Today, we had a company-wide discussion and departmental breakout sessions to discuss what Wisdom is at Aquire, and what it means to our employees.  I was going to synthesize the message for this blog post, but the value is really in the direct quotes from the Aquire staff.  These are unrehearsed, rapid fire brainstorming snippets of thought.  I am so proud of them and impressed by them, I am sharing directly, without synthesis.  They are not all inclusive, but they are good ones.

“Wisdom feels synonymous to the passion for the job and customer.  Everybody lives this every day at Aquire!”

“Wisdom is knowing your gaps between your current state and your desired state.”

“Wisdom gives you the ability to make the right choice and not just a choice.”

“Wisdom is understanding the need behind the problem.”

“Wisdom is the culmination of life experiences, both positive and negative.  You should learn from both.”

“Wisdom goes back to action.  It is not what they know, it is how they act and what they do.  You can be smart and still do foolish things.”

“Don’t confuse knowledge with wisdom.  Knowledge is information.  Wisdom is the ability to know how to act upon the knowledge you have.”

“You can share your wisdom, only if the recipient already has the ability to receive and assimilate it.”

“Wisdom is looking at how the need and the solution will fit in the big picture, so that the right action is taken.”

“Wisdom is finding a solution that can solve a problem for many, not just fixing a symptom.”

“We must ask questions to put things into context.  Without context and experience, wisdom can’t be drawn upon.”

“Wisdom helps us, help people address their problems in a different way.”

“Applying collective wisdom allows better solutions.  It often requires a lot of information to build the wisdom around an issue.”

“Experience can be painful but it often leads to wisdom.”

“Based on wisdom we have established our recommendations. Those recommendations gathered from many sources become best practices.”

“One of the wise things that have been taught to me at Aquire is that we are not just here to sell you products.  We are here to solve your problems.”

“Wisdom is all about the journey; our department has 87 years of experience in within Aquire.  We want and are willing (drive) to participate and share WHAT we know.”

“Wisdom enables us to be our clients’ GPS.  We learn from the past in order to position our customers in the path of compelling events.”

Cheers,
Lois and Team

Seven ways to get included on the corporate succession plan.  There are many things that get evaluated by management and talent management teams when they are doing succession planning.  As I  observe succession plans I see the desired requirements for the planners.  However there are often gaps between the planners needs and the candidates focus on what they should be developing about themselves.  For many people these may be obvious, but for others I hope it will help them think about the things they do to develop and promote themselves.  There are, of course, specific skills required for different roles and career paths.  This list is more about the universal traits.

1. Think strategically. This may be one of the most critically evaluated traits during promotion consideration.   Department leaders that focus on their goals as if their department objectives are the end goal have just painted themselves into their ‘end goal’.  They can’t advance if they can’t understand and communicate their part of the mission as a piece of the greater objective.
2. Be a learner.  In order to take on new responsibilities you will have to grow.  In order to grow you have to learn new things.  Keep this skill always active.  Stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone until it becomes your comfort zone.  If you can’t look back at your year and see giant strides you have made, how will anyone else see the progress?
3. Mentor/Leader. Leadership is needed throughout all organizations.  Even if your next role is not a management position, the ability to mentor and lead others is needed.  If you can’t get enough visible practice within your organization, then practice these skills in your community, and make sure your employee profile and LinkedIn profile include these contributions.  The real boost to your career is when management recognizes you are developing others and leading teams successfully through projects that tie to the mission of the department or company.
4. Open/Flexible.  Business is changing faster than ever before.  You don’t want to be the barrier of progress.  Fads can be dangerous.  Trends are valuable.  Do you know the difference?  Are you ready to make several lateral moves within the organization to be prepared for a future role further up in the organization.  This is often a measurement watched during succession planning.
5. Be successful.  Excel at what you do now – if you can’t do really well now in your current position, then you won’t show up on anyone’s radar as a high performer.  Even if you are under-employed, don’t assume your past laurels will get you where you want to be.  A proven track record is essential to gain a champion for your career leaps.  People like to back winners.
6. Visibility/being connected. Let’s face it, if the world doesn’t know who you are, how will they know they need to consider you for promotion?  Some organizations have methods to find the hidden jewels in the organization for promotion, but most organizations still use direct relationships to consider who is going to be put into the pool for evaluation.  Both methods have good supporting arguments.  If you are not visible to your leaders, are you ready to be one of them?  However, this bullet comes with a warning sign – don’t make these connections superficial.  Add value to the organization and support the leadership to help foster the relationship.
7. Have a vision.  The main criteria I hear when executives are reviewing their management team for the future, is the ability to see and shape the possibilities yet to come. Know where you want to go.  Know where the business is going.

