What to Do When You Know More Than Your Boss By Janet Britcher.

Keith was an engineer who enjoyed his role and his autonomy. His boss Eric was also an engineer, but in a different specialty. He gave Keith a lot of freedom to problem solve and create according to his own skills and expertise. This worked well most of the time.
There were two times it did not work well:

1. When Keith knew more but Eric mandated a different solution.
2. At year-end when Keith wanted to be acknowledged for his work yet Eric didn’t have enough information to evaluate it.

Clients I’ve worked with experience knowing more than their boss around mid-career or later. This is most common in industries that require multiple disciplines to accomplish a task, including:

• Computers and hardware
• Biotechnology
• Medical devices
• Medicine and healthcare
• Software and systems

Get Credit

How can Keith still establish priorities, exercise influence and get credit when his boss doesn’t know what he really does?

1. Become exquisitely informed about the company, which is the context of the work. Take every opportunity to invite himself into his manager’s world. It is only by knowing the manager’s point of view that Keith can translate his accomplishments into relevant language.
2. Invite Eric into his world. Keith should not be reluctant to include Eric for fear he will disagree with a course of action. Better to know at the beginning of a project than months later.
3. Keith needs to understand his manager’s motivation and rewards. What accomplishments are expected of Eric? How is Keith a part of that? How can he align his contributions?

No matter how superb Keith’s skills and accomplishments, if it’s not what the company needs, he won’t get the excellent recognition he thinks he deserves. For some, it is challenging and frustrating to be evaluated by someone who has less expertise. Your manager however is the messenger of what will be well regarded by the organization.
Just because Keith has expertise doesn’t mean the company wants all of it. That’s why it is so important to jointly establish expectations. Keith may have more knowledge, but Eric likely has a valuable perspective about what is important, and what will be recognized.

Ongoing Year-round Rapport

Keith should get in the habit of presenting no more than three bullets related to what he wants to convey. When meeting with his manager, give a high level executive summary first. There is a very high probability that a manager with a different expertise can be overwhelmed or can be dismissive of too much detail. Therefore contributions and information needs to be presented with the audience in mind. Not too superficial, but not too technical all at once.
Another delicate area is the dilemma of Keith teaching Eric. This contradicts the explicit hierarchical relationship, so it’s important for Keith to respect Eric’s competence and authority while sharing specialty knowledge. Talk more about:

• what matters about the product or project
• how it impacts the department and company
• why it’s cool technology or process (but at a very high level)
• how and why it’s exciting to work on this
• and less about the details of what it took to achieve the expertise or the outcomes

Connect directly back to the sense of accomplishment, autonomy and commitment as a source of confidence, and be as willing to learn from your manager as you are to teach.
Keep in mind when working for a manager who does not have your expertise, you will have best results when you align your contribution with the strategy of the whole organization. Talk about how your knowledge creates results that benefit the company.

Good Management

Good management is the ability to orchestrate performers who have different kinds of talent. No one expects a conductor to be able to play every instrument superbly. It is the same with management. A manager who did not grow up through the particular functional specialty (engineering, finance, science) will not micromanage. Rather than relying on prior expertise, good mangers:

• Give direction
• Elicit ideas
• Foster collaboration
• Provide support
• Inspire
• Give feedback
• Provide career development

A good tuba player can improve the performance of another tuba player, but good managers ensure a quality result of the entire team, regardless of whether each function has previously been a part of their career. Following these tips provides a greater chance of orchestrating a good outcome.
KINGSMITH.

The Mistakes These Successful People Don’t Regret By Bernard Marr.

The vast majority of new businesses fail — which means, logically, that a high percentage of successful business owners have at least one failure in their past, big or small.
What makes one person pack it in and go home while another tries again? The difference between failure and success is simple: the successful keep trying.
Take, for example, these four highly successful entrepreneurs. Each had one or more major setbacks in their career that could have derailed them entirely. Instead, they chose to learn from their mistakes and power forward to become some of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time.

Vera Wang: Failed Figure Skater

Vera Wang revolutionized the bridal fashion industry, but before that, she was a world-class figure skater. As a young girl, Wang competed in the 1968 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, coming in fifth in the Junior Pairs division and missing her goal of joining the U.S. Olympic figure skating team.
From ice skating, she turned to fashion, and worked her way up to senior fashion editor at Vogue before being passed over for a promotion. She left the magazine and became design director for Ralph Lauren until, frustrated with the choices for her own wedding, she designed her own bridal gown. Soon after, she started her fashion house.
"For me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating,” Wang told Cosmogirl, “But I carried that with me for the rest of my life."

Bill Gates and Paul Allen: Failed Traffic Software Developers

Bill Gates and Paul Allen started a compony called Traf-O-Data, offering a computerized microprosessor that could analyse traffic data for municipalities. When they tried to demonstrate the program for a potential client — it didn’t work. Soon, the program was made obsolete entirely.
But they didn’t let that deter them, and went on to found a second company caled Micro-Soft. Allen later told Newsweek, “Since then, I have made my share of business mistakes, but Traf-O-Data remains my favorite mistake because it confirmed to me that every failure contains the seeds of your next success. It bolstered my conviction that micro-processors would soon run the same programs as larger computers, but at a much lower cost."

David Mintz: Failed Garlic Ice Cream

David Mintz, founder of Tofutti, a line of non-dairy ice cream, rolled out an ice cream called Krazy Garlic. The product was non-dairy ice cream made from garlic — though it didn’t have a garlic flavor.
Retailers sent the product back en masse. They wouldn’t even taste it. Mintz, a garlic-lover, never even considered that people would be turned off by the mental combination of garlic and ice cream without ever tasting it.
"The naming of a product is so key,” he told Entrepreneur. “It has to make the consumer want to try it.”

Barbara Corcoran: Failed Florist

Barbara Corcoran, real estate mogul and one of the sharks on Shark Tank, started out as a florist.
In college, she started a small “flower of the week” club, and delivered bouquets of fresh flowers to customers’ homes and offices. But one of her clients was more than a slow-pay — he was a no pay.
Still, she continued delivering flowers to him — essentially for free — for nine months.
Because her business was so small, only 32 customers, that one delinquent account eventually forced her to fold. "I went out of business because of that one customer. I only had 32 customers, so he represented a big share of my business," Corcoran told Entrepreneur.
Still, the failure taught her how to ask for money, and the folly of building a business that relies too heavily on only one or two customers.
What has been your biggest learning mistake? I’d love to hear your stories of failure that turned to success in the comments below
KINGSMITH.

