Well, I’ve been slack – at least when it comes to posting regularly here. But now it’s officially 2016 I guess it’s time to make a whole lot of resolutions I’ve got no intention of keeping and kick off on an unsustainable eating/excercise regime?
In all seriousness though, I am going to take the bull by the horns (or should that be red monkey?) when it comes to 2016. Oh yeah, 2015 was pretty great – in fact the reason I was so slack on the blogging front was because I started a new job (with the same awesome people). But 2016 is going to be even better!
Last year I was inundated with opportunity – so much so that I really had to take stock of what I value and want my life to be full with. I decided that a new job with the same organisation was where it was at, the #PeoplePeopleCU was a great way to connect with likeminded people in Melbourne, I was more active and sought out more professional development both in person and online and I also was lucky enough to meet some really great people along the way.
So how do I improve on 2015?
I’m going to take Dr Jason Fox’s advice and pick a word for the year, last year I picked ‘Build’ and didn’t really tell anyone about it. This year I’m going to go with ‘Rocket’.
Rocket (for me at least) = the year of launching some amazing things and seeing them fly. (Side note: if you don’t know of Dr Jason Fox and his writing/speaking you need to google him. Now.)
I’m really exciting about 2016 and what it holds. This year I’m off to the SHRM Conference in Washington D.C., there are some massive projects at work that are going to require a lot of time and energy and I’m looking forward to more People People Catch Ups and learning from some cool people.
Just before I sign out on my first (hopefully of many) blogs for the year I’d like to say a big thanks to all the amazing people that made my world better last year – there are just too many to mention but I’m so grateful for all of your sharing, caring and general excellence.
Category: Personal brand
Mentoring is AWESOME!
I woke up this morning and felt incredibly… lucky. Lucky that I am excited to go to work. Lucky that I enjoy my career and I get to work for an organisation I believe in. Lucky that I have been fortunate enough to have some incredible mentors throughout my career.
(In case you can’t tell, I quite like my job)
In retrospect, the availability of a mentor (which has quite often been a manager for me – but not always) who is invested in my career and development has been the key factor in whether I’ve loved where I work or not. It’s not always about the sexiness of the company – one of the most enjoyable places I ever worked was the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department. This wasn’t because of the focus on tax, but due to the excellent group of people I worked with and the incredible managers I had while I was there.
As well as having benefited a huge amount from some mentors who have been very generous with their time, I’ve also been engaged as a mentor myself – it is an incredibly rewarding thing to do. The success of the relationship (whether it’s an informal or formal relationship) is very dependent on the mentee being proactive, understanding what they want out of the relationship and giving adequate thought to the ask that is placed on the mentor. When I’ve seen formal mentorships break down it is almost always linked to a mismatch of expectations. In saying this – the right attitude of the mentor is also critical: you aren’t creating a mini-me or giving all the answers, you’re giving someone the benefit of your perspective and helping them figure out the journey for themselves.
Acknowledging what both parties can learn from each other is also key – this isn’t a one-way relationship. Many organisations now are seeing the value in setting up ‘reverse mentoring’ programs where executives are mentored by younger employees – often with a particular focus on technology or emerging fields.
Forbes had a great article from 2011 (which is still just as relevant today) which detailed how becoming a mentor can develop your own career. This article references research from Sun Microsystems who found that mentors were 6x more likely to be promoted to a bigger job.
Six times!!!
Mentoring isn’t just great for individuals; MicroMentor cites research which states that mentored businesses increased their income during their programs of up to 83% (compared to non-mentored businesses that increased revenue by 16%).
Your Challenge:
My challenge to you? Commit to becoming a mentor, or being a mentee in the coming year. Whichever path you take commit to reflecting on your journey as you go, whether it’s through a journal, your Outlook or another method, and come back to it at the end of the year. I guarantee that if you have an open mind the amount you can learn through this process is almost limitless.
What No-one is Telling You About Navigating Your Company’s Employment Brand Online
Are you hearing this a lot?: “future of work…blah blah blah…. millennial… blah… technological shift”?
