C-Suite Network™

Menu
Search
Close this search box.

Author: Evan Hackel

A dynamic, innovative, thoughtful and inspiring leader with 30 years of experience in franchising, distributed networks and cooperatives. Successful history of: (i) turning around a $700 million distressed franchise system into a $2.0 billion revenue business in four years, (ii) reviving and re-energizing a $3.5 billion revenue franchisor and (iii) founding three franchise systems. Experienced corporate board member.

Currently, a consultant to some of the largest franchise systems in North America. A franchise industry leader, widely published, keynote speaker, member of the New England Franchise Association Board, and Co-chair of the International Franchise Associations Knowledge Share Task Force.|A dynamic, innovative, thoughtful and inspiring leader with 30 years of experience in franchising, distributed networks and cooperatives. Successful history of: (i) turning around a $700 million distressed franchise system into a $2.0 billion revenue business in four years, (ii) reviving and re-energizing a $3.5 billion revenue franchisor and (iii) founding three franchise systems. Experienced corporate board member.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Human Resources Leadership Personal Development

Three Simple Training Tips to Dramatically Boost Company Performance

Many companies view training as a “nice to have.” They think it is important to create an attractive, engaging training program for new hires, and that it might be good to have a focused course that teaches employees how to perform certain tasks or use certain pieces of company technology. Once those companies cover the bases by offering training in just a few areas like those, they turn the page and start to think about other realities of doing business.

But what if . . .

What if those companies thought about employing training in a larger, more strategic  way to improve performance in a wider range of business activities? What, for example, if they stopped to consider that a $10,000 investment in training could net a 10% increase in the sales made by each salesperson, resulting in an additional $10 million in annual sales revenue? What if they stopped to think that a similar investment in training could result in a 10% increase in the accuracy of order filling, and would save $1 million a year?

In short, what if companies made the connection between training, performance, and the bottom line?

And what if your company did? You see, training offers you the potential to dramatically increase profits and performance. Here are three tips to get that to happen for you . . .

Start with the End in Mind

Chances are you know where you would like to see improved performance or profits in your organization. But specifically what would those improvements look like? Would there be fewer defective products, better company reviews online, a 15% increase in the sales of one of your product lines . . . specifically, what?

Specific goals begin to emerge when you consider questions like those. They help you define the specific business challenges and goals you need to address. And once you have defined those issues and goals, you can begin to determine if there is  training that will assist in  reaching them.

Develop an Appropriate Curriculum

Your curriculum should be designed to teach people the skills they need to learn or improve in their specific role. But developing an effective curriculum is a bit more complex than simply defining skills. It should be right for the people in the roles who are performing the tasks and jobs that your training addresses. And it should be designed to have a focused, specific impact on the business items where you are trying to “move the needle” and bring about change.

An appropriate curriculum is also about more than just a list of skills and behaviors. It should consider how those lessons will be delivered – by a live training presenter, on phones or tablets, enlivened with games and exercises, in short “chunks” or longer lessons, for example. Creating an effective curriculum depends on considering who your learners are, where they are, and how they would prefer to learn.

Measure Results, then Tweak and Adjust Your Training Accordingly

At this point, you loop back to the decisions you made in the first step we explored in this article, when you started with the end in mind. The difference is that you are now going to develop ways to measure the change you have brought about through training.

You might decide to measure how much more each of your retail salespeople is selling on an average sale, whether fewer of your products are being returned, whether your rates of repeat business are improving, whether your online reviews are more positive, or other hard or soft metrics that tell you how effective your training has been.

Once you are measuring, you can tweak, modify your training, and find ways to improve results. But one thing for certain? If you don’t measure and adjust, your training will never deliver the results it is capable of.

In Summary . . .

Start with the end in mind . . . develop an appropriate curriculum . . . then measure results and adjust your training. That is a simple, yet powerful, approach to improve company performance. And you can use it to improve more company performance  that you have probably stopped to consider.

 

Categories
Growth Human Resources Leadership Personal Development

Keys to Effective Training

Let’s take a look at two professional trainers. For this article, let’s call them Joan and Jack.

Both Jack and Joan are energetic trainers who get their audiences laughing quickly. They will both do whatever it takes – using props or quacking or asking trainees to do silly things – to illustrate a concept or get their trainees excited and engaged. And when trainees leave at the end of the training day, they feel energized, happy and ready to take on new challenges.

But there are significant differences between the results that Joan and Jack achieve. A few weeks after training is over, the performance of the people who trained with Joan has improved dramatically and measurably. The performance of the people who trained with Jack? Well, it hasn’t improved much at all. Most of them quickly went back to “business as usual.”

In other words, Jack’s training is edutainment. Joan’s isn’t, because it gets results. And that is true, even though someone who peeked into either of their training rooms wouldn’t notice much difference.