Bad Mistakes That Make Good Employees Leave By Travis Bradberry

It’s tough to hold on to good employees, but it shouldn’t be. Most of the mistakes that companies make are easily avoided. When you do make mistakes, your best employees are the first to go, because they have the most options.
If you can’t keep your best employees engaged, you can’t keep your best employees. While this should be common sense, it isn’t common enough. A survey by the Corporate Executive Board found that one-third of star employees feel disengaged from their employer and are already looking for a new job.
When you lose good employees, they don’t disengage all at once. Instead, their interest in their jobs slowly dissipates. Michael Kibler, who has spent much of his career studying this phenomenon, refers to it as brownout. Like dying stars, star employees slowly lose their fire for their jobs.
“Brownout is different from burnout because workers afflicted by it are not in obvious crisis,”Kibler said. “They seem to be performing fine: putting in massive hours, grinding out work while contributing to teams, and saying all the right things in meetings. However, they are operating in a silent state of continual overwhelm, and the predictable consequence is disengagement.”
In order to prevent brownout and to retain top talent, companies and managers must understand what they’re doing that contributes to this slow fade. The following practices are the worst offenders, and they must be abolished if you’re going to hang on to good employees.
They make a lot of stupid rules. Companies need to have rules—that’s a given—but they don’t have to be shortsighted and lazy attempts at creating order. Whether it’s an overzealous attendance policy or taking employees’ frequent flier miles, even a couple of unnecessary rules can drive people crazy. When good employees feel like big brother is watching, they’ll find someplace else to work.
They treat everyone equally. While this tactic works with school children, the workplace ought to function differently. Treating everyone equally shows your top performers that no matter how high they perform (and, typically, top performers are work horses), they will be treated the same as the bozo who does nothing more than punch the clock.
They tolerate poor performance. It’s said that in jazz bands, the band is only as good as the worst player; no matter how great some members may be, everyone hears the worst player. The same goes for a company. When you permit weak links to exist without consequence, they drag everyone else down, especially your top performers.
They don’t recognize accomplishments. It’s easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially with top performers who are intrinsically motivated. Everyone likes kudos, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. Rewarding individual accomplishments shows that you’re paying attention. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it’s a raise; for others, it’s public recognition) and then to reward them for a job well done. With top performers, this will happen often if you’re doing it right.
They don’t care about people. More than half the people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain that their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate their employees’ successes, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge them, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates. It’s impossible to work for someone for eight-plus hours a day when they aren’t personally involved and don’t care about anything other than your output.
They don’t show people the big picture. It may seem efficient to simply send employees assignments and move on, but leaving out the big picture is a deal breaker for star performers. Star performers shoulder heavier loads because they genuinely care about their work, so their work must have a purpose. When they don’t know what that is, they feel alienated and aimless. When they aren’t given a purpose, they find one elsewhere.
They don’t let people pursue their passions. Google mandates that employees spend at least 20% of their time doing “what they believe will benefit Google most.” While these passion projects make major contributions to marquis Google products, such as Gmail and AdSense, their biggest impact is in creating highly engaged Googlers. Talented employees are passionate. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions improves their productivity and job satisfaction, but many managers want people to work within a little box. These managers fear that productivity will decline if they let people expand their focus and pursue their passions. This fear is unfounded. Studies have shown that people who are able to pursue their passions at work experience flow, a euphoric state of mind that is five times more productive than the norm.
They don’t make things fun. If people aren’t having fun at work, then you’re doing it wrong. People don’t give their all if they aren’t having fun, and fun is a major protector against brownout. The best companies to work for know the importance of letting employees loosen up a little. Google, for example, does just about everything it can to make work fun—free meals, bowling allies, and fitness classes, to name a few. The idea is simple: if work is fun, you’ll not only perform better, but you’ll stick around for longer hours and an even longer career.

Bringing It All Together

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.


What other mistakes cause great employees to leave? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
KINGSMITH.

Don’t Use These Words on Your CV or LinkedIn Profile By Bernard Marr

If you’ve ever gone house-hunting or looked for a flat, you know there are certain words that act as a kind of code: “cozy” means it’s about the size of a postage stamp, “rustic” means there might be mice, and “fixer-upper” means it’s probably going to fall in on you.
Similarly, there is a certain style of language that tends to pop up on resumes, CVs, and LinkedIn profiles that HR and hiring managers cringe to see.
In general, most of these terrible terms are so vague or jargony as to mean practically nothing. At best they suggest you might be padding your CV or profile because you’ve run out of things to say; at worst, they suggest you haven’t achieved much of anything in your career worth talking about.
Replace them by heeding that ages-old writing adage to “show, don’t tell;” use active words and concrete examples instead of these tired terms:

1. “Responsible for…”
   This is such a blanket statement when describing your job duties, it tells nothing about what you actually did. It brings to mind someone just doing the bare minimum to get by. Instead, use active verbs like created, achieved, improved, or led.
2. Problem-solving skills
   Did you sit around doing crosswords or solving rubik's cubes all day? Instead, list an accomplishment that demonstrates your problem-solving skills.
3. Detail oriented
   One typo on your resume (and they happen to the best of us) and this statement rings false. If being detail oriented is a key trait for the job you want, put it into practice by paying particular attention to details when you submit your application and during the interview.
4. Intelligent
   Being intelligent and saying that you’re intelligent are two different things. Putting it on a CV or saying it in an interview can come off as egotistical or awkward. (This also goes for words like successful, likeable, humble, etc.) Instead, talk about the way you think or approach a problem with words like logical, quantitative, or synthesise.
5. Proactive
   This is a business buzzword and has been used so much it has very little meaning left in it. What are you actually trying to say? That you are self-directed? That you can spot problems before they happen? Demonstrate this with examples.
6. Team player
   Something about this feels wishy-washy, as though you couldn’t come up with anything better to say. “I don’t have any actual accomplishments, but I’m a team player!” If you want to convey that you work well in groups, again, give specific examples.
7. Obsessive
   No matter how passionate you are about your work, saying that you are (or, in fact, being) obsessive is not a good thing. Passionate is a pretty good replacement word here.
8. Strategic thinker
   Before putting something like this on your CV, ask yourself how you would demonstrate it if asked to in an interview. It’s pretty difficult to back up. If you have a concrete example, use it instead.
9. “Experience working with…”
   Experiences happen to you. They are passive. Instead, talk about achievements.
10. Salary negotiable
    On a resume or in a cover letter, this just sounds desperate. Unless the recruiter specifically asks for your salary requirements in your cover letter, avoid it altogether until the interview. Then, do your research and have a specific number in mind when you get the question. It is mostly understood that salaries are negotiated, so saying it on your CV is redundant as well.