Yes yes, it is true, it’s real, and we do need to prepare for change in the world of work. But something I’ve noticed is that we aren’t so great at preparing for is what’s just around the corner.
No I’m not talking about Generation Z – I’m talking about the critical role of social and new media in how we manage our employment brand.
You’re reading this – so I know you can use LinkedIn, Google… maybe even Twitter? I love social media for professional development (and those that know me hear me wax lyrical about it all. the. time.) – but social media for PD is an option for business folk. You might use it, you might not, but it won’t really impact on your ability to do your job (yet).
Something that is right around the corner (and already here if you’re in a big market like the U.S.) – the proliferation of employer review websites and apps. The potential impact on employment brand from social and new media is huge.
You might have heard of some of these review and information sharing platforms: Glassdoor, Vault & JobAdvisor, and apps like Whisper and Canary. If you haven’t, you will.
The likelihood of your organisation getting reviewed or spoken about on one of these platforms in the next year? Growing exponentially.
The likelihood of most HR professionals and business owners knowing how to navigate this tricky topic? Not great.
These sites are to the world of work what TripAdvisor is to the travel industry: an incredible opportunity, but a force to be reckoned with. Just one negative review might dictate 100% of your organisation’s rating on such a platform.
So wait… what?
The platforms I’m speaking about are already common in the USA… and due to the global nature of technology and it’s impact on trends in the workplace it won’t be long until your CEO or investors are asking you why weren’t you on top of this?!
A bit of a rundown on the kinds of platforms I’m referring to:
Glassdoor
One of the most well-known of these sites, Glassdoor is a US-based site where employees (and former employees) anonymously review companies and their management and can post salary data. Glassdoor includes options for employers to pay for an enhanced profile.
Vault
Vault is all about ranking and reviewing companies, internships and schools. With a wider scope than Glassdoor it seems to be more focused on the graduate market.
JobAdvisor
This Australian based site is similar to Glassdoor (except I like the interface better) and has a few more Australian employers listed – similar to Glassdoor & Vault it uses a ratings system and gives you information from individual reviewers based on ‘pros’ and ‘cons’.
Whisper
Whisper wasn’t originally billed as a site to review employers – but it is increasingly being used in reference to user’s jobs, the base concept being it is an anonymous secret sharer where users post their secrets online. It is possible for workplaces to feel the heat from this app (as there’s nothing stopping users naming their workplace in their confessions).
Canary
Billed as ‘anonymous company chatter’ this app allows users to ‘share insider news, thoughts and rumours with your co-workers’. Aside from the potential intellectual property and privacy concerns Canary is designed to facilitate gossip, which, when it’s anonymous, is potentially an HR (and PR) nightmare.
Don’t panic:
Just start by getting familiar with these platforms, as well as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook along with any other collaboration systems your organisation uses if you aren’t already comfortable with them.
Conversations are going to happen, disgruntled employees are going to post damaging things online. We can write all the policies and procedures we want, but the idea of completely mitigating the risk in this space? Impossible.
What do I need to do?
- Get familiar with these platforms yourself.
- Asses whether your organisation is already being talked about.
- Get out ahead: encourage your star staff to engage in this space – next to 20 stand out reviews, 1 negative review won’t look so bad. But if potential employees, stakeholders or customers just see the 1 negative one? Not good.
Repost from LinkedIn article published 6 September 2015
Psych Assessments and Personality Profiles: Worth It?
This week’s post is a result of a question submitted through Engage Learn Build. It’s a question I get asked frequently in various forms – from executives looking to evaluate their team or a new hire, managers who feel they should be using psych assessments but don’t know where to start, right through to friends who are wondering what on earth the correlation is between a seemingly random request for a psych assessment midway through the recruitment process.
My response to these questions varies greatly on the why:
- Why is the decision maker wanting to engage in a psychological assessment or personality profile?
