Your #Career : 17 Tricks for Landing a Job that Isn’t Advertised … or Doesn’t Exist….There’s a “Hidden Job Market” with Tons of Unadvertised Jobs. And as it Turns Out, There are some Easy Ways to Crack It.

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“This is good news for job seekers who are a little adventurous but also strategic,” explains Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and author of “Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job.” “A hidden market affords you endless opportunities to pursue your dream job. Whether a job is unadvertised or hasn’t even been created yet, by being proactive and pursuing the companies you want to join, you’ll increase the odds of finding what you want. And if the stars line up, you may even have limited or no competition.”

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“With any job search, networking is critical, but especially if you pursue this alternative tactic,” Taylor adds. “If you know any insiders who either work or have worked at the companies you’re interested in, that’s great news. Or, you may know an industry contact who can refer you to such a person. But remember that if you’re casting a wide net and are still employed, you must use a lot of discretion.”

Your “hidden job search” will require a lot more research, tenacity, and emotional intelligence than a traditional one, she says, “because you typically have to do more persuading and take the time to package yourself extremely well when you’re trying to land an unadvertised, or non-existent job.” But the effort can be well worth it, she adds.

If you’re up for the challenge, here are 17 tricks for landing an elusive, hidden job:

1- Work on mastering your soft skills.

Taylor says you’ll need: good communication abilities, strong drive, excellent street smarts and instincts, great networking skills, diplomacy, intellectual curiosity, persuasiveness, an ability to articulate your pitch, passion, and creativity.

Aside from having a competitive, marketable skill set, these are some soft skills that can make a huge difference when trying to tap the hidden job market.

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2- Find your ‘unique selling proposition’ and master your elevator pitch.

You can’t be all things to all people, so zone in on your brand and “unique selling proposition.”

“Who are you in your industry sphere? What have you accomplished that makes you unique? Where are these skills most needed?” Taylor asks. “Make your elevator pitch powerful and succinct. Once you have your packaging complete, this kind of targeted search will be much more efficient.”

 

“When pursuing hidden jobs, this is more true than ever,” she explains. “Your question should initially be about whether they can help steer you in the right direction. Informational interviews are a foot in the door, too. They may be arranged because the hiring manager views them as a safe approach to keep your expectations low.”

3- Do your homework.

If and when you decide to pursue this type of job search, the onus is on you to conduct extensive research. “You have a little more latitude when there’s a published opening, but this requires a deeper understanding of the industry, company, their mission, department, specific contact names and duties, as well as knowledge of how you can contribute in a meaningful way,” Taylor explains.

Use keywords and the company name not only on LinkedIn, but through a general search, she suggests. “This way, you’ll find endless information on companies, people, strategies, news, and more.”

Roll up your sleeves and become a job sleuth. “Read news releases. Look for people with common interests and think out of the proverbial box. If one of your prospective hiringmanagers plays on a local golf team or is involved with your favorite charity, for instance, forge ahead and leverage commonalities. If they had an anniversary or major achievement in the press, mention that in your pitch,” she says.

 

“Since job networking has virtually become synonymous with LinkedIn, and networking is a huge part of your strategy, take advantage of this critical tool,” she says.

4- Network non-stop.

Spread the word about your job search on social media, talk to colleagues, reconnect with former colleagues, attend industry meetings and conferences, and talk with relatives and friends to get the word out. “Just be sure to thank your contacts along the way and offer to helpthem if they need anything,” she says. “Pay it forward.”

If you tell enough people about what you’re looking for and the value you can bring to a company, someone may say, “Oh, I think a job like that might be opening up at my company soon,” or a startup founder may hear about you and say, “We could probably use someone like that on our team.”

“With any job search, networking is critical, but especially if you pursue this alternative tactic,” Taylor adds. “If you know any insiders who either work or have worked at the companies you’re interested in, that’s great news. Or, you may know an industry contact who can refer you to such a person. But remember that if you’re casting a wide net and are still employed, you must use a lot of discretion.”

 

5- Stay on top of industry and company news.

Your homework is never done.

Set up alerts and stay on top of company and industry news. “It will help open doors and elevate your personal brand with prospective hiring managers,” she explains. “Google alerts is a must-have, but so are those from job-related apps. Openings for similar jobs at companies can give you a sign that your timing is good. Just be sure not to become overwhelmed with every app on the planet, especially if you’re easily distracted. Be focused and selective.”

6- Watch for companies in ‘hiring mode.’

When you read stories of companies hiring in your field, that’s a clue you have an above-average shot at either filling an unadvertised position, or potentially having one created for you, Taylor says.

 

7- Zero in on your dream job or company.

Finding a hidden job is more laborious, but your approach here is quality, not quantity. “So before you launch your campaign, have a clear idea of the position and companies that most appeal to you,” Taylor suggests. “Then scour their websites to familiarize yourself with their goals and people.”

8- Become a LinkedIn Guru.

“Since job networking has virtually become synonymous with LinkedIn, and networking is a huge part of your strategy, take advantage of this critical tool,” she says.

Learn the ins and outs of it; add meaningful connections; explore the benefits of LinkedIn Premium; post helpful articles to your page and groups; engage with members who might help you; look at your connections and their connections; offer to help others; write to employers; and regularly look at job postings on the site.

 

9- Ask for guidance, not jobs.

People are much more receptive when they’re not put on the spot.

“When pursuing hidden jobs, this is more true than ever,” she explains. “Your question should initially be about whether they can help steer you in the right direction. Informational interviews are a foot in the door, too. They may be arranged because the hiring manager views them as a safe approach to keep your expectations low.”

 

10- Volunteer and join committees.

Not only does volunteering with a charity help you give back, it can also establish trust, strong professional bonds, and friendships, she says. “If there’s an industry association that accepts volunteers and you can join a committee, you will interface with people who instantly have common interests. Job seekers who give back to their community have an edge in hiring, too, all things being equal.”

 

11- Call and email.

Did you need to read that twice? “In this day and age, calling a perfect stranger at a company with anything having to do with a job seems risky,” says Taylor. “However, that could be the very reason that you stand out. Some added ammunition: You know someone in common, you’re highly diplomatic, you have a competitive skill that’s in demand, and you understand their mission and corporate culture.”

Your email can acknowledge that they have no openings, but your background can be described as mutually advantageous for specific reasons. “This is where your deep knowledge of the firm can reap major rewards.”

12- Go as high as you can.

Depending on how senior you are and the size of the company, don’t be afraid to reach out and reach high in the organization.

“If you’re a mid-level IT manager, it may make perfect sense to target the CIO or CTO, especially if you have a very marketable skill. If you start too low, you may have to deal with the ‘fear factor’: No one wants to help a job candidate who could threaten their job security,” she says. “Accessing the email can be tricky, but there are ways to figure it out, and beginning with the appropriate admin can at least get you in the door.”

