"What if I fall..."

“Oh but my darling, what if you fly…”

A friend of mine sent me this quote, admitted it is a bit of a fluffy one. On Facebook, I get bombarded with similar quotes that are all designed to lighten up my day. This one however stuck to my mind.

We all know the story about Icarus. He made wings to make him fly. When he came too close to the sun, his wings burned. From childhood on, we learn not to be overly ambitious, not to set goals that seem impossible to reach. We continue this way of thinking in our professional lives. Feedback during performance reviews is often focusing on areas of improvement rather than on achievements where you used your strengths to excel.

Focusing on strengths is becoming more and more an acceptable leadership style. Rath & Conchie wrote a book, Strengths Based Leadership, where academic research shows that to the extent we can use our strengths, people are six times more likely to be “engaged” in their jobs and more than three times more likely to declare they have an excellent quality of life in general.

Applying this strengths based leadership style requires a different way of thinking, a different way of hiring, coaching and assigning people to positions.

It all starts by knowing and acknowledging what your own strengths are. Strengths define who you are, they make unique. Often we are not aware of the innate talents that we have that can be developed into strengths.

Once you know your own strengths, you need to have the courage to surround you with people who complete these strengths. Rath & Conchie identified 4 domains of leadership strengths: executing, relationship building, strategic thinking and influencing. Any effective team should consist at least one person of each domain.

When it comes down to people management, you need to understand the strengths of people reporting into you and place them in the appropriate roles. This takes listening to people and empowering them to invest in their strengths. But it also requires thorough understanding of the business and the markets to know how to match employee’s strengths with specific projects and goals.

These three guidelines should allow you to make people fly without having their wings burnt. I’ll start by giving the good example, I promise never to ask you during interviews what your weakness are J.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Isabel

Through a personalized and tailor-made approach, Ingenium Executive Search aspires to assist you in attracting the right talent that matches the DNA of your company

Check out our website http://www.ingenium-search.be

Follow me on Twitter @IngeniumSearch

Are you already a steward of meaning?

Last week I went to a seminar on the soul of work. What may seem like a fluffy subject turned out to be a very interesting and enlightening afternoon. Those of you who follow me on twitter have seen the very enthusiastic tweets J.

Monique Valcour, a professor at EDHEC business school, held an engaging presentation on the importance of having a meaningful job. Research has shown that meaningfulness is crucial to having engaged employees. Consequently, leaders should be ‘stewards of meaning’.

I have written several times already on key leadership skills but this for sure was a new angle.

Many companies have a yearly engagement survey, questioning their employees on how committed they are in their job and how their leadership contributes to that. I don’t think any of them have a question included as to whether people feel that their job is meaningful. I wouldn’t put it in either…until now…

Monique had several examples on how to add meaning to a job but the most striking one was a story about a cleaning person in a hospital. She had to clean rooms of people who were undergoing chemotherapy. Not the most pleasant job to say the least. However she found meaning in it by realizing that due to her contribution patients still had some dignity in their most vulnerable moments. Head’s off for that!

Taking this example and looking at leaders being a steward of meaning…if you can create an environment where people can find that meaning in even the lowest of jobs…than you really have an edge on all others.

Meaningful work is different for every individual, what someone cares about is very personal. This means that you cannot make work meaningful for people. They need to do that themselves.

What you can do is to create context that employees can leverage to derive meaning from their work.

You can do by some fairly simple actions:

• ·       Show them how their work fits into the bigger picture
• ·       Capitalize on their strengths because that is what energizes them
• ·       Give them autonomy in completing their work
• ·       Give recognition for good work 

Creating such a work environment, will allow people to connect their personal interests and life objectives with their job and will automatically lead to a higher employee engagement.

After all, wouldn’t you want to join an organisation whose work engages your interest and deserves your passion?

I look forward to hearing from you,

Isabel

Through a personalized and tailor-made approach, Ingenium Executive Search aspires to assist you in attracting the right talent that matches the DNA of your company

Check out our website http://www.ingenium-search.be

Follow me on Twitter @IngeniumSearch

Don't let the sting be in the tail...

There are very few things that are as unpleasant as having an excited candidate about a job, a pleased future employer and then…a negative reference check…

I don’t do reference checks by default but for some of my clients, it is part of any hiring process. Although candidates may assume the contrary, this is not a simple courtesy call.

A reference check mainly wants to ensure that a prospective employee is who he or she claims to be and is capable of doing the job. Traditionally, it is done for the last one or two candidates. If you have gotten to this stage, you are close to landing the job. To make sure that the sting is not in the tail, here are a few tips.

It all starts by choosing the right references.

Choose people who will paint an honest representation of who you are as a person and as an employee. I will be looking for your roles and responsibilities, your key achievements, your strengths and your weaknesses. Make sure that the people who provide you with references can talk in detail about all of these aspects, not because they like you as a person but because they have worked with you for a significant amount of time. They don’t have to picture you as being the perfect employee, no one is, but the majority of what they tell me should make you attractive for your employer-to-be.

Once you have identified these people, make sure that you reach out to them before sending me their details.

It does not exactly ooze professionalism when the person on the other end of the line wonders why I could be calling them. Or worse, does not remember ever working together with you.

Of course you can merely send an e-mail to inform them but a quick phone-call will significantly increase the impact. It allows you to explain the role you are applying for, the challenges this will bring and the strengths and characteristics you would like to highlight. They will be able to better prepare what they are going to say and their reference will have a lot more value for your future employer.

Ask them for appropriate timeslots during which they will be available. Pro-activeness is a quality I highly value…

Also, and this is too often forgotten, provide feedback to them on what the outcome was and thank them for their time…you may need a glowing reference next time around.

Certain situations may present as challenges as far as a good references goes: you may have had a bad relationship with a previous boss or you may have separated in bad terms from a previous employer. Better than trying to hide it, be up front about it. Being open from the start won’t harm you, on the contrary, it will give you the advantage that you will be able to picture the circumstances, what you have learned from it and how you would do things differently. Counterbalance potentially bad references with positive references on the qualities that are crucial for your future role.

I can’t provide you with a recipe for perfection but these tips should allow you to get the sting out of the tail. Should you need some more detailed advice, don’t hesitate to send me an e-mail.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Isabel

Through a personalized and tailor-made approach, Ingenium Executive Search aspires to assist you in attracting the right talent that matches the DNA of your company

Check out our website http://www.ingenium-search.be

Follow me on Twitter @IngeniumSearch