ITLP Tuesday Readings

By selecting this article for today's Tuesday Reading, I'm not suggesting that you should be out looking for a job. Rather, given the author, Steve Tobak, who has extensive experience on both sides of the hiring desk, I thought that his piece "What Hiring Managers Really Look For" was excellent advice for the hiring manager.

So, translating his advice to the hiring manager's side of the desk:

1. What's your gut reaction to the candidate? Presence? Does he/she look you in the eye? Is there good chemistry?

2. Does she meet the job spec? Does the candidate have the skills and competencies necessary for the position?

3. Is the flesh-and-blood candidate who you expected based on the resume you received?

4. Is the candidate's experience relevant to the open position?

5. Is he smart? How does he think and problem solve? Give him a real scenario to work through to give you the info you need.

6. What her personality like? What kind of person is he? Can-do attitude? Or, a sense of entitlement? Strong work ethic? Can she handle responsibility? How does she hold herself accountable?

7. Does he get along with others? A loner? Team player? Easily irritated? Listener? Etc.

8. Are you like-minded? While it's not necessarily logical, we do look for people who have characteristics we value and pass by those we find grate our sensitivities. Keep your mind open for differences that can actually improve your team. But, as they say, don't buy trouble.

Dust off your competency based interviewing skills and you will have the tools to dig out the details you need to understand the candidates skills and competencies.

Good hunting. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:06 AM | Permalink

"Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." ~ William Penn

Do you know how you are spending your time? Track it to see. What do you consider an important use of your time? Make a list.

Write 3 things you can do to make better use of your time.

Posted by Jim Hall at 3:44 PM | Permalink

You may have run across the term "decision fatigue" in your recent reading. John Tierney in a lengthy New York Times article "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" writes:

"Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get anyry at colleagues and families, spurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket, ... No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can't make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It's different from ordinary physical fatigue - you're not consciously aware of being tired - but you're low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless ... [and] [t]he other is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice."

Today Reading, "A Non-Exhaustive Read On Fighting Decision Fatigue" by FastCompany writer Kevin Purdy provides us with some key lessons and take-aways on the subject from John Tierney's much longer piece. Tierney's article is drawn from the forthcoming book he and Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University and an expert on self-control, have written.

Baumeister's "money" quote on decision fatigue in the book is: "Making decisions uses the very same willpower that you use to say no to doughnuts, drugs, or illicit sex. It's the same willpower that you use to be polite or to wait your turn or to drag yourself out of bed or hold off going to the bathroom. Your ability to make the right investment or hiring decision may be reduced simly because you expended some of your willpower earlier when you held your tongue in response to someone's offensive remark or when you exerted yourself to get to the meeting on-time."

Purdy makes three recommendations based on the research:

1. Schedule around temptations and weaknesses, not just time. For example, consider the endless drip of your willpower that will occur before your meeting or activity:

   • don't schedule meetings back-to-back
   • establish habits that reduce the number of routine decisions you have to make and promote healthy living
   • don't be afraid to "sleep on it" - postpone decisions when you are experiencing fatigue.

2. Respect the duality of sugar. Blood sugar does an intimate dance with your willpower all day. Eat a good breakfast and have healthy snacks available for stress eating. A quick shot of calories can partially restore your ability to step back from the rink and make good calls.

3. Make expensive decisions early in the day and in the process. In working through a complicated set of decisions, make the most costly ones first when your willpower is high.

So, as you work your way through this week, be sensitive to your willpower reserve as you face the decisions you find in front of you.

. . . . jim

P.S. And if you have time, read Tierney's article which I mentioned at the beginning. It's really insightful.

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:43 AM | Permalink

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." ~ Maya Angelou

Do you watch for cues and listen for words that let you know how someone is receiving your information? Do you ask for feedback and what the person thinks about you have said or done?

Do you check in with people periodically to get their thoughts and opinions? Do you make sure the conversation is left in a good place before leaving the conversation? You can ask..."Are we ok?"

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:32 AM | Permalink

I think we are all micromanagers at heart. This week's reading is a short piece by John Baldoni, "Get Involved without Being a Micromanager: 3 Tips" which recently appeared in BNET's leadership blog.