 

13- Consider project work or a temp job.

One way to land a job when there’s no advertised opening is to offer your services as a project worker, consultant, or high-level temporary worker. “If a full-time position is in the offing, you’re already well situated,” Taylor says.

14- Be kind to the gatekeeper.

“Most of the corporate positions I accepted were never advertised,” Taylor says. “I targeted companies with whom I wanted to work. I also believe that administrative assistants are the unsung heroes of today’s companies. They’re often the trusted confidantes of C-suite executives.”

Many job seekers make the mistake of overlooking this vast resource and try to circumvent them in emails or calls. But consider their knowledge and influence, she advises. “Executives who are told by their admins that a great candidate contacted them are much more likely to show interest than if the job seeker is evasive. This is where your people skills can shine, as you show respect for the very people who can be invaluable allies.”

 

15- Have a thick skin and remain positive.

No matter how diplomatic you are, you’ll run across people who will turn you down. “It’s fine. You’re not here to please everyone and you just became one person closer to landing a great, unexpected interview,” she says. “Negativity can drag anyone down, but if you remain tenacious, you will get traction.”

 

16- Be patient.

If you need a new job fast, this isn’t necessarily the way to go about it. But if you have the luxury of time, it’s an excellent approach.

However, you need to be patient. You’re trying to find jobs that are not advertised or may not even exist yet, so the process may be challenging and can take a while. Don’t give up too easily.

17- Assume an entrepreneurial mindset.

Tell yourself, “They need me more than I need them” until you believe it.

“View yourself as a catalyst for the company’s growth,” says Taylor. “Put yourself in the shoes of the manager and market yourself accordingly.” How will they advance their mission with you on board? What unique abilities do you bring to the table? Consider that you’re offering something they need versus asking for a favor.

“When conducting your job search, it’s wise to pursue the obvious: publicly posted openings,” she says. “But when you expand your options to the ‘unseen,’ the possibilities are only limited by you.”

 

 

Businessinsider.com | February 19, 2016  |  

Your #Career : 5 Hiring Trends To Watch In 2016… #3- Social media will be Increasingly Used to find Candidates. (i.e. your LinkedIn Profile)

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As 2016 gets into full swing, we’re beginning to see several key hiring trends develop. Based on my insights as a former recruiter, I believe these themes bode well for job seekers looking to make the most of their career this year by finding a new job.

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Here are five trends job seekers can leverage in finding their next great role:

1. Job offers will include more perks and benefits. According to Mercer, salary increases this year are projected to be 2.9%. So, if you’re planning on remaining in your current job, chances are your raise will not be significant (if you receive one at all).

As such, job seekers looking to increase their earning power by pursuing external opportunities should also focus on negotiating more bells and whistles in their offer. In light of the current talent shortage, employers are generally hungry for quality candidates. Seekers should leverage this not only in negotiating financial benefits like base compensation, a sign-on bonus and relocation allowance – which may be more difficult to attain in the current economic climate – but also for perks like flexible work schedules and additional time off. Candidates can expect to see offers that include ramped up benefits like unlimited personal time and extended maternity and personal leaves.

 

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2. Increased interest in boomerangs. The trend of employees considering returning to their former employers is on the rise. In a recent Monster poll, more than half of participants revealed that they’d consider returning to a former employer.

To that point, an additional 28% reported that they are already boomerangs. As more recruiters (and therefore employers) tap into this potential gold mine of rehires, they’re discovering the benefits of a former employee: boomerangs already know the company culture and infrastructure, which can help reduce their time to hire as well as their ramp up period.

We can expect to see more companies hosting in-person and virtual alumni events to network and re-establish rapport with their former employees, and, most importantly, build a pipeline of valuable potential rehires.

3. Social media will be increasingly used to find candidates. Back in the day, employers could only rely on resumes and cover letters to get a sense of a candidate’s qualifications. As we all know, the Internet and social media have made it much easier for them to find and research potential candidates – especially elusive talent that may not be actively looking for a job.

While resumes and cover letters are still staples of the process, expect recruiters to check out your online profiles in addition to what you have submitted – or even before you submit anything at all.

The really good news? Whether you’re looking for a job, applying or simply networking, having an active, polished online presence can make it easier for recruiters to find you and reach out about opportunities you may not have even known existed. Be reachable and, more importantly, be responsive to their emails, even if you’re not interested at the time.

4. More lucrative employee referral programs – and beyond. When I worked in corporate recruiting, all of my hiring managers shared one common hiring metric: the number one source of new hires was employee referrals.

In 2016, it’s likely employers will ramp up their referral programs for employees, as well as start extending referral bonuses externally, such as offering $100 to $500 to friends of the company and former employees. As the war for talent heats up, keep your eyes open for opportunities to refer friends and colleagues.

5. More offers will include flexibility. Until recently, it was common for candidates to be nervous about asking potential employers for flexible work arrangements.

Now more and more employers are offering flexibility as part of their employment package up front. And the options will continue to expand this year – from occasional telecommuting to staggering work hours and more. As the workplace continues to evolve, hiring practices will change along with them.

Vicki Salemi is a career expert for Monster, author, public speaker and columnist.

 

Forbes.com | February 18, 2016 | Vicki Salemi

#Strategy : Stressed Out At Work? How to Train Your Brain to Fix It…According to the World Health Organization, Stress costs Businesses in the United States around $300 Billion per Year, in Terms of Absenteeism, Employee Turnover, & in Losses of Productivity.

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“Most of us are training ourselves to be incredibly good worriers, or not being able to sleep, or not being able to have good relationships,” Burton explained. Practicing mindfulness is a way to combat that, without any “woo-woo” nonsense, as Burton calls it. Mindfulness isn’t oddball chants tied to the mystical or spiritual. “It’s brain training, pure and simple,” he said. 

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Around the age of 40, executive Joe Burton was experiencing what he calls “unhappiness at full speed.” He lost two siblings at young ages, wrenched his back, and suffered from insomnia. He served as a COO at several multibillion dollar companies and was finding great success in his career, but he was burning out – quickly.Stress was killing him, if not literally, then certainly in terms of his mental well-being and productivity.

According to the World Health Organization, stress costs businesses in the United States around $300 billion per year, in terms of absenteeism, employee turnover, and in losses of productivity. According to the University of Massachusetts Lowell, health care expenditures are 50% higher for employees who report high levels of stress, and absenteeism can cost large U.S. companies around $3.6 million each year. Another analysis shows high levels of stress contributes to at least 120,000 deaths in the U.S. each year and health care costs of $125 to $190 billion.

 

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To ease that burden on himself and on others, Burton decided to take a step back from the traditional executive sphere and instead focus on technology that could help people in similar situations. For Burton, that meant focusing on mindfulness. “There are literally thousands of studies correlating mindfulness training across a wide array of health and performance benefits,” Burton said in an interview with The Cheat Sheet.