How Can You Avoid Wasting Money on Frivolous Training?

The first step is understanding that although good training is often entertaining, it is not entertainment. In other words, training is supposed to achieve demonstrable results, not just make people laugh or enjoy themselves or kick back and enjoy a day out of the office or away from the selling floor.

I call the wrong kind of training edutainment. It’s entertaining, it does well on the “smile sheet.” but doesn’t actually have long impactful results.

How can you make sure that your training is hitting the right targets? Here are some steps that can help assure that you are getting a good ROI on every training dollar you spend, because your trainers and your training are hitting the right goals:

1. Think of training as a strong combination of education, engagement and usefulness. Training must educate by teaching skills, transferring knowledge, cultivating attitudes and hitting other specific targets. Yet training that is purely educational doesn’t get results. That is why training must present information in ways that are engaging, interactive and require the learner to think and use the information learned.

2. Apply the VAK Attack model to increase learning. VAK stands for the three ways that people learn, and your live training should make use of all three. Visual learning happens when people watch materials that can include videos, PowerPoints, charts and other visual elements. Auditory learning happens when people learn by listening to people who might be other trainees, compelling trainers, visitors and others. And kinesthetic learning happens when people get out of their seats and move around as they take part in work simulations, games, and other meaningful exercises.

3. If you’re hiring an outside trainer, speak with other organizations where he or she has worked. When you do, ask for specifics about what the training accomplished. Did average sales orders increase by a certain percentage? Did customers report measurably higher levels of satisfaction when they were polled? Did thefts and losses decrease by a certain significant percentage when training was completed? Remember to look for hard data about results. Statements like “We loved Paul’s training!” might be nice, but they don’t tell you much about whether Paul’s training was worth the money it cost.

4. Define outcomes and make sure your trainer can reach them. Do you want your salespeople to contact 25% more new prospects? Do you want the people who deliver and install appliances for your store to give true “white glove” treatment to customers? Or do you want your hotel front-desk staff to delight guests with exceptional service?  Your trainer should explain his or her plans to break those processes down into individual steps and address them directly through training.

5. Help your trainer know who your trainees are. A good trainer will want to know about their ages, prior experience, educational level, current jobs, and all other factors that can be leveraged to engage them more fully in training.  A concerned trainer will also want to be aware of any factors that might cause them not to engage.

6. Let your employees tell you what they need to learn during training. Your salespeople know the biggest challenges they face on the retail floor every day. Your service technicians know the glitches that arise most often when they are interacting with customers. Why sit back and hope that your training developers will guess or already know what those issues are and address them in training? It is less haphazard to ask your employee what they most need to learn in training, then make sure those topics are covered.

7. Work with your trainer to develop meaningful metrics. If you work together to define what you will measure after training is completed, chances are good that your training will accomplish much more, because its goals are well defined.

8. Monitor sessions and make sure that training stays on track. If you are a company training director or a member of senior management, you might not want to attend sessions, because your presence could put a damper on trainees’ ability to relax and learn. If that is the case, ask a few trainees to check in with you at lunchtime or other breakpoints to tell you whether the trainer is hitting the benchmarks you created. If not, a quick check-in with the trainer can often get things back on track and avoid wasting time and money.

The Special Challenges of Training within Franchise Systems

The structure of franchise systems makes it even more difficult to deliver effective training, especially to front-line retail and service employees who work at the franchisee level – in other words, the people who are doing the work. Delivering training to them becomes a two-part process because it is first necessary to train the franchisees, who must then train their employees.

Strategic use of e-learning technologies can go a long way toward simplifying and optimizing that process. In fact, that is why Tortal Training was created: to create effective training at low cost via e-learning to franchisors to offer franchisees.

It’s All About Getting Your Money’s Worth and Getting Results

If you are a training director who wants to record serious results from serious training, it’s important to work closely with professional trainers who don’t only entertain, but educate.  That’s the difference between training that’s frivolous and training that offers a good ROI on your investment.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Investing Leadership Personal Development

Are You Sure You’re Training the Right Things?

Not long ago a training consultant got a call from a sales manager who said, “We need sales training!”

The consultant answered, “Are you sure?”

The caller explained that some of their customer service reps were doing four times the volume of others. It had to be because they were better salespeople … right? So, they needed sales training!

The consultant agreed to help, but insisted on observing the company’s top performers to get a better understanding of what sales techniques they were using.

As it turned out, the top producers weren’t better salespeople at all, but rather had developed a more effective method for processing customer transactions. Once the consultant recognized that, it was easy to document their techniques and build short training interactions around them. The result was an almost instant uptick in sales across their entire customer service rep population.

The message? To get the results you want, you need to understand the reality of your situation. Here are some non-obvious, commonsense steps to help you do that and avoid wasting time and resources.

