters deeply to me, why would I focus on an end?

Well worth the read, go check it out.

The 1 Thing You Need to Do to Get the Job You Always Wanted!

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Last week I got a call from an old work friend. He wanted to have lunch.  He just left a position and was in transition.  Not a bad or negative job loss, just parted ways.  When you get to a certain executive point in your career, it’s rare that bad terminations take place. It’s usually, “hey, we like you, but we really want to go another direction, and we know you don’t want to go that direction, so let’s just shake hands and call it a day, here’s a big fat check.”

Executives get this.  For the most part, there aren’t hard feelings, like when you were young and lost a job. I usually find that the organization the person is leaving from are super complimentary, and usually takes the blame for the change.  Executives in corporate America are like NFL coaches. You get hired with the understanding that one day you’ll be fired.  It’s not that you know less, or aren’t going to be successful in your career, it’s just that the organization needs change, and you’re part of that change.

Welcome to the show, kid.

My friend decided that he was going to find his next position not through posting for positions online, or trolling corporate career pages, he was going to have lunches.  About two per week, with past work friends. Let’s connect, no pressure, we already know each other and I want to catch up.

You see, in 2019 you don’t find great jobs by filling out applications in ATSs and uploading your resume to Indeed. You get great jobs because of the relationships and personal capital you’ve built up over your career.  Having lunch and reconnecting turn on a relationship machine. I believe that people, innately, want to help other people. When a friend comes to you with a situation, and you have something to offer or help, you will do that.

The problem is most people who are looking for great jobs don’t do this. They lock themselves in their home office and apply to a thousand jobs online and get upset when nothing happens. Great jobs aren’t filled by ATSs and corporate recruiters.  Great jobs are filled through relationships. Every single one of them.

Want to find a great job in 2019?

Go out to lunch.

Welcome to the Real-World Tesla Employees!

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You probably saw this last week but it came out that Tesla employees fear for their jobs more than any other technology company, of over 8000 tech workers surveyed:

A survey by workplace chat app Blind shows that out of all the major tech companies, Tesla’s employees most fear being laid off.

Blind surveyed 8,230 tech workers over a week at the beginning of this month. Overall, 35.9% of users surveyed said they were worried about layoffs at their current company, while 64.1% have job security.

Tesla had the highest percentage of fearful employees, with 77.2% saying they are concerned about job cuts. It was followed closely by eBay and Snapchat, with 71.9% and 71.3% respectively.

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but Tesla isn’t a ‘tech’ company. Tesla is a manufacturing company. They make cars and other stuff that has to be built in factories.

For the millions of other employees who work for manufacturing companies, the fear of being laid-off is super real!

Why?

  • Sometimes we design and market stuff that doesn’t sell.
  • Sometimes the Chinese steal our designs and tech and make our stuff cheaper and sell it back to us.
  • Sometimes economic conditions make it so people don’t have enough money to buy our stuff.

Layoffs happen.

The big joke here is that the company who did the survey actually thinks Tesla and Google are the same type of company. They aren’t. They are both super hot ‘brands’, but they are both not technology companies.

Sure the Tesla is loaded with technology, but so it every other vehicle on the planet right now, and it’s increasing in every model from every manufacturer.

Also, fear of layoff is real in every company, in every market, in every industry. Sure many technology companies are hot right now and need workers desperately and it looks like that will be the case for a long time, but that’s isn’t a guarantee. Blackberry was on top of the world for a hot minute, then they weren’t. (Oh, I loved my first Blackberry!)

Turns out, if you make crap no one wants to buy, or can’t afford to buy, jobs will be lost! I think people who buy Tesla’s love Teslas! I hear nothing but great things. Also, for many, a full electric car just isn’t practical, yet. And, they are super expensive. And quite frankly, Tesla isn’t very good at being a manufacturing company. Tesla is not Toyota.

After the Great Recession we have an entire Generation coming into the workforce that will place job security much higher than the generations before them. None of us wants our employees to be fearful for their jobs, when it’s not performance related. It’s an awful feeling and a culture killer.

It’s also part of business. Capitalism isn’t perfect, but I prefer it to the alternatives.