Workforce

Fear of Failure Vs. Fear of Success — What’s the “dif” for my career?

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The difference simply depends upon your mindset.  Are you more likely to think in negative terms (e.g., failure) or positive terms (e.g., success)?  Failure is on the same continuum as success.  Fear is used to mask the reality of what you’d truly love to do, be or have, and prevents us from taking responsibility for our career choices.

When people are in low paying jobs where they are miserable, and use their kids’ expenses (kids is the “politically correct” excuse right now) or other excuses for not hiring a career coach to get a much better paying job that they will love, it is a reflection of them not taking responsibility for their career.

We all have a committee of one in our head (aka ego) that loves to chatter.  This chatter reflects conscious and unconscious thought patterns, and reinforces the limiting fears and concerns.  Or, it supports the illusion that you will have a great career someday when other things change.  This keeps us from becoming responsible for our chatter and pursuing a great career: work smarter, have financial freedom, and realize our dreams now. 

If we were to delve slightly deeper into our chatter, we would find that the fear is:

  • normally a fear of the unknown,
  • not being in control of a situation,
  • being right that others are wrong, or
  • avoiding someone else’s poor opinion of us.

 If we were to delve slightly further, you would find that the true fear is:

  • not saying the right thing in an interview,
  • not having your ideas heard,
  • others not making the right decisions on your behalf,
  • not being clear about your career direction,
  • effectively dealing with difficult bosses, employees or co-workers, and/or
  • making difficult ethical decisions.

The point is that you need to get real about your true fear(s).  When you can specifically state what you fear in your job or having a career that you enjoy, then you can make a positive and profound difference.

Why?  What you focus on will expand.  If you focus on fear, it will consume you, hinder any forward movement and impede your decision-making.  If you focus on your goals and move forward with a specific plan in place, confidence will replace fear.

Steps for Positive Results:

1)     Declare a positive mantra.  This will start you thinking in a different manner.  Without doing so, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to move on to Step Two since your excuses are designed to prevent you from changing anything.

2)     Hire a coach.  WHY?  Usually you will make it harder than it needs to be to achieve results on your own.  We inevitably get in our own way.  Having a coach will support your forward progress to keep you on a positive track.

3)    Design a results oriented goal and focused action plan to move forward, and fine-tune it with your coach.  This will support your results by acknowledging your achievements and reinforcing the positive expansion of them.

 (c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2009

 Jeannette Seibly is a nationally recognized coach, who has helped thousands of people work smarter, have financial freedom, and realize their dreams now.  Along the way, she created three millionaires.  You can contact her:  JLSeibly@gmail.com OR http://SeibCo.com

EMPLOYEES ARE OUR GREATEST ASSETS

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OR?  Are they?  As business owners we continually hope for a perfect world where all employees have integrity, are loyal and fit perfectly into any role the company requires.

Unfortunately, it is not a perfect world.  People are unique and bring with them varying experiences, backgrounds, education and other credentials.  They also bring their own set of learning abilities, interests, and personalities!

Do we intentionally hire people who are not assets in our business?  NO!  Then how do they get hired?

We have relied on traditional hiring practices as a means of filling jobs with productive people that can cost upward to 5 times a person’s salary.

Did you know…

           …63% of all hiring decisions are made in the first 4.3 minutes of an interview?

           …Over 50% of all the resumes have false or misleading information on them?

 …to determine technical competency and interpersonal skills, we rely on interview questions such as: “What book(s) have you read recently?”  “What famous person would you like to go out to lunch with and why?”

…business owners spend more time purchasing a $35,000 piece of equipment than hiring someone at a salary level of $35,000?

How do we stop the insanity of continuing to use the same or similar counter-productive methods while expecting different results?

First and foremost, we need to get ourselves out of the way.

The problem is that we think we know enough.  After all, we have worked hard and are successful.  We believe anyone with enough drive and savvy can do what we do.  Many of us, in our efforts to be fair, expend our energies on training or coaching people to change, to fit the job.  We even try paying people more money to be productive and effective.

A better return on investment would be to discover smarter ways to screen, interview, assess, and make the right selection in the first place.   We’ve used the excuse that we’re doing all we can do legally!  However, there are a lot of gray areas in the hiring process that can legally work!

Second.  When we are hiring people, we need to be clear as to our own strengths and weaknesses.

When we hire people to do marketing, sales, and/or servicing of our clients, there is a risk that they may form stronger relationships with our clients than out company has formed. Problems may occur when this employee leaves. 

Be clear and specific about what you do best or dislike doing.  Stay in contact with your clients and/or prospects in a manner that supports them and your employees while sending a message that you care.  Having Non-Compete Agreements may help but too often they provide a false sense of security. 

Third.  Take the time to determine exactly what you need. 

Be open to restructuring or creating a job that will support your vision and mission of the company.  You may find people who have skills that can support your company, but they may not fit the traditional definition for the particular job you were looking to fill.

Fourth.  Establish a consistent procedure, and then follow it regardless of the person! 

The Director of Worldwide Security for a Fortune 500 company once said, “If the company has followed all their own written procedures, by the time final clearance for hiring is issued, there’s a .001 chance of finding out something that people didn’t already know!”

