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Your Career:How To Job-Hunt After Getting Fired…Getting Fired is Not Bad for You. It Might Be the Best Thing That has Ever Happened for Your Career.

March 1, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The big thing about getting fired is not the process of getting fired itself, but the job-hunt afterwards. The good news is that the working world is changing fast. One of the ways that the traditional Godzilla structure keeps working people in line is that it tells them “If you get fired, good luck getting hired anywhere else!”

It used to be a huge thing if you got fired and then had to say “I got fired from my last job” when you started your job search. You don’t have to do that now. Getting fired is not even a real thing. It just means that an employer said “Hit the road” before you said “I’m out of here.” It’s not a legal designation.

It’s just a conversation. We have to shake the toxic lemonade out of our veins and stop thinking that a job application is a legal document or more fundamentally, that organizations have more power than individual people do. That is nonsense!

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If you are about to get fired, you can quit. Your boss or someone in HR can begin to say “Look, we can see that it’s not working out and so —”and you can interrupt them and say “Let me make this easy – I quit!” However, if you don’t have another job lined up, don’t quit, because if you quit you won’t be eligible for unemployment compensation. Let them fire you. It doesn’t matter.

Most employers these days will never give a bad reference, because they don’t want to be sued. They won’t tell another employer that they fired you. All they are likely to do is to confirm the dates that you worked for them and your job titles. Here in the U.S. they can’t confirm your salary without your permission. For the same reason, many employers will not make you ineligible for rehire just because one manager terminated you.
If you sign an application or a background-checking form that gives your possible new employer the right to check your references and if your former employer tells the new employer that you are ineligible for rehire, the new employer will ask you what’s up. You’ll say “It was a difficult situation leading up to my departure.

“We had differences of opinion that were significant enough that it was obvious the fit was not good. I am surprised that I am ineligible for rehire there but of course, I don’t intend to work in that organization again in any case.”

Your relationship with your new hiring manager is the key. If he or she doesn’t trust your judgment, why would you want to work on his or her team?

You never have to say “I was fired” during your job search. We still have the outdated idea that being fired puts a mark on shame on you. It’s not true. Most of the people who get fired from their jobs in my experience are not bad people or bad employees.

We do not know how to be adults at work. We do not know how to talk about energy. When two people don’t resonate together, that is an energetic mismatch. It doesn’t make one person wrong. An immature or flustered boss may not know how to put words around the mismatch, so he or she will say “You aren’t meeting my requirement.”

You may think “The feeling is mutual, sweetheart” and be happy to be out of the bad work environment. When you apply for a new job, you can simply say that you left. I don’t want you lobbing resumes or applications into faceless Black Hole portals, anyway.

When you send a Pain Letter directly to your hiring manager, there is no mention of course of how or why you left your last employer.

The question “Why did you leave Acme Explosives?” may come up at a job interview. It probably will, and that’s good, because that’s just the kind of question employers should be asking. After all, your story is your brand.

“I had a great time learning for the first three years,” you will say, “and then it was time to go. I needed a bigger challenge.”

If you were in your job for a short time you can say “I misjudged that situation, honestly. I thought it was going to be a channel development job, but it was really straight selling and that’s not my strong suit. I’m more of a program manager and a long-term relationship builder, versus the kind of order-taker they needed at Acme.”

You are going to find in your job search that there is a huge difference between the organizations and people you feel comfortable with and the ones you don’t. As you trust your body more to send you signals it will oblige. You will leave some workplaces and think “That place is fun. I could learn something there.” You will leave other places and think “There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to work there. Those people look like they’re in misery.”

Trust your body and trust the universe to get you into the right spot. For all intents and purposes in the 21st-century workplace, you get to decide whether you were fired or not. Maybe one day you will wear that distinction as a badge of honor, like I do. I’ve been fired two and a half times and those experiences helped to make me who am I today — whoever that is!

Getting fired is not bad for you. It might be the best thing that has ever happened for your career. When you get fired, you get shaken out of the stupor that most of us fall into all too easily. Whenever you grow new muscles, the universe and I will be here on the sidelines, cheering you on!

Forbes.com | February 28, 2015 | Liz Ryan

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2015/02/28/how-to-job-hunt-after-getting-fired

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Strategy: How To Go Over Your Boss’s Head…What Would Happen If I Went Over my Boss’s Head to See my Boss’s Boss?” In Some Organizations, No One Would Notice

February 28, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

If you want evidence that the standard corporate or institutional hierarchy is a broken system, ask yourself “What would happen if I went over my boss’s head to see my boss’s boss?” In some organizations, no one would notice. In those organizations, people talk to their boss’s managers all the time.

In other organizations, you might as well clear out your desk the minute you decide to step outside the chain of command and talk to your boss’s boss about something on your mind. You know that when you make that visit, you’re not going to come out in one piece.

Either your boss will get wind of your treachery and fire you, or your boss’s boss will pretend to take your issues very seriously and then completely by coincidence, your job will be eliminated.

A lot of senior managers, sad to say, don’t know how to make themselves more available to their ‘skip-level’ reports, as one-down employees are known.

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Do you know how I know that? I know it because I sit in depositions and answer questions about good leadership practices. Companies pay enormous sums to employees who were abused or harassed by their bosses. It is a sad thing to witness, much less to be part of.