There are many elements to the decision making process for promotions and developmental moves.  These are, at the same time, the fundamentals as well as the critical support beams to the structure of your career advancement.  They can be both the table stakes and the high stakes at the talent review table.  I suggest you focus closely on where you excel and share these strengths with your organization.  All will benefit from these qualities and that is what it’s all about.

What does this mean to you / us?

We are now poised to spread our wings like never before. We will work closely with Peopleclick Authoria and will continue to operate as Aquire with the same staff and management as always to service the world with our workforce planning and analytics, org charting, organizational modeling, succession planning and the rest of the Aquire product portfolio.

Aquire’s growth story is powerful, not only from our ability to create an international market for our technology solutions, but also by creating some of the best jobs, filled with the best software people any customer has ever worked with! (I get these letters, I know the customers feel that way). Now we keep all the goodness and get a boost.

We will expand our market reach through the Peopleclick Authoria teams. We will continue to execute the technology visions of our co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Ross Melbourne. Your favorite tech support people are still here to answer your calls. The unique Aquire culture focusing on customers, innovation and the awesome sustainable employee lifestyle will continue. The elegant and powerful software from Aquire will still be solving people’s data integrity, merger integration, workforce analytics, succession planning and organization visibility problems.

Aquire has been approached many times in the past for merger or acquisition opportunities. The opportunities were never right for us or the market. When approached by Peopleclick Authoria we started exploring the great product synergies. We started talking to the people and researching the people and we knew we had found an impressive organization, with quality, intelligent people who have high integrity standards and a strong market position. The opportunity to work together with PCA while continuing with our product roadmap, our Aquire team and great customers, was an evolution that is just so right.

We are very excited about this new stage of our lives. You may have questions and I am happy to address them. Please send them my way. I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Lois

There was a tree in Cambridge Mass, where George Washington first took command of his troops in 1775.  A scion of that tree (a part of the tree that you use to start another tree growing) traveled to the Washington University campus and was planted there around the turn of the century.

The original tree in Cambridge died from disease and the favor of a scion from the Washington University Elm traveled back across the country and was planted in the original spot in Cambridge.  Then there is another turn in this reciprocal gift of life.  The Washington University tree was struck by lightning and once again a scion from Cambridge came back to Washington State to plant this beautiful joy of a tree.

There are so many lessons of graciously giving and graciously receiving in this story.  There is a message of respecting your roots (no pun intended).  Knowing where you came from and giving back to what helped make your success happen.  We need to make sure we hang on to our history and we share it with others.  Without the recording of the history of these trees, their caregivers wouldn’t have known or thought of continuing the gift.

Do you recognize your mentors or the people that helped you get where you are?  Do you give back to them or pay it forward to others to continue to make the world a better place?  I am considering one last question now, for the lesson of the legend of the Cambridge and Washington Elms, What have you given to others today that can grow and keep on giving?  If we act upon the goodwill of this story, we would each develop a strong legacy.

Do we do this enough with our employees that we are developing?  Do we give them the chance to make choices in just enough of a controlled environment that they can miss the mark by a small enough margin that it doesn’t damage their reputation too badly, or damage the department’s ability to execute?  Do we give them the chance to wind up with a gross mixture of ice cream and toppings, which will help them stop and think about their choices a bit more the next time? Or will they consult more expert ice cream eaters to increase their chance for success the next time?