Many companies, in the hiring process, become attached to a person with whom they “connect.”  They lose their perspective when they do not follow their own policies and want to solely follow their intuition.

When we follow a well-defined selection process, we discover more about the person and they learn about us.  We are open to gathering more information by listening to others’ input (e.g., our employees, partners, customers, etc.).  We realize that there are times when our sole instincts are not the best guide.

If she or he is the right person, they will appreciate the time you have invested in determining whether or not they fit the company and job.   That starts the process of developing loyalty.

Fifth.  Be professional. 

Develop interview questions based on finding out “Can the person do the job?”  “Will the person do the job?”  “Does the person fit within this company?” 

Focus on what experience, education and background they have.  What skills can they bring that will resolve problems and issues we are experiencing in our company, industry, and/or profession?  Will they support our style of business?  Will they be:  Team-focused?  Highly competitive?  Capable of going with the flow?  Innovative?  Able to follow well established procedures?

Conduct reference checks, employment verifications, background checks, and core-value testing as well as personality and job fit assessment to ensure that your perceptions of the candidate are realistic, not idealistic.

The bottom line question for our business to truly be successful with each employee:  Is this truly the right person, in the right position, to create the right result for my business?

Fitting people into the right job reduces people-problems and provides businesses with people who are productive in jobs they love.  It supports a profitable vision of “employees are our greatest assets.”

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly and John W. Howard, PhD, 2005

Jeannette L. Seibly, Principal of SeibCo, LLC specializes in straight talk with immediate results and has been particularly successful in coaching and training business owners, their executives and managers, to achieve unprecedented results.   JLSeibly@gmail.com

John W. Howard, Ph.D., owner of Performance Resources, Inc. helps businesses of all sizes increase their profits by reducing their people costs. His clients hire better, fire less, manage better, and keep their top performers.  jwh@prol.ws

Are You Ready for the New World of Work?

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Are You Ready for the New World of Work?

 Regardless of your age, many workers will go through unemployment again in their lifetime.  Now is the time to learn lifelong skills on how to sell yourself and your value; and how to transfer your current skills into new opportunities and pursuits.

 We are now experiencing the start of a new world of work, again!  Back in the 90’s, changes started occurring much more rapidly than they had in the previous decades.  Now, it’s moving forward again.  Are you ready?  

Baby boomers, early in their careers, were willing to take risks, take a stand for what is right, and move heaven and earth to make it happen.  Then, they became older, and other priorities took over, e.g., kids, mortgages, retirement and caring for their parents. 

Then, the next generation of movers and shakers evolved (aka Generations X and Y) and their views of success are different.  They are not willing to settle for the old standards employers have used for too long to determine career paths, recognition and paychecks.  They look at risk taking as something they will do as long as there is a clear payback. 

The common denominator between all the generations:  most have not had to work to find their next job!

What is the major hindrance in finding the next job?  Attitudes!  Self talk and how we communicate with others limit the types of work and job challenges we are offered, and the corresponding paychecks.

 Regardless of your generation, there are three basic types of job seekers:

 1)  Do nothing and wait out the economy.  They are waiting for employers to call them.  (Hint:  It’s not going to happen.)  Your waiting will impact you professionally, and your family financially.  Many times your health and well-being can suffer, too.  Let go of the illusion that someone will serendipitously recognize your value by simply reading your resume and offer you your dream job. 

2)  Yeah, but’s.   They make luke-warm attempts at finding a job, and rely heavily upon resume blasts or support groups to talk about finding a job.  While support groups can be great in helping people, unless they are results-focused they will unconsciously reinforce the “I won’t do it” mentality that often limits job seekers (e.g., won’t relocate, won’t work in a different industry or profession, will stay unemployed so children can keep their current friends, will keep relying solely on blasting out resumes, etc.)

 3)  I’m the one!  They have an attitude that says, “I’m career directed, job fit ready and open to transition out of my old career path when it is no longer working.”  They realize the only limiting factor is how they view themselves, and they create positive self talk.

 These job seekers are open to effectively exploring, investigating and educating themselves so that they can communicate their value to their next boss!  They do not rely upon past job titles and job responsibilities – they have taken the time to clarify who they are, their inherent strengths and weaknesses and how to communicate these traits effectively.  They are ready for the new world of work.

 They effectively use their network to market themselves using voice-to-voice conversations to elicit the best of others’ ideas and opinions, which goes beyond tweeting, and posting requests on their Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn pages.

As a result, they are the first to learn about the myriad of new opportunities being created throughout the world due to new businesses, industries, inventions, and professions; and unadvertised job openings (an estimated 90% of all openings!). 

Their focus is to find a job that matches their goals and provides job fit–now and in the future.  So they prepare great questions to ensure clarity about the company’s direction, and how the company envisions their path for success.  They are comfortable saying, “No, thanks.” to job offers, when they are clear it won’t work.

 Are you ready for the new world of work? 

About the author:  Jeannette Seibly is a nationally recognized coach, who has helped 1000’s of people achieve unprecedented results.  She has created three millionaires.  You can contact her:  JLSeibly@gmail.com OR http://SeibCo.com

 (C)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2009