In a survey from CareerBuilder.com asking hiring managers and human resources staffers to rank the best and worst words to use on a resume, the best words all had something in common: they convey action.
Avoid cliches, jargon, and passive terms in favor of active descriptions of your actual achievements, and your CV or LinkedIn profile will definitely stand out from the crowd.
What are your personal resume pet peeves? Any forbidden words I should add to my list? Let me know in the comments below.
KINGSMITH

How to Thrive on Stress By Jo Marchant.

We all know that being stressed at work is bad for us. Quite apart from making us aggravated and miserable, stress chips away at our physical health, increasing the risk of chronic conditions from eczema to stroke. But scientists are discovering that stress isn’t always damaging: in the right circumstances it gives us a boost that improves both our mental performance and our physical health. What’s more, by changing how we think about stressful events – an exam or work presentation, say – we can shift our physiology from a harmful state to a helpful one.
Feeling afraid or stressed has a dramatic impact on the body. If you face a threat, whether it’s a hungry lion or angry boss, your heart beats faster. You breathe more heavily, and your pupils dilate. Blood is diverted away from non-urgent areas such as the gut and sexual organs and towards the limbs and brain. Digestion slows, and fat and glucose are released into the bloodstream to fuel your next move.
This fight-or-flight response is controlled by stress hormones released into the blood stream, including adrenaline and cortisol, as well as the sympathetic nervous system, which connects the brain to the body’s major organ systems. It has evolved to help us survive in emergencies, and in most animals it switches off as soon as the threat has passed. But humans have the ability to worry all the time, even about things that have already happened or may never happen at all.
Such chronic anxiety leaves us on constant alert, and over time this can damage the body, increasing the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, for example. Stress also triggers an immune response called inflammation, which acts as the body’s first line of defense against infection and injury. That’s great in an emergency but if switched on all the time it can eat away at healthy tissues, exacerbating conditions from diabetes to dementia. Inflammation is even thought to accelerate cellular aging by wearing down the ends of our chromosomes.
The good news is that stressful events don’t harm us directly. What does the damage is our psychological response to those events, and this we have some control over. In my book, Cure: a journey into the science of mind over body, I investigated the scientific evidence behind a range of stress-busting techniques. For example, mindfulness meditation aims to help us distance ourselves from our worries. We’re encouraged to recognize that negative thoughts are fleeting and don’t represent reality. Trials show that mindfulness training reduces stress and anxiety, protects against depression, and improves quality of life. There’s some evidence that this in turn has physical health benefits, such as easing pain and auto-immune disease, and reducing our susceptibility to infections from the common cold to HIV.
I was surprised to discover, however, that not all fight-or-flight is the same, and sometimes it can actually be good for us. Psychologist Wendy Mendes of the University of California, San Francisco, uses the example of a skier who unexpectedly comes across a steep icy trail; it’s her only way down the mountain. Her heart rate will rise, but depending on how experienced she is, she might feel either fear or exhilaration. And those have different physiological effects.
Psychologists call these contrasting states “challenge” and “threat”. “Challenge” is the mindset of a hunter closing in for kill, or a fighter who knows she’s going to win. To put that in a work setting, imagine giving a talk or going into a job interview where you’re confident of success and keen to show off your talents. Your sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive, causing your peripheral blood vessels to dilate. This allows your heart to work more efficiently, pumping oxygenated blood to the limbs and brain. People experiencing this type of response perform better than normal, not just physically but mentally too.
Fear, on the other hand, causes the body to go into damage control mode as it prepares for defeat. You’re being hunted and there’s no escape, or fighting a stronger adversary. At work, going into that presentation or job interview, you feel underprepared. Instead of focusing on the potential rewards, you’re terrified of embarrassing yourself or losing out.
In this state, psychologists have found that the sympathetic nervous system activates to a lesser extent. Instead of dilating, your peripheral blood vessels constrict and your heart beats less efficiently, meaning less blood is pumped around the body. From an evolutionary perspective this makes sense: it minimizes blood flow if you’re caught or injured. But it also impairs performance and strains the cardiovascular system, because the heart is forced to work harder to push blood around the body. A threat response also triggers inflammation, as the immune system prepares for injury and infection.
When it comes to longer-term health, challenge responses are generally positive, while threat responses are damaging. Mendes has found that people who experience a challenge response bounce back to normal fairly quickly. Mild to moderate bursts of such “positive’ stress, with time to relax in between, are thought to provide a useful workout for the cardiovascular and immune system.
But people in a threat state take longer to recover, physically and mentally. They worry more about how they performed, and remain more vigilant for future threat. Their blood pressure stays high. Over time, the extra strain on the heart can lead to hypertension, while high levels of stress hormones contribute to chronic inflammation.
Crucially, it turns out that thinking differently about stressful events – focusing on what we have to gain rather than what we might lose, for example – can help us to shift from a threat state to a challenge state. In fact, Mendes has found that a change as simple as how we interpret our physical response to stress can have dramatic results.
In one study, she subjected volunteers to a stressful public speaking task. She told one group that if they experienced physical symptoms of anxiety during the test, such as a racing heart, this was a good sign. It meant that oxygenated blood was being delivered to their brain and muscles, she explained, and this would help them to perform better. Just knowing this shifted these volunteers towards a challenge response – with greater vasodilatation and cardiac output, compared to those who were advised instead to ignore the source of their stress, or who received no instructions at all.
In another study, Mendes found that reframing the body’s responses in this way didn’t just shift volunteers’ physiology, it improved their performance too. She asked students preparing for the Graduate Record Exam (a high-stakes test required for admission into graduate school) to sit a fake test in the lab. Compared to a control group, those advised to interpret their stress as positive had physiological benefits as in the other study. But they also scored higher – not just in the fake test but in the real GRE, which they sat weeks later.
Changing your outlook isn’t a magical solution to all work stress. If you’re overworked, badly treated, or doing a job you don’t enjoy, consider what you might do to change that. Meanwhile employers have a responsibility to treat their workers well. But all jobs worth doing will challenge and stretch you, and you have more control than you think about how you respond. With even a small shift in attitude, you can start to perform better under pressure. And that may improve your long-term health too.
KINGSMITH.

Differences, Equality, & The Oscars: A Reflection on Stacey Dash's Comments By Wade G.Morgan

What Does It Mean to be American?
Yesterday, I watched an interview featuring actress Stacey Dash in which she expressed her opposition of calls to boycott the Oscars. For the second year in a row, The Academy released a nominee list that exclusively featured white actors & actresses in the major categories, which prompted people like Jada Pinkett Smith & Spike Lee to call for a boycott, as they felt people of color should have been better represented in the nominations. In her interview, Dash stated the following:

"I think [the boycott] is ludicrous... We have to make up our minds.

Either we want segregation or integration, and if we don't want segregation, we need to get rid of channels like BET, and the BET Awards, and the [NAACP] Image Awards, where you're only awarded if you're Black.