Step One: Get Real Information from the Right People

A modified version of DACUM (which stands for Developing a Curriculum) can be effectively used in situations like that one. DACUM, which was created by educators to design courses, analyzes what people really do and what they need to learn.

In stark contrast to getting only the leadership team or training department heads in a room, training designers should invite the “boots on the ground.” These are the top performers, the gurus, and the go-to people everyone in the organization knows and relies on. A facilitator leverages a process by which they can extrapolate all that delicious institutional or “tribal” knowledge that exists only in their heads.

Diversity of perspective is key here, so don’t be afraid to have a mix of people. Here’s a sample group:

The new person who really gets it! – That person on your team who’s been in a role for six months to a year and really seems to get it. He or she provides a fresh perspective.

The go-to person who has been there forever! – He or she can be described as having forgotten more about the job than most people will ever learn. They provide historical knowledge about how the role has changed over the years.

An adjacent collaborator role – Don’t be afraid to bring in someone who is not in the role, but “close” to it. This individual can provide an outsider’s perspective and bring knowledge and experience to a different role.

Key stakeholders – This group is essential because they need the results. They are often your champions who need to understand the process and often support your budget.

Step Two: Create an Occupational Definition – Prime their Minds!

Get everyone in the room focused on the role and get discussions about leadership, work ethic and good communication out of the way. You can use a simple quadrant matrix to document:

  • Reporting lines – Who does the role report to up, down and laterally.
  • Critical knowledge and skills – What specific skills are essential to doing the job well?
  • “Nice to have” abilities and traits – What type of person tends to perform well?
  • Learned but wasn’t taught – What were those “a-ha moments” your group had on the job?

Step Three: Define the Body of Knowledge for Peak Performance – The Meat and Potatoes!

A Duty/Task Matrix can be used to define the body of knowledge necessary to perform in the role. You only need some big post-it notes and sharpies. Get the information on the wall so everyone can see it. Put duties down the left, and tasks going across left to right. Here are the definitions and some examples:

  • Duties – This is a something that is top-of-mind for the role. It doesn’t have a beginning or an end. It is ever-present while on the job and usually ends in –ing. Some examples:

Restaurant Manager. Duty: Maintaining food safety

Automotive Maintenance Manager. Duty: Selling products and services

  • Tasks – These are processes or procedures that have a beginning and end. They usually can have a metric associated with them. These roles fulfill duties by repeatedly completing a series of tasks, usually four or more. A defined task requires an object, verb and qualifier. Some examples:

Restaurant Manager. Task: Wash hands properly

Automotive Maintenance Manager. Task: Write a customer-facing estimate

When you identify all the duties and the tasks required to fulfill a role, you’ve documented the entire body of knowledge used by your experts in the room. You’ve also just blown your LT away, because they had “no idea!” your people did all this stuff!

Step Four: Understand the Gaps and Criticality

Your Duty/Task Matrix stands before you and now you need to know where the information is and what tasks have the highest impact on performance. Here are steps to follow:

Draft a Gap Analysis – Go task by task. Where is it documented how to perform this task? In HR? Marketing? Sales? Ops? Or is it in one of your expert’s head? Has it been passed down over time? If it’s the latter, it’s a gap!

Consider criticality – Everything in your Duty/Task Matrix is important … but what’s most critical? Use a simple rubric and define the impact to the business, performance, individual or team upon failure. Ask the question: If the worker fails to perform this task, does anyone notice? Does it create some rework—possibly a lot? Will you lose a customer? Will someone get hurt?

Step Five: Build Your Plan

You now have all the information you need to build your plan. You know what the role looks like, contained in your Occupational Definition. You know the body of knowledge that needs to be learned, as described in your Duty/Task Matrix. You know what exists and what doesn’t, laid out in your Gap Analysis. And you know what information is critical to performance, as summarized in your Criticality Analysis.

You can build your Learning Maps for the role, from beginner to expert. You can start to design and develop training around the gaps that really impacts performance. You can map these duties and tasks to competencies and leverage them in cross-team training interactions, and make decisions on the right method for delivery

Now you are armed, much like a marketing department, with an analysis of your customer base and potential for results based on empirical data and not simply feelings. Now you can go to your LT with a plan that justifies a budget and will deliver results. Oh, and you’ve done it all in two days. Good luck!

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

How to Make Millennials Fall In Love with Working for You

Recent studies find that millennials’ attitudes toward work differ dramatically from those held by members of the older Baby Boomer generation. For example, a recent study from Gallup, “How Millennials Want to Work and Live,” reported these findings:

  • 60% of millennials say that the opportunity to learn and grow on the job is “extremely important” to them. In contrast, only 40% of baby boomers feel the same way.

