Tag: Employment

Lighting Up The Future

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A match flame

A bit of illumination (c) R Dennison October 2013

It almost goes without saying, that work plays a huge part in most people’s lives – and according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figure there are 29.87 million people in work in the UK.

However the days are long gone in which employees started work with an organisation in their 20s and stayed there until retirement four decades later.

Even a thorough PEST analysis of the political, economic, social and technological climate now could not identify the sort of jobs that will be the backbone of the economy in 2053 .

If only there was some way of being able to light up the period 40 years ahead, and know what make a future career meaningful and exciting.

I would argue (based on the people I have coached) that self-knowledge can help light up that darkness.  If you are supported in developing an understanding of: the qualities you value; the skills you offer; and the work you find stimulating you are closer to where the next few steps in your career might take you.   Having some light shed on the future makes it seem less uncertain.

The Guardian’s Work Blog sets out the quandary quite neatly.  The discussion below the line is useful too.  My comments are shown under the name RogerAD.

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Graduate Employment: Against All Odds

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More Than 80 to 1 Odds On Getting A Graduate Job (c) R Dennison August 2013

More Than 80 to 1 Odds On Getting A Graduate Job (c) R Dennison August 2013

As some school students nervously await their exam results their elder graduate siblings are looking for work.  The good news is that there are graduate level jobs available.  The not so good news is that competition has never been more fierce.

 

As the BBC noted in a report from the Association of Graduate Recruiters there are more than 80 graduates after each vacancy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-23247176

The challenge is twofold, scale down unrealistic expectations of new entrants and then encourage realistic appraisal of their skills.  The coaching approach would then be to ask questions to:

 

–      clarify what the job seeker wants from the jobs they are pursing  (an adequate income; the opportunity to use their skills; room for development into a long-term career)

–      support the development of a confident; approachable presentational style on paper and in person, to ensure their CV becomes one of the half dozen sifted in and they shine during their interview.

–      Encourage reflection if the job search does not make the hoped for progress – what else could be done to present the candidate in the best possible light?

 

Keeping the candidate’s confidence up would also be part of the coaching programme, since the odds are their search for their elusive first job might take them beyond the end of the summer.

 

 

The Magic Management Pill (Doesn’t Exist)

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Magic Management Pills (c) R Dennison July 2013

Magic Management Pills (c) R Dennison July 2013

I wonder how many people managers have wished for a daily pill they could take to make leading their teams easier or at least painless?

 

Sadly there is no substitute for the confidence that comes from practising regular and effective people management.  Leaders ‘To Do’ lists can include a mixture of practical, stretching and contradictory objectives, such as: delivering high quality outputs; exceeding customer expectations; satisfying formal obligations to staff.  The trouble comes if people management is too low on the list of priorities.  Quality outputs only come from motivated people who are supported by their leaders.

 

The complication is that members of staff come to work with their personal and family situations in tow.  Sometimes those factors can get in the way of team performance.  An advice piece in The Guardian newspaper’s work blog explores that complicated relationship.  See what you think of the options available to the manager.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/work-blog/2013/jun/28/how-manage-colleague-personal-traumas

30 Minutes Worth of TED Talks

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What's The Purpose of Climbing The Ladder? (c) R Dennison June 2013

What’s The Purpose of Climbing The Ladder? (c) R Dennison June 2013

 

I haven’t looked at the Youtube TED site for a good long while.  I have missed out on some good content as a result.  If you have 30 minutes to spare here are some recommendations.

Having mentioned Leadership recently I was spurred on to see what talks might help when thinking about pursuing leadership opportunities, while climbing the career ladder.  Funnily enough, the first talk I came across questioned the wisdom of making the climb an actual goal.

Adam Leipzig’s talk centres on the notion of finding fulfilment in pursuing one’s life purpose.  One’s purpose might not involve rising rung by rung.  He presents the process of identifying purpose as a five step exercise.  It takes about five minutes to complete the exercise from start to finish.  Here’s the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVsXO9brK7M

While you are TED focused you might also want to invest around 25 minutes in viewing Patti Dobrowolski’s talk on Drawing Your Future, and Ryerson University’s Dr Ivan Joseph’s Self Confidence presentation.

Good luck.

Another Thought About Bullying

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A Glass Broken (c) R Dennison 2013

A Glass Broken (c) R Dennison 2013

I posted on the subject of bullying recently and co-incidentally the Guardian has just featured the topic too.  Their timely illustration (of the impact of workplace bullying) appears in the work advice section.  A reader’s letter recounts the difficulties linked to working with someone whose behaviour sometimes involves bullying.

