“What? Are you trying to teach me something?” The link between organizational learning and polar bears
Let me tell you a tale of two species… I was at a conference recently and one of the participants shared this story with me. “So, I went to the CEO and I said, ‘We have to start learning to stay current in today’s economy.’ The CEO said, ‘Ya, why? I’m making money so...
Virtual introductions: The “why” and “how”
When you are anxiously looking for work or trying to find a client, where do your thoughts go? After reading this post, hopefully they will zero in on one tiny, often overlooked but immensely powerful practice: the virtual introduction. The four categories of people I...
The power of a true vacation, and why you should harness it
“You can’t do a good job if a job is all you do.” - Artifact Uprising “A vacation is over when you begin to yearn for your work.” - Morris Fishbein I have a confession to make. Since I started my business 10 years ago I have only taken one vacation – ONE vacation, ONE...
Virtual networking part three: Using Twitter to network your way into a job
Not one who needs to use a lot of words in a day? Twitter might be your new favorite social media space. Each post, or Tweet, is limited to a mere 140 characters, enabling you to share your message with a large audience, knowing that a quick glance is all the reader...
Networking tips and tricks for wallflowers: What to do before, during, and after an event
Intimidating as they may be for you, networking events are venues that invent opportunities. How? By connecting you with the people who will significantly impact your professional future. This post summarizes a more in-depth Shift article you can access here. In this...
Virtual networking part one: Using LinkedIn to find work and build your professional network
"The opposite of networking is not-working." - Anonymous Did you know that often managers and recruiters are looking at your social media profiles BEFORE they look at your resume? The truth is that your network is what will continuously feed you work – regardless of...
Virtual networking part two: Using Facebook for getting work and building your professional network
“Are you on Facebook and LinkedIn?” or “Do you have a Twitter handle?” – these are questions you have probably been asked by someone wanting to “connect” with you, and more and more employers are asking - and expecting – that their potential candidates will answer an...
How to get the most out of a bad job experience: 5 mistakes to avoid
It was one of the worst jobs I ever had... The staff was cliquey and always gossiping and backbiting about the others, the boss was incompetent and sleazy, and the pay was crappy with an impossible workload. I was there for a year but it felt like 100 years. Sound...
Rejected again! Practical tips for turning job rejections into opportunities
The job hunt becomes discouraging when all you hear back is “no”. But rejections can be good feedback to help you get closer to the job you seek. Here are some tips that can help turn rejections into new opportunities: Sometimes “no” does not really mean “no," but you...
How to win the interview and get the job, even if you are new to the country
Let me tell you about my friend Mary. She is a very qualified accountant from Cameroon and has her CPA designation - that puts her at the highest level of qualified accountants in Canada. For almost two years she has been single-mindedly trying to find work in her...
Getting a job with your degree – 12 tips that work
Many university students are now finding themselves in the same boat as immigrant trained professionals: they have the education but cannot land jobs in their field. According to Stats Canada, of those who are earning money while completing their degrees, a whopping...
Overcoming talent blindness
The Webster dictionary defines talent as "a special ability that allows a person to do something well." We all have some special abilities that help us do things well and we are actually full of latent, undeveloped talents Why learn to see talent in others? Dave...
Work experience – does it really matter?
People with experience on their resumes tend to receive more interview requests, and experience is certainly good for personal brand and increasing perceptions of competence. Surprisingly, however, a meta-analysis [1] about the effects of work experience on job...
Measuring for results: Three key principles
We all know it is important to measure for results, but often we don’t know what to measure or how to interpret the metrics. Another issue is knowing what to do – how to change our behaviour – based on the metrics. QUESTION 1: HOW CAN I UNDERSTAND METRICS SIMPLY?...
8 Social Assumptions and What To Do About Them
Are your social assumptions about people’s motivations accurate? Have you noticed yourself or others making any of these kinds of statements? “Why do we need _________? I would never use it.” “Back in the day when we only had two TV channels…” “What barriers? I didn’t...
Basic cultural themes that affect the workplace: Theme #1 speech patterns
Every piece of communication shared requires a sender and a receiver - someone to send the message and someone to receive it. Inevitably, there exists a space between the sender and the receiver where interpretation of the message occurs. Culture and Communication...