 

  • 50% of millennials strongly agree that they plan to remain in their jobs for at least the next year. In contrast, 60% of members of all other groups plan to stay in place for that long. The message is that millennials are weighing their options.

Findings like those – and you can easily find more – show that keeping millennials happy and engaged at work can be a challenge. But it can be done. Here are some trends that can have a strong impact on your franchise’s ability to attract, hire and retain the strongest millennial employees.

Millennials like to feel capable and confident in their jobs. They do not like to feel like rookies. Many think of themselves as leaders – or as leaders who are waiting to be discovered. They want to look good and thrive on being able to confidently contribute from the first day they arrive on the job. The right kind of training – both for new and current millennial employees – makes that happen.

Millennials are usually skilled students. They like to apply the learning skills they built while they were in school. To them, learning feels as natural as eating three meals a day. In contrast, getting baby boomers to believe in learning can be a harder sell. They tend to view training as a burden, something they must endure. In contrast, millennials are more likely to say, “Wow, when can I start?”

Millennials are tech-friendly. Most of them love to be trained on their mobile phones and tablets, which are the most powerful training options available to many companies today. The result is better knowledge transfer, even to groups of employees who work in far-flung locations. Baby boomers, in contrast, are more tech-resistant. They are likely to freeze and resist when they hear they are going to be taking company training on their little smartphones.

Millennials like to be part of energized teams. This is a bit of a contradiction, but at the same time millennials think of themselves as individualist entrepreneurs, they also expect to be part of an interesting team. Letting millennials get to know their teammates during training, and fostering a sense of team/group identity, can help convince them that they have joined the right organization.

Millennials like a well-defined career path. Consider creating a personalized career development plan for all new employees. (The exception being seasonal or other short-term workers who will probably not remain with your company for long.) Another idea? Enroll new employees in management training programs from their first days on the job. In a retail franchise, for example, you can enroll them in training that will enable them to manage their own stores in two years, or after another stated period. Millennials like to know their next steps as they build their careers, and training is a fine place to begin.

 And remember training . . .

Training is important to millennials. They are the most energized, skilled and capable generation ever to enter the workforce. Train them well and they will become your organization’s brightest future.

This article is adapted from the book Ingaging Leadership by Evan Hackel.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a 35-year franchising veteran as both a franchisor and franchisee. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal of Ingage Consulting. He is a speaker, hosts “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business, and author of Ingaging Leadership. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanspeaksfranchising.com. Follow @ehackel or call 704-452-7368. Why not have Evan Hackel address your group about franchising success?

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Fight Disengagement at Every Level of Your Organization

Ingaged leadership is a new way of leading, founded on the belief that if leaders create an organization where everyone works together in open partnership, that organization becomes vastly more successful.

Instead of telling people what to do, Ingaged leaders unlock the power of people’s minds, creativity and emotions. Some of the key skills of Ingaged leaders include:

1. Asking for help, because doing so is a sign of strength, not weakness.

2. Listening constantly and actively for nuggets of high value in what other people are saying and supporting the best of them.

3. Setting aside personal opinions about what will work and letting people try their most prized ideas.

How Can You Apply Ingaged Leadership throughout Your Organization?

Leading and supervising are two very different things. In fact, there are opportunities to practice Ingaged leadership at every level.

Ingaging with Trustees

When boards convene, many organizational leaders give them a report of company finances, introduce a few new hires, talk about new products – and that’s about it. Those practices represent disingagement, not Ingagement. Remember that members of your board were appointed because of extensive leadership experience, so invite them to share in open-ended discussions about long-term mission, marketplace trends, competitive issues, and more.  One way to start that discussion is to talk openly about the long-term issues you and your company is facing. The more you share openly, the more you encourage board members to do the same.

Ingaging with Your Top Executive Team

To be honest, I have observed that top leadership teams in many companies are hindered by internal fissures and factions that are never discovered until someone quits or a major problem arises. Those problems often happen because executives have ambitions and plans that are being stifled by the company leaders, or because the rejection of their ideas in the past has caused them to self-censor.

The solution is to build a top management team that is positively disruptive. That means resisting the temptation to surround yourself with “yes people,” “people who are just like me” and people who prefer “group think” to shaking things up. Also, have the courage to recruit people who are genuinely better than you at doing certain things, and let them. Their efforts will free you and results will soar.

Ingaging with Middle Managers

The leaders of many organizations overlook the fact that middle managers possess the kind of reality-based, realistic and valuable intelligence that cannot be found anywhere else in house. Instead of hearing directly from middle managers, those company leaders hear about them from divisional heads or other upper-tier executives. That kind of filtering is a crippling mistake. In contrast, Ingaged leaders interact directly with members of middle management. Even in very large organizations like franchises, they create – and visit – advisory boards made up of mid-level managers, leadership councils and other forums where managers can speak and be heard.