As I listened to my son gently challenge his older cousin on a gift shop purchase, “Are you sure a gadget that cool should be so cheap? What if it breaks quickly?”.  He too was exercising his developmental leadership skills.  I was proud, and inspired.  He was coaching, yet letting his cousin make the decision. (The gadget broke that night).  It reminded me that we should remember to repeatedly give opportunity for decision making every chance we get.  Allow a large tolerance for less than stellar results when the individual is just getting started making their own decision and then continually raise the bar of expectations.   Tolerance is always key when developing the decision maker.  They need to feel safe to stretch when making choices.  You shouldn’t always be made to eat all the yucky ice cream with the wrong toppings!

Cheers,

Lois

Leaders doing what they believe in will instill the passion and the need for results.  They believe in the need to get something done and they want to assure that it does.  That doesn’t mean they take credit for all of the team’s accomplishments, but they are accountable for the results, both the wins and the losses.  Great leaders often study other great leaders.  They want to find the lessons learned.  If they are going to work hard, they want to be able to measure their results.  They want measurements that allow them to prove their accountability.

A culture of accountability and visibility is very important within an organization.  Let’s consider an occasion I recently discussed with an HR professional of a manufacturing firm.  They were celebrating the drop in unplanned absences in the plant.  This had been a goal set by the organization that they were going to target for 6 months to improve productivity and morale.  During the little celebration of all the managers involved, the HR person noticed one of her star managers seemed very disengaged, and she was surprised.  She approached him to ask how he was doing.  He took her out into the hallway and poured out his frustrations.

He had taken the goal very seriously.  He sat down with his entire staff, and they explained the cause and effect of unplanned absences, which brought up several rough confrontations between his people, but they talked through it and came out on the other side feeling much better about each other, about their productivity goals, and how skipping work impacted those goals.  In other words, he engaged his employees, showed great leadership, soothed feelings, and really took a leadership role in the process of lowering unplanned absences.  It took a lot of effort.  His frustration lay in the fact that some groups in the break room celebrating had not reduced their unplanned absence at all, and one team’s had gone up slightly. Meanwhile, he had dropped his unplanned absences to less than .01% in the 6 months measured.  His entire team was watching the number and were accountable to him for this decrease.  He was very pleased with this team.  The celebration did not take in consideration that some groups had worked really hard to improve the numbers, while other leaders had done nothing but were here celebrating.

This line manager was really getting concerned about what his team was going to say and feel when the news went out to the entire organization, yet the team knew that some groups had not made any effort to improve.  How would he keep them motivated in the future if their numbers were not recognized and compared to other teams?  How would the other teams ever get the benefit of improvement if they were not called out for missing the goal?

The HR leader jumped into action and asked the Plant Manager to wait 24 hours to release the numbers and news to the line workers.  She stayed up all night pulling numbers leader by leader (we could have made that easier for her and hope to in the future) and ranked the managers on their unplanned absences for the 6 months measured.  She drew a chart and drew a line between the manager that achieved the goals and those that didn’t.  The next day when the Plant Manager made the announcement to the entire staff, the chart was shared.  The crews above the line were rewarded with 30 days of being first to release to the cafeteria for lunch (a big deal at this plant, so you don’t get stuck in line waiting for food)  Usually, this honor was rotated between crews.  Morale jumped and more teams were looking at ways to improve their numbers.  The first manager in the story then pressed the Plant Manager for the next goal they needed to conquer.  He is leading in accountability and believes it has great results for the company.

Cheers,

Lois

But besides all the rabbit holes we could go down for that specific topic, let’s talk about the needs for succession planning.  Do you think that 6 months ago BP thought they would be discussing the replacement of their CEO this summer?  Do you think that there is only one person being replaced at BP? – NOT  What about the people that specifically managed the work around regulations to avoid building a relief well?  I would bet these less visible positions will be turning over quickly too.