 

Most people would recognise that typically the atmosphere in the workplace can combine both positives (interesting tasks) and negatives (challenging people).  Most people accept that sometimes their job can seem like the proverbial half-empty glass.

 

The Guardian’s advice-seeker has spent time trying to talk to a supervisor who can tackle the bullying issue.  The supervisor hasn’t grasped the situation successfully.  For the correspondent their glass is not half empty.  It is actually broken.

 

Reading between the lines the correspondent seems to have a narrow set of options.  Option one, they put up with the situation (more unhappiness for them and for the bully).  Option two, they start looking actively for other jobs they could be doing.

 

There is a crying need, I think, for coaching support to be made available to managers on this topic.  Bullying makes workplaces unproductive, creates stress and wastes time.  Managerial support would equip supervisors with the empathy, people skills and confidence to sense bullying is occurring, intervene firmly to end it and leave a climate of zero-tolerance afterward.  Hopefully this kind of learning is going to become commonplace in future and bully-friendly environments a thing of the past.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/work-blog/2013/may/10/how-deal-with-nightmarish-colleague

 

How Full Is Your Bucket?

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Cover of "Understanding Psychological Con...

Cover via Amazon

In my experience some people resist change in their professional lives, even if they are unhappy.  They don’t want to benefit from taking on a new way of thinking, after a change to their circumstances.  Or they may feel that ‘at their time of life’ change is not possible and they have to put up with bad situations.

I think those people may be missing out.  That is especially true if the person is in a junior job role and change has happened around them, meaning their expectations about their working environment – personal development; pay rises; job security – are not being met.  This is true in the private sector and, the Daily Telegraph’s Jobs Editor Louisa Peacock suggests, amongst civil servants.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9630531/Whitehall-jobs-down-30000-on-year-amid-rock-bottom-staff-morale.html

Hopefully senior managers already have, or are actively being coached to develop strategies to counteract the dip in staff morale that results from unmet expectations.

For senior managers who don’t see why action is necessary (or believe staff will put up with just about anything) Neil Conway and Rob Briner’s 2005 analysis ‘Understanding Psychological Contracts at Work’, includes the telling observation:

“When an employee believes that [their] organisation has failed to deliver its promises on a regular basis, he or she will question whether it makes sense to continue contributing to that organisation or whether it might be better to move on to another”.

The new look People Management magazine this month includes a feature on ‘Eight Ways To Reward Staff, Without Giving Them A Pay Rise’.  I like the simplicity of their final suggestion: try to say ‘thank you’ to others for their contribution.  The article suggests literally writing notes of appreciation and leaving them with colleagues who have done a good job (I can remember from personal experience how a simple act of appreciation can put a smile on someone’s face).

The magazine says this concrete expression of gratitude is an echo of Tom Rath’s and Donald O Clifton’s approach to combatting workplace negativity, set out in their book, ‘How full is your bucket?’.   I like the idea and I am going to try it out the next chance I get.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Your-Bucket-Positive-Strategies/dp/1595620036

Back to Reality

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When is the ideal time to learn something new?  Put another way, when is there ever a quiet few months in which to tackle personal development goals?  I doubt there ever will be an ‘ideal’ or ‘quiet’ time, since the stack of competing claims on our time is increasing daily.  It might take a very long time to roll the dice correctly to earn permission to start.

Two dice

Make a choice, don’t leave development to luck

 

There’s also always the risk that some senior colleagues view that time as time spent being unproductive.

I vividly recall saying as much to a colleague whom I mentored.  His aspiration was to earn a promotion from his entry level management role to the next management grade.

I encouraged him to look at the common attributes called for in the roles he wanted to hold.  I supported him in identifying voluntary opportunities in his current role that he could exploit, to demonstrate his potential.  We came up with a twelve month development timetable he could follow, to gradually build up his skills portfolio.  His goal was to be at the front of the promotion pack one year hence.  Then reality intervened.

Somehow my mentee’s line manager never got around to creating the space for his wider potential to be demonstrated.  Perhaps that manager liked the results he was getting from my mentee and thought my mentee was happy staying in that role.  Inevitably that line manager then left.

Their successor needed to focus on maintaining results, not developing people.

An internal re-organisation followed.

Before the dust settled the ideal time for development had passed.

If there is a lesson to take away from this example, it may be this.  However difficult the reality, the ideal time for development may just be ‘now’.