According to Burton, the average person spends about 47% of their time with their mind wandering, thinking about the past, worrying about the future, or focusing on regrets or anxieties. The brain follows established patterns, meaning over time it grows more ingrained to accept those distractions. 

“Most of us are training ourselves to be incredibly good worriers, or not being able to sleep, or not being able to have good relationships,” Burton explained. Practicing mindfulness is a way to combat that, without any “woo-woo” nonsense, as Burton calls it. Mindfulness isn’t oddball chants tied to the mystical or spiritual. “It’s brain training, pure and simple,” he said.

With mindfulness training, Burton eased his back pain and restored his ability to get a good night’s sleep. Mindfulness is also tied to relieving symptoms of PTSD, addictions, and can even have biometric effects likelowering blood pressure. With that in mind, Burton founded Whil (pronounced “will”), a company that provides mindfulness exercises for employees and individuals who are looking to relieve the stress in their lives. It’s geared toward driven professionals who “know they’re not going to slow down but also need help,” Burton explained.

Whil has three main branches. Now is geared toward adults, both in professional and personal capacities, and leads people through mindfulness and yoga exercises with videos created by trained experts. Grow is a similar platform, but is designed for teenagers. Burton said to his knowledge, Whil’s program is the first of its kind for teens.

“Happiness begins at home, but so does stress,” he said. The goal of Grow is to equip teenagers to handle stress appropriately, before ingraining stress patterns into their lives. A third branch, Search Inside Yourself, isbased on the book written by former Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan. Those sessions, also all online, provide employees with emotional intelligence lessons and ways to improve leadership and teamwork through the lens of mindfulness. 

“The beauty of our program is everything was mapped against the leading causes of diseases and was made for the individual,” Burton said. An employee can log into their company-sponsored account when they’re having a particularly difficult time focusing, or can log on if they’re experiencing the death of a loved one.

“The thing I’m excited about is the teachers that we’re working with are really world class – the content we’ve created is just amazing,” Burton said. Once you sign up, you can search for meditations or yoga sessions based on how you’re feeling, what you’d like to accomplish (become more aware, connect with others, experience gratitude, etc.), and how long you have. Some sessions are just one minute, others are about 10 minutes or so. Mindfulness and yoga both have introductory lessons, followed by a library of hundreds of videos based around certain goals. 

The “ground swell” of interest around the topic of mindfulness has really made a difference in the last few years, Burton said, but individuals and companies will have a number of reasons for trying it. Individuals might want to become more productive or alleviate stressors, while companies may want to lower their health care burdens by meeting the needs of their employees. “Different people are interested in creating new habits for different reasons,” Burton said. Whil is optimized to work on a desktop or a mobile device using headphones. “For us, we think mobile devices are the best stress-delivering mechanism ever invented,” Burton said. In this case, the devices that often cause the most distractions can also be the vehicle for stress relief. 

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CheatSheet.com | February 19, 2016 | Nikelle Murphy

 

#Strategy : 13 Science-Backed Tactics for Winning any Negotiation…Whether it’s your Salary or your Cable Bill, a Lot of Life is Up for Negotiation. 

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Fortunately for you, there are plenty of psychological tricks that can help you get what you want — especially when you start out as the person with less power.

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Here, we rounded up some of the most practical and creative science-backed negotiating strategies.

Know your context.

Is the negotiation one-shot or long-term?

In “The Mind and the Heart of the Negotiator,” Kellogg management professor Leigh Thompson notes that the interaction between a customer and the waitstaff at a highway roadside diner is one of the few one-shot negotiations that happen in life — there’s little chance that patron or staff will see each other again.

But every other negotiation is long-term, with employment negotiations as a primary example. If it’s long-term, you need to manage not only monetary value, but the impression you’re making.

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Make the first offer.

It makes use of the anchoring effect.

If you start high, the hiring manager may adjust the figure down slightly. But that’s typically a stronger position than starting low and trying to negotiate up.

“Whoever makes the first offer essentially drops an anchor on the table,” Thompson tells Business Insider. “I might say that your opening offer is ridiculous, but nevertheless, unconsciously, I’ve been anchored.”

 

Make an aggressive offer.

Columbia University negotiation scholar Adam Galinsky says that people are overly cautious when making first offers.

On HBS Working Knowledge, Galinsky likens negotiating a salary to selling a house:

Take the perspective of the seller: more extreme first offers lead to higher final settlements…

High-anchor offers lead buyers to focus on a negotiated item’s positive attributes. In addition, an aggressive first offer allows you to offer concessions and still reach an agreement that’s much better than your alternatives.

In contrast, a nonaggressive first offer leaves you with two unappealing options: Make small concessions or stand by your demands.

Before you go in, know the lowest amount you’d accept.

Scholars call it the “reservation value,” or the lowest amount you’ll take.

“We always hope to do better than our reservation values,” writes negotiation expert Chad Ellis, “but it’s important to know what yours is, both to avoid accepting a deal you shouldn’t have and as a reference point for how much a current deal is worth to you.”

Having a firm grasp of your reservation value is important from a psychological perspective: If you anchor it into your mind,you’ll be less anchored by the other person’s offer.

 

 

Mirror the other person’s behavior.

When people are getting along, they mimic one another — mirroring each other’s accents, speech patterns, facial expressions, and body language.

A Stanford-Northwestern-INSEAD studyfound that people who were coached to mimic their negotiation partners behavior not only negotiated a better deal, but expanded the pie for both people.

“Negotiators who mimicked the mannerisms of their opponents both secured better individual outcomes, and their dyads as a whole also performed better when mimicking occurred compared to when it did not,” the authors wrote.

Offer a range slightly above what you hope to get.

Research indicates that people respond best when given a “bolstering range offer,” where you state the number that you’re looking for — and a range above it. If you’re trying to get to a $100,000 salary, ask for a salary range of $100,000 to $120,000.

Offering a range strikes people as more reasonable than standing firm on a single number, so you’re less likely to get hit with an extreme counteroffer.

 

Tell them something about yourself.

In a 2002 experiment cited by Wharton professor Adam Grant, Northwestern and Stanford students were asked to negotiate over email.

Some went straight to business, exchanging only names and email addresses.

Others went off-topic, “schmoozing” about hometowns and hobbies.

The schmoozers reached an agreement 59% of the time, while the business-only made it 40% of the time.

Keep all your options on the table.

Grant also notes the work of researcher Neil Rackham, who found that skilled negotiators don’t “sequence” the topics within a negotiation — they keep everything on the table.

So instead of saying, “Let’s resolve the salary first, and then we’ll move on to the other issues,” you resolve the components of the agreement all together — location, vacation time, or signing bonus.