Any given high level position change is likely to target 2 – 6 more moves or hires within the organization.  Each person that get moved up, leaves a position that needs to be filled.  New people in new positions, whether hired from the outside or promoted from a succession plan is going to consider their new team and evaluate if they want to make changes.  This creates another cascade affect.  Companies need to be prepared for this dynamic. Staffing changes ALL THE TIME!  Critical roles cannot be left unfilled for very long, regardless of the reason they were made empty.  What are you doing to either…

1)help prepare your organization deal with the trickle effect of replacing people throughout your company

or

2)make sure you are qualified and willing to step up to new responsibilities in the organization when opportunities arrive.

Look at the steps for succession planning (these are very high level, there is much more to the process, but these  will get you started.

Know that when a decision goes wrong, there may be ramifications up and down the chain of command.  Succession Planning is not just for the c-suite.  Are you watching the trends of your organization to see where the highest turnover is taking place?  Could you change those turnover trends by doing a better job of succession planning?  Are your people being developed so that when they are needed to fill another position? Are they are trained and familiar with the teams and processes in the department?  Are you measuring which leaders are preparing your future executives by promoting them and providing career and project mobility?

These are critical questions to be asking of your organization and putting systems in place to make all of this information visible and the plans executable.  What are you doing to make sure you are contributing to the stability and growth of the organization?  You think that might be a hot seat today.  It is a much cooler seat then it will be when there is a crises for replacements raises its head, so step up.

Cheers,

Lois

An ardent supporter of mentoring programs, Lois Melbourne reveals the secret to ensuring successful mentor-mentee matches and explains why corporate mentorship programs are more important than ever to organizations. Discover how she has shaped her own career and taken her company global with lessons learned as both mentor and mentee. From students to entrepreneurs, mentors and mentees, Lois shares the benefits of this enriching personal development tool.

When we were together at #HREvolution in Chicago this Spring, Paul Hebert, @incentintel, led a session with Jason Seiden with the objective of discussing how to influence people.  I found an interesting twist to the conversation that I have not been able to get out of my head for the last couple of months.  So, I have been reading and thinking and watching with this topic in mind.  I feel that my thoughts might be helpful for some.

The topic about influencing continually moved to compensation and incentives.  I believe some in the group had a very different perspective of these terms then I did. And, if I am going to develop myself and my managers as good leaders at Aquire, I need to figure out why!  Why were they moving a conversation about influencing to incentives?  They are very different things.  As I listened, I figured out that several of those gravitating to incentives  were recruiters who live their day in the compensation negotiation role, so they leap to money and benefits.  This got a little scary for me, when I thought about the deeper consequences of recruiters – the people setting the stage for new employees, thinking that motivation and inspiration were possibly the same as incentives or $.  I am glad to hear that my own staff clearly saw the difference between these terms.  One of my managers thought I should create a primer of some of the confused terms.

Being more a short story teller then an academic designing primers, I put together the following  scenario.

If I want you to leave the room:

• I can give you an incentive to leave the room by offering money or food if you leave the room.
• I can motivate you to leave the room by threatening to hit you if you don’t leave the room.
• I can influence you to leave the room by giving you information about why it might be better to be outside of the room.
• I can inspire you to leave the room by telling you a story about what we can achieve by helping the people in the room next door understand how reading to their children, as toddlers, helps them build their imagination, vocabulary, ability to focus and desire to have books in their lives.  So, we get up and eagerly leave the room to do better things.

There is a great deal of difference among these.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a book about this topic, which Paul did encourage us to read.  I had read it years ago, and in the last 2 months, it became available on the Kindle, so I am reviewing it again.  I encourage anyone needing to influence people (which is everyone) to read it and better understand the power and subtle science of influence.

For even more wisdom on Influence,  Paul’s website will continually educate you upon all of these nuances.

