In Patrick Lencioni’s book ”The Five Dysfunctions of Team” he identifies trust as the foundation principle for all teams.  Without trust teams will struggle with handling conflict and pushing to achieve their primary goals and objectives.  To start building trust with one’s teammates the following actions are required:

• Listen – One of the quickest ways to build trust with someone is to listen to them.  When people know they have been listened to they are more likely to reciprocate that same action and the great things is the more we listen the better we can understand someone.
• Trust – To be trusted you must trust others because it only works when both parties give.

• Do – Nothing destroys trust faster than when our words don’t match our actions. Whatever you say will do, do it. At the end of the day your actions should reflect your words.

Building trust with teammates is not an easy or short process but it is required if you want to create a work environment where you can grow, learn and do your best work.

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Over the years I have had the opportunity to attend a lot of professional development conferences and on the average the content and the speakers at those conferences are generally good not great but still good.  But on May 9^th and 10^th I attended the Catalyst Conference in Dallas and from the beginning this conference had a different feeling about it, it was like electricity was in the air. Excitement and enthusiasm radiated from all, from the volunteers you met in the parking lot directing you in, the people managing the registration desk, the other attendees and from everyone that took the stage as a speaker, emcee or musician they all brought that spark.

When it comes to keynote speakers the average leadership conference has only one or two really strong keynote speakers but the Catalyst Conference brought a dream team of keynote quality speakers for example some of the people that spoke or performed were: John Maxwell, Nancy Duarte, Kirk Franklin, Bob Goff, Katie Davis, Andy Stanley, Kevin Olusola and Israel Houghton.  You might be wondering why I’m including the musicians as part of the dream team of speakers; it is because the way the conference planners blended music, art, and leadership content each element contributed to creating an enhanced learning experience for all attendees.  Speaking of content below is a list of some of the key takeaways I gathered from the conference.

Realize that everyone can teach you something. –  (John Maxwell)

Remember the audience is the hero, when you are conducting a presentation and realize it is not about you but about audience. – (Nancy Duarte)

Apply Daily the Rule of 5 by doing the five things that you must do every day to achieve your purpose in life. – (John Maxwell)

“Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone”. At times in life we don’t help others because we cannot help everyone in that scenario and in the end no-one gets helped, so instead we should provide help to someone the way we wish we could for everyone.  – (Andy Stanley)

“Haters get louder when you do something that matters” – (Jon Acuff)

Be Different. – The Catalyst Conference raised the bar how conferences can be delivered by combining music, art/entertainment and content in a way which kept the audience engaged and present.

Be Not Afraid. – God encourages us to be not afraid when we take on big challenges or endeavors.

The Catalyst Conference is a great conference for engaging with other leaders and learning how to stretch and grow your leadership skills.  For more information and to see when Catalyst is coming near new you go to http://catalystconference.com.

What leadership conferences or events you have attended that have contributed you growing your leadership skills and knowledge?

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*****

Collaboration is useful when you are:

#1. Dealing with complex issues

#2. Leveraging diversity

#3. Inviting others to buy-in

#4. Dealing with strategic issues

#5. Solving long-term challenges or finding long-term solutions

Collaboration isn’t useful when you are:

#1. Under time constraints

#2. Dealing with issues irrelevant to others

#3. Working with those who don’t have good communication or collaboration skills

#4. Experiencing conflict rooted in divergent values

Collaboration and divergent values:

Conflict rooted in divergent values is a deadly roadblock to creating collaborative environments.

For example, when leadership says our organization values team-work while at the same time rewards and honor are focused on individuals, values are colliding. The mouth says one thing while the pocketbook says another. In this situation, some employees are paralyzed while others embrace the inconsistency and win.

If you’re facing conflict because of clashing value-systems the answer is at the top. Collaboration won’t help you, it only makes matters worse. The only thing that helps is the person/s at the top establishing, exemplifying, and expecting everyone to embrace, core organizational values.

*****

Take your pick – some questions:

What makes collaboration fail?

What makes collaboration succeed?

What are important collaboration skills?

Is collaboration over-valued in the business world?