“By keeping all of the issues on the table, you have the flexibility to propose trading location and bonus for a bump in salary,” Grant writes.

 

Use a precise figure rather than a round number.

You’ll probably sound like you know what you’re talking about.

That’s according to recent research, which found that dealmakers who present more precise offers (like $1.01 million) in mergers and acquisitions see more favorable outcomes than those who present round-number offers (like $1 million).

Specifically, those who make precise offers are more likely to win the negotiation, to have their initial offer accepted, and to see higher announcement returns.

Elicit your partner’s sympathy.

When you’re the less powerful party in a negotiation, it can help to make the other person feel slightly bad for you.

That’s according to a recent study co-authored by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and New York University. During mock negotiations around salary and benefits, some participants were told to reveal they had student loans and an ill parent and others were told it was best to stick to rational arguments.

Results showed that students in the first group, who gained their partner’s sympathy, were more likely to get what they wanted. In fact, both parties walked away with a better deal in these situations.

 

Emphasize what you’re giving the other person.

And don’t focus on what the other person is losing.

A study conducted by researchers at Leuphana University and Saarland University in Germany explored this in a range of negotiations, including buying and selling used appliances.

In one experiment, participants were divided into buyers and sellers and asked to rate their partner’s proposal. In some cases, they received offers (e.g. “The seller offers the refrigerator for a price of €160,” or, “The buyer offers a price of €160 for the refrigerator”). In other cases, they received requests (e.g. “The seller requests a price of €160 for the refrigerator,” or, “The buyer requests the refrigerator for a price of €160″).

Results showed that both buyers and sellers were more likely to concede when the other person focused on what they were going to gain from the negotiation (offers), in contrast to what they were going to lose (requests).

Act in unpredictable ways.

One study found that expressing inconsistent emotions throughout a negotiation can yield more favorable outcomes than staying emotionally stable.

In one experiment featured in the study, students role-played face-to-face negotiations for a new business venture. Half the students were told to express either consistent anger or inconsistent emotions. Those told to express anger said things like, “You’re beginning to get on my nerves,” while those told to express inconsistent emotions also said things like, “I’m very happy we’re negotiating together.”

Results showed that students who expressed inconsistent emotions claimed greater value in the negotiations. And other experiments in which students alternated between anger and disappointment yielded similar findings.

The reason is likely because the partners of those expressing inconsistent emotions felt less control over the situation.

Interact through a virtual medium.

According to research from Imperial College London, presented at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, face-to-face interactions tend to favor the more powerful person in the negotiation.

In one part of the study, 74 people participated in two-sided negotiations in which one party was more powerful than the other; in another part of the study, 63 people participated in three-sided talks where the levels of hierarchy varied. These talks either took place in person or in a 3D virtual simulation.

Results showed that the less powerful people performed better in the virtual settings. So you may want to consider petitioning your boss for a higher salary or a flexible schedule over email.

 

Businessinsider.com | February 18, 2016 | Drake Baer and Shana Lebowitz

#Leadership : 5 Signs Your Leadership Style Is Too Soft…There’s Huge Pressure on Leaders to Keep Employees Engaged & Inspired & to Create Workplaces that are Fun & Fulfilling. But Sometimes these Initiatives Go too Far & Bottom-Line Business Results Suffer.

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There’s huge pressure on leaders to keep employees engaged and inspired and to create workplaces that are fun and fulfilling. But sometimes these initiatives go too far and bottom-line business results suffer. Leaders turn overly soft and are so focused on making people happy that they forget to help employees be productive and efficient.

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There are four fundamental leadership styles: Diplomat, Pragmatist, Idealist and Steward. Leaders can be effective or ineffective within each of these four styles, but one style in particular is at the greatest risk of being too soft—the Diplomat. (There’s a leadership styles assessment to determine your own style.)

Diplomats prize interpersonal harmony. These leaders are kind, social, and giving, and typically build deep personal bonds with their employees. They’re often known for being able to resolve conflicts peacefully (and for avoiding conflicts in the first place). Working for Diplomats has been described as being more fun and social than working for other types of leaders. Diplomats put less emphasis on challenging their employees, focusing instead on putting their people in positions that leverage their strengths so they can reliably achieve success. And traditional measures of employee satisfaction are often very high for Diplomats.

As a leader you don’t ever want to stop focusing on inspiring and engaging your employees. But you do want to ensure that all the deep emotional connections you build with your employees and the level of challenge you create translate into exceptional bottom-line results. Pay attention to the warning signs, be engaging but not too accommodating, and you should achieve great success.

Working for a boss with a Diplomat leadership style can be an amazing experience. (Read more about all the leadership styles in my Forbes article“Which Of These 4 Leadership Styles Are You?”) But if any of the Diplomat characteristics sound similar to your leadership style, you want to make sure you don’t go to extremes. Here are five signs that your leadership style has become too yielding…

1. A 5-Minute Conversation Turns Into 50 Minutes

Imagine you give an employee a highly specific bit of constructive feedback (e.g. “this report is too long, shave off 1,000 words”). It’s the kind of feedback that requires no more of a response than “I got it, I’ll fix it now.” Now imagine that even though the feedback conversation should be done within 5 minutes, you find yourself engaged in a lengthy conversation with the employee about why they fell short, how that makes them feel, and why you’re somehow to blame for their mistakes.

Has that ever happened to you? If the answer is yes, that’s a good sign that you’ve become too appeasing. It’s good to encourage dialogue with your employees and it’s great when they feel comfortable sharing. But when employees believe they can talk themselves out of being criticized or held accountable, that’s a problem.

There are times when an employee just needs to say “I’m sorry. I messed up. I’ll fix it immediately.” That’s not indicative of a dictatorial environment; it’s usually just a sign of an efficient and accountable operation. There are some conversations that should be five minutes and done. So when you regularly feel like five-minute conversations are turning into 50-minute therapy sessions, that’s a strong sign that you’ve moved from approachable to acquiescent.

 

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2. Your Meetings Get Off Topic And Take Too Longg

Have you ever been in one of those meetings where a few of the big personalities just dominate the conversation? They talk louder than everyone else, including you. All you hear are their thoughts, their ideas, their yeas and their nays. The quieter employees feel totally shut out from participating. And even when you try to rein them in, they manage to barge right through and keep dominating.

Ideally meetings are value-adding forums where all invitees participate. Isn’t that why you called all those people into the meeting in the first place? Yet, when we struggle to control the loudmouths, when they don’t respect our authority (formal or otherwise), it’s a sign that we’re not being forceful or commanding enough.

Of course people should talk. Intense conversations can signal a healthy team. But there still needs to be someone in the room with enough power to keep the conversation on track, on time and thoroughly professional.

