Should You Turn Down a Promotion to Management?
Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and faculty chair of the Leadership Initiative , has just co-authored a new book with Kent Lineback called Being the Boss. It was Mr. Lineback who a decade ago wrote about entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley with Randy Komisar in The Monk and the Riddle.
Mr. Lineback, spent 25 years as a manager and executive and has been candid about his shortcomings. The book he and Dr. Hill wrote may provide new insights for managers and leaders, in the post recession economy. It may even spare employees some grief as their new managers negotiate a learning curve. Dr.Hill says she frequently asks executives, “How many people have suffered as you tried to learn to do this job?”
Tags: leadership, management, mentoring
Networking in the New Year 2011
As many economists say that 2011 is expected to bring a thaw in hiring, even as the unemployment rate may temporarily rise as discouraged workers come back into the workplace, networking remains important asset in any job search.
Some job seekers are taking a cue from very visible twenty and early thirty somethings who are writing their own rules about employment. Dan Schwabel is one.
Dan has created a splash with his 2009 title Me 2.0 Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success and a new version published in October, 2010 called Me 2.0 Revised and Updated: 4 Steps to Rebuilding Your Future (Kaplan Publishing). He can be found on his website www.danschawbel.com and also blogs at www.personalbrandingblog.com where he’s entered personal branding predictions for 2011.
Late in 2010, I received an invitation to interview Dan through one of his sponsors, DeVry University. No limitations were placed on questions I asked and he wasn’t paid for his participation. The interview was brief and capped at seven minutes.
I asked Dan, who has been widely covered in the media, what is the most difficult part of keeping a brand fresh. He said to keep the information relevant, up-to-date and consistent. Consistency is important he says because you are making an implicit promise to your network.
And when I asked what it was necessary to do to avoid having a brand become overexposed he highlighted the importance of being focused and singled out Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as being particularly effective.
As social media continues to evolve, there will likely be new branding outlets that become popular. Still, the essential truth of networking is you get out of it what you put into it.
A New Era of Telecommuting, Part Two
With the Blizzard of December 26 and December 27, 2010 wreaking havoc with personal and transportation schedules, many who would have otherwise commuted to offices, spent the day after the holiday weekend telecommuting. It’s possible their productivity was interrupted by shoveling snow or keeping an eye on children playing (this being a vacation week after all).
While working from home can bring fewer interruptions and better concentration, there are times when there are clear signs that even the most experienced remote employees may need to consider heading back to the office. Bryant Rice, who is based in San Francisco and heads the North American government sector for DEGW, a strategic business consultancy suggests being alert to these changes. Read the rest of this entry »
A New Era of Telecommuting
In November, President Barack Obama announced a two year pay freeze for federal workers, eliminating plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million federal civilian employees, including those working at the Defense Department and no raises at all in 2012. (The pay freeze doesn’t affect those in uniform or civilian being promoted who would still get the higher pay that comes with a position.)
Then last Thursday he signed the Telework Enhancement Acot of 2010 H.R. 1722 that directs each federal agency to design policies to promote telecommuting. About 5% of federal workers telecommute. The goal is to increase that number. Read the rest of this entry »
Update: Gallup Chief Economist Dennis Jacobe on Job Creation
We asked Dennis Jacobe, the chief economist at Gallup why he thought big business was adding jobs while entrepreneurial companies were shedding them.
He said, “I think the current job situation reflects the lingering effects of the financial crisis and efforts to deal with it. Historically low interest rates and the associated efforts to pump money into the economy, are now producing uneven global growth. Larger companies have access to the credit markets; are building strong cash reserves; and are experiencing strong global demand for commodities and capital goods. Smaller entrepreneurial companies have not recovered full access to credit, nor have the benefited significantly as a group from the global commodities boom. At the same time, the federal government’s ability to run deficits has allowed it to expand spending while the remainder of the government sector had had to pull back.
While it appears large company and federal government hiring is sufficient right now to produce minimal new job creation, the economic challenge today is to find a way to get America’s entrepreneurs and small businesses once again creating jobs. This is a major challenge given the blunt nature of fiscal and monetary policy, but the only way we are going to see sufficient job creation is to get the employment rate back down to acceptable levels in a reasonable amount of time.”
How did Gallup know to compare job creation in large organizations and small businesses? Said, Mr. Jacobe “We have several jobs measures including the Job Creation Index, Underemployment, and our Small Business survey. We asked this additional factor to the survey to see if it would help us reconcile the jobs data we are getting from different sources.”