Cheers,

Lois

A man from Minnesota is on vacation with his family in Germany. They were scheduled to come home on Friday because the man had a big presentation on Tuesday, and he wanted to allow for travel delays. The volcano ash shuts down travel from Europe, with 18,000 flights cancelled on Saturday alone. The man called his boss to alert him of the delays and began implementing several back-up plans, including securing high quality video conferencing time for the Tuesday client meeting at this own expense. He was fired for missing the client meeting. This example of leadership in crisis gets a big FAIL vote from me.

Many companies are forcing people to take vacation days for the time off work, while suffering the insulting blow of living with thousands of other people in airports for days on end. Several people have reported the lack of acceptance of work conducted from airports and hotels, despite the herculean effort travelers are going through to get internet access and phone time to work in a flexible telecommuting environment. These people are working hard not to let down their employer, even though these employees are sleeping on cots and eating airport food. Come on, bosses – cut them some slack – work with them! If your employees are putting in the effort to be productive for you – don’t add more harassment by declaring those days as non-working.

I won’t even get started on the price gouging issues – because this is a blog more about workforce decisions – but that disgusts me, too.

Policies are there to help you make decisions, but if you have any type of leadership skills at all, you’ll work with these stranded travelers and allow them flexibility, especially if they’re trying to work for you. If you don’t, you will lose your best internationally traveled employees as soon as they can find a more humane employer that respects them.

I wish them luck on their job hunt – because if you are not working with them in this odd, off-balanced time – you don’t deserve them.

Cheers,
Lois

An important issue to keep in perspective right now is the unemployment rate. The news latches on to the job loss in the country and never the job creation. Yes, job loss is dramatic and traumatic, but to keep the economy in perspective – a terrible time, but something we will get through - we need to look at the job creation opportunities as well.

Jeffrey Miller provides the hard facts about the balance between job loss and job creation. We have to put it in perspective. See A Dash of Insight, JOLTS from the BLS.

And if we can’t create new jobs, we can map new career paths for existing employees by using Succession Planning and 9 Box Matrix tools. Make yourself and your managers aware of your wealth of talent. Share this information with employees, perhaps giving them a new perspective on their career potential.

A dear friend sent me a lovely e-mail piece on perspective. Unfortunately, I don’t know the source; know that I would give proper acknowlegment if I did.

A Tale of Perspective

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad.”

“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said the son.

“So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father.

The son answered, “I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”

The boy’s father was speechless. Then his son added, “Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are.”

Isn’t perspective a great thing? Let’s all spend more time focusing on everything we have, and less time on what we don’t have. Appreciate the good things in your life, especially your friends and coworkers! Help them refresh their perspective and appreciation.

Cheers,
Lois

As I dig deeper into Mandela’s leadership style, and think about how I try to practice leadership, as well as what I admire most in others, I think it boils down to respect. People respected Nelson Mandela, because he treated them with respect. When he had visitors, he introduced his cell guards as his security detail, called them by name, and the visitors shook the guards’ hands. These guards were treated with respect, even as they helped to hold him captive. Mandela knew they were doing a job they were told to do, and he gained their respect, and later their following, by treating them the way he wanted to be treated.

He learned as much as he could about what was important to an individual before he met with them. (This is something that many salesmen do.) Mandela took it further. He then dove into those topics and genuinely learned about them, so that he could have a meaningful conversation about the subjects. Learning what was important, both negative and positive, for individuals was how Mandela showed his respect and gained respect from so many people. It took a lot of people to turn his country around, and they are still working on it.

Nelson Mandela’s leadership, a leadership of earned respect and shared respect, was, in my opinion, how it happened. The book is a great read on many levels. Thank you, Greg, for introducing me to it. I recommend that you put it on your reading list.

Cheers, Lois

Follow Lois on Twitter: http://twitter.com/loismelbourne

The following is a process I went through with a student who is soon to graduate from college and is uncertain what types of jobs he should pursue.

He loves to write and loves sports. He wants to write about sports. He thought about it, and is “concerned about newspapers dying.” So he was ready to throw in the towel on the idea of writing for sports. I said, “Whoa! Back up, let’s see how you can follow your dreams.”