3. You Regularly Mediate Employee Conflicts (Instead Of Employees Solving Issues Themselves)

It’s troubling when a leader is regularly sucked into employee conflicts. In an ideal world, employees would act like adults and resolve conflicts themselves, reserving the boss-as-mediator for only the most serious issues. But when a leader has become too accommodating, employees quickly figure out that they plead their case to the boss and the boss will intervene on their behalf. It’s actually quite similar to the games that our kids play; whether it’s “ma, he’s looking at me funny” or playing one parent off another.

When the leader has a no-nonsense, ‘suck-it-up’ reputation, these manipulations are rare. But when the leader is seen as overly accommodating or appeasing, these games will be a frequent occurrence.

4. You See The Same Problem Multiple Times

There isn’t an organization on the planet that doesn’t have employees who make mistakes. That’s the price of doing business. But when you see employees making the same mistakes again and again, that’s often a sign that they haven’t gotten the message that they need to improve. And that’s often the result of employees believing that their gentle leader won’t really follow through on enforcing consequences.

I’m not suggesting that leaders move to the opposite extreme, where employees are risk-averse and paralyzed by fear of being fired. That’s every bit as damaging. Rather, the effective leader will find the middle ground of mistakes may be inevitable, but we all must strive to avoid making the same mistake repeatedly. Employees need to know if they don’t take their mistakes seriously, and work diligently and earnestly to improve, the consequences will be more than just a leader’s look of disappointment.

5. Employees Aren’t Learning New Things

One of the biggest leadership tests is: are your people learning new things? Because if they’re not, they’re not growing and developing and it’s a likely sign that your leadership style is too soft.

Making sure that people learn really isn’t that difficult. Once a month ask your people “Hey, what’s something you’re better at now than you were last month?” If they don’t have an answer, follow up with questions such as, “What would you like to get better at this next month?” and “What new skills are you going to have to develop this next year to reach your big goals?”

Give your people HARD Goals that challenge them and push them outside of their comfort zone and let them know that you believe they can do it. What’s interesting to think about is when you ask leaders, “What were the most significant goals you’ve ever achieved in your life, were they easy, or were they hard? The answer is always hard. And yet, those same leaders give employees too easy goals that are achievable and realistic and then wonder where the greatness is.

The best goals are not the ones that sit totally within your comfort zone. The best goals activate the brain and get the most neural activity going in a positive way. These are the goals that are 20 to 30 percent outside of your comfort zone, where you can look back on that goal and say, “Honestly, I wasn’t even totally sure I could pull that off. It was a doozy, but I’ll tell you what, I learned a ton.”

Conclusion

As a leader you don’t ever want to stop focusing on inspiring and engaging your employees. But you do want to ensure that all the deep emotional connections you build with your employees and the level of challenge you create translate into exceptional bottom-line results. Pay attention to the warning signs, be engaging but not too accommodating, and you should achieve great success.

Mark Murphy is a NY Times bestselling author, founder of Leadership IQ, aleadership training speaker and creator of the leadership styles assessment.

 

Forbes.com | February 11, 2016 | Mark Murphy

 

Your #Career : Bulletproof Your Position: 10 Tips For Improving Job Security…The Key to Job Survival is to Find Ways to Make yourself a More Valuable Employee, So you Stand Out From the Crowd.

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Sometimes, coming to work each day and doing your job isn’t enough to protect you from being let go due to “downsizing.” The key to job survival is to find ways to make yourself a more valuable employee, so you stand out from the crowd.

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Question: I’ve worked in the same job for several years, but there are rumors that our company will be laying off employees later this year to cut expenses. Is there anything I can start doing, right now, to help make sure I won’t be one of the employees laid off?

Answer: Most employment in the U.S. is “at-will,” which means an employee can be dismissed by their employer for any reason and without warning. That means the best way to decrease the odds of your employment being terminated is to create a strong relationship with your manager and to clearly demonstrate your value to the company (so your boss won’t want to lose you). Here’s how:

Understand your manager’s goals. Find out his or her objectives and priorities. What keeps your boss up at night? Think about ways you can help achieve these department goals.

Agree on your goals, objectives and projects. Meet with your manager to ensure you fully understand and mutually agree on your goals and objectives for the quarter/year as well as all projects for which you’ll be responsible. Then track and provide progress updates, asking for help or advice as needed.

 

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Create a “Goals and Objectives” document. Take those goals you agreed on with your manager and put them into a simple document where you’ll be able to track your progress. Use a simple format, like an Excel spreadsheet, and include column headers such as: ID#, Project Name, Description, Timing (due date), Goal/Objective (whatever it might be), Stretch Goal/Objective (a slightly more challenging goal or objective), and Progress (such as color coding to denote your progress). Use this document during your progress review meetings with your manager.

Learn your manager’s communication style and flex your style to his or hers. Find out how your manager prefers to interact with you. Do they want weekly, bi-weekly or monthly progress review meetings? Do they want to meet in person or receive email updates and then follow up with you if they have any questions? Adapt your communication style to best fit your manager’s style.

Never miss a commitment. Complete all your projects/assignments on time (and under budget). If you hit an obstacle, “go ugly early” as the old saying goes, by letting your boss know and asking for help.

Do outstanding work. You can’t do mediocre work – your work needs to be exemplary if you want to stand out. Look for ways you can go above and beyond the daily requirements to demonstrate how you add value to the organization.

Think of yourself as an “internal consultant.” Be more than just an employee. Consultants are hired to assess a current situation and then create action plans for improvement. They are paid for their expertise and their calm, professional demeanor, especially in times of difficulty. By thinking of yourself as an “internal consultant” you can use this same frame of reference to demonstrate how you add value to your department, to your company and even to your boss.

Become an expert in something. People turn to the experts when there are challenges and to solve problems. Look for areas in your business where you can put your skills to use and become an expert. Then, volunteer for projects that will allow you to use these skills and show them off.

Offer to help coworkers. Don’t wait for someone to approach you. Offer your help to others when it appears they might need it. Don’t expect any return favors – help others because you want to, not because you expect something in return. Always play nice with others and learn to flex your style so you can get along with any personality type.

Improve your skills every year. Become a more valuable asset by treating yourself like a product that you work on improving, year after year. Define your career aspirations, create a career development plan and then share this information with your boss and ask for his or her help and support.

Lisa Quast is the author of Secrets of a Hiring Manager Turned Career Coach: A Foolproof Guide to Getting the Job You Want. Every Time.

 

Forbes.com | February 15, 2016 | Lisa Quast 

 

Your #Career : How To Find A Second Act With Purpose…Today’s Workers are Already Anticipating the Need for Change with Plans to Extend their Working Lives.

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Once you have some picture of where you want to go, get things moving by taking small steps toward that vision. What really matters is that you do a little something on a regular basis.

