Mentoring | Bovo-Tighe

12
Jun

Retain Talent by Fostering Professional and Personal Growth

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Source: mindmapart.com

Glassdoor, an online job listing site, reported recently that their site users rate ‘professional and personal growth’ as a top reason for leaving one company for another. As we have noted before, you have to create a path for career growth within your organization for ambitious employees (the kind you generally want to keep!) You cannot always meet this need with promotions, but you can create opportunities around their current position to keep them fully connected to your mission and values.

New projects involving cross-functional teams
Revised job responsibilities, growing the position along with the person.
Travel to regional conferences and other events, where the employee represents the organization to the outside world.
Certification and other talent development courses.

Provide Employees the Resources to Succeed

Even talented people need support to achieve their goals. Continue reading →

19
May

Time to Rehire Yourself?

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Remember that feeling? Recapture it!

While we were researching a recent blog post about the marketing company HubSpot and its intensive focus on developing a highly productive corporate culture, one of us came across a related post on LinkedIn by the CTO of HubSpot, Darmesh Shah, which deserved a little attention of its own:

Ten Ways to be Sensationally Successful at Your New Job

This is very compelling, because everyone starts a new job with a head of steam, full of energy and ready to contribute at a high level. Most people quickly lose that head of steam, and end up cruising along with the pack, as Shah says “where every day feels the same and your new job quickly seems just like the old job.”

How do you avoid that sub-optimizing trap? It’s all up to you.

We will summarize Mr. Shah’s points and add our own take, as we always do!

NOTE: If you are a seasoned employee, you can benefit from these ideas, too. Simply embed the mindset that you have just been hired, and think about how your job and your work environment look to a new hire. What would you see? What action would you take to improve things? Think about the following advice with that in mind:

1. Pretend you are still interviewing for the job for the first six months. Work hard to prove that your skill set and leadership are worth keeping and developing.

2. Start a project that leverages your experience to solve issues in your new organization. Involve peers in the work, especially those who may benefit from the result.

3. Embed the mindset that you are “here to help.” That means helping everyone:

Work on your boss’ challenges without waiting for a direct invitation.
Volunteer to join a work team with a big project that is struggling.
Seek help from others, then offer help to those same people immediately thereafter.

4. Take action without prompting. Seek areas that could benefit from new thinking, and focus your personal projects on those areas of opportunity.

As Shah says:

“You don’t have to wait to be asked. You don’t have to wait to be assigned. Pick a side project where, if you fail, there’s no harm and no foul, and take your shot. You never know how it will turn out… and what it will do for your career.”

Some of you would say that this is not ground-breaking stuff, yet too many employees fall into a cruising rhythm and lose that “head of steam.” So covering this topic seems like it still has a great deal of utility. In fact, we talk about it regularly.

When you get to work tomorrow, rehire yourself and assess your situation as a new employee would, especially one with a skill set like yours. What project would you start first?

Let us know what you figure out!

17
May

Of Lollipops and Leadership

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Our gal in Houston, Kris Hermes, sent the video you can click to watch below in a staff e-mail to remind us of the true essence of leadership:

It is a day-by-day process that can lead to grand one-time events, but doesn’t have to or need to have such grand moments. Indeed, such highlights can distract you from the nuts and bolts of a real ongoing leadership mindset.
It goes on without limit. You can have results that mark milestones, and wonderful successes that everyone notices. But leadership goes right on through those and must keep thriving in the shadows of those great events.
And it can be as simple as connecting two people with a lollipop to break the ice and open the door to engagement (in all sorts of ways!)

Leaders are not the source of productivity and innovation. Their people are. Leaders are the catalyst that unlocks the people’s energy and gets it focused in the right direction.

Watch the video, which features a speaker named Drew Dudley speaking at a TEDx talk in Toronto a few years back. Let us know what you think! Spot on? Too simplistic?

25
Apr

Are Millennials Really Different About Job-Hopping?

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The last few years has seen a mini-boom in HR training products and services to help them “understand” the Millennial generation that is now entering the workforce. This recent article in Forbes by Contributor Jeanne Meister is typical, with its headline “Job Hopping Is the ‘New Normal’ for Millennials: Three Ways to Prevent a Human Resource Nightmare.” Yikes!

Reality Check: Millennials at 22 act a lot like Baby Boomers at 22.

Boomers liked pogo sticks, too!

As we begin to experience the reality of their workforce participation, rather than the forecast, we are beginning to see evidence that these young people are not so different from past generations after all, especially Baby Boomers.

Consider these descriptions:

Baby Boomers charged out of college with a real ideological head of steam, ready to challenge authority and upset the status quo. The Vietnam experience had convinced them that the older generation did not necessarily “know best,” and were willing to question decisions and demand a rationale, as their parents did not. Continue reading →

22
Apr

Bovo-Tighe and Harvard Business School Are On the Same Page

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We enjoy it when great minds and we agree!