My part of it is to state for the record how eyes-open employers avoid problems by opening up communication up, down and across their organizations. Sometimes when my deposition is finished, the employer settles the case the same day. They can see that they’re not going to win at trial, so they pack it in.

The higher-level boss never knew about the bad behavior his or her subordinate manager was engaging in. There was no practical way for an employee to skip over their own boss and go see the higher boss to report the problem. They would have been fired if they’d tried.

How can an employee prove that belief? It’s easy to prove if it has already happened to someone else. They went over their boss’s head and voila! their job disappeared – completely by coincidence.
You have to know the organizational culture where you work if you’re thinking about paying a visit to your boss’s boss to talk about something that isn’t working.

Here are some clues:

Does your boss’s manager know you well already? Does he or she talk to you when your boss is not around? If so, you might have a chance to start a productive conversation with him or her.
If your boss is difficult, unqualified, dealing with a personal problem that gets in the way of work (like a substance abuse problem or a mental health issue) does your boss’s boss seem to notice? If not, do you think he or she is really going to take your input seriously? Everyone is busy at work, but when you’re so busy that you’re completely unaware of an elephant in the room that is trumpeting at a hundred decibels, I’m not sure it’s worth your trouble to talk to your boss’s boss. You might be better off just getting out of Dodge alive.
Is your company’s HR team very involved with employees, and easy to talk to? If so, you might skip the boss’s boss approach and talk to HR instead. If your HR team is distant, hard to talk to or disinterested, you might be wasting your breath and worse, you might be hurting your own future job reference (even if the information you have to share is offered with the best intentions).

We had a client who was in a tough situation. Her boss had an out-of-control alcohol problem. Our client, Rita, had no relationship at all with her boss’s boss, the company CFO. Rita was terrified of her direct manager, the woman who was struggling with alcoholism.

The CFO didn’t seem to notice anything wrong, although everybody in Rita’s department knew about the alcohol on the boss’s breath in the afternoons and had seen her slumped over her desk snoring many times.

Rita called us one day. “Listen to this,” she said. “The CFO called me and said he wants to meet with me tomorrow morning. I can guess what he wants to talk about. What should I say? I’m very nervous. I’m caught between a rock and a hard place.”

“You are not in a safe space to say what you know,” we said. “Why should you share your perspective on your boss’s substance abuse issues without any protection for yourself? Your boss is out of control. In our experience, the CFO will ask you a lot of questions about your boss.

“He will listen to whatever you tell him and he’ll take a few notes. Then you’ll go back to work and worry your head off. Your CFO is very unlikely to act immediately. You’ll be wondering who knows what and what’s going to happen and you won’t be able to sleep.”

“So what should I tell my CFO?” asked Rita.

“Sadly for your company and for your manager, who needs help, I wouldn’t say anything,” I told her. “Say that you’re saddened to hear about your CFO’s concerns, if he even shares them with you. He may not say a word. He may just be digging right now. That’s too bad for him.

“You are paid to be an accountant, not a private investigator. Let the guy get out of his office once in a while and wander around. He should have been doing that all along. He would see the problem with your boss in two seconds if he used his own powers of observation rather than relying on yours.”

We would love to coach people to go see their boss’s manager if something were amiss, but in way too many organizations it isn’t safe to do that. That is why plaintiff’s-side employment attorneys keep their jobs. People like Rita quit and then file a lawsuit over bad behavior, because all roads to do something about the problem while they still worked for the company were effectively blocked.
It might be worth making that trip if you think there’s a chance your boss’s boss will take your concerns seriously and act on them.

That could happen in a case where the company is put at risk by the problem you’re planning to report. A supervisor with an alcohol issue is probably not one of the risk factors that keep CEOs up at night, but there are plenty of other risky situations that do.

If your boss were your company CFO and he or she were siphoning money away, that would get the CEO’s attention. If your boss were systematically sexually harassing people and building up a stockpile of aggrieved employees who might one day band together for a class action lawsuit, that would do the same thing.

If you’re an executive wondering whether the employees who work for your subordinate managers would feel comfortable talking with you directly, the answer is probably no. Unless you are actively cultivating relationships with those people, they wouldn’t have any reason to think you would listen to them.

If you feel awkward about establishing relationship glue between you and the people who work for managers on your team, let that concern go! If your managers are freaked out about you being friendly with their employees, you can coach them out of that fearful state.

Don’t, of course, bypass the managers who work for you and give instructions to their team members directly. That will confuse everybody and beg the question “Why do you have managers working for you, if you intend to manage everybody directly by yourself?” In my experience, this is a much less common situation than the opposite one — the scary one where employees have no access to their boss’s boss at all, even in emergencies.

That’s what you have to watch out for. Our client Rita buttoned her lip and didn’t say anything to her boss’s boss about her manager and her alcohol problems. It was not her fault — her boss’s boss asked her oblique cat-and-mouse questions to see how much Rita would spill. No dice! Rita had us in her corner.

It took months, but finally Rita’s manager passed out at a staff meeting and was sent to rehab. Rita never talked to her boss’s boss again. She got another job while the company was busy cleaning up the mess that had accumulated while its incapacitated accounting manager was on her downward slide.