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When Doug Rauch “retired” in 2008, he was 56. He had spent 31 years at Trader Joe’s, where he led the California grocery chain’s move to the East Coast, rising to president. But don’t call it “retired,” he calls it “graduation.”

Here’s why: While he planned to keep active serving on corporate and not-for-profit boards from his home in Newton, Mass, he quickly realized it wasn’t fulfilling enough for him.

Today, Rauch is headlong into his second act. His new venture opened in June of 2015: the tiny, 3,500-square-foot Daily Table, a not-for-profit grocery store he founded in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston.

 Rauch, now 64, is part of a growing cohort of retired workers back at work, in part due to increasing lifespans and the desire to remain relevant. The rewards are threefold: financial, mental and physical.
“Today’s workers are already anticipating the need for change with plans to extend their working lives,” says Catherine Collinson, president of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, who recently released a study, The New Flexible Retirement.

A Merrill Lynch study conducted in partnership with Age Wave, a research firm that focuses on aging, found that nearly three of every five working retirees said retirement was an opportunity to shift to a different line of work.

 

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How workers can successfully extend their working lives is a tricky issue, but one way is through upgrading skills and going back to school to pivot to new kinds of work. That’s what Rauch did and how his idea for Daily Table came to life. In 2010, he enrolled in Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, which selects applicants –most of whom are in their fifties and sixties — from the top echelons of their industries to return to campus for a year to develop new skills, make new contacts and reflect on what’s next.

He was fortunate to have had that opportunity. But there are lots of ways to make the move to nonprofit work at this stage of life. Here are 10 steps you can take–preferably before you retire from your old job–to find new work with purpose in your next chapter.

Get financially fit. Debt is a dream killer–one of my favorite mantras. If you’re financially fit, it gives you options. You’re nimble enough to try things out, or work for less than you did in the past, for the reward of loving what you do and knowing you’re having an impact on the world around you.

Shape-up. To fight ageism in the workplace, you must have the stamina for a new beginning; you need to be physically in shape and stick to a healthy diet. You don’t have to bench-press heavy weights or run fast miles, mind you, but you do need to have a level of fitness. It will show. You exude energy and a can-do, positive vibe. People want what you have. It subtly shows hiring managers that you’re up for the job.

Take time to reflect. “Carve out solitude, space, and time to consider what kind of mission speaks to you,” says Marci Alboher, the author of The Encore Career Handbook. You need a certain amount of humility to switch to nonprofit work. There’s a shared sense of the mission, a collaborative decision-making environment. If you’re used to being an independent worker or a leader, this might not be a suitable fit without an attitude adjustment.

Do an inventory of your existing skills and interests. How can you redeploy your financial expertise, for example,  or your tech know-how or management skills on a new path?

Consider working with a career or life coach to talk through steps needed to make the shift. Successful career shifters typically set flexible time frames of three to five years to move into a new field. Finding what you want to do next is a process, so be patient.

Study up. Return to school for a tune up or a skills refresh. In addition to the Harvard’Advanced Leadership Initiative that Rauch attended, The StanfordDistinguished Careers Institute also offers a program for professionals in their 50s and 60s and beyond.

Be practical, though, when it comes to spending on education. If possible, take some classes while your current employer is still offering tuition reimbursement (though be sure to investigate whether there’s a payback requirement if you leave).

You might easily be able to hone your existing skills for the non-profit sector with just a course or two, e.g. accounting for not-for-profits. (Seton Hall Universitymaintains a searchable list of non-profit management courses across the country.)

Some other innovative programs: EncoreHartford, a 16-week fellowship program, begun by the University of Connecticut’s Nonprofit Leadership Program and now in its sixth year, has helped more than 100 corporate professionals, mostly older than 50, convert their corporate expertise to the nonprofit world. The program costs $2,950. It includes a crash course in nonprofit management and finance held in local nonprofits and a two month, 30-hour per week fellowship at a local nonprofit. Encore.org is working to increase learning opportunities through its EncoreU and a limited number offellowship programs outside the classroom. Pace University in New York offers an Encore Transition Program, aimed at helping executives and professionals explore swops from midlife careers to nonprofit and public service organizations. (Pace’s program, like the one at the University of Connecticut, has no ties to Encore.org.) The tuition is $795, and classes are limited to about a dozen student

Subscribe to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Start reading articles and follow the thought leaders in the sector of the industry you’re interested in on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Develop a nonprofit-oriented resume. Your resume must show what experience you have and how it relates to the organization you’re interviewing with. Your cover letter must show why you want to work for that group and precisely what skills you have in your tool kit to help the organization with its goals.

Volunteer. If there’s an organization whose mission calls to you, raise your hand. “Get out of your head and into the world,” says Alboher. Look into volunteer opportunities to start developing some in-depth experience in an area that interests you and taps into your expertise. Serve on a board.

This builds your network and gets people to start thinking of you in new ways. Volunteering can also freshen your skills and stretch new muscles. Once you’re inside of an organization and its leaders get to know you and your skill set, it can lead to paid opportunities down the road.

To find organizations where you might get involved, check out web sites such asCommongood Careers and The Bridgespan Group. Other helpful sites includeBoardnetUSA, Handsonnetwork.org,Idealist.org and Volunteermatch.org. AARP also has a “Volunteer Wizard” match-up board. Look around your community. Where might you lend a hand?

 Do some pro bono consulting. Take on a consulting assignment for a local charity gratis. This may segue to a paid consulting job and to more permanent duties once you test the waters.

 Reach out to your network to ask for help. Whom do you know in the nonprofit field? Tap your Linkedin and other social media connections to search for possible contacts. Book an advice and counseling lunch or coffee to brainstorm. Always ask for another name or two of people you might be able to reach out to for guidance.

Polish your elevator speech. Nonprofits want to hear why you want this specific job for this specific cause and how it resonates with your personal story. Your passion and commitment for the organization and cause is the thing that sets you apart from other candidates. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Getting good at explaining this is crucial.

 One last tip: Do something daily to inch toward your goal. “Don’t struggle to find an ideal starting point, or perfect path,” says Clearways Consulting career coach Beverly Jones, author of Think Like an Entrepreneur, Act Like a CEO: 50 Indispensable Tips to Help You Stay Afloat, Bounce Back, and Get Ahead at Work.

Once you have some picture of where you want to go, get things moving by taking small steps toward that vision. What really matters is that you do a little something on a regular basis.

For Rauch, the impetus to start a second act was a lingering feeling that he wasn’t in love with his job anymore. “I didn’t have the gas left in the tank, and I had the sense that it was simply time to do something different, make a difference and make an impact.”