We recently received an invitation to an online leadership seminar to be run by the folks at Harvard Business School (one of our staff is an alumnus, who plans to check it out.)

We like the topic, and we see potential in the messages they seek to convey. Here is a short summary, culled from the invitation:

“An executive’s leadership journey begins with an intentional, focused investment. This investment takes the leader out of his/her comfort zone, and requires a focus on improving himself and others. Intrapersonal excellence is only part of the journey. The ability to create a high performance team requires alignment on the team’s vision and priorities.”

The focus on stepping out of a comfort zone caught our eye. When we mentor and coach executives, that is a big step to take, but a critical one if leaders are to cast off the old mindsets that hinder them from getting aligned with either their staff or the realities of their organization or industry.

We feel the phrase “focus on improving himself and others” needs expansion, which we will get to in a moment. The seminar’s “key takeaways” are also worth a look, as they align with our own leadership tenets:

Each individual has the power to drive transformative change within their organization
Resilient leaders have an inner ability to overcome obstacles to transform themselves, their teams and their organizations
Transformative leaders are committed to continuous learning by identifying their weaknesses and committing to develop those weaknesses
At the core of great leaders rests the positive energy to develop their teams, drive execution and deliver business results

Transform Yourself First

The very first bullet point is critical:

Every person, regardless of position or responsibility, can transform him or herself into a highly effective leader for the organization.
You must transform yourself before you can help your teams and organization transform themselves.
You cannot transform others. They can, however, transform themselves with your help.

Second, we stress that transformational leaders* promise to make life better for those who follow them, and fulfill that promise by helping the team achieve shared goals. These leaders:

Care about the success of their followers (whoever they are)
Focus on people first, tasks second

We see a highly productive virtuous circle here: If a leader successfully engages his or her team and clearly communicates how much he or she cares about the entire team’s success, the team will motivate itself to complete the tasks needed to achieve that success. This activity frees the leader to concentrate even more time on employee engagement and motivation, further enhancing productivity.

Mind the gap, but don’t fret over it!

Every person, including transformational leaders, have gaps in their skill sets. These gaps may or may not be “weaknesses,” as the business school e-mail labeled them. They are, however, areas where the leader needs to find help. This help comes from a number of sources, all of which the leader should tap:

Team members whose skill sets complement the leader’s, covering gaps in a mutually beneficial way.
The boss’ skill set, which can be transferred to the leader through mentoring.
A coach hired to address talent gaps and help the leader to fill them.

The key to “filling the gaps” starts with the awareness that they exist, and the confidence to admit that it is normal, that everyone has them. The key difference with transformational leaders is that they have a willingness to truly work on adapting mindsets and skill sets to fill the gaps in working with the people around them.

What do you think? Can everyone become a transformational leader? What have you done to take steps in that direction?

*We call our leaders “transformational,” while Harvard Business School uses the adjective “transformative” in its course description. It may be splitting hairs, but we feel that “transformational” better captures the emotional appeal of what we seek to accomplish within ourselves, and within the people around us.

15
Mar

QBQ works well with the Bovo-Tighe Foundations of Excellence philosophy

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In our work with clients, we give people tools to make them more productive at work every day. We help them discover their own strengths, and how to become a transformational leader, regardless of their professional status within their organization. Our mission is to make everyone more productive, supportive and collaborative in both professional and personal lives. To that end, we borrow useful tools from collaborative partners that help our clients succeed.

One of those is a concept called QBQ, the Question Behind the Question, created by a friend of ours, John Miller. It is a very simple, direct method for keeping yourself on track when “practicing personal accountability at work and in life.”

QBQ complements our Foundations of Excellence approach very well because it focuses on the day-to-day job of leadership: How do you move your team and yourself forward with energy and enthusiasm towards the accomplishment of your mutual goals? Continue reading →

8
Jan

Get back to work: Engagingly!

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January can be a hard month at work, especially for people who took time off during the end-of-year holidays. Here are some tips for jump-starting your year that can both improve your personal productivity and raise employee engagement with your team:

1. Move your schedule up

When getting back into a normal work rhythm can seem arduous, addressing the issue head-on makes the most sense. First, review each day’s agenda the night before. Your spouse may yell about working in the evening (especially on Sunday night!) but spending an hour nailing down stuff that needs attention helps in three ways:

A better night’s sleep: All the stuff you need to remember is written down, so it doesn’t need to stay in your head.
A faster start to the day, as you are already set to act on your daily plan.
A more pleasant start to the day (this can rub off on others, too) as you know where you are going those first few hours. Nothing calms the nerves like removing uncertainty. Continue reading →

20
Dec

Great Leadership Quotes for the Holiday Home Stretch

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Earlier this week we shared some leadership quotes that didn’t quite work for us. Today, let’s explore some quotes that do work, and understand why we like them. We hope you find some daily inspiration in them. Let us know where you disagree with us, however, by commenting on our post.