This blog was originally written and posted on Sep 28, 2010 by Dan Rockwell and was reposted with permission from Dan Rockwell

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1. DON’T SHOW UP WITHOUT HAVING DONE YOUR RESEARCH
One of the things the recruitment team encountered was a number of people coming to us asking why they should consider the company we were representing. Where I sometimes think that’s an appropriate question, when it is followed up with “What types of jobs do you guys have?” it communicates to me that you did not take this seriously enough to prepare ahead of time.

The Takeaway: DO YOUR RESEARCH. Impress any recruiter you meet with your knowledge of the company’s products, position in the market, or even previous year’s performance. That will help you stand out from the crowd, which leads in my next tip.

2. DON’T FADE INTO THE BACKGROUND

Do something to make a memorable impact on the recruiter you are talking to. Tips here include

• Submitting a resume that is indicative of your work experience AND also caters to the position you’re interested in (even if that position is not completely aligned with your experience),
• Creatively answering questions asked of you such as why their company should hire you or what interests you about the company
• Confidently telling  the recruiter what it is that you want both in the short and long term and how you plan to work with his or her company to be successful

The Takeaway: Make a memorable and lasting first impression.

3. DON’T LIE ON YOUR RÉSUMÉ

This is the absolute worst thing you could ever do. When you hand your resume over to a recruiter, you are giving that person free reign to pick anything on that sheet of paper and ask questions about. I saw students who put they had experience with a specific technology and as I would ask them very specific and moderately difficult questions, they would produce a blank stare.

The Takeaway: Leave things off of your resume that you may not be the most comfortable talking to, or find a way to let the recruiter know what the extent of your experience is in that subject area.

4. DON’T FORGET ABOUT YOUR PROJECTS

One of the things that students often times forget is they have a wealth of experience from the project work they do for their classes. This body of work can be a great way to fill a resume that lacks formal work experience.

The Takeaway: Include relevant project work on your resume. A recruiter can then use that information to screen you in a way that sets you up for success and helps them to get a better sense of what skills you bring to the table.

5. DON’T BE AFRAID TO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

A company recruiter is going to ask you a bunch of questions including some tough ones that you may not be able to answer. So what do you do when you get such a question? The worst thing you could do is say you don’t know the answer and then become silent.

The Takeaway: Share your thinking as you are evaluating the question. Often times, recruiters want to get an understanding of how you think, as opposed to seeing that you get an answer right or wrong.

I must confess this list is not an exhaustive one, but it does include some specific things I’ve seen  and general tips that can help students at all levels. Feel free to add more tips in the comments or expand on the five you see above. Thanks for reading and feel free to share this article with your friends that might be interviewing.

The post Interviewing Tips – Top 5 Things Not To Do appeared first on Drive Influence.

1. Plan your attack.  Prior to entering the career fair floor take some time to map out and prioritize the companies you want to meet with.  After identifying the companies you want to meet with spend a few minutes researching those companies.
2. Prepare your elevator speech. In your elevator speech you should state at a minimum your name, background (student – your major, year in school and the school you are attending, professional – current position, and company) and the role you are seeking.  Once you have your speech down be prepared to give anywhere because you may meet a recruiter anywhere at the career fair.
3. Know your resume.  Anything you place on your resume is fair game for a recruiter to ask questions on, so know the content on your resume.
4. Do a couple of practice runs.  When you first get to the career fair stop by a couple of companies that are not on your list so that you can practice your elevator pitch and get some of the butterflies out.
5. Listen to the people before you.  While waiting in line to talk to the next recruiter listen to the questions the candidate before you is asking the recruiter and don’t ask those same questions.  You may build off of a question that you heard earlier but don’t ask the same exact question because the recruiter will be thinking didn’t you just hear me answer that question.
6. First impressions matter.  Going to a career fair is like speed dating and you only have a couple of seconds to make a great impression.
7. Get the recruiter’s contact information.  If possible get the recruiter’s business card so that you may follow up with them.  When you do follow up with the recruiter mention some of the things you talked about to refresh their memory because they might have talked 100 candidates at the career fair.
8. Always be professional, relaxed and confident.  Once I was recruiting at a career fair and a student stopped by as we were wrapping up for the day.  The thing that impressed me with this student was that he was very professional by giving me his business card, resume, he had a great elevator speech and afterwards he followed up. When we started interviewing for the role he was one of the first we contacted to interview, he did great in the interview loop, we hired him and he turned out to be a fantastic employee and it all started with a great first impression.