Follow me on Twitter, @KerryHannon Visit me at Kerryhannon.com

 

Forbes.com | February 16, 2016 | Kerry Hannon

#Leadership : 7 Mistakes Leaders Make That Make Everyone Miserable…“Look for 3 Things in a Person: Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If they Don’t Have the Last One, Don’t even Bother.” –Warren Buffet

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From Enron to Volkswagen, we’ve watched in horror as leaders who lack integrity have destroyed businesses time and again. But the real tragedy happens when regular leaders, who are otherwise great, sabotage themselves, day after day, with mistakes that they can’t see but are obvious to everyone else.

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In most cases, it’s slight and often unintentional gaps in integrity that hold leaders, their employees, and their companies back. Despite their potential, these leaders harm their employees and themselves.

“Look for three things in a person: intelligence, energy, and integrity. If they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother.” –Warren Buffet

Dr. Fred Kiel did the difficult job of quantifying the value of a leader’s integrity for his book, Return On Character, and his findings are fascinating. Over a seven-year period, Kiel collected data on 84 CEOs and compared employee ratings of their behavior to company performance.

Kiel found that high-integrity CEOs had a multi-year return of 9.4%, while low integrity CEOs had a yield of just 1.9%. What’s more, employee engagement was 26% higher in organizations led by high-integrity CEOs.

Kiel describes high-integrity CEOs this way: “They were often humble. They appeared to have very little concern for their career success or their compensation. The funny point about that is they all did better than the self-focused CEOs with regard to compensation and career success. It’s sort of ironic.”

Kiel’s data is clear: companies perform better under the guidance of high-integrity leadership. “Companies who try to compete under the leadership of a skilled but self-focused CEO are setting themselves up to lose,” Kiel says.

Every leader has the responsibility to hone his or her integrity. Many times, there are integrity traps that have a tendency to catch well-meaning leaders off guard. By studying these traps, we can all sharpen the saw and keep our leadership integrity at its highest possible level.

1. Fostering a cult of personality. It’s easy for leaders to get caught up in their own worlds as there are many systems in place that make it all about them. These leaders identify so strongly with their leadership roles that instead of remembering that the only reason they’re there is to serve others, they start thinking, ‘It’s my world, and we’ll do things my way.’ Being a good leader requires remembering that you’re there for a reason, and the reason certainly isn’t to have your way. High-integrity leaders not only welcome questioning and criticism, they insist on it.

 

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2. Dodging accountability. Politicians are notorious for refusing to be accountable for their mistakes, and business leaders do it too. Even if only a few people see a leader’s misstep (instead of millions), dodging accountability can be incredibly damaging. A person who refuses to say “the buck stops here” really isn’t a leader at all. Being a leader requires being confident enough in your own decisions and those of your team to own them when they fail. The very best leaders take the blame but share the credit.

3. Lacking self-awareness. Many leaders think they have enough emotional intelligence (EQ). And many times, they are proficient in some EQ skills, but when it comes to understanding themselves, they are woefully blind. It’s not that they’re hypocrites; they just don’t see what everyone else sees. They might play favorites, be tough to work with, or receive criticism badly. And they aren’t alone, as TalentSmart research involving more than a million people shows that just 36% of us are accurate in our self-assessments.

4. Forgetting that communication is a two-way street. Many leaders also think that they’re great communicators, not realizing that they’re only communicating in one direction. Some pride themselves on being approachable and easily accessible, yet they don’t really hear the ideas that people share with them. Some leaders don’t set goals or provide context for the things they ask people to do, and others never offer feedback, leaving people wondering if they’re more likely to get promoted or fired.

5. Not firing poor performers. Sometimes, whether it’s because they feel sorry for an employee or simply because they want to avoid conflict, leaders dodge making the really tough decisions. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with being compassionate, real leaders know when it’s just not appropriate, and they understand that they owe it to the company and to the rest of the team to let someone go.

6. Succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent. The tyranny of the urgent is what happens when leaders spend their days putting out small fires. They take care of what’s dancing around in front of their faces and lose focus of what’s truly important—their people. Your integrity as a leader hinges upon your ability to avoid distractions that prevent you from putting your people first.

7. Micromanaging. You see this mistake most often with people who have recently worked their way up through the ranks. They still haven’t made the mental shift from doer to leader. Without something tangible to point to at the end of the day, they feel unproductive, not realizing that productivity means something different for a leader. As a result, they micromanage to the point of madness and fall off schedule. An important part of a leader’s integrity rests in giving people the freedom to do their jobs.

Bringing It All Together

The bad news is that these mistakes are as common as they are damaging. The good news is that they’re really easy to fix, once you’re aware of them.

Forbes.com | February 16, 2016 | Travis Bradberry 

#Leadership : True Grit: How My Team Learned To Thrive In The Face Of Adversity…Business is a Game of Dramatic Ups & Downs, Especially for Teams that are Trying to Create Something New or Bring about Meaningful Change in a Stagnant & Complacent Market.

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It’s easy to feel a bit bipolar at times. Some days you’re on top of the world, and other days you’re just trying to stay alive. How a team manages these swings, and the periods of adversity in particular, is what separates successful businesses from failures.

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Every business encounters adversity. It’s one of the few constants that you can count on and it can be all too easy to allow these setbacks to get you down, discourage your efforts, and extinguish the fire that keeps you going. Good leaders recognize this fact but find the courage and wherewithal to help their teams avoid these pitfalls.

I’m not an expert on many things, but one area where I have plenty of experience is dealing with adversity. At BodeTree, my team and I have had our fair share of failures, strikeouts, and unfair situations. Despite these setbacks, however, we always keep moving forward. We’ve learned to use adversity to our advantage, and it all comes down to one trait: grit.

Remember that character is king

Grit is just another word for strength of character. An individual or team who displays grit is someone who can take a hit and just keep on going, no matter what. It’s this resilience that enables successful teams to avoid the pitfalls of depression, lethargy, and apathy that people tend to run into when faced with adversity. It may seem like grit is an innate virtue that people people either are born with or not, but this isn’t the case. Grit can be developed, just like any other skill.

Developing grit in yourself is difficult; trying to develop it in others is even harder. It takes equal parts understanding, compassion, and dedication. Over the years at BodeTree, I’ve learned that grit starts with intellectual honesty and the ability to face your fears. Leaders looking to foster gritty teams can start by fostering an environment of transparency and trust. When team members know how they’re being judged and what the expectations are, they’re more willing to be honest about shortcomings and face their fears. If team members feel as though their next mistake will be their last, anxiety sets in and people tend to crumble in the face of adversity. Leaders must create an environment that encourages grit and resilient thinking across the board.

 

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Turn anger and frustration into something productive

If you’ve developed a gritty team,  you can use adversity and challenges to your advantage. There are only two ways to handle bad situations; you can accept what happened and roll over, or you can get mad. I’ve found that turning the other cheek is rarely productive in business. Instead, I like to work to focus the collective anger and frustration of my team into something productive and transformational.