Ingaging with Front-Line and Entry-Level Staff

Too many companies seem to apply classic “mushroom management” to employees at this level. (“Keep them in the dark and hope they grow.”) What a loss, since front-line employees have critical knowledge and ideas that should be captured and reinforced. In smaller organizations, instituting an open-door policy or visiting hours can help. In larger companies, virtual suggestion boxes on the company intranet have worked well. So have general meetings where employees brainstorm and suggest ideas that can be captured, responded to, and utilized.

Remember too that your company’s training programs offer a setting to invite and acknowledge new ideas from front-line staff. If you encourage your trainers to explore bigger company issues and invite ideas, you can begin to build high levels of Ingagement, literally from the bottom up.

Ingaging with Your Sales Team

Your salespeople know more than anyone else does about customers’ concerns, motivations to buy, opinions of your products, and much more. Yet many companies focus only on sales quotas and incentives, never soliciting salespeople’s insights. To tap this critical intelligence, invite salespeople to attend your top management meetings, listen actively to what they say, and then implement their solutions and new ideas. Another solution is to conduct brainstorming sessions during larger sales meetings, invite people to offer their best ideas, and then let them try them in the real world.

Still More Opportunities to Benefit from Ingagement

Ingaged leadership can be used to build more beneficial relationships with job applicants, clients, vendors, top executives at other companies, and many more people. The more you Ingage at every level, the greater you and your organization will become.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Shift Your Focus to the Positive

“The negativity around here is wearing me down.”

If you have ever said those words to a colleague, I have some tough-but-loving advise to offer you today . . .

If the negativity is getting to you, it is up to you to do something about it. You… and no one else.

You don’t have the time, you say? You are not negative other people are, you say? Well that could be true. But unless you do something to turn the problem around, you are part of the roadblock.

Here are two simple, time-efficient steps you can do today to transform your organization into a much more positive place to work.

Use the Power of Five-to-One

I recommend telling people five positive things for every comment that could possibly be interpreted as negative – so in effect, you are operating on a ratio of 5 to 1 in positive versus ambiguous or less-than-positive communications. This practice will transform your leadership on the job, and it will produce surprising transformations in the way you interact with your family members, friends – in fact, everyone around you.

Why? Because too many of us don’t spend enough time giving positive feedback. Some of us say nothing at all until they need to comment or correct something that we think someone is doing wrong. Over time, this negative pattern causes others to feel unappreciated and so defensive that when you approach them, they know that you are unhappy with them. Is that good leadership? Is it a good way to interact with the people you love?

In contrast, be on the lookout for good things and call attention to them in positive ways. Concentrate not on perfection, but on the progress and hard work that you see in other people. If you apply this philosophy consistently, everyone around you will be happier, more motivated and less distracted by worry. Please try it and again, let me know how it has helped you.

Express Appreciation Every Day

Expressing appreciation seems like a small thing to do. But just like using the Three Things philosophy, it exerts a surprisingly profound force on everyone around you. You can express appreciation to members of your family, to people who work for the same charities and organizations that you do – and to people you meet everywhere and anywhere as you go about your life.

If the babysitter you hired to watch your kids one night did an especially caring and capable job of it, mention how much you appreciate that. And then go on to do the same, by expressing appreciation for the gas station attendant who washes your windshield, to the waitperson who did an exceptional job attending to your family at a restaurant, to the woman who holds the door of the ATM to make life a little more pleasant for you instead of letting it close in your face.

Every time you express appreciation, you are creating a more positive world, both for you and for everyone around you.

Embrace the Fact that Other People Often Have Ideas that Are As Good As Yours . . . and Possibly Better

Learn to suspend judgment in interactions with other people, by letting go and allowing them to surprise you by doing things the way they want to. We have already explored this leadership book in this book. I am here to tell you, it can produce transformational results in your family and personal life.

Here is a small experiment for you to try. If you have a child, for example, try to see everything you say and do through his or her eyes. You son just came to you with a suggestion for a summer program he would like to participate in, for example, or your daughter wants to go on vacation with her best friend’s family. If you were your son or daughter and expressed desires like those, how would you feel if your idea gets summarily shot down by Mom or Dad?

Accept the idea that the people around you are just as smart as you are, and sometimes smarter. You are not the person who gives final permission for everything. Do bear in mind, of course, that part of being an effective parent sometimes means failing to give permission. Does you daughter want to go swimming with sharks, for example, or travel to a dangerous part of the world. Or does you son suddenly announce that he wants to drop out of college a few months before he is due to graduate? Remember that you don’t have to approve everything. As you do in your professional life, it is a matter of exercising positive leadership. But before you deny permission, take a little time to ask “why?” so you can determine what the real issues are. Then facilitate decision making in a positive and Ingaged way.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is a 35-year franchising veteran as both a franchisor and franchisee. He is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal of Ingage Consulting. He is a speaker, hosts “Training Unleashed,” a podcast covering training for business, and author of Ingaging Leadership. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanspeaksfranchising.com. Follow @ehackel or call 704-452-7368. Why not have Evan Hackel address your group about franchising success?