You can begin to create a relationship with your boss’s boss if he or she doesn’t reach out to you.

It’s good to get to know your boss’s boss if you can. Establish a relationship if the opportunity presents itself. Let your boss’s boss know your name, and don’t be shy about chatting in the hallway and sharing your opinions. You never know when that relationship might become a lot more central to your working life than it is right now.

Forbes.com | February 27, 2015 | Liz Ryan

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2015/02/27/how-to-go-over-your-bosss-head/

Strategy: How Multitasking can Kill your Productivity…Because of Email Alone we Typically Waste 1 Out of Every 6 Minutes

February 28, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The word priority didn’t always mean what it does today. In his best-selling book, “Essentialism,” Greg McKeown explains the surprising history of the word and how its meaning has shifted over time.

Multitasking with phone

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.

Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple “first” things.

People and companies routinely try to do just that. One leader told me of this experience in a company that talked of “Pri-1, Pri-2, Pri-3, Pri-4, and Pri-5.” This gave the impression of many things being the priority but actually meant nothing was.

–Greg McKeown, “Essentialism”

The Myth of Multitasking

Yes, we are capable of doing two things at the same time. It is possible, for example, to watch TV while cooking dinner or to answer an email while talking on the phone.

What is impossible, however, is concentrating on two tasks at once. Multitasking forces your brain to switch back and forth very quickly from one task to another.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if the human brain could transition seamlessly from one job to the next, but it can’t. Multitasking forces you to pay a mental price each time you interrupt one task and jump to another. In psychology terms, this mental price is called the switching cost.

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Switching cost is the disruption in performance that we experience when we switch our attention from one task to another. A 2003 study published in the International Journal of Information Management found that the typical person checks email once every five minutes and that, on average, it takes 64 seconds to resume the previous task after checking your email.

In other words, because of email alone we typically waste one out of every six minutes.

multitasking Jamesclear.com

While we’re on the subject, the word multitasking first appeared in 1965 IBM report talking about the capabilities of its latest computer. [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][1]

That’s right, it wasn’t until the 1960s that anyone could even claim to be good at multitasking. Today, people wear the word like a badge of honor as if it is better to be busy with all the things than to be great at one thing.

Finding Your Anchor Task

Doing more things does not drive faster or better results. Doing better things drives better results. Even more accurately, doing one thing as best you can drives better results.

Mastery requires focus and consistency.

I haven’t mastered the art of focus and concentration yet, but I’m working on it. One of the major improvements I’ve made recently is to assign one (and only one) priority to each work day. Although I plan to complete other tasks during the day, my priority task is the one non-negotiable thing that must get done.

Here’s what my current weekly schedule looks like…

Monday – Write article.
Tuesday – Send two emails (one for networking, one for partnerships.)
Wednesday – Write article.
Thursday – Write article.
Friday – Complete weekly review.
Saturday – OFF
Sunday – OFF

The power of choosing one priority is that it naturally guides your behavior by forcing you to organize your life around that responsibility. Your priority becomes an anchor task, a the mainstay that holds the rest of your day in place. If things get crazy, there is no debate about what to do or not to do. You have already decided what is urgent and what is important.

Saying No to Being Busy

As a society, we’ve fallen into a trap of busyness and overwork. In many ways, we have mistaken all this activity to be something meaningful. The underlying thought seems to be, “Look how busy I am? If I’m doing all this work, I must be doing something important.” And, by extension, “I must be important because I’m so busy.”

While I firmly believe everyone has worth and value, I think we’re kidding ourselves if we believe being busy is what drives meaning in our lives.

In my experience, meaning is derived from contributing something of value to your corner of the universe. And the more I study people who are able to do that, people who are masters of their craft, the more I notice that they have one thing in common. The people who do the most valuable work have a remarkable willingness to say no to distractions and focus on their one thing.

I think we need to say no to being busy and say yes to being committed to our craft. What do you want to master? What is the one priority that anchors your life or work each day?

If you commit to nothing you’ll be distracted by everything.

Sources

IBM Operating System/360 Concepts and Facilities by Witt and Ward. IBM Systems Reference Library. File Number: S360-36

Thanks to Charlie Hoehn for originally pointing me toward “Essentialism” and, more specifically, the quote on priority. Also, thanks to Tim Kreider for his article “The Busy Trap“, which I read years ago, but probably influenced my thinking in some way.

JAMES CLEAR WRITES ABOUT SCIENCE-BASED IDEAS FOR BUILDING HABITS THAT STICK AND MASTERING YOUR CRAFT. IF YOU ENJOYED THIS ARTICLE, THEN JOIN HIS FREE NEWSLETTER.

Businessinsider.com | February 27, 2015 |

JAMES CLEAR, JAMESCLEAR.COM

http://jamesclear.com/multitasking-myth#ixzz3T2l4KWJ6

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Leadership:10 Fundamental Success Truths We Forget Too Easily…You will Never Experience True Success Until you Embrace Failure

February 27, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

It’s surprising how easy it is to lose sight of the important things in life. Busy schedules and weekly routines have a tendency to put the brain on autopilot.

Some of life’s essential truths need repeating. Keep this list handy and give it a read any time you need a boost.