If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms; it's a double standard."

She continues,

"[T]here shouldn't be a Black History Month; we're Americans. Period. That's it."

After hearing her statements, I reflected on an idea Dash implies, which I have heard popularized in many conversations other than ones about Oscar nominations: the idea that difference disables equality and cohesion. From this premise, Dash implies several ideas. First, Dash suggests integration requires invisibility. Second, she equates a celebration of difference to an act of exclusion.
What Does It Mean to be Different?
Like most people, Dash appears to aspire for a world in which people of all backgrounds coexist peacefully. To achieve this goal, she advises us to forget about our differences, embrace a singular identity, and move forward from there, together. While her intentions may be noble, I offer a simple critique to the premise of her advice.

Rather than assume that differences disable cohesion, what if we assumed that differences enable cohesion?

For me, this question stems from two similar questions. First, what does equality mean, and what would it feel like? Second, what does difference mean, and how do we understand it? If we understand differences to be insurmountable divisions, then yes, acknowledging differences may prevent the kind of society that we aspire for.
But, if we understand differences to be the qualities that make us unique, allow us to approach problems in new ways, and encourage us to offer our perspective when something goes awry, then no, differences do not prevent the society we envision; rather, they enable that society to occur. Ironically, if we understand differences to be the qualities that bring us together, then avoiding our differences would preclude the exact harmony that it would have appeared to bring.
What Equality Looks Like To Me
So, when I think about institutions like BET, the BET Awards, Black History Month, and other similar establishments, I do not see them through a lens of exclusion; rather, I see them through one of celebration. Similarly, I do not see our world as a zero-sum game in which celebrating one person's accomplishments prevents us from acknowledging and celebrating another's.
I think it is fair to question why marginalized groups can collectively celebrate their identities without reprisal while majority groups cannot - I have asked the same question myself. The answer lies at the intersection of context, history, and cultural subjugation. In short, majority groups have historically used their difference to both exclude and subordinate other groups. Being "different" alone did not disable marginalized people from interacting in majority spaces; rather, being different and "less than" did. On the other hand, marginalized groups accent their difference to regain the humanity and dignity that was previously deprived, and to remind group members that to be marginalized is not to be less than.
I don't think I want a world that ignores my Blackness, my masculinity, my height, my weight, my family, my hometown, my language, or anything else that makes me, me. I want a world that acknowledges those qualities, embraces them, challenges me to constantly critique and improve them, and allows me the freedom to pursue my dreams precisely because I am all of those things and more. I want a world that understands the following:

It is often the acknowledgement & celebration of our differences that enables & enhances our humanity.

We have the opportunity to create a world that cherishes each person's unique take on humanity. We have the opportunity to create a world that values each person's unique identity equally. We do not need to ignore our differences to accomplish either of those goals.
KINGSMITH.

Why You (and I) Need to Be More Positive By Travis Bradberry.

We've all received the well-meaning advice to "stay positive." The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as Pollyannaish and unrealistic. It's hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking.
The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.
That was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind's tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These "threats" magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced the project you're working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life.
Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention. You must be intentional about staying positive if you're going to overcome the brain's tendency to focus on threats. It won't happen by accident. That's why positivity is the skill that I'll be giving extra attention in 2016.

Positivity and Your Health

Pessimism is trouble because it's bad for your health. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists.
Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania has conducted extensive research on the topic. Seligman worked with researchers from Dartmouth and the University of Michigan on a study that followed people from age 25 to 65 to see how their levels of pessimism or optimism influenced their overall health. The researchers found that pessimists' health deteriorated far more rapidly as they aged.
Seligman's findings are similar to research conducted by the Mayo Clinic that found optimists have lower levels of cardiovascular disease and longer life-spans. Although the exact mechanism through which pessimism affects health hasn't been identified, researchers at Yale and the University of Colorado found that pessimism is associated with a weakened immune response to tumors and infection.
Researchers from the University of Kentucky went so far as to inject optimists and pessimists with a virus to measure their immune response. The researchers found optimists had a much stronger immune response than pessimists.

Positivity and Performance

Keeping a positive attitude isn't just good for your health. Martin Seligman has also studied the connection between positivity and performance. In one study in particular, he measured the degree to which insurance salespeople were optimistic or pessimistic in their work. Optimistic salespeople sold 37% more policies than pessimists, who were twice as likely to leave the company during their first year of employment.
Seligman has studied positivity more than anyone, and he believes in the ability to turn pessimistic thoughts and tendencies around with simple effort and know-how. But Seligman doesn't just believe this. His research shows that people can transform a tendency toward pessimistic thinking into positive thinking through simple techniques that create lasting changes in behavior long after they are discovered.
Here are three things that I'll be doing this year to stay positive.

1. Separate Fact from Fiction

The first step in learning to focus on the positive requires knowing how to stop negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that — thoughts, not facts.
When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it's time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you're doing and write down what you're thinking. Once you've taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity. Evaluate these statements to see if they're factual. You can bet the statements aren't true any time you see words like never, always, worst, ever, etc.
Do you really always lose your keys? Of course not. Perhaps you forget them frequently, but most days you do remember them. Are you never going to find a solution to your problem? If you really are that stuck, maybe you've been resisting asking for help. Or if it really is an intractable problem, then why are you wasting your time beating your head against the wall? If your statements still look like facts once they're on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you can trust, and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out.
When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain's natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

2. Identify a Positive

Once you snap yourself out of self-defeating, negative thoughts, it's time to help your brain learn what you want it to focus on — the positive.
This will come naturally after some practice, but first you have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your brain's attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can't think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps there is an exciting event you are looking forward to that you can focus your attention on.
The point here is you must have something positive that you're ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative. Step one stripped the power from negative thoughts by separating fact from fiction. Step two is to replace the negative with a positive. Once you have identified a positive thought, draw your attention to that thought each time you find yourself dwelling on the negative. If that proves difficult, you can repeat the process of writing down the negative thoughts to discredit their validity, and then allow yourself to freely enjoy positive thoughts.

3. Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the “right” thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels.
You cultivate an attitude of gratitude by taking time out every day to focus on the positive. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.

Bringing It All Together

I realize these three tips sound incredibly basic, but they have tremendous power because they train your brain to have a positive focus. They break old habits, if you force yourself to use them. Given the mind's natural tendency to wander toward negative thoughts, we can all use a little help with staying positive. Join me in putting these steps to use this year, and you'll reap the physical, mental, and performance benefits that come with a positive frame of mind.

How do you stay positive? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
KINGSMITH.

Incredible Things That Happen Once You Learn to Love Being Alone By Travis Bradberry.