We all dive deeply into the details; sometimes when we are the only one with the necessary skills and expertise. But, more often it's counterproductive and even harmful. And, too often we do so when we need to feel that we are personally making a difference.

Baldoni provides three guidelines to help us decide when to dive in:

1. Focus on your expertise. If you are the expert, go for it. Otherwise, defer to "the experts on the ground."

2. Keep your hand in it. When you move up the organizational ladder, it's hard to let go of work that you care deeply about. Yet you must let go, delegating much of what you did so well in order to take on your new responsibilities. Still, sometimes it may be appropriate for you to reserve a small amount of the most significant tasks for yourself.

3. Find your juice. Feeling a sense of accomplishment as a leader is a matter of mobilizing the team to action and achieving results. And, when the team succeeds there is a great deal of satisfaction, for the team and for you. As a leader you need to get your "juice" from your team's successes.

Baloni suggests, in closing, that knowing when to jump in and when to hold back is difficult. But note, when you do jump in, you prevent those on the ground from figuring things out for themselves. Much better to let those closest to the issue, find the fix, and by doing so, learn not just how to fix this problem but also how to avoid it the next time it occurs.

Showing others what to look for and how to respond is a leader's more important legacy.

Hope you have a great week. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:34 AM | Permalink

I first saw reference to an E-mail Charter in Davig Pogue's NYTimes column "We Have to Fix Email" on June 30, 2011. In the column Pogue calls attention to the email overload that we all are experiencing almost every day in real time.

That column points to a blog post by Chris Anderson, organizer for the high profile TED conferences, "Help Create an E-mail Charter!" that argues the case for addressing the email overload: "E-mail overload is something we are inadvertently doing to each other. You can't solve this problem acting alone. You will end up simply ignoring, delaying, or rushing responses to many incoming messages, and risk annoying people or missing something great. That prospect is stressful." Anderson then puts forth a set of principles that he hopes the world will adopt.

The 16 principles in Anderson's blog have since become ten and are posted at www.emailcharter.com. I think that they represent very good advice and encourage you to consider them as you write and respond:

1. Respect respondents' time. YOU, the sender, are responsible for minimizing the time required to process your email.

2. Short or slow is not rude. Give your addressees time to respond.

3. Celebrate clarity. Start with a clear subject line. Use crisp sentences.

4. Quash open-ended questions. Sometimes open-ended questions are necessary. But, even when you really do need to write "Thoughts?" do recognize that you may be injecting a multi-hour task in a way that will be seen as both immediate and important. Do provide some advice on the actual importance of your request and when it's needed.

5. Slash unnecessary cc's. Only cc your email to those who really need to see it. And, use Reply All sparingly. That email you sent with ten cc's expands to 100 responses if everyone responds cc-ing everyone on the list. How much time will that add to your day to check to see if anything relevant is said in all those responses.

6. Tighten the thread. Before you press send on that response, edit the incoming mail that you've included in your response to only what's relevant.

7. Attack attachments. Don't use logos and signature files as graphics which appear as attachments. It consumes time to search these out if they don't expand and figure out whether there is content there. And, don't send plain text files that could be included directly in the body of the email as attachments.

8. Two gifts you can give. EOM -- End of Message -- when your message is so short it can be in the subject line, and NNTR -- No Need To Reply -- either in the subject line or at the end of the message when no response is needed.

9. Don't send content free responses.

10. Disconnect! Schedule time to do serious work and stay disconnected during that time.

Fairly simple principles. If we all begin to follow them, we can all save real time.

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:16 AM | Permalink

This quote is taken from this week's Tuesday Reading:

"The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to undervalue the times when you are apparently doing nothing, and these are important times."

Dave Lois from the University of Wisconsin sent this additional quote (thanks Dave) that different personalities will take something from each of these quotes:

"The difficulty of always feeling that you ought to be doing something is that you tend to overvalue how important some of the things you are doing."

Do you perceive thinking, reflecting and planning as "doing nothing"? List why these are important. Do you replace thinking with doing in order to avoid getting out of your comfort zone? How do you grow?

If everyone is always doing, then who is learning, planning and leading? List issues you complain about and goals you would like to achieve. Make the time to think, reflect and plan your actions to move them forward.

Posted by Jim Hall at 2:54 PM | Permalink