Looking for Jobs in the Wrong Place?
For those who have been applying to small businesses, the traditional engines of job creation, a new finding from Gallup may have them reorganizing their job search.
Gallup found that for the second week in November larger companies are hiring more workers while the smallest businesses are shedding jobs. Over 40% of companies that have at least 1,000 employees said their company was hiring, while 22% reported layoffs.
At the other side of the workplace spectrum, nearly 10% of workers said their employer was ramping up and 16% said their employer was letting people go.
This was the first time that Gallup asked about company size and I’ve asked Gallup if their chief economist, Dennis Jacobe can explain why and what job seekers can expect heading into the New Year. As soon as I hear back from him, I’ll add an update.
Separately, the study also found that the federal government was hiring while state and local governments were letting employees go, the legacy of budget cutting in the aftermath of the recession.
Tags: hiring, job creation
A Writer, His Workplace and Corporate Patron
For those who us who may be preoccupied with work (and with 9.6% unemployment who isn’t) and seek a broader understanding of our relationship to it, a recent book by Alain de Botton provides illumination.
Mr. de Botton, came to prominence over a decade ago, when he wrote How Proust Can Change Your Life and more recently considered The Joys and Sorrows at Work which met with mixed reviews. Now he continues his journey into how we work with A Week at the Airport (Vintage International 2010). (I learned about the Airport book from Gretchen Rubin’s insightful blog The Happiness Project.)
What is amazing about the book is its origins. It was instigated by Colin Matthews, the CEO of BAA, a subsidiary of Ferrovial that runs airports in England, Scotland and Italy including two outside London–Heathrow and Sansted.
Mr. Matthews, gives Mr. de Botton license to live at Heathrow Airport for a week, He takes up residence at the adjacent Sofitel Hotel and sets out to explore Terminal 5.
His title is writer-in-residence, one cannot imagine he would be any more prolific at a writer’s colony like Yaddo or Breadloaf. Mr.de Botton plunks himself down in the terminal and begins his interviews with travelers, security personnel, baggage handlers and even a corporate executive who seems to have less flexibility than those on the clock.
During one interview he meets Willie Walsh, the CEO of British Airways who is beset by threatened strikes, a balance sheet leaking red ink and the ire of Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer (He has fallen behind on a payment schedule for the 787 aircraft.)
What follows is an amusing portraity for any writer (myself included) who has attempted a CEO or celebrity interview and hoped for more than a tidbit to share with eager readers. “The promise of shared secrets is rarely fulfilled for it is almost never in the interests of a prominent figure to become intimate with members of the press. He has better people on whom to unburden himself. He does not need a new friend. He is not going to disclose plots of vengeance or his fears about his professional future.”
Alert to possibilities, Mr. de Botton floats the idea of becoming writer-in-flight, on a British Airways flight a concept that Mr. Walsh embraces slightly, before apologizing for taking so much of Mr. de Botton’s time and calling for a security guard to escort him from the corporate offices.
The relationship between Mr. Matthews, the BAA executive and Mr. Botton is a curious one, Chief executives have traditionally not been literary benefactors. Even after the publication of the book Mr. Botton puzzles over the motivation for it. In a reply to an e-mail inquiry he wrote, “… I’m stunned that Heathrow airport agreed to this book – indeed initiated it.” Previously, he said, “My experience of the corporate world for my previous book (The Pleasures and Sorrows…) was rather more negative. Again and again, I saw companies closing their doors to writers, assuming that they were either irrelevant or else out to destroy their reputations. The idea that a writer might simply want to observe and reflect in a complex way, both positive and sometimes negative, was alien to them.”
Mr. Matthews replied to a request about allowing a writer at Healthrow to chronicle activities there in human rather than strictly economic terms. He wrote in an e-mail,
“Alain de Botton’s book is not a traditional piece of corporate marketing. Opening Heathrow up to literary critique was an adventurous step and the result is a book that tempts people to think differently about Heathrow.
“We wanted a respected author and somebody who is passionate about travel to help us tell the many stories of passengers beginning or ending adventures at Heathrow, meeting or parting with people they love or just passing through on business.
“We can also tell a story of ongoing improvement in customer service at Heathrow. With freedom to roam the airport for a week and full editorial control of his book, Alain has created a credible story of how thousands of staff working across dozens of organisations are working hard to make every passenger’s journey better than the last one.”
With various models of new journalism being considered by pundits and journalists alike, Mr. Matthews observations offer an intriguing commentary about the role of the writer in our society. And as questions persist about why American corporations aren’t hiring, he offers an unconventional view about how to bring attention to a company’s products.