1. Life is short

None of us are guaranteed a tomorrow. Yet, when someone dies unexpectedly it causes us to take stock of our own life: what’s really important, how we spend our time, and how we treat other people.

Loss is a raw, visceral reminder of the frailty of life. It shouldn’t be.

A great day begins with a great mindset. Remind yourself every morning when you wake up that each day is a gift and you’re bound to make the most of the blessing you’ve been given. The moment you start acting like life is a blessing is the moment it will start acting like one.

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2. Being busy does not equal being productive

Look at everyone around you. They all seem so busy—running from meeting to meeting and firing off emails. Yet how many of them are really producing, really succeeding at a high level? Success doesn’t come from movement and activity. It comes from focus—from ensuring that your time is used efficiently and productively. You get the same number of hours in the day as everyone else. Use yours wisely. After all, you’re the product of your output, not your effort. Make certain your efforts are dedicated to tasks that get results.

“Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.” – Mark Twain

3. You’re living the life you have created

You are not a victim of circumstance. No one can force you to make decisions and take actions that run contrary to your values and aspirations. The circumstances you’re living in today are your own—you created them. Likewise, your future is entirely up to you. If you’re feeling stuck, it’s probably because you’re afraid to take the risks necessary to achieve your goals and live your dreams. When it’s time to take action, remember that it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than at the top of one you don’t.

4. Great success is often preceded by failure

You will never experience true success until you embrace failure. Your mistakes pave the way for you to succeed by revealing when you’re on the wrong path. The biggest breakthroughs typically come when you’re feeling the most frustrated and the most stuck. It’s this frustration that forces you to think differently, to look outside the box and see the solution that you’ve been missing. Success takes patience and the ability to maintain a good attitude even while suffering for what you believe in.

5. Fear is the No. 1 source of regret

When it’s all said and done, you will lament the chances you didn’t take far more than you will your failures. Don’t be afraid to take risks. I often hear people say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Will it kill you?” Yet, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. The worst thing that can happen to you is allowing yourself to die inside while you’re still alive.

6. Your self-worth must come from within

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of your own destiny. When you feel good about something that you’ve done, don’t allow anyone’s opinions or accomplishments to take that away from you. While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within. Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain—you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.

7. Your’re only as good as the people you associate with

You should strive to surround yourself with people who inspire you, people who make you want to be better. And you probably do. But what about the people who drag you down? Why do you allow them to be a part of your life? Anyone who makes you feel worthless, anxious, or uninspired is wasting your time and, quite possibly, making you more like them. Life is too short to associate with people like this. Cut them loose.

8. You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive

Life goes a lot smoother once you let go of grudges and forgive even those who never said they were sorry. Grudges let negative events from your past ruin today’s happiness. Hate and anger are emotional parasites that destroy your joy in life.

The negative emotions that come with holding on to a grudge create a stress response in your body, and holding on to stress can have devastating health consequences. Researchers at Emory University have shown that holding on to stress contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease.

When you forgive someone, it doesn’t condone their actions; it simply frees you from being their eternal victim.

9. Live in the moment

You can’t reach your full potential until you learn to live your life in the present. No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future. It’s impossible to be happy if you’re constantly somewhere else, unable to fully embrace the reality (good or bad) of this very moment.

To help yourself live in the moment, you must do two things:

1) Accept your past. If you don’t make peace with your past, it will never leave you and, in doing so, it will create your future.

2) Accept the uncertainty of the future. Worry has no place in the here and now. As Mark Twain once said, “Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe.”

10. Change is inevitable and must be embraced

Only when you embrace change can you find the good in it. You need to have an open mind and open arms if you’re going to recognize, and capitalize on, the opportunities that change creates.

You’re bound to fail when you keep doing the same things you always have in the hope that ignoring change will make it go away. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Life doesn’t stop for anyone. When things are going well, appreciate them and enjoy them, as they are bound to change. If you are always searching for something more, something better, that you think is going to make you happy, you’ll never be present enough to enjoy the great moments before they’re gone.

Bringing it all together

Are there important truths that I’ve forgotten? Please share them in the comments section.

Travis co-wrote the bestselling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and co-founded TalentSmart, the world’s #1 provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving 75% of Fortune 500 Companies.

Forbes.com | February 25, 2015 | Travis Bradberry

Leadership: How America’s Top CEOs Motivate Employees & Get Results…What are the best ways to motivate your employees? We asked America’s Leading CEOs What it Takes.

February 25, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

What are the best ways to motivate your employees?

We asked America’s leading CEOs what it takes:

Don Bailey, CEO, Questcor

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
BAILEY: Listen to them, have sincere respect for what they do and understand that they have families as well. Communicate with them as often as possible

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Brian Mueller, CEO, Grand Canyon Education

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
MUELLER: You have to do two things. First, you have to understand that everyone needs a path to significance that comes as a result of the work they do. GCU has 3,000 people, and I can’t meet with everyone individually. But what we try to do as a large management leadership group is make sure we’re looking at every job classification in the university and figuring out a way for that job to have significance, monetarily and otherwise, for the people who are doing them. People work, first and foremost, for themselves and their families. There has to be a path that leads to significance for them individually. That’s highly motivating.