Basic cultural themes that affect the workplace: Theme #2 hierarchy
In the last post I spoke about how speech and silence are interpreted differently across cultures and then considered ways to use this knowledge to improve cross-cultural communication. Let's look deeper. When there are differences between how people communicate...
“Three cups of tea”: The principle behind building your network and getting results
Yes, you do need to network! In some countries people are introduced or placed by friends and family into jobs or brought into a business. In other countries, graduates find their first jobs because they are automatically placed by an educational institution,...
Dealing with prejudice during an interview: How even you can find the right words to be direct
You've researched the company, met up with employees who work there, prepped your answers so you can answer the key questions you know the interviewers are going to ask, put on your "power suit," and done everything you can to be ready to deliver the best job...
Effective meetings strategy #1: Using meetings to mine for team talents
People categorize and use routines to deal with things quickly and efficiently throughout the day. This is a natural part of understanding the world and it saves us time. Unfortunately, in a workplace setting, classifying people in terms of what we already know about...
Biology and business: genes and employee performance
Biology, employee performance, and business systems have more in common than you may think. According to the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins (first published in 1978 and widely accepted as the most significant communication about the basics of inheritance...
Five Skills for effective workplace communication
Effective workplace communication can be learned! You may think you know how to communicate to your team or employees. But communication is not about what you think has happened when you speak with someone, it is about what actually happens between two people in...
Me biased? 3 strategies to find out
It is pretty easy to tell other people what they should do, how they should fix a work issue and how to fix their personality foibles. We can quickly see when someone else is so much in favour of a person or a project they can’t see the forest for the trees. We can...
The Myth of “Old School” Management
It always irritates me when I hear people excuse a manager’s poor performance by saying “don’t worry about (insert name of bad manager here), he/she is ‘old school.'" What does that really mean when someone describes a decision maker as ‘old school?' My initial list...
Linking Training, Organizational Climate and Business Outcomes
Statistics about training investments increasing company net worth, particularly in the area of high capital and skilled worker training, are widely known. However research on training and organizational effects is still relatively new. Tharenou, Saks and Moore...
Supervisory Basics 2: Setting Clear Expectations
Setting clear expectations is critical to team success When you are an employee, you expect your team leader to let you know what your job is and to teach you how to get that job done. Many supervisors make the mistake of assuming their team already knows what to do...
Productivity challenge: Your employees are not your family
The news is not good. It appears the Alberta approach to improving productivity is to throw more people, money and material resources at the issue without considering - or measuring for - the consequences. Financial Post’s July 25th story by Yadullah Hussein about oil...
Effective meetings strategy #2: Matching goals with questioning strategies
We've all been there...stuck in a meeting fighting hard to keep either our eyes open or to stop them from rolling. And, as comedian Dave Barry so aptly highlights in the quotation above, we might just be left feeling that our potential has somehow been sapped because...
The paternalism checklist for women and men
Isn’t paternalism a good thing? Paternalism. Isn’t that what you do if you are a father? Well, not exactly. To have fatherly or “paternal” feelings towards someone is, at its root, kind and loving: it implies interest in the well-being and development of children and...
Evaluating the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion efforts
They say, “what you measure grows.” But before measuring begins, when you start paying attention to something, it’s importance in your thinking increases. Let’s say you want to buy a car for example. Suddenly you notice things about cars you never noticed before and...
5 planning strategies to build leadership from within
Internal leadership development is something many companies fall short on. Bruce Anderson from the International Institute of Directors and Managers states that barriers to leadership building from within stem from a lack of: Time to coach Accountability with regard...
5 Megatrends to rock your world – and mine
At the Manufacturing Leadership Executive Summit this year, Frost and Sullivan’s megatrends and disruptive technologies presentations had some particularly close to home themes for me. As a business owner working in industry managerial training, e-learning and...
Cultural Intelligence: It’s all about finding the patterns and principles
One of the most useful reads on developing cultural intelligence is David Livermore’s tour of 10 cultural clusters around the world . The author has an approach I greatly appreciate: he is practical about approaching the daunting task of figuring out how to live, work...
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