 

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Rethinking the Manager/Employee Touch-Base Meeting

Manager/employee touch-base meetings were created to be better than yearly or twice-yearly job reviews. But have they turned out to be as good as everyone expected? Sometimes, but not always.

A supervisor usually pulls up a document that was created in the last touch-base and says, “Here are the to-dos we talked about last time. Have you done this . . . have you done that?” And then the final killer question is, “Why not?”

If you conduct touch-bases like that, you are sending the message that you, the manager, know everything and that your supervisee must prove him or herself. Your employee leaves the room feeling blamed, pressured and even threatened.

Yet there are simple, highly effective ways to turn touch-base meetings into opportunities for mentoring, coaching, and positive motivation. The strategy is to reverse the process so you’re letting your employee take responsibility, rather than your catching them at what they’re doing wrong.

Start with a simple open-ended question . . .

Questions like “Has it been a good few weeks since we last talked?” or, “Have you been enjoying work lately?” kick off a give-and-take conversation that allows you to then talk about anything in a safe way. They also offer you a chance to get a general feel for how things are going for your employee.

Replace “Let’s see how you’re doing on your to do list” with “What do you feel good about accomplishing since we last talked” . . .

If you follow this advice, you will start out focusing on positive changes and accomplishments that the employee has made. Next, give positive reinforcement for what they’ve accomplished and let them feel proud of their achievements. Then move on to any items that are still undone, which you can now discuss in a positive and upbeat way. This change drains the blame from your meeting and creates positive, motivational conversations.

Ask, “Are there areas where you need some help?” . . .

This is where you can coach and assist employees. Your offer of help prevents them from feeling bad about something that is undone and lets them feel comfortable about getting the help they need. Be sure to listen for underlying reasons why your employee might not be tackling certain tasks. The issue could be time, meaning they don’t have enough time to do everything – perhaps others in the organization could help?  It could be that they lack some piece of technology that would help them, the services of a consultant, or something else.

The bottom line is, by offering help you are helping someone not feel guilty about not getting something done. Under the old system of job reviews, people would often feel guilty and want to mislead or try to divert blame from themselves. That is very unhelpful. Having a frank and honest discussion, much better.

Let the employee set his or her own “to-dos” and priorities . . .

As a supervisor, there will be times when you need to make firm assignments. But as much as you can, allow your employee to set his or her own priorities and projects. That builds a sense of ownership and enthusiasm.

After the steps I recommend above, ask your employees how they’re doing on their action plan (a better name than a “to-do list”) to see if anything has been missed. Then ask them if they have anything they would like to add to the list. You can follow up with motivational questions like, “Why do you think this is important?” and, “How do you plan to tackle it?”  If there’s something you would like them to put on their list that they didn’t already think of, now’s the time to mention it. Most of the time, they are highly likely to have thought of that idea in the first place.

And to add still more encouragement . . .

Observe the “five to one” rule when meeting with supervisees who could benefit from an extra dose of positive inspiration. How does it work? For every one thing you say that could be interpreted as criticism, say five things that are positive and encouraging.

To sum it up . . .

When you adopt the approaches I recommend in this article, you change the touch-base to an extremely positive experience for encouragement, coaching and honest discussion. It is no longer an inquisition. In essence, you’re reversing the process by having employees take responsibility for their own action plans. Because you are now a mentor and coach, you will create a very strong and positive work bond.

 

 

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Don’t Let Great Millennial Ideas Slip Through Your Fingers

An executive I know hired a young woman for his marketing department and put her to work managing some current campaigns. Then he found out 18 months later that she was a bona fide expert about marketing on social media. I mean, she practically lived on social media. She could have brought so much to her new employer from day one – yet that value went completely untapped for a year and a half.

Call that knowledge loss, call it money wasted, or call it something worse. Whatever you call it, it’s bad. How did it happen? I don’t work for that company, so I’m not sure. But it was probably because the top executives there were all baby boomers. It probably never occurred to them that a new millennial worker had ideas they needed to hear.

Is it happening in your company? Here are some steps to take to be sure you’re discovering and tapping the unique insights and skills your younger workers possess.

Strategy One: Uncover Hidden Skills during the Recruiting Process

It’s a mistake to screen job applicants by only saying, “Here’s what you’ll have to do on the job . . . can you cut it?” Ask open-ended questions instead, like, “We’re recruiting a team to market our new app – what do you think we need to do?” Or, “We are currently using the XYZ platform to track ad usage by in our franchise locations – do you know of anything better?”