Brad Cleveland, CEO, Proto Labs

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
CLEVELAND: I’ve been fortunate to attract and retain some of the brightest people in our industry at each of our lead management positions. We have exceptional talent in our international leadership positions, research & development, program management, software development, finance, human resources, sales and marketing. To retain these types of high-level people, in my experience it works best to help identify the goals, set priorities, ask the experts what they need to get the job done and then get out of their way. This approach continues to work very well at Proto Labs and I do not anticipate it changing.

Behrooz Abdi, CEO, InvenSense

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
ABDI: Communicating the vision, empowering the team to execute to the vision, celebrating their wins, and communicating more.

Mike Fifer, CEO, Sturm, Ruger & Company

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your team?
FIFER: Communication is key and it must be frequent and honest (whether the news is good or bad). Backing that up, however, is the concept of “it’s all about the incentives.” We have very simple, clear and concise incentives.The most important incentive is profit sharing for all of our employees and contractors, including employees provided by temporary services agencies.

We allocate 15% of the pretax profits every quarter to profit sharing. The first year it averaged less than 5% of pay so it was important, but not yet a game changer. Now it is more than 30% of pay and everyone is paying attention and pulling together in the same direction. Typically this sort of incentive takes a couple of years to take root in an organization; junior participants have to trust that it is real, non-arbitrary, and here for the long term.

As a manager, you know it is starting to work when a junior employee takes independent initiative to save expenses or to push for higher efficiency. Once the employees of an organization believe in the profit sharing, it becomes an incredibly important driver of day-to-day performance. The keys to success with profit sharing are that everyone participates, pro-rata with their earned base wages for the period, and that it be based on a pre-determined formula that does not change. It will fail if the employees believe it to be discretionary.

Arkadiy Dobkin, CEO, EPAM Systems

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
DOBKIN: I do believe it is rather simple… While there are many different ways to motivate people and many of them are very critical to be present in the company…I think that our best people are motivated the most by tangible results they contributed to…And specifically, results recognized by clients themselves.In our business the real clients’ success, the significance and importance of the solutions, their complexity and technical and business challenges solved on the way to deliver those solutions is the best motivation in my opinion. When client directly attributed the success to our people, our teams, and our experience and skills – it is BIG.

Bryan Shinn, CEO, U.S. Silica

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
SHINN: I try to treat folks as I want to be treated and I think that’s one of the most motivating things to an organization, no matter where you are in the leadership hierarchy if you’re engaged and empathetic and just real with people I think it goes a long way, I also put a lot of effort into recognizing the small things, you don’t have to wait until someone has a major accomplishment. One of the things I’ve learned is don’t be afraid to challenge the rules or do something unconventional around reward and recognition, just calling somebody up to say thank you or finding a way to find out what they like to do in their spare time and reward them with it – it really goes a long way and can be tremendously motivational for a team.

Jason Rhode, CEO, Cirrus

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
RHODE: Cirrus’ founding CEO Mike Hackworth often said that morale and motivation in the workplace comes from having a meaningful and worthwhile goal, a reasonable plan to achieve the goal, and being able to measure yourself making progress on the plan. In my view, ensuring that we have such a vision, plan, and visibility at a corporate and individual level is a tremendously very powerful motivator.

Harry Herington, CEO, NIC

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
HERINGTON: It all comes down to culture and trust. There is no better way to motivate employees than to establish a culture of trust. Employees must trust the person who is leading the company. Most employees are not involved in setting the strategic direction of the company — in many ways, my decisions dictate their future. That’s why I believe trust is so important, and I created a special program called, “Ask the CEO” to help establish trust.

John Foraker, CEO, Annie's

John Foraker, CEO, Annie’s

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
FORAKER: Annie’s is a mission driven business, and our employees are highly engaged in delivering on that mission. They really care about it, and also about how we achieve success. We operate the business according to a set of well-defined values around quality, sustainability, honesty, and doing the right thing even and especially when no one is looking. Because of our mission driven approach we attract really smart, highly engaged, and highly capable people who care and want to make a difference in the world. This set of common values and mission is highly motivating to people, as they see their work furthering the success of the business beyond just simple financial metrics. Pay, benefits, and a comfortable work environment are all important, but being bound by a common higher purpose is motivating to our employees.

Jim Koch, Founder and Brewer, Boston Beer Company

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your team?
KOCH: The best way to motivate is to lead by example and encourage creativity. One way I’ve done this is something I call the “string theory.” In the middle of graduate school, I decided to take a break and became an instructor with Outward Bound. At the beginning of each four-week course I gave everyone a supply of Alpine cord (a kind of string for lashing gear, pitching tarps, etc.) Consistently, if I gave my group plenty of string, they would run out and need more. But, if I gave them less and told them they had only two-thirds of what they really needed, they would get incredibly creative and make that cord last. They’d splice, they’d share, they’d save; they’d forage for bits of rope left behind by others. Through this exercise, I learned that culture and values can substitute for money and resources. Since we were on a tight budget in the early days, we used every piece of “string” we had, and that created a corporate culture of innovation and creativity. I’ve found that this motivates people to do the best and achieve terrific results with what they are given.

Steve Fredrickson, CEO, Portfolio Recovery Associates

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your team?
FREDRICKSON: If you have the right team, the best way to motivate them is to hand them a challenge, provide appropriate resources, and then get out of their way, while monitoring progress and results. Then, once final results are delivered, insure that fair rewards are provided.