We live in a world of constant contact—a place that’s losing sight of the importance of being alone. Offices are abandoning cubicles in favor of shared desks and wide-open common spaces, and rather than sitting at their desks working independently, school children are placed in groups. It seems that a never-ending “ping” has become our culture’s omnipresent background noise, instantly informing us of every text, tweet, and notification. Even something as mundane as cooking dinner has become worthy of social sharing.
One result of all this social connection is that many of us rarely have any time alone. While we’re told that this connectivity is a good thing and that being around other people is necessary for a fulfilled life, you can certainly have too much of a good thing.

“All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.” – Jean de la Bruyere

A study of 600 computer programmers at 92 companies found that while productivity levels were relatively stable within each company, they varied greatly from one company to the next. The more productive companies had one thing in common: they ditched the ultra-hip open office in favor of private workspaces that granted freedom from interruptions. Of the top performers, 62% said they had adequate privacy at work, while only 19% of the worst performers shared that opinion. And, among the low performers, 76% said they were often unnecessarily interrupted.
Solitude isn’t just a professional plus; it’s also good for your mental and emotional well-being. To get the most out of life, you must learn to enjoy spending time alone. The benefits of solitude are too numerous to catalog, but here are some of the best.
You recuperate and recharge. All of us—even the hopeless extroverts among us—need time to recuperate and recharge. There’s nothing like spending time alone to make this happen. The peace, quiet, and mental solitude you experience when you’re by yourself are essential to recovering from the stresses of daily living.
You can do what you want. As fun as it is to spend time with other people, it inevitably leads to compromise. You’re constantly modifying your ideas to accommodate other people’s desires and opinions. Being alone frees you up to do exactly what you want when you want. You can throw on whatever you feel like wearing, eat what you feel like eating, and work on projects that are meaningful to you.
You learn to trust yourself. Freedom is more than doing what you want; it’s the ability to trust your gut and to think clearly, without any pressure or outside influence. Being alone helps you form a clear understanding of who you are, what you know, and what’s right for you. It teaches you to trust yourself. When around others, even when you don’t realize it, you monitor people’s reactions in order to gauge the appropriateness of your own feelings and actions. When you’re alone, it’s all on you. You develop your own ideas and opinions, without having them watered down by what anyone else thinks. Once you learn to enjoy being alone, you’ll discover what you’re truly capable of, without the constraints of other people’s thinking.
It increases your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. TalentSmart has tested more than a million people and found that 90% of top performers are high in EQ. Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence, and you can’t increase your EQ without it. Since self-awareness requires understanding your emotions and how you react to various people and situations, this necessitates careful self-reflection, and self-reflection happens best when you’re alone.
It boosts your self-esteem. Enjoying your own company is a huge confidence booster. If you’re bored and restless when you’re by yourself, it’s easy to start thinking that you’re boring or that you need other people around to enjoy yourself. Learning to enjoy time alone boosts your self-esteem by confirming that you are enough.
You appreciate other people more. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Time alone lets you see people in a whole new light, and it helps you to develop a renewed sense of gratitude for who they are and what they do.
You get more done. It’s said that “more hands make light work,” and while that might be true when it comes to raking leaves, it’s a completely different story with cognitive tasks. Even the effectiveness of brainstorming is more myth than reality. Researchers from Texas A&M found that group brainstorming hinders productivity due to “cognitive fixation.” Cognitive fixation is the tendency for people working in groups to get stuck on other people’s ideas, reducing their ability to come up with anything new, and the bigger the group, the more fixated everyone becomes. Spending time alone not only eliminates distractions but also ensures that you don’t have trouble with “too many cooks.”

Bringing It All Together

Everyone benefits from solitude. Take the opportunity this week to spend some time alone.
KINGSMITH.

Which Office Personality Are You? By James Caan.

The office is a funny place, full of weird and wonderful personalities. Every single person on earth is different, but we do tend to see some reoccurring personality traits in an office environment.
We spend half of our lives in a working environment, surrounded by colleagues who each have their own story to tell. Inevitably, you’re not always going to get on with everyone you work with, that’s human nature. We’re not programmed to gel with every person on the planet, some we clash with, others we naturally gravitate towards.
I’ve been building and scaling businesses for 30 years and, during this time, I’ve come across just about every type of colleague you can think of. For me, office culture is at the top of my priority list and I always try to ensure my team are in a happy, working environment they can thrive within alongside people they don’t dread spending their day with.
So, what are the typical office personality types and, more importantly, what is the best way to work with each?
The one with the big personality
Every office has that one person who some may, mistakenly, assume is slightly big-headed and a bit of a show off. This is the one who likes to be centre of attention and will always make sure their opinion is not only heard, but certainly taken into consideration too.
Being an extrovert, this person has the great advantage of feeling comfortable and confident about their ability to perform in their role. I know this can be quite frustrating for colleagues who may not understand this type of personality but appreciating their ‘can-do’ attitude is a great start.
The one designated leader
Life is full of natural leaders. The people who aren’t afraid to go to the front of the class, those who are first to answer a question or put themselves forward for a task and generally has great innovative and creative ideas. The same is true in an office environment, I’m sure you can think of a colleague who instinctively takes the lead during a group task – someone who you’d happily follow and trust.
Not everyone is a born leader and that’s fine, as long as you show passion and illustrate the value you add to the business, you shouldn't see this person as a threat.
The one who’s a secret mastermind
Here’s the introvert of the office. The person who wouldn't necessarily instigate weekday chit chat or organise Friday night work drinks but who’s mind is working overtime – taking in every little detail. This personality is more reserved, quiet and methodical in their approach. Some may mistake this for being uninteresting and monotonous but it’s more likely it takes this person longer to build trust and friendship with colleagues than others.
It’s important not to bombard this colleague with questions as this may make them feel uncomfortable. Respect their reservations and understand how important these characteristic are to maintain a balanced environment.
The one who doesn’t stop talking
The chatterbox, on the other hand, is most likely to be the life and soul of the party. They are absolutely essential in an office environment as they help to create a fun, friendly environment. This person is likely to go out of their way organising catchups and getting to know their colleagues more like friends.
Inevitably very chatty, they can be a distraction at times. The trick is to understand the benefits of this personality type whilst avoiding temptation to encourage procrastination.
Whatever you are, you should always embrace being different and meeting other people who are different to you.
Let me know what personality type you are!

KINGSMITH

The Career Risk You Don't Know You're Taking By Sallie Krawcheck.