We discussed the types of media where he reads about sports, such as newspapers, blogs, team websites. On and on he went. I looked at him when he ran out of breath and said nothing. The light bulb went on. He suddenly realized there were hundreds of places where people write about sports. I encouraged him to pull together all his sports writing from school, and to continue to do more. Then he will have a portfolio to show somebody. A little bit of exploration has opened the future job hunt with excitement, not dread or as much fear.

If you are in human resources, you likely have knowledge of the workings of a company that actually very few people have insight into. Most of us only experience a portion of the process when going for job interviews. Help people understand how the organization chart is structured. If you can explain the hiring process at your company or general practices to your contacts in need, it will likely be very enlightening to them.

Help them think about looking for jobs in something they love to do. What competencies do you have? How do you describe your job skills so that you are quickly in the key employee category? How do you jump from being a resume filtered through the software, into a box in the org chart? What a wonderful gift of knowledge!

Cheers,
Lois

Rich taught me how to be a mentor, although I don’t think he knows it. Rich has asked me deep questions that make me really think. He leads me to make my own decisions, because only I know the answers to those big questions for myself. He never tells me what to do, but I walk away from our conversations wiser and ready to make my decisions. The leadership and mentoring skills he has shown me, have shaped my life as I have progressed from the bottom of the organizational chart to the top of my own organigram.

I now try to use his techniques of questioning, guiding, and leading in my parenting, mentoring, and corporate leadership. Finding the needs and concerns of my colleagues through questions that don’t put them on the spot, reading between the lines but not making assumptions, and truly caring about the outcome of each conversation because every interaction matters, are the traits Rich has taught me. I am still being mentored by Rich in life lessons as we occasionally meet over Indian food and great laughs. He likely doesn’t realize it, but I leave each of those lunches recharged and feeling like a million bucks. I have not refined my mentoring skills to his level, yet. But I’m working on it.

I have been on the receiving side of many mentoring relationships and am doing my best to ‘pay-it-forward’ as I mentor others. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the best leadership I provide is when I go into the mode of mentoring others through achieving their objectives.

Thank you, Rich!

Cheers,
Lois

As I talk with people about their succession planning and the assignment of competencies to a role, I’m surprised at the assumption that the competencies designated as leadership or representing leadership are so often confined to the position of managers. I went through an entire index of competencies designated for a sales organization and, other than persuasion, leadership requirements were missing from the job competencies. Leadership has to be fostered throughout an organization. It needs to be developed for individuals and teams so that everyone can progress. When people lead they are usually more positive and display a better attitude.

Please review your expectations within your performance reviews and your job competencies. Look hard for the opportunities to build leaders and attitudes by setting the bar for what you expect of your individuals. If you set the bar high, they’ll rise to the occasion. This will, in turn, help with team projects, future succession planning, and every day in the progress of the company.

Oh, and as a leader, your attitude is being observed, especially in trying times.

Cheers,
Lois

The cub scouts have this great way of rewarding boys for doing good deeds during a cub scout event. They give the boys a brightly colored bead to hang from a leather strip on their belts. The promise of this small prize can turn a wild batch of 7- and 8-year olds into a camp cleaning machine just to earn the beads. Sometimes I wish we had a visible award system for the decisions our people make.

I can see it now. Every time you make a decision for the business, a bead is added to the jar on your desk. If a manager’s employees don’t have very many beads then you know that manager is not empowering his/her staff to make progress. Their leadership is in question. You could ask people how many beads they earned in their last position, and how they earned them. It would be quantitative. It would be, let’s face it, impossible. This is not practical, but an interesting thought exercise.

Are you hiring people with the right behavior that exhibits past leadership and decision making? (If you don’t know how to find their past behavior, I recommend Top Grading by Geoff Smart.) Are you empowering your employees to flex their decision making abilities and deepen your bench of leaders in the organization? Are you building quality successors within the organization? Are you encouraging your team to “earn their beads” today?