- Will the tool that is being suggested actually help answer that question? (Quite often the answer is no…)
- And finally, does the decision maker actually know how to interpret the results, or do they have someone on hand to walk them through the process? (Again, quite often the answer is no).
Question:
Hey Renée, as a leader, the most valuable learning I’ve done has been about myself. Tools like MBTI, 360 feedback mechanisms and TMI profiles (IE creator / innovator, concluder / producer etc) have all made me much more aware about how to get the best out of others, but most importantly made me much more self aware of my own strengths and weaknesses and helped me out plans in place to compensate.
How do you rate the different tools out there for leaders looking to be more mature and self aware in their approach to leading others and what traps and pitfalls should they look out for using those tools?
– Damo
Answer:
I totally agree, I think there is a time and place for these tools (which I geekily love) and I get heaps out of them too. I think for me the key is context. If you’re someone who can go out and take what they need from these types of tools, apply it etc. then it is less important, but I often see people engaging with tools (either themselves or with their teams/organisations) and then not contextualizing it and making it mean something for the individual/group.
Most people don’t naturally do this (it is a skill highly related to EQ) – but as a leader, when engaging others in this space, the context is everything. Ideally these tools should help inform a broader plan rather than be the plan. As for preference I personally have gotten the most out of 360’s, especially when it is a goodie. The Human Synergistics LSI tool is pretty decent and I really like Facet5. Although if you’re looking at team dynamics rather than individual development I’d lean more towards personality trait profiles (MBTI, DISC are all much of a muchness in my opinion) because they’re easy to understand and focus people on understanding how they relate to others – and others relate to them, which when you’re trying to get a team to work together is pretty critical.
The big trap is the idea that any one tool (or often, consultant selling that tool) has all the answers. While most tools are supported by good theory there is a lot of room for error and an element of subjectivity in analyzing results. Some assessments have been developed with sales people in mind for example, where extroversion is an asset – where someone who is trying to cultivate a collaborative leadership style might rate badly but actually still be really effective in their substantive.
My readers might have differences of opinion when it comes to some of the psych and personality tools I’ve listed. But I maintain the most critical part of the equation is the ‘why’, and if the organisation or the manager concerned hasn’t got that figured out then I’d suggest that any of these tools are next to useless.
The Balancing Act of Work/Life Balance in the World of HR
I wear many hats as a people & culture professional: strategic advisor, problem solver, sounding board, behaviour changer… but I’m also a friend, a partner, a daughter, a sister. There – I said it. I have a life outside of work!
While I love the variety my chosen profession brings sometimes it is really tiring. Tiring because in people & culture you can feel like you’re a million things to a million people, and it’s impossible to meet all of their needs all of the time. Then, at the end of a day filled with 10 urgent matters and 20 incredibly important ones, I roll on home to my family and try and switch my brain to At-Home-Renée (note: she doesn’t get as much done as At-Work-Renée).
I often have this conversation with other people in our industry – just how do you balance the two when it is so easy to prioritise a job you love over everything else? We are the best at preaching the importance of work/life balance but in my experience we are often the worst at balancing the two.
I’ve gone over to the dark side a few times, getting obsessed with checking emails from the time I wake to when I went to sleep, that little ‘ping’ sound sending shivers up my spine. But I came to a realisation that I did not do my best work when thinking about the office all day every day, I didn’t lead by example, insisting on responding to weekend emails the second they arrived, scheduling work travel in the weekends so not to impinge on my ‘productive’ time. I do my best work when I’m happy, when I can dedicate the time required to important projects and be honest with my colleagues about what I can, and cannot, reasonably take on.
I meditate (I know, it sounds terribly new-agey but I swear by it), I exercise, I don’t have my email notifications ‘pop up’ on my phone and I’m getting better about working reasonable hours. And do you know what I’ve noticed? I’m more productive, I produce better results and I’m a nicer person to work with.