I hope these career fair tips are beneficial to helping you find the job of your dreams.

Also share with us things that have helped you at career fairs.

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The positive value of making mistakes.

Mistakes indicate you are trying new things. Einstein put it this way, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Furthermore, embracing our mistakes enlightens us. James Joyce explained, “A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”

Most importantly, our mistakes make us. While successes reiterate who we are, mistakes create and recreate us.

Top three mistakes leaders make.

Clinging to the command and control model of leadership is catastrophic when knowledge workers are involved. Knowledge workers frequently know more than the boss. Command and control leaders frustrate and de-motivate. However, setting knowledge workers free leverages their skills, enhances their effectiveness and allows companies to exceed the reach of management.

Losing the big picture in the details slows forward momentum, lowers productivity, creates unnecessary stress, and under-utilizes talented staff. Leaders reach higher and go further when they delegate rather than dive into details.

Neglecting the big Mo results in flat individuals and organizations. Untended organizations naturally cool down and become problem centric structures with negative attitudes. Leaders may forget the power of celebrating small wins to create and nurture momentum.

Today may be a good day for you to better leverage the skills of a knowledge worker, or refocus on the big picture, or fuel organizational momentum.

*****

In your opinion, what are the top mistakes leaders make?

This blog was originally written and posted on Aug 26, 2010 by Dan Rockwell and was reposted with permission from Dan Rockwell

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Courageous leaders do more than listen to constructive dissent, they encourage it. Hot conflict not comfortable collaboration produces brilliance.

Encouraging constructive dissent:

1. Don’t answer first. Tell people you expect hard truths and practical answer. Don’t settle for yes.
2. Share all the information. You discourage feedback when you toss out information you withheld that invalidates what someone just said.
3. Embrace and honor great feedback. Say, “I hadn’t expected that answer; what are you basing it on.” Push back without pushing away.
4. Change your mind. A community leader once told me they never led a meeting they didn’t already knowing the outcome. I started avoiding their meetings. Does it surprise you they didn’t enjoy rich feedback? Once people realize you don’t really care what they think, they stop telling you what they really think.
5. Ask tough questions. One of the saddest things I’ve seen leaders do is listen to bull crap. Exposing smoke-blowers motivates people to prepare for meetings and discussions.
6. Terminate drifters and butt kissers. They just take up space and drain vitality from real workers. Spend time with honest hard thinkers.
7. Publicly honor constructive dissenters. When constructive dissent ends up rejected, honor the person. Disagree without being disagreeable.
8. Focus on solutions not people. Balance #6 with #7.
9. Assign groups to defend positions regardless of their personal point of view. Tell the people to your right they are defending option “A” and the ones on your left are defending option “B”.
10. Make decisions.  Vigorous discussions without decisions demoralize. Great people want to participate and they want responsible decisions that establish clear direction.

Bonus: Get the creative dissent ball rolling by planting a dissenter who publically dissents.

This blog was originally written and posted on July 28, 2011 by Dan Rockwell and was reposted with permission from Dan Rockwell

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Leadership Without Easy AnswersRonald Heifetz; Belknap Press 1998WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

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Not the case.

To my great surprise it took weeks to complete.  I heard things like “oh that is unique”.  Unique I began to understand was synonymous with difficult and costly.  How could this be?  It was a hinge, a simple hinge that I should be able to remove and replace with ease.  Yes there is that word again… EASE.  But this project was not easy.   It was difficult and time consuming.  Why?

Mostly because I wasn’t prepared.

I didn’t really speak the contractor language and didn’t ask the right questions.  When I was in the right store, store #3, the first time, I left the hinge at home. I did find out that day that I needed both sides of the hinge to communicate the problem correctly which was very beneficial.  One side was not enough to provide the full requirements to the sale person.  Store #3 sent me to a different specialty store, store #4, even though they had not seen the hinge.  Prior to going to store #4, I collected both sides of the hinge and was hopeful to finally find my replacement.