Cheers,
Lois

As a mentor in both formal and informal formats, I find brilliant and ambitious people who are fully intimidated and uninformed about the career hunt they have ahead of them. So I would like to give you some ideas on where and what you can do to help prepare these future leaders.

First, there are many formats for mentoring out there, so take your choice based on what works best with your schedule and knowledge base. Just a few options include:

• Mentor a college student.
• Host an event at your office (be sure to provide food!).
• Offer to speak at your local college or university.
• Offer to help the career center at the local university to make sure they are up-to-date on coaching students about finding a job in the current environment.
• If the local university does have a good career advisement department, help them figure out if they are marketing to and actually reaching students.

Second, address the issues most pertinent to students preparing for the job market. The following list includes the type of information students I have worked with needed (in many cases, in their own words).

• How do I know a corporation is looking for employees?
• How is the application process different for corporate jobs than when applying for a retail or grocery store position?
• What key words are critical in a resume and why?
• What is the role of a recruiting firm vs. a recruiting department in a company?

Third, recognize and reinforce the critical topics that may seem obvious to you, but are still new or unknown to students, such as:

• Knowing and nurturing good interview skills.
• What NOT to do, such as over inflating a resume.
• Knowing that recruiter firms should never charge an applicant.
• Finally, sharing information near and dear to your heart. For me, that would be how to choose an industry/career that you can enjoy.

Bringing it all together, Aquire sponsors a pizza dinner for students to run through these topics and answer questions (it’s a great way to kickstart a new program, too.) We don’t do it to find applicants, but it can obviously be a reward for giving back to the community.

My mentoring allows me to do these things regularly, but I realize not everyone can do them all. The important thing is to do what you can knowing that you are contributing to the workforce of tomorrow – paying it forward, if you will.

Please share ideas you have for helping our future workers or let me know if I can help answer your questions.

Cheers,
Lois

Aquire Core Values

• Use Respect In Your Interactions
• Provide Stellar Customer Service
• Work As A Team
• Communicate And Make Decisions With The Highest Integrity
• Approach Our Markets With The High Energy Needed For Aggressive Growth
• Develop And Participate In A Strong Partner Community
• Create An Environment Fostering Innovation
• Be Committed To Quality Business Solutions
• Use These Values To Win Business

We can provide a great deal of empowerment to our employees, because we hire them knowing they share our drive and values. We trust them.

My favorite leadership course I’ve taken was driven by a book, The Leadership Challenge, by James Kouzes and Barry Posner. It was amazing. Six years later, I still keep the bookmark on my desk with the “10 Commitments of Leadership” and I share them with others. One of the items, #4, is ”Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to their values, interests, hopes and dreams.” To appeal to their values, you have to know what they are. If you want to build your bench strength of strong leaders and personnel then I encourage everyone in the org chart who has anything to do with hiring, succession planning, or management to understand their employees’ and candidates’ values, interests, hopes and dreams. This will help you identify the synergy with the company’s objectives and thus provide the right seeds for a healthy crop of leaders in the future.

Resources to consider:
The Leadership Challenge
Your own corporate Values Statement.
The Dream Manager to appeal to their dreams. (More on this one in the near future.)

Cheers,
Lois

• Listen carefully during job interviews. Listening here can help you avoid hundreds of issues in the future. A big key to this listening is first asking the right questions.
• Listen when there is a lot of change going on. Your employees need to be heard, and they often have incredible ideas you need.
• Listen when they are telling you things from their heart or their gut. As a leader you can learn more here than you may expect.
• Listen when they are disagreeing with you or with the standard corporate line. This can be difficult, yet essential to finding better ways of doing things.
• Listen when they are talking about your customers. Information is key and information about your customers is frankly worth gold.
• Listen any time they are communicating to you. Be glad they want to communicate.

Listening gives you information and builds trust between you and the communicator. If you need help improving your listening skills as well as mindfully listening and remembering what you’ve heard, I highly recommend the book, The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communications in this Age of Distractions by Rebecca Shafir. It is a very worthwhile read.

* Dallas, The Eagle 97.1

Cheers,
Lois