It is really hard to fight the urge to ‘just’ do a few extra hours – because as we all know that is a perfectly reasonable, even required, thing to do occasionally – but as soon as it becomes the norm, then I know I’m straying in to dangerous territory.
How can I extol the virtues to the managers I work with of the importance of happy, healthy employees if I myself am not one? How to I promote the idea of encouraging employees to normally work a regular work day if I can’t do it myself?
I don’t believe being overworked is just dangerous to the person (increased risk of cardiovascular disease anyone?) – but it is also dangerous to role model this behaviour, particularly if you’re the guardian of good workplace practice in your organisation.
I’m always looking for ways to both increase my understanding of how I manage this balance and how I can promote this balance within my organisation which is one of the reasons I am looking forward to Dr Adam Fraser’s presentation at the AHRI National Convention on HR: Loving What You Do. Dr Fraser’s presentation promises to give HR professionals practical tools to switch between different roles and environments with less anxiety and friction.
The author will be a guest of the AHRI National Convention and has been asked to write up their thoughts on the event.
This article was originally published on the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) website.
Ugh: Networking!
Ok – so this is how I thought about networking most of my career: “Yuk! Guess I better go… wonder how quickly I’m going to be able to escape out of the door!”
Seriously – I hated it. The forced nature of everything. Meeting people who pressed you for meetings (or worse, work) incessantly. Engaging in awkward getting-to-know-you games after a dull speaker. The fakeness of it all.
But then I discovered I didn’t actually have to hate it. I realised it wasn’t networking I hated – because networking is, at its essence, just meeting people and getting to know them – it was that the events that I was attending were all wrong for me.
Just over 2 years ago I moved to Melbourne Australia from New Zealand. For anyone that has emigrated there is definitely a shift, no matter your industry: job titles don’t exactly translate, organisations you’ve worked with aren’t well known, the ‘nature of work’ can be different. Despite NZ and Australia having many similarities, I was definitely on the back foot when entering the Melbourne job market.
I thought I should just suck it up and get networking, I (luckily) found a role, but all of a sudden my wide network of connections in NZ didn’t count for much. I didn’t have many contacts in Australia who I could drop an email, asking how they were dealing with this law change, or that industry issue. I attending some great events, but I attended many more terrible ones.
I discovered that I have preferences when it comes to industry events and networking just like everyone, the key for me was figuring out what I wanted and who could provide me with that.
Some of my learnings have been:
- I don’t need one event to do it all
I love having the opportunity to hear someone speak I would never get the opportunity to otherwise, Commissioners, Head Economists, Politicians. A good breakfast event (because, coincidently, I also love food) with a great speaker is tops! What I don’t like is for an event to shoe-horn in a speaker with games and awkward conversation.
- I like having unstructured talking time.
I’m actually ok at striking up a conversation here and there. Often the best contacts I’ve made through various forums has been engaging in a great conversation and continuing it over dinner or drinks after the event has finished. If I’m not tied to a table or group I’ll mingle until I find interesting people who I can learn from. - I don’t like feeling like I’m being lined up as a client.
The big divider between events where I feel engaged and those where I don’t is the authenticity of the conversation. You know what – if your company stumped up a lump of cash to make this event happen then that’s awesome! Good on you for investing in relationships. But I don’t want to sit through an hour of your MD telling us about how great their product is if they’re doing an ‘introduction’ for the speaker that got me in the door who then only speaks for 15 minutes.
Likewise if you’re a consultant that is fantastic, I get that you need clients to make your business work. But I’m not going to become a client by you pressing me into a meeting. I’d like to actually connect with you as a person, and in exchange I won’t pretend like I might have some work if really I know there is no chance.
Recently I was flirting with the idea of reconnecting with a great group of people who I coincidently met at one of the great networking groups I joined when I first moved to Melbourne. I had a chat about it with a friend and thought ; well if I like the super unstructured drinks & a loose theme kind of networking event then maybe others would too’?