To use a Zen kind of paradigm, be the student, not the teacher. The things you learn could be very valuable indeed.

Strategy Two: Invite Comments and Ideas during New Employee Training

Training is an ideal time to ask new hires important questions like, “How strong do you think our brand is” or, “Do our competitors do something better than we do?” If you ask questions like those, you let new employees know that you are a company that values honest and open input. And training is the place to do it. After an employee begins working for you, he or she may want to communicate big ideas only to a supervisor, where they can die. Or worse, he or she might never voice those big ideas at all.

Strategy Three: Have Big Delayered Meetings Where Everyone Presents Big Ideas

Get employees from all level into one room and ask them for the biggest and craziest ideas they have for improving your business. To avoid stifling the flow, just collect the ideas on a whiteboard or on sticky notes and go back to discuss them later. Those brainstorming meetings helps assure that good ideas from the ranks are heard directly by upper management, not left sitting on the desks of managers throughout your company.

Strategy Four: Get Some Reverse Mentoring Going

Reverse mentoring has become popular in many organizations. The idea usually to have an older executive mentored about technology by a younger, tech-savvy employee. I would recommend widening that lens and having millennials and other young workers keep your senior executive team up to speed on marketplace trends, products that have entered the marketplace, news about “hot” competing companies, and more. The wider you can cast your net for ideas from young employees, the more you benefit.

Strategy Five: Reward the Big Ideas and Information that Millennials Contribute

If an employee delivers a valuable piece of information to you, offer recognition, feedback, or increased responsibilities. Treat it like gold. If you don’t, that bright young mind is likely to think, “Why should I tell my company anything . . . they ignored me the last time I did.” It’s up do you to offer the recognition that keeps information flowing.

In summary . . .

Millennials have ideas, information and skills that you need. Are you listening to them? If you aren’t, let’s face it, the fault lies with you. Open the doors, let the information in, and watch your company improve in ways you could never imagine.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Energize Millennial Workers

Do you want to get much more from the millennial employees you hire . . . and do you hope that they will continue to work for you for the long, not the short, term? If those are your hopes, it is essential to bear in mind that millennial employees’ attitudes and beliefs about working differ dramatically from those held by baby boomers and members of other age groups.

Consider these findings from How Millennials Want to Work and Live, a recent study from Gallup:

    • Millennials value learning – 60% of them say that the opportunity to learn and grow on the job is extremely important. The study found that only 40% of baby boomers feel the same way.
    • Millennials view many jobs as stepping stones  21% of them have changed jobs within the last year. Only 50% plan to remain in their jobs for at least the next year, compared to 60% of members of all other groups.
    • Millennials expect to advance in their jobs 50% of them say advancement is extremely important, vs. 40% of boomers.

Learning and Training Retain Millennials and Maximize their Productivity

In the companies that I have led, I have seen the realities that underlie statistics like those. I have also seen first-hand that training is the key to reducing millennial turnover and increasing their productivity.

And here are some of the reasons why:

    • Millennials like to feel capable and confident in their jobs. When I was their age, I was happy to learn the skills I needed on the fly. Millennials do not feel that way. They want to look good and feel confident from the first day they arrive on the job. Training is what makes that happen.
    • Millennials welcome training. They like to apply the learning skills they built while they were in school. To them, learning feels as natural as eating three meals a day. As the Gallup study finds, they are eager to learn. In contrast, many baby boomers tend to view training as a burden that they have to endure.
    • Modern training technologies speaks to millennials. Most of them love to be trained on their mobile phones and tablets, which are the most powerful training options available to many companies today. The result is better knowledge transfer, even to groups of employees who work in multiple locations.
    • Millennials welcome mentoring relationships with their managers. The Gallup study found that 60% of millennials feel that the quality of the people who manage them is extremely important. Your training is an ideal place to set up expectations that millennials will enjoy close, collaborative relationships with their supervisors. With that in mind, your training for new employees can establish mentoring, not reporting, relationships.
    • Millennials love independence, but they love teams too. This is a contradiction, but millennials think of themselves as both rugged individuals and eager team players. So letting millennials get to know their teammates during training, and fostering a sense of team/group identity, helps convince them that they have joined an organization where they belong.
    • Millennials are career-oriented. Do they love to hop from job to job? Yes, they do. But only if they sense that their opportunities to advance are blocked. That is why I believe in creating a personalized career development plan for each new employee. (The exception being seasonal or other short-term employees who will probably not remain in your employ for long.) One example? Enroll new employees in management training programs from their first days on the job. Millennials like to know their next steps as they advance in your organization, and training is the best place to explain them.

In summary . . .