Kevin Thompson, CEO, Solarwinds

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your team?
THOMPSON: At my company, SolarWinds, we focus on creating an environment where employees have the opportunity to create a unique place within the company – their “sweet spot.” Like the manager of a playoff-bound baseball team, we fill out our line-up so that everyone has their own role to play and brings their unique skillsets to the game. That line-up is calibrated to combine skill and passion, and we work hard to make sure that each employee plays a position that complements the rest of the organization. It’s how we win.

Wallace E. Boston, CEO, Amerian Public University System

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
BOSTON: Establish a mission that everyone can relate to and rally around. Reinforce that mission with actions from the top down. Be consistent, through good times and bad.

Cheri Beranek, CEO, Clearfield

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
BERANEK: When we started Clearfield, my COO and I wrote the core values of the company on an airplane. We didn’t need a focus group or multiple committee meetings, because we were living the values every day – They start with LISTENING and conclude with CELEBRATING our every success – in the early days we didn’t have many successes, so we hung a ship’s bell that we ran with a $10,000 order. Later, as we grew, we hung a $100,000 bell. When we got our first million dollar order, we didn’t yet have the $1,000,000 bell – but today, all three hang on our sales floor to remind us where we’ve been – and where we need to go. The culture of celebration, builds upon our philosophy that while we may feel like a family, we choose to operate our business as a small town – with each individual motivated to make active choices to continue to belong to the group – not feeling any level of entitlement.

Mike MacDonald, CEO Medifast

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
MACDONALD: The best way to motivate a team is to create a very open work environment where people have the ability to make suggestions and comments. At Medifast, we encourage a leadership style that is highly participative and allows for open communication between all levels of the organization to accomplish business objectives.We’ve found that when you empower people to do their jobs within their style, they enjoy their work and can achieve their goals.

Rick Bergman, CEO, Synaptics

FORBES: What are the best ways to motivate your people?
BERGMAN: At Synaptics, we have a great culture where everyone works as a team. We try to remove any bureaucracy and hierarchy within the organization. Despite our growth over the past couple of years, any employee can still have major impact on the outcome of the company as long as they are innovative and driven. So openness to new ideas at any level and working together as a team keeps Synaptics employees highly motivated.

Forbes.com | February 25, 2015 | Vanessa Loder

Your Career: How to Optimize your LinkedIn Profile so Recruiters Come to You…Recruiting is What sets Linkedin apart as a Business, So it’s What Users Should Focus on, Too

February 25, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

As a business, LinkedIn relies on Talent Solutions, the professional social network’s influential recruitment product. In the fourth quarter of 2014, Talent Solutions brought in nearly $369 million in revenue on its own — accounting for 57% of LinkedIn’s overall revenue, according to reports.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

As Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Piskorski explains in his book, “A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media,” recruiting is what sets Linkedin apart as a business, so it’s what users should should focus on, too.

“Most of the activity on LinkedIn is recruiters going and searching through your profiles again and again and again,” Piskorski tells Business Insider. “That’s where most of the action is.”

With that in mind, check out the below infographic from British social media consultancy LinkHumans, which explains how to optimize your profile so that recruiters come to you.

Businessinsider.com | February 25, 2015 | Drake Baer

http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-profile-optimization-2015-2

Leadership:13 Personality Traits of Toxic Employees…Is Your Office a Den of Negativity?

February 25, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

If you’re constantly complaining to coworkers about how much you hate your job, looking for any and every excuse to get away from your desk, and gossiping more than talking about work projects, the problem might be you.

stressed office work burned out upset

Find out if you possess any or all of the 13 most common traits of a disengaged and toxic employee, and change your ways before you tank your career.

If you’re like the vast majority of working individuals, going to work isn’t something you’re jumping for joy about.

However, that doesn’t mean you have to make it miserable for the rest of the office. By contributing to the gossip, office politics, and complaining, you’re only making it worse for yourself (and for morale) by “spreading the cancer” throughout the office.

What’s scary is that many habitual complainers don’t even realize that they’re the culprits of their own toxic work environments. These types of employees are usually disengaged, unhappy, and try to recruiter others to join in on their misery — because, after all, misery does love company.

To help you identify whether or not you’re “one of them,” take a look at Officevibe’s infographic below to see if you relate. Then, read on to find out how to fix your problem.

infographic disengaged employee

Instead of being a Debbie Downer and promoting a toxic work environment, why not be the change that you want to see in the ~~world~~ office?

To help steer you in the right direction to turn that frown upside down, consider trying your hand at one of the following:

1. Learn a new skill that will enhance your career knowledge and, possibly, warrant a raise.

2. Negotiate a raise. If a measly salary is what’s got you down and out, then learn the tricks of the trade and negotiate yourself a fair wage.

3. Change up your morning and evening routines, or try out these three lifehacks to improve your mood and boost your health.

4. Talk to your boss about the possibility of working a more flexible work schedule to promote higher productivity.

5. Consider changing careers to something that better suits your personality type and skills.

Bonus: You can also read this post to see three ways to cope with office politics effectively and professionally.