“Some people will never learn anything…because they understand everything too soon!”

~Alexander Pope

This is a great reflection on a leader with mind that is closed to input, who is not imbued with our philosophy of the Pursuit of Truth. Business leaders must make fast decision every day, and cannot wait for all the information they need to make great decisions, but the leader who makes quick decisions based solely on what he assumes is the truth will make poorer decision.

“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.”

~Elbert Hubbard

Exploration is a fundamental part of leadership. You have to look underneath the superficial appearance of situations, and of your employees, if you wish to foster creativity and achieve goals the most efficient way.

“The world is not to be put in order. The world is in order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.”

~Henry Miller

The marketplace is not for a leader to shape. The marketplace can be brought to your preferred view, but it takes massive financial resources to do that. A large corporation like Coca-Cola or General Electric can try to do that, but the rest of us will find it a fruitless task. A much better approach is to fully understand the environment in which you work and adjust your approach to fit those circumstances. With regard to teamwork, how much easier is it to change your own mindset about engagement than it is to change everyone else’s?

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”

~E. B. White (more famously known for the wondrous ‘Elements of Style’)

We don’t really need to explain this one, I hope. Relate it to the Alexander Pope quote at the top.

“We tend to wear suits of armor one over the other…We hope we will not have to completely undress.”

~Chogyam Trungpa

It is a learned skill to be comfortable in your own skin, and not take professional disagreements personally. It is also hard to accept criticism without embarrassment. Both are critical to successfully engaging with employees and other co-workers (especially bosses.)

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

~Robert Louis Stevenson

Our life’s work at Bovo-Tighe is to help you become what you are capable of becoming. Let us know how we can make that happen for you in 2013.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season. Make someone (including yourself) happy with a present, or a gesture, or simply a kind word!

18
Dec

Leadership Quotes That Don’t Quite Work For Us

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Occasionally, we find inspirational quotes that have a grain of truth, but don’t quite “hit their marks,” as actors say. We found the following in a Leadership Quotes calendar for 2012, and wondered just how they applied to the environment in which leaders must work in the 21^st Century

“Stop thinking, and end your problems.”

~Lao-Tsu

We are all guilty of “overthink,” which leads to analysis paralysis. But the idea that not thinking a problem through makes it go away seems unproductive, to say the least!

“Of that which you see, believe only a little. Of that which you are told, nothing.”

~Spanish proverb

We agree that you need to challenge assumptions and other “accepted wisdom” when exploring data and making decisions. That is the spirit of our Pursuit of Truth leadership philosophy. Continue reading →

30
Nov

Zig Ziglar: An Advocate for Action and Passion in Life

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A lot has already been written to mark the passing of Zig Ziglar, one of America’s great inspirational speakers and motivators. One of the best obituaries was written by the Los Angeles Times.

For us at Bovo-Tighe, this is a very personal loss, even though none of us knew Mr. Ziglar. His core messages of personal responsibility, positive thinking and a bias towards action in controlling our personal and professional lives deeply infuse all the work we do with clients to build employee engagement and foster true leadership.

“I read of Zig Ziglar’s passing and said a quick prayer of gratitude for all the engery, passion and wisdom he delivered non-stop for 42 years. My life is richer for Zig Ziglar’s message,” wrote Brooke Bovo in a message to the company this week.

“Zig gave a lot to all of us. He was in many ways the founder of the modern motivational world, and therefore very foundational to all of us at Bovo-Tighe, reinforcing our own human development philosophies,” wrote Dave Tighe.

We will miss him as a person and a personality: No one can duplicate the genuine fervor and affection he brought to his work with people. But his uplifting example remains with us in his printed words and his recorded videos. Through these he will serve as inspiration for untold numbers of people for decades to come. If each of us can only accomplish a small percentage of the good work Zig Ziglar achieved in his life, each of our lives will be well-spent!

To celebrate the legacy of Zig Ziglar, we share a handful of our favorite inspirational quotes. As you read them, notice that the wisdom is not new, but Mr. Ziglar had a real knack for expressing universal truths in ways that a lot of people found easy to grasp (as in “understand” and “hold onto”):

“The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.”

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.”

“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

“You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.”

“Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission”

“Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.”

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”

“It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action and discipline that enabled us to follow through.”

(Find more quotes here.)

Finally, here is a quote that captures the tremendous value that awaits you by choosing to live a positive, energetic, forward-thinking life:

“There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.”

If everyone went the extra mile, it would cease to be an advantage. It is unfortunate, but a majority of people don’t make that effort. So when you do, it offers you better chances to succeed in whatever you strive to do.

Share your thoughts on Zig Ziglar if he and his work inspired you at any point in your life!