As a result of this, and subsequent conversations, with the original group I’ve set up a ‘People People Catch Up’ – for people whose business is people – People & Culture, L&D, OD, Projects, Change and everything in between. If this sounds like you and you’re based in Melbourne (or just happen to be here on August 13th 2015) I’d love to see you there!
For more details head to book into the #PeoplePeopleCU here or contact me via @ReneeRoberz
Just Do It
Well, it’s been ages since I’ve actually sat down to write; far too long in fact. And I know that for my own development, personal and professional, that blogging really helps me clarify my thoughts and cements my plan of action.
I could list one million reasons here why I’ve been a bit slack, I’ve been on leave, work has been incredibly busy, life got in the way in general. But none of those reasons outweigh the importance of my goals and development – but they so easily get in the way.
Via Twitter a little bird said to me; “Just start writing, do it every day, even if it’s just a sentence”. And you know what? She’s right. I just need to get off my butt and do it, because no one else is driving my career, my development, that’s my responsibility. And, like many people, I often put my development in the backseat, instead focusing on immediate priorities – like a heavy workload and a busy life. But when I think about what I want to be doing and where I want to be in 5, 10, 20 years – I need to make sure I take responsibility every day.
So often, as is the life of someone who works in L&D/HR, I have colleagues, friends and acquaintances who come to me to ask how do they make the next career move; how do they move into that management job, that senior consulting position. The advice I give is just this; decide exactly what it is you want, figure out the steps it will take to get there, break them down to achievable chunks and Just Do It. (Oh yeah, I totally have no shame when it comes to ripping off great slogans from major corporations.)
And this is exactly the advice I’m giving myself right now.
Just Do It.
Hard Truth: I Would Judge You On Your Social Media Profile
Yup, let’s face it. We’ve all done it. Sussed out that new work contact on LinkedIn or Twitter (maybe Google Circles… or not) and judged them a little.
Unprofessional photo (Wearing tinsel in his hair? Really?!)
Mistakes in the description of the copywriter job she had… wouldn’t recommend her to anyone!
A bio written in overly formal wordy language that screams “I THINK I’M AWESOME!”
Yeah, I do it too.
So, like it or not, given that most people will make snap judgements of you, there are a few basic tenents that can translate into a more favourable initial impression online. My top four recommendations to get it right?
1. The profile picture
No, the one of you holding a glass of bubbly at your cousin’s wedding with your significant other chopped out will not do. Nor the picture from 15 years ago when you still got ID’d for alcohol.
Nothing flash is needed: just a semi-professional (or super-professional, depending on your industry) head shot.
The only people who shouldn’t follow this advice in my opinion are children’s party entertainers and spirit coaches (they can go for something a little kookier).
2. Proofread
It kills me how often I see LinkedIn bios with horrendous spelling errors. Just get a friend to read over it. Copy and paste into MS Word and see if anything is underlined red or green. And if it is, fix it.
3. Write in first person
Pop quiz: When someone describes their accomplishments to you at a party, do you sometimes think they come across as a bit of a blow-hard if they speak about themselves in the third person? I certainly do.
Same goes in your social media profiles. You are trying to connect with people, do that by speaking in your own voice, you will come across like a real person and I promise you that is a good thing.
4. Be authentic
Social media is an opportunity for you to make connections with people you might not ordinarily have the opportunity to connect with. It’s a way to tell people a little bit more about yourself and your world in an easily accessible environment.
Use it – but think about how you do it. Just as you are careful with your professional reputation, be careful with your online one. Be yourself, but don’t forget that these are professional mediums. While being true to yourself, your beliefs and your ethics, don’t sell yourself short by endorsing everyone you know for every skill they have listed (can you really endorse Jenny for Strategic Planning if you worked with her at McDonald’s on drive-through when you were teens?).
If you’re going to put your professional persona out online (and I think that is awesome – yay the internet!) just be wary of who is going to read it, and what message you’re sending. Will your future boss, co-worker or client see your online brand as an extension of real-life you? Or are you making choices that could lead to those relationships suffering?
Renée Robson 