Businessinsider.com | February 25, 2015 | LEAH ARNOLD-SMEETS, PAYSCALE

http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2015/02/are-you-a-toxic-employee-infographic-#ixzz3SmxypGkq

Your Career: How To Follow Up On A Job Interview…Ask the HR person During the Interview How He/She Would Like You to Stay in Touch

February 25, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Sarah Stamboulie, a New York career consultant, had a young Japanese client whose work visa was due to expire in just six weeks. The man was determined to get a job at a hedge fund that would allow him to stay in the U.S., but he spoke with a strong accent, his written English was poor, and he had made a weak impression on job interviews. Stamboulie, who has worked in human resources departments for both corporations and nonprofits, encouraged him to follow up with an interviewer at a Japan-based fund who had already turned him down.

How To Follow Up After A Job Interview

Impressed by the young man’s persistence, the hiring manager recommended him to another Japanese fund that had an opening. Stamboulie’s client got the job. “It was like a semi-hostile referral, but it worked,” she recalls.

Lesson learned: Following up on a job interview is crucial. Even if you blow the interview, it pays to get in touch after the fact.

Ideally your interviews always go smoothly, and after each one you craft an effective note thanking the interviewer for the time, expressing enthusiasm and making it clear you listened closely to the hirer’s requirements. “The follow-up letter is almost like a proposal letter,” Stamboulie says. You should tailor it to the company and suggest specific ways you can address the needs you discussed when you met.

Roy Cohen, author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide: Success Secrets of a Career Coach, agrees that a follow-up note should always focus on what the hiring manager’s looking for. “You should say, ‘I listened, I understand your needs and your challenges, and here’s how I can help you address those,’” he says. Concisely remind the interviewer of what you’ve accomplished in the past, and make a couple of concrete suggestions for how you can help the company.

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Do send the follow-up note as soon as possible. “If you don’t, someone else may send a message more quickly,” Cohen advises. If you don’t have time to craft a longer note, consider sending a short thank-you immediately, mentioning that you want to give further thought to the challenges you discussed and promising to send a more in-depth message soon.

Do send e-mails rather than handwritten notes, Stamboulie and Cohen agree. “People say that snail mail stands out, but it stands out for the wrong reason,” Cohen says. “It will make you look like a dinosaur.”

If you’ve met with more than one person in the interview process, think about what will make for an appropriate note to each, Cohen advises. For instance, if you interviewed with someone who would be reporting to you if you get the job, you can say something like, “It sounds like you’re working on some interesting projects. It would be great to have you as a colleague.”

David Couper, a career coach in Los Angeles and author of Outsiders on the Inside: How to Create a Winning Career Even When You Don’t Fit In, recommends a different tack if you’re following up on a meeting with human resources staff, as opposed to a hiring manager. HR professionals tend to struggle with overloaded calendars. He says it’s always a good idea to send a follow-up e-mail, but if the interview was at a large company, “don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back.” He recommends asking the HR person during the interview how he or she would like you to stay in touch.

Couper also suggests leapfrogging over HR if you get no response to your follow-up note. A client of Couper’s who was interviewing for a vice president-level job at an entertainment company did just that. It took several phone calls, but he eventually got the hiring manager to put pressure on the overworked HR team to hire him. He got the job.

This is an update of a story that ran previously.

Forbes.com | February 25, 2015 | Susan Adams

Got Kids? The 25 Best Companies for Internships Right Now…Only the Savvy Students Know This is the Time to Start Applying for Summer Internships

February 25, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

It’s only February —but only the savvy students know this is the time to start applying for summer internships. According to Glassdoor, there are more than 27,500 open positions in the US right now. According to Glassdoor, there are more than 27,500 open positions in the US right now. So to help internship-seekers find the very best ones, Glassdoor combed through thousands of reviews shared on its site by interns over the past year.

Facebook takes the top spot for a second consecutive year, with a company rating of 4.6 out of 5.

The social networking giant’s interns report a great company culture that “embraces inclusiveness and creativity, feeling like part of the team, working with smart engineers and colleagues on projects that actually get built and impact billions of people,” says Glassdoor.

A software engineering intern at the social media giant wrote on the Glassdoor site: “Great culture, easy to talk to anyone you want throughout the company. I felt like I was given a challenging task and able to grow as an engineer.”

Another intern said: “You are working on a very interesting problems, which actually affect more than a billion people. You also learn a lot from people around you.”

Here’s the full list of the 25 best companies for internships this year:

Glassdoor

Now check out this video that takes a look inside Facebook:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-25-best-companies-for-internships-right-now-2015-2#ixzz3SluSXBsw

Leadership: What Being a Navy SEAL Sniper Taught Me About Good Business…As a Navy SEAL & Entrepreneur/Manager the Word NO Doesn’t Exist for Me & my Fellow EO’ers.

February 24, 2015/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

I spent over a decade as a Navy SEAL. I was deployed five times to not very pleasant countries, I was in Afghanistan in 2001 when my first child was born, and finished up my last tour as the head instructor for the U.S. Navy SEAL sniper program, one of the best sniper courses in the world. I gave up my career early to spend more time with my kids and to pursue entrepreneurship.