Career risk. When we think of this, we typically think of professionals leaving their jobs for a start-up. Or raising their hand for a promotion that they might not be ready for. Or even someone “taking on” their boss in a power struggle. These examples represent career risks that individuals choose to take.
But here’s an idea that might make you uncomfortable. Or even extremely uncomfortable. In this economy, with business in certain sectors changing so quickly, you may be taking career risk…..by standing still. You may be taking risk by trying not to take risks.
Ask anyone who worked in the financial services industry over the last decade. Or in the print-only newspaper world. Or, of course, the tech world. The changes in these businesses may have been driven by different forces, but the change has been….and is….and will be….so fast that professionals in those industries have needed to manage risk: the risk that your skills may become obsolete…..the risk that the job that you love changes….the risk that you boss changes…the risk that your company changes strategy….the risk that the new boss won’t like you so much.
An example that I lived: prior to my running Merrill Lynch (the “Thundering Herd”), it had enormous continuity…and then significant leadership change. Up to the year 2000, the business had one boss for 15 years (and that guy spent a total of 38 at the company). Then the outside world changed: there was the Nasdaq meltdown of 2000 and the subprime crisis of 2007/2008; that in turn drove the sale of the company. As a result, since 2000, Merrill has had eight business leaders (unless I’m missing someone, which is reasonably likely); that's one about every two years. And each of those leaders tended to establish their own management teams (as new leaders do), and each of those leaders had changes in business strategy (as new leaders do), so the change has rippled through the organization. Almost constantly.
What to do as a professional?
Since it is much less likely that you’ll start at a company training program and then retire from it 45 years later with the gold watch, be open to change and to changing yourself. I’ve transitioned several times: I started my career as an investment banker….became a research analyst …..worked as a manager and leader at big companies…..and am now an entrepreneur. Some of this was skating to where the puck was going; some of it was pushing myself to figure out what I loved and shifting my career closer to those things.
Be a voracious learner. I can’t tell you how many professionals I know who have just stop trying new things. Some of them tell me they are “too senior” for it (“If I go on LinkedIn, I’ll just get bombarded with interview requests” and “It’s only people looking for jobs there”); but it feels more like they have gotten comfortable.
But here's what can happen: a couple of years ago, a head-of-marketing friend of mine was laid off; I urged her to get on social media; she dawdled on it. And as I tried to introduce her to job opportunities, a couple of potential employers declined, because that itself was evidence enough that her skills were dated.
Build a strong network. Kudos to you if you have a strong network within your company; but you’d better also have a large, diverse and strong network outside of your company. There’s always something more urgent to do than building this; but not having one if you leave your current company is no less than make-or-break.
Prepare financially. Being prepared financially is a great form of insurance. A “barbell approach” to risk can make sense here, particularly for women: build an emergency cash fund that is 3 – 6 months of salary. But don’t build up too much cash (as many women do), because that penalizes us financially. According to analysis by Ellevest, if you put $25,000 in a savings account, then you can grow that to approximately $35,400 in 35 years; put that same money in a diversified investment portfolio and it can grow to more than $54,000.
If you take a career break, keep your skills current. This also hurts us women disproportionately. We take more career breaks – and longer ones – than men; and they negatively impact our earnings. So, in addition to planning for them financially (more from Ellevest on that here), it’s also important to plan for them professionally so that you’re not left behind. Increasingly, I’m seeing women use some of their time away to learn to code or to keep their marketing skills up-to-date by volunteering time at non-profit.
KINGSMITH.

Better than a New Year's Resolution: A New Mindset By Deepak Chopra.

The tradition of making a New Year's resolution is an optimistic gesture, but it quickly fades as around 80% of people quickly break their resolution. The reason? Old habits creep back in, and these habits are rooted in an old mindset. It sounds incredibly ambitious to change a whole mindset, but in reality this is easier than keeping a single New Year's resolution, because a new mindset paves the way for a broad range of life changes.

What is your mindset right now? None of us can truthfully say. A mindset is like a worldview. It's the lens through which you see life. A silent filtering process is going on. We let in certain experiences and censor others. When we hear someone else express an opinion, we filter it through yes, no, maybe, and so what? before actually hearing it. Your brain has been programmed and conditioned for years to filter reality; there's no getting around it without conscious effort.

Since conscious effort is the key, here are five reprogramming techniques that will clear your mind as well as change your mindset.

1. Reject your old self. Most people allow beliefs, opinions, likes and dislikes to pop up by default. In any situation, their thinking isn't centered on the present but is a relic of the past. The self who originated old thinking doesn't exist anymore. So when you find yourself having a negative reaction, and you can see that this reaction is one you fall back on (e.g., getting angry, feeling anxious, shutting out whatever is new and unknown), simply stop for a second and silently repeat the following mantra:

   I am not that person anymore.

Let this thought sink in, then open yourself to the situation as it is unfolding in real present time. Your real self is always here and now.

1. Reject default attitudes: Most of us have reacted to thousands of situations over a lifetime that left an impression. Call them psychological impressions or karmic imprints, the terminology doesn't matter. In both cases, the result is the same. an impression is like a microchip that sends out the same message over and over. It makes us respond the same way over and over also, which is the opposite of actually being real and present.

So the quicker your response is, the more you should reject it as a default mechanism. Simply seeing this will help to de-condition the brain. The same brain that became imprinted can be cleared again--all it takes is a little self-awareness.

1. Listen to the people you don't listen to: When you shut anyone out, you are censoring reality. Great decision-makers appear from the outside to be very decisive and single-minded. But this disguises how they actually arrive at a decision, which involves a period of searching. While searching, they open their minds to all kinds of information, spreading the net as wide as possible. In other words, great decision-makers do the opposite of censoring reality.

Try listening to people you have been shutting out, whatever your reason was originally. We can all tell when we're being shut out, and we all have the same reaction. We resent it, and we have no motivation to help that person. See yourself as a kind of human In Box, allowing as many viewpoints as you can to enter your mental landscape. A rigid mindset is soon melted this way.

1. Favor expanded awareness: Consciousness isn't easy to define, and you can spend your life paying little attention to it. But at bottom, every day is about having experiences; every experience requires an experiencer; and every experiencer is using their awareness to confront life's challenges. So no matter what is happening, awareness determines the outcome.

What you want to cultivate is expanded awareness. If you don’t know what this means, you certainly have experienced its opposite, constricted awareness. As a defensive move, we contract our minds due to fear and threat. We draw back when we feel insecure and vulnerable. We are averse to the unknown and the potential risks that await us there. These are all symptoms of constricted awareness. Be conscious of when you feel these things, take a deep breath, and relax. Let your mind ease into the situation instead of contracting--that's all expanded awareness needs to be.

1. Find the way of least action: In physics, the law of least action holds that nature favors the shortest path to achieve a result. A tennis ball falls to earth in a simple curve, not a curlicue. An arrow flies straight to the target. Water boils at 212 degrees F. If nature is always this efficient, using the least effort and energy as possible, why do we complicate our lives? The combination of stress, struggle, and needless suffering is the result of a mindset that sees no other way to live.