This is now 2 weeks into a 2 hour estimated project.

The very nice man at store #4 directed me back to the very store that had sent me away.  If store #3 didn’t have what I needed, I was told, then I would have to hire a contractor.  A contractor to fix a hinge?!  Boy is that scope creep or what?  The costs would go through the roof all for the simple replacement of a hinge.

Once more I tentatively walked into store #3, this time with the broken hinge in hand.

IT WAS EASY.

The same person waited on me but didn’t recall our previous meeting.  I chose not to remind him as I was looking for ease.  He took one look at my hinge and said he had exactly what I needed and he even knew exactly where it was.  I didn’t need to describe or ask for anything.  I just showed him my broken hinge. I was out of the store in less than 10 minutes and paid less than $10.  Back at home I was able to replace the hinges and FINALLY close the door on both my cupboard and the project!

How easy was it in the end?  I was given the name of the correct store right away.  If I had been prepared, I would have solved this problem with 2 store stops.  Instead I made 5 visits to 4 different stores and even considered spending more money to hire a contractor.    Part of this was practice, I had never had to replace a corner kitchen cabinet hinge before and the other part was preparation particularly because I did not speak the language of the home hardware industry.

How many times do our work projects go over time and budget and are difficult to complete? Unfortunately more often then we would like to admit.   Research tells us that our performance increases the easier it becomes.  I invite you to strive for ease in the most complicated situations in order for your project performance to soar.

What wisdom does this story give you for your current difficult project?  Is there someplace you can find ease to ensure it goes smoothly and within budget?

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When managing our career we should incorporate a similar GPS feedback system to provide valuable information on how we are progressing towards our career goals. The feedback required for us to make the necessary adjustments and changes to our career action plan has to come from a wide range of sources such as the following:

Our Self – Taking a long hard look in the mirror to analyze truly how we are doing is the first step to becoming open to receiving feedback.  While you are looking in the mirror I would suggest you do the following:

• Be critical and self-reflecting – Take time to analyze both your strengths and weakness to understand how they impact your ability to attain your goals.  Take time reflect on a daily basis to identify what went well and what could have gone better.  Also as you complete various projects and major actions ask yourself if I had to do this project over what would I do differently.
• Look ahead – Constantly analyze the current work landscape to identify potential roadblocks and detours.
• Listen to the silence – Listen for what’s not being said because someone has not said something it doesn’t mean that everything is fine.

Manager – In your monthly 1:1 sessions with your manager it would be good to discuss the following:

• Core competencies – Discuss the core competencies required for your current role and the next role you are seeking in your career. (For example if you are Software Program Manager one of your core competencies may be project management)
• Identify development opportunities – Based on your past career discussions and current performance identify ways, opportunities, and actions that would help enable you to grow your skills.
• What’s going well and not so well – Real feedback is required for consistent growth so have an open and honest conversation on how things are going.

Peers – Our peers can be a great source of feedback but do realize some of the feedback may be filtered at times because of internal politics, and direct and indirect competition among team members.

• 360 Feedback Survey – A 360 feedback survey allows you gather anonymous feedback from peers, managers and associates on your working styles which also help you to identify potential blind spots.  (Sample 360 Survey –  www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?​u=510151843628)
• 1:1 Conversations – Ask for direct feedback from those you are working with as you complete major tasks and projects.

Career Mentors – Mentors are great sources to receive feedback and guidance on how to plan ones career.  When meeting with your mentor it would be great to seek their opinion on the following:

• Discuss feedback – As you gather feedback from your various sources bounce some of it off your mentor to get their opinion.
• Outline next steps – Once you have updated your career action plan based on the feedback you have received have your mentor help you identify any potential holes or roadblocks.

While gathering feedback you will receive a wide range of comments some of it will be good, some bad and some may just be noise.  During the entire feedback process remember you have asked for feedback to aid in your career growth so you must be willing to take it and not be defensive when some of the comments are not favorable.  Receiving feedback is powerful tool so as you gather feedback constantly look for ways to utilize it to help you achieve your goals.

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