It hasn’t been an easy transition, and my first business venture was a colossal failure. However, as the saying goes, “fall down five times, get up six.” Today I own a growing and successful digital publishing company, Force12 Media. I’ve learned so many great lessons from my SEAL Team days that I apply to my business today. I hope you find the following useful for your own organization—thank you for letting me share my experiences with you. Now, on to chemistry…

1. Good Chemistry—It Matters.
Having an organization with members who work well together is extremely important, and nowhere is that more important than in a SEAL Team, where lives are on the line.

When I was a freshly minted SEAL and stationed in Coronado, California, I actually saw an entire 16-man SEAL platoon get disbanded. Command did this because they had an issue with several people not meshing together. Nobody was to blame, it just wasn’t working.

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Chemistry matters—and it’s just as crucial when it comes to creating a successful business, with employees who enjoy doing their work. For instance, if you have a problem employee who’s busy spreading hate and discontent, that’s like a cancer. The more quickly you can get rid of a bad employee, the better off everyone will be.

I recently hired and fired a very smart and productive person in the span of two months purely because of his poor treatment of another of my employees, who had been with me for years.

The guy I had to fire was definitely talented, and he knew it. What he didn’t know was how to work as a part of a team and how to respect other people. I saw the early warning signs and took swift action to resolve the situation. It reminded me of the recent hit movie The Imitation Game, based on the life of the legendary World War II cryptanalyst Alan Turing. As he’s portrayed in the movie, Turing is brilliant, but he soon disrespects everyone on his team. Resentment builds, and they quit him. Only at that moment does he realize that he can’t be successful just by himself.

Life is simply too short to keep problem employees around. We have a term in the SEAL Teams called “Violence of Action,” meaning that all resources are to be deployed to overcome an enemy. That’s how I approach problems.

It didn’t matter if you were a sniper or a heavy weapons gunner. In the SEAL Teams we trained hard together, fought hard together, and played hard together. It builds chemistry and alignment, creating an unbreakable bond within the SEAL platoon environment. I’ve sought to create esprit de corps in my own business through team-building events, dinners, outings, and creative off-site meetings (race-track driving or sky-diving, anyone?).

2. Stay Calm Under Pressure
As a former head sniper instructor for the SEALs, I had my very own “stress lab” to run. My fellow cadre and I created hundreds of high-pressure situations to make or break our students.

For instance, we used to have a drill called “Edge Shot.” We’d place all the students 800 yards away and inform them that their targets would appear sometime between now and three hours. They then had three hours on the scope, concentrating and waiting. I remember one student who took his eyes off his line of view to wipe the sweat from his brow. When he looked back up he saw his target disappearing into the distance, and he received a failing grade. A little sweat and discomfort is no excuse to take away your focus.

Having gone through the stress of SEAL training and then sniper school was an enormous gift that has taught me how to remain calm under corporate fire, as when dealing with difficult customers, vendors, and legal matters (you know what I’m talking about here).

It has also helped me model behavior for the rest of my team; they know I expect cool heads during stressful times.

I can also think of some great offsite team-building scenarios that include situational drills to stimulate and stress employees to the point where they become practiced in the art of cool under pressure, but more on that next time.

3. Adversity Is Opportunity Knocking
As a Navy SEAL and entrepreneur the word NO doesn’t exist for me and my fellow EO’ers. I try to see every problem as a chance to learn, a gift, and having this mindset has been extremely powerful in my business.

A few years ago my company was working with an advertising agency that had become extremely difficult to work with. They had been known to be extremely slow to pay–sometimes close to 180 days late.

While we were working on a branded video project, a young agency rep decided to cancel the entire campaign. The only problem was that it was noncancelable due to the video production we’d been doing on their behalf.

My team had spent a lot of time and money producing this project, and I had just returned back from shooting with them in Europe when I got the news.

I had every reason to give this young agency person a lesson in business ethics and contracting. In fact, I would have loved to just lay into them, but I kept my cool on the call (see lesson 2). After hanging up, I thought about the situation for a moment. What were my options?

A) I could have my lawyer send a letter demanding payment, and they would have had to pay. (I’ve never found this route to be a good idea.)

B) I could try to work through this already difficult agency relationship.

C) I could use this problem as an excuse to go to the brand directly and build a stronger relationship with my ultimate customer. I chose this option.

So I flew out to the brand’s corporate headquarters and met with the digital team. I was honest, laying out the situation and informing them that although we loved their brand and our relationship with them, we were prepared to walk away from the business if the ad agency didn’t start treating us as a partner.

It worked. Our customer had had no idea these problems were ongoing, and soon realized that other partners were experiencing similar issues. The brand client was grateful and committed to put pressure on the advertising agency to do right by us.
By facing the issue head-on, I turned a six-figure problem into an opportunity to develop a stronger relationship with a core client. Today they are one of our biggest clients, and we have an incredible relationship with them—regardless of which ad agency they’re with now or in the future.

Not everything I learned in the SEAL Teams can be applied to business—for instance, I can no longer settle personal issues by suggesting we “take it out back.” That said, I am amazed at how many of the lessons I’ve learned in SEAL training and as a sniper can be applied to running a successful business..

Brandon Webb, a former Navy SEAL, is an EONYC chapter member. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Red Circle. His next book, Among Heroes (Penguin Random House), will be published in May 2015.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, its management, or its other members.

Forbes.com | February 23, 2015 | Entrepreneurs Organization