But there has always been another way, as pointed out by the world's wisdom traditions. Look into them, and you will find some astonishing propositions, including the following: Life was never meant to be a struggle. When you encounter the silent depth of your mind, some problems dissolve automatically while others present new solutions. Your higher self is real and wants only the best for you. A life aligned with the laws of nature is not only easier; it brings love, creativity, and bliss as our birthright.

For the new year all of these things are worth exploring, I think. They guide me personally, and from long experience I know that mindsets, which can feel like prisons, can be transformed into the gate to freedom.

KINGSMITH.

The Simple, Life-Changing Question That Hardly Anyone Can Answer By Oprah Winfrey.

One of my favorite parts of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” came after the cameras stopped rolling.
I would spend time with the studio audience in Chicago and open up an ongoing Q and A. Inevitably, the conversation would move toward honest and sincere talk about their lives. In almost every session I’d ask: "What do you want?"
It’s a deceivingly simple question — and one I’ve found most people can’t answer. Yet it’s profoundly important. What do you really want in your life? And where are you on the path towards what you really want?
What I’ve come to know is that so much of our lives is controlled by our intentions and our beliefs. It matters what I believe, and what you believe, and what we as a community come together and believe. Our intentions become thoughts … our thoughts become beliefs … our beliefs become words and actions. From inception, our intentions and beliefs carry power; what we believe is often what shows up for us.

A few days ago, I met with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner to talk about all of these ideas as part of my new series, “Belief.” Some highlights from our interview:
When I realized the incredible power of manifesting
One day I was at my farm in Indiana. It was a rainy day and I was thinking, "Gee, I sure would like some tomato soup." Soon after, the caretaker who lived across the street came in with a pot of tomato soup. I asked her: “What made you do that?" She said: "Well, honey, I had these tomatoes. So I thought maybe you'd like some tomato soup.” So I was like, Wow, if you can get tomato soup like that, what else is possible? What else can I manifest? So I started trying it with other things. I have seen it happen over and over and over again. You control a lot by your thoughts.
The conversation that taught me about life in the simplest and most powerful way
I did an interview in the late '80s with a mother who had watched her son die. She crawled into bed with him as he was dying. And his last words were, "Oh, it was all so simple." And then he smiled. When she said that, I got chills. We're going to take our last breath and say, "Why were we struggling all that time? Why were we swimming upstream? Where all we had to do was just look at each other and accept each other for who each of us represents on the planet.” I thought back to that quote. Ah, it was so simple. I didn't have to fight that hard. It didn't have to be that hard. That show, along with many others, had a powerful and calming impact on me in terms of the way I led my own life.
Why we all ultimately want the same thing
In speaking to the audience after my show, I kept hearing people stand up and say, "You know, I did the thing I was supposed to do. I went to school. I got the degree. I even got my master's. I did the work. And now what? I feel like that there should be something more.” And so that became one of the tenets of our show. How do you give and help to fulfill that something more that people are looking for?
Oprah Winfrey presents "Belief," a groundbreaking seven-night television event exploring humankind's ongoing search to connect with something greater than ourselves. Tune in to the Belief starting Sunday, October 18, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
www.oprah.com/belief
KINGSMITH.

How Companies Would Hire People If They Were Smarter By Liz Ryan.

Recruiting Needs an Overhaul

The state of corporate and institutional recruiting is abysmal. Recruiting is the most broken HR function, followed by performance reviews.
We can get rid of performance reviews. Many companies have already done that. We can't get rid of recruiting. We need to re-design the way we hire people, instead!
We ask exactly the wrong questions and follow exactly the wrong process in hiring people. We hire very stupidly.
We use an inflexible, data-crunching method to sort resumes. We create job specs based on pure delusion -- as though we could possibly know in advance that the right person for a certain job would need to have five or seven or 15 years of experience in Marketing or Finance.
How could we possibly know that? We can't! It's arbitrary.
We write job specs that require a certain number of years of experience with a certain software tool -- an idiotic pass/fail requirement when some people pick up and master a tool in three months and others take years to gain that same proficiency.
The fundamental problem in recruiting is that we try to match people with jobs as though the people were pegs and the jobs were holes.
We pretend that we can determine a person's suitability for a job based on facts, when we all know that any facts we could report in a job application tell us almost nothing useful about the fit between a person and a job - not to mention an organization.
One software engineer, for instance, could have years of experience with a particular programming language and still be utterly wrong for your assignment.
The software engineer has seventeen years of experience -- but so what? The more important question is "How does his or her mind work?"
We all see the world differently. Another software engineer could have far less experience but end up to be a much better fit for your job opening.
The second software engineer might have a better feel for your issues and better instincts for solving your problems.
You'll learn those things about him or her on an interview -- unless the perfectly-suited candidate never gets to meet you because he or she was screened out by a brainless keyword-searching algorithm.

How to Recruit with a Human Voice

Here's what smart organizations to do to hire great people every day:

• They create job specs not based on lists of qualifications (made up in their minds!) but by describing the assignment and the organization.
• They use their job ads to entice smart people with other options (the only people you can afford to hire) rather than driving talented people away with off-putting, fanciful-bordering-on-delusional requirements.
• They save everybody's time and energy by including the salary range in the job ad.
• Rather than forcing busy job-seekers to fill out tedious online job applications (do you make your customers create their own records in your customer database?) they ask applicants to respond to a job ad with a thoughtful 250-word paragraph. (There's an example below.)
• They make careful but speedy 'yes or no' decisions and get back to every applicant right away.
• They don't play cat-and-mouse with compensation. They get everybody's salary requirements and expectations right out on the table early.
• They don't let anybody interview candidates who isn't a strong interviewer. I am always shocked by how easily we throw unskilled interviewers onto a hiring committee. That isn't fair to them, to job applicants or to your customers and shareholders.
• They treat recruiting as their highest priority. We recommend to our CEO clients that they tell their hiring managers and HR folks they've got 90 days to fill any job. If you can't fill the job in 90 days, either you didn't understand the market or you made the new hire too low a priority. If that happens, the job opening disappears like Cinderella's coach at midnight. Better luck next time!
• They treat every job applicant like gold, because job applicants are people and only people can buy your company's products and services, or recommend them.

Job-seekers are fed up with their awful treatment at the hands of employers. HR people and hiring managers are just as fed up with the bureaucratic delays and roadblocks that ATS (applicant tracking system) technology creates.
An ATS is a terrible use of technology to solve a human problem, and its day is past - thank goodness!