I firmly believe that millennials are the most energized, skilled and capable generation ever to enter the workforce. How do you unlock their potential and make sure they remain in your employ for the long term? You do it with great training.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Effective Strategies for Hiring Top Millennial Employees

“Our research — which provides an in-depth look at what defines Millennials as employees, people, and consumers — both confirms and casts aside some of the myths about this particular generation . . . on the job-hopping question, we found that 21% of Millennial workers had left their job in the last year to do something else, a number that is more than three times higher than that of non-Millennials who report doing the same.”  Source: “What Millennials Want from a New Job,” Brandon Rigoni and Amy Adkins, Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2016

Generalizations tend to be . . . well, general. But the fact remains that most millennials don’t want to work for just any company – and if they land a job in a company that they don’t like, they won’t stay around long.

One reason is that they hope to contribute their efforts and hours to a company that stands for something beyond making sales and making money. They want to share in the vision of a company and if they join yours, they expect that working for you will be in some way important.

As a result, the hiring paradigms have changed. In the old way of hiring, job applicants sold themselves to companies. Today, the company is being interviewed too, and needs to sell itself. When recruiting millennials, hiring companies need to bear in mind that there are certain important attributes that millennials are looking for – an exciting environment, a clear and understandable path to advancement, a chance to exercise personal autonomy while still being part of a stimulating team, and more.

How can your organization recruit and hire top millennial employees, and then make sure they keep working for you for the long term? I would like to recommend these strategies which I have used successfully.

Create a Personal Career Plan for Every Millennial Applicant and New Hire

In the past, baby boomers have been comfortable with the idea that they could discover the of how to build careers after they were hired. I have observed that millennials want to know the game plan and the rules before they come on board.

I have succeeded in recruiting strong millennials by creating personalized career plans for them, which should be discussed during the interviewing and hiring phase. The focus should be on questions of what your company expects from successful workers and what positions lie ahead. Individual career development plans are big differentiators in convincing millennials to take your job.

Please note that this advice does not pertain to everyone you’re hiring, only to employees who want and advance and remain with your company for the long term. You needn’t create a personalized development plan for short-term summer employees, for example, or for elder employees who are only looking for part-time jobs during their retirement years.

Stress Autonomy, Creativity and Entrepreneurship

In general, millennials like to express themselves through their jobs – not to be “cogs in a machine.” They like to make decisions, create and implement plans, and make personal, recognizable contributions to the companies where they work. Stressing that creativity is part of the job can go a long way toward differentiating your company from others that are hiring.

Reduce the Unknowns

Millennials like to have specifics spelled out. Even though they have earned a reputation for being “loosey-goosey” and casual, most of them are not. The more specific and concrete you get in setting out expectations, the more they will want to come on board. If they will have regular weekly check-ins with their supervisors instead of quarterly reviews, for example, talk about that. Talk about benefits, about required travel, about reporting lines – and all the details that apply. The more you explain and reveal, the more honest and desirable your company becomes.

Introduce Job Applicants to Future Supervisors and Team Members

It is again a generalization, but being part of an energized team is often more important to millennials than it is to Boomers or members of other age groups. For many millennials, teamwork really counts – even though they want to be strong, recognized individuals. The operative strategy is to have your company interviewers introduce desirable applicants to their potential managers and team members – preferably in the actual location where the applicant will work. The more millennials feel that your job is an invitation to join a stimulating team, the more likely they will be to take your job offer above others.

Test and Screen for the Right Abilities, Aptitudes and Attitudes

Why is it especially important to consider job fit when hiring millennials? One obvious reason is that good fit helps assure that the millennials will perform well in their new jobs. That’s a given. But there’s a subtler reason too, which is that millennials are generally less likely to stay in jobs that they find frustrating, overly difficult to perform, or repetitive and dull. With greater speed than Boomers, millennials will quit and move quickly to other jobs.

That is not because millennials lack company loyalty or are “job hoppers.” It is because they want to enjoy a sense of progress and accomplishment in their work. And remember that if they leave you, you incur the costs of recruiting and training new workers.

Offer Excellent Training

For boomers who are considering job offers, the promise of excellent training can be a big determining factor that convinces them to choose your company. It is a generalization again, but many millennials like the idea that they will be able to perform their jobs capably from day one instead of learning by trial and error.

 

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel, the creator of the concept of Ingaged Leadership, is a recognized business and franchise expert and consultant. Evan is also a professional speaker and author.  Evan is Principal and Founder of Ingage Consulting, a consulting firm headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts. A leader in the field of training as well, Evan serves as CEO of Tortal Training, a Charlotte North Carolina-based firm that specializes in developing and implementing interactive training solutions for companies in all sectors. To learn more about Inage Consulting and Evan’s book Ingaging Leadership, visit Ingage.net