As the book concludes Mr. de Botton muses about all the other writer-in-residence positions he might take up in “institutions central to modern life—banks, nuclear power stations, governments, old people’s homes—and the kind of writing that could report on the world while still remaining irresponsible, subjective and a bit peculiar.”
Tags: Alain de Botton, Colin Matthews, corporate executives, corporations, Gretchen Rubin, hiring, interviewing, writer-in-residence
Has a Recommendation Cost You a Job or Promotion?
Even a favorable recommendation could impede a woman’s career according to on-going research at Rice University, that shows qualities described in recommendations for women differ sharply from those of men.
And those differences may be costing women jobs and promotions in academia and medicine according to the findings of psychologist Michelle Hebl, her colleague Randi Martin and graduate student Juan Madera, now an assistant professor at the University of Houston. Dr. Hebl says the ramifications extend beyond academia and medicine into the corporate culture. “Women, even if they are protected by law or the organization, experience discrimination in subtle ways,” she said.
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation, reviewed over 600 letters of recommendation for nearly 200 applicants for eight junior faculty positions at a United States University.
Female candidates were described in “communal” terms like sensitive, caring and nurturing. Their male counterparts were described in “agentic” terms that included decisive, independent and aggressive. “Having people describe you in communal terms is not a good thing,” said Dr. Hebl who says that words that are supposed to be positive are not the ones that come to mind when someone thinks of a leader.
Dr. Hebl doesn’t think using gender neutral terms in recommendations will make a difference. Instead, she suggests recommenders look at the requirements of the job itself rather than resorting to conventional stereotypes. The traits that are valued in the academic job are research ability, independence and autonomy, not words that may say a women is not serious about a job, for example role model.
If an employee asks for a recommendation, Dr. Hebl suggests eliminating qualifiers in your description. “Phrases like, ‘I think she might be good’ or ‘might be a leader’ are doubt raisers about ability.”
Why Do Companies Require Credit Checks for Job Applicants?
If you are job hunting, do you need to have more than your job history, resume and references in order? Do you also need to make sure your mortgage or rent payments are up to date?
The EEOC http://www.eeoc.gov/ held a public Commission today to hear testimony about the growing use of credit histories as selection criteria in employment.
“High unemployment has forced an increasing number of people to enter or re-enter the job market,” said EEOC Chair Jacqueline A. Berrien. “As a result, an ever increasing number of job applicants and workers are being exposed to employment screening tools, such as credit checks, that could unfairly exclude them from job opportunities.” opportunity.”
The Commission heard from a diverse set of experts. Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) noted the use of credit histories “create[s] a fundamental ‘Catch-22’ for job applicants,” especially during a period of high unemployment and high foreclosures, both of which have a negative impact on credit.” She observed, “You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.”
Sarah Crawford of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law cited studies that show credit history is a poor predictor of job performance. She also pointed out many credit reports are riddled with errors or incomplete information, making whatever predictive value they might have even less reliable.
Michael Eastman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Christine V. Walters of the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) and Pamela Quigley Devata of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, LLP—told the Commission that law permits the use of credit history and it is predictive in certain situations. .
However, Dr. Michael Aamodt, an industrial psychologist, said that although there is considerable research that supports using credit scores in making consumer decisions, there is little research exploring the implications of using credit checks for employment screening. Since this has the potential for being discriminatory, he said it would be wise to use an applicant’s credit history only within a thorough background check.
It’s Official, We’re Delaying Retirement
If there was any doubt retirement is being delayed it became clearer on Tuesday. Concerned about rising health care costs and not having saved enough, forty percent of U.S. workers are planning to delay retirement according to a new study by Towers Watson.
Those most immediately affected are older workers and those in pooerr health who are afraid of losing their healthcare coverage.
Workers who plan to delay retirement expect they will be on the job at least three years longer than originally anticipated. Over half the 9,000 respondents surveyed in May and June have also cut back on their spending.
“The economic crisis has had a deep effect on employees’ attitudes toward retirement and especially on risk … workers continue to have a fear that they won’t be able to afford retirement,” said David Speier, a senior retirement consultant at Towers Watson. “Despite the signs that some employees are saving more, spending less and reducing debt as the economy stabilizes, workers continue to have a fear that they won’t be able to afford retirement — and that will have significant implications on companies’ ability to plan their future workforce needs,” he continued.
Tags: career transitions, Retirement