A Job Ad With a Human Voice

Here is a sample Job Ad with a Human Voice we wrote for a client:
E-Commerce Operations Manager - Angry Chocolates
We're Angry Chocolates, a specialty organic chocolate maker located in downtown Fayetteville. We launched our first e-commerce site in 2015 and it has grown enough to create the need for a new E-Commerce Operations Manager.
This could be a great job for you if you love the back end of a website, like to work with numbers and inventory levels and want to work with Marketing, Production and Inventory Control to build a tremendous online business worldwide.
We need someone in this job who can start a new function from scratch and manage a team (over time - right now it's a department of one) and who understands U.S. and international shipping.
The job reports to our VP of Operations and pays $80-$90K. If this job sounds like a good fit for you, please send us a 300-word message that tells us why you think so. We're excited to build our E-Commerce operation and hope to hear from you!
Chuck Jones, CEO, Angry Chocolates
What are Chuck and his team looking for as they review 250-word responses to their job ad, when they sit down at a staff meeting one week after the ad runs?
They are looking for people who have thought about the job and the challenges it will bring. They want to see each job applicant's brain working.
Chuck and his team receive 150 responses to their ad. Brigit Hathaway, Angry Chocolates' HR Manager, screens out 110 of the responses.
Those 110 job-seekers completely failed to respond to Chuck's assignment, writing generic things like "I have a long background of managing successful multi-location logistics teams."
They fell down by demonstrating no understanding of Angry's unique situation and drawing no parallels between their experiences and Angry's needs.
Chuck asked applicants to explain why THIS job is a good fit, and folks who sent in generic zombie-style responses didn't do that.
When Chuck meets with his managers, they have 40 job-ad responses to review together. It won't take long to narrow that group down to 20 people they'd like to know more about, and 20 folks who aren't a good match for this job.
Here is an excerpt from one of the responses Brigit and the team received.
This applicant, Bryan, is a contender for the role.

Excerpt from Bryan's Response to the Angry Chocolates Job Ad

Dear Chuck and Team,
I was excited to see that Angry Chocolates is growing internationally as well as domestically these days. Congratulations to all! I'm interested in your E-Commerce Operations Manager.
I've been running a fulfillment center for three giftware manufacturers for the past three years, working with each of their web teams to coordinate the sales order process and then overseeing picking/packing and shipping of about 500 orders/day. I also have my own home-based e-commerce business, selling gemstone jewelry through a website I designed myself.

How to Hire Great People, Faster: Recruiting with a Human Voice

In the old-school, traditional world of crusty bullet-point-loaded job ads and ATS screening, Bryan wouldn't have had a chance.
He would have been kicked out of the pipeline in a heartbeat because his past jobs didn't have the "right" titles.
Traditional recruiting doesn't allow for the possibility that someone could have learned what they know at a part-time, sideline business like Bryan's home-based gemstone business - but why not?
Since Angry Chocolates is new to e-commerce, a more fearful version of Chuck would have required five or seven or even ten years in e-commerce while Bryan only has three.
Try running a fulfillment organization for three years! You'll learn a lot, fast.
Bryan may get the job at Angry Chocolates! He has e-commerce experience both from his home-based business and his day job.
How long does it take seven smart people to read 40 short essays? It doesn't take very long! The conversation is very good for their Team Mojo. They aren't just talking about skills and qualifications. They are talking about themselves and their culture, too.
Around the table, Chuck's managers discuss the job and the candidates. They zip over to LinkedIn to check out the job-seekers' profiles.
They don't waste job-seekers' time dragging them in for interviews before telling them what the job will pay.
They don't make anybody fill out an online job application. Their slogan at Angry Chocolates is "Treat people compassionately."
They have built a great business by following that wisdom!
The world is changing. The simpler and more human we can make recruiting, the better it will be for all of us. We are not machines. We can see by now that recruiting people through mechanical means is a horrible idea.
It keeps talented people out of our organizations and robs our customers and shareholders of their talents.
It's 2016, and we can bring a human voice to recruiting. Any employer or recruiter can use these methods. You can take a step into Recruiting with a Human Voice right now!
Our company is Human Workplace.
To learn how to recruit with a Human Voice, join the Four-Week Virtual Course Recruiting with a Human Voice launching Saturday, January 9th!
If you're job-hunting, check out our Four-Week and 12-Week Virtual Courses for job-seekers (and our courses for entrepreneurs and working people, too)!
Want to bring the Recruiting with a Human Voice mindset and methodology to your organization? Reach us here to find out more!

Reach us with your questions here!

KINGSMITH.

Keeping Your 2016 Public-Speaking Resolutions By Bill McGowan.

OK... I'll admit it. New Year's resolutions are pretty silly.
Our quest for self improvement is a 365-proposition these days, so the notion that one day on the calendar represents the ideal window of opportunity to up our game is about as antiquated as a flip phone.
But if you are fiercely determined to wipe the slate clean this week, and improving your communication skills is at the top of your list, I have some good places to start.
And the best part is, they're pretty simple fixes.

1) Try getting through a speech or presentation without saying the words "perspective" or "standpoint." This is one of the most mind-numbing verbal habits in corporate America right now. Instead of saying, "so how are we doing against our competitors?" we somehow feel the need to lean on that ubiquitous crutch with, "So if we were to look at this from a competitive landscape perspective..." I'll take the former over the latter any day.

2) Don't begin your sentences with "so." Like most trends, I'm pretty sure this one started in California where people in the technology field would start virtually every thought this way. And when the "so" is drawn out and said longer, followed by a pause, it can make your contribution to the discussion sound ponderous.

3) Don't use stilted, jargony and over-complicated phrasing to try to sound smarter. For instance, why would you ever substitute "we need to make a decision on this soon," with "we're rapidly approaching a choice point on this." Go ahead laugh. I heard that one recently in the boardroom of a Fortune 100 company.
4) Embrace pausing. Most of us are deathly afraid of silence. We kid ourselves that to sound intelligent we must have a steady stream of audio spilling out of our mouths. That is why the natural gap that is supposed to exist between your first sentence and your second sentence is often filled with "uh" or "um." Those dreaded filler words are not period substitutes. Speaking in shorter, choppier sentences will always keep your listener's attention more than one droning, paragraph-long sentence.

5) Jettison "kind of" and "sort of." This one has spread like some kind of verbal rash. It might have initially come into vogue to prevent us from sounding too brash and too opinionated. But there's something terribly wrong when you hear a company's leader talk about a key hire by saying, "she was sort of the best candidate out there." What that CEO should be saying is, "she IS the best person for this position." Nod if you've heard your fair share of presentations that start with, "so, I just thought I would kind of quickly walk you through what's happened since we last met."
The year is young yet. Like any bad habits we're trying to break, we're always bound to have lapses. Awareness is always the first step. Here are five to keep your eyes (and ears) on.
KINGSMITH.