We’ve faced some difficult situations at BodeTree over the last few years, including deals and partnerships falling through at the 11th hour. The news can be devastating at first, but it can also be motivating. We’ve learned to let our feelings of self-pity give way to righteous indignation. We channel our anger into productivity and let it renew our passion to bring about change. For us, succeeding in our space is no longer a matter of business or strategy; it’s personal.

I’m fortunate to have such a dedicated and gritty team. The adversity we’ve faced could have derailed us, robbing the team of its drive and dampening our will to move forward. Lesser teams would have crumbled, but we’ve managed to turn adversity into an advantage. Our anger and resilience pushes us forward and gives us purpose. We’ve become a team hell-bent on advancing constantly, uninterested in anything short of total market dominance.

I hope that our experience can serve as an example for other teams. You will face adversity in your endeavors no matter what they are, that much is certain. Just remember that success isn’t determined by whether or not you encounter challenges, but rather by the way you respond to those challenges. Leaders of teams must work to developing grit, both in themselves as well as the people they lead. The resilience that results will enable individuals and teams to transform anger and frustration into a powerful motivator that can you forward, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

 

Forbes.com | February 15, 2016 | Chris Myers

 

 

Chris Myers is the Cofounder and CEO of BodeTree, a web application designed to help small businesses manage their finances.

#Leadership : 5 Bad Habits That Make Meetings Miserable & Unproductive…Report Found that 67% of Meetings are Considered Unproductive by Executives & They take Up Roughly 15 % of every Institutions Time.

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In 2015 organizations held more than 25 million meetings per day in the United States. This translates to more than $37 billion in lost productivity, according toa study by Fuze. One Harvard Business Review report found that 67 percent of meetings are considered unproductive by executives and they take up roughly 15 percent of every institutions time.

Free- Office Works

As a recent college graduate working at my first full-time job, this calculatorestimates $3,000 of my salary has already gone toward meetings. While some advocate for nixing meetings altogether, we see a lot of tools that help capitalize on that time and money spent. Sticking to an agenda, setting clear goals, sending reading materials in advance are a few items to start the list. Even though many people spend countless hours in meetings every week, meeting time doesn’t have to be money down the drain. I’ve learned a lot and completed numerous team projects as a result of meetings.

But even if meeting organizers use all the tools available, we can still waste time when employees do not conduct themselves well in meetings. As a newbie in the professional world, I’ve had to learn a lot (the hard way) about the flip side of productive meetings: how to be a good meeting attendee. I think the main guiding principle boils down to knowing what to say and when to say it.

 Nevertheless, here are five bad habits we often see in meeting attendees. They each take on a life of their own. I have observed or experienced all of the during my first six months in the professional world.

1. Offline Commenter: We see this trait manifested when people share any comment that would be better made “offline” from the current meeting. It’s easy to over-share because we want our coworkers (and by coworkers I mean our boss) to know how hard we’re working throughout the hum drum of our daily tasks. But there’s nothing worse than wasting everyone’s time with something that should have just been sent to one person in an email.

Offline Comments likely show up during transitional moments in department-wide meetings and sound like this: “I was thinking that the thirteenth graph on page 41 should fade from blue to green because it really captures the essence of the numeric transition happening there,” and “Could you send out that production schedule for me while I’m on vacation next week?” If it pertains to less than three people in the room, one should jot it down and share it later.

 

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2. Interrupter: The most surprising element of my short time in office culture is just how often sophisticated, adult humans interrupt each other. I thought everyone’s parents were like mine, forcing me to stop and realize my error every time I spoke over another person. While my parents were trying to teach me that interrupting is just plain rude (which is still true), this tendency is also an obvious meeting-time-waster because of how many interrupted comments end up needing to be re-said. An interrupter is skilled at convincing office attendees that whatever he has to say cannot wait even one second. This is almost never true. But he is easy to tame. One must simply default to only speaking when others have finished.

3. Brainstormer: If you want to waste a lot of people’s time, send in an untimely Brainstorm. I only know this because of all the evil stares I got the first time I threw out a new, unformed idea at the end of a long meeting. Everyone was gearing up to head back to their desks and finish daily tasks when I said something to the effect of, “Hey guys. What if we did this really cool, time consuming thing that just popped into my head but hasn’t been fleshed out at all. Dear Boss, aren’t I brilliant?”

Brainstormer will try to convince you in the moment that she is more impressive than she is. But the truth is most new ideas aren’t formed enough to be shared with large groups on the spot, and co-workers are not prepared for an unplanned creative discussion. People will tune out while the person entertaining Brainstorm verbally babbles through the rough sketch of a new idea. Ultimately, the time will pass at an unproductive caliber.

Brainstormer is tricky, though, because offices shouldn’t throw this character out completely, unlike some others that need to die forever. Brainstormer brings a timeliness learning curve with her. One has to work with her for a while while before she is ready to be unveiled, and there is an optimal setting for such unveiling: generally in a meeting that has been dedicated solely to this Brainstorm, and one where all the attendees have already been briefed on what is to be Brainstormed.

4. Side Noter: Side Note is a tricky guy because he will drop little clues that make you feel like something you wish to say is more important and relevant than it is. Being able to consistently discern what constitutes a Side Noter comes with the benefits of being a meeting veteran. But it’s not too difficult to catch on. Side noter is similar to Offline Commenter, but carries an aura of false importance because he likely has at least a tangential relationship to something that is already being discussed.

However, the easiest way to lose the attention of half the people in the room is to start a sentence with, “And Just as a side note…” Upon hearing these words, one person will check their watch, another will respond to an email, a third will be whispering to the colleague beside them, and someone will get up to refill their coffee. If something seems to be a Side Note, then it should be shared from its rightful place, which is on the side.

5. Late Starter: It may seem like a no-brainer, but Late Starter still plagues more meetings in the professional world than she should. A Bain and Companyreport says that typically 8 percent of the time and money spent on a meeting is lost when the meeting starts only five minutes late. Late start will whisper to you,just finish sending this last email, the elevator will definitely come quickly, oryou need fill your water bottle and it’s no big deal if you’re a few minutes late.She’s lying, though. The truth she tries to hide from you is that there is almost never a good reason to be late to a meeting.

Late Startr serves only one purpose: rendering those precious beginning minutes as useless. We’ve all been there—the awkward moments when we try to eek out the perfect amount of small talk so as not to launch a too-long conversation, tip-toeing around words that might need to be repeated when the late person arrives, pinging said late person to see when they will show up. And then somehow, like the universe has slowed so that everyone can feel the meaty weight of this wasted time, all three of those things likely took place in only two and a half minutes. And then everyone browses their phone in silence. Precious minutes (and therefore dollars) wasted.

 

Forbes.com | February 14, 2016 | The Berlin School Of Creative Leadership