Welcome to the April 2007 issue of Rise & Shine
Your Leadership Solutions and Resource Newsletter!
Bright Lights (Tips/Solutions)
For the next several months, Rise & Shine will continue to highlight tips and suggestions from
The 10 Keys of Effective Supervision™:
- Support Growth
- Unite With Your Team
- Praise Others
- Expect Excellence
- Require Accountability
- Verify Potential
- Instill Independence
- Share Continuously
- Optimize Ownership
- Reinforce Relationships
This month's focus is on the eighth Key – Share Continuously:
According to the Rising Sun model, "Share Continuously" is defined as: "Establishing a system of ongoing two-way communication."
Think back to a time when an important decision needed to be made in the workplace.
What was you reaction?
Did you make the decision on your own or did you seek the advice of others that report to you?
If it was a group effort, is this the norm in your decision making process?
If you felt that the decision needed to be made solely by you, then how did you communicate that decision to others?
The point to be made here is that the method in which communication takes place is crucial in creating a workplace community where people feel valued. The more you are seen as someone who is genuinely committed to listening and responding appropriately, the more committed those around you will be to organizational initiatives.
World Views (In the News)
How to Stay Competitive in a Global Job Market
Whatever job you do, looking over your shoulder to see who is coming up behind to take your place won't do you much good these days. The increasingly global nature of the workplace means your competition may be nowhere in sight.
That's true whether you've watched your manufacturing job head offshore or you're a worker still in high demand stateside--a nurse, say, or certain engineers--and any worker in between.
"Now you're competing with workers on a global scale," said Tom Kochan, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and codirector of MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Research.
The question is how do U.S. workers stay competitive when companies can pick and choose from workers across the globe? Talk to any expert in the field and the first words they're likely to say are "the ability to communicate well."
But that's not all. Here are six additional strategies to consider that will keep you ahead in the worldwide rat race:
1. Become a lifelong learner
If you figure school was what you finished when you were 22, think again. This doesn't necessarily mean going back to college. There are a variety of ways to continue learning, from do-it-yourself to highly structured, regimented programs.
According to Tom Kochan, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and codirector of MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Research, it is "the ability to upgrade and keep one's skills current over the full career cycle that is so important today. Technologies are changing and people have to move across jobs more frequently, so they have to make sure their skills transfer across jobs."
Most workers these days can't count on their employers to provide that kind of training. Employers don't have "an incentive to train people to be competitive in the external labor market," Kochan said. "We've got to expand those opportunities so we make sure that all segments of our labor force have access to continuing learning and education."
2. Get the right schooling
At college, learn behavioral skills as well as skills related to your particular profession. That means learning "the ability to work in teams and to communicate effectively, to write effectively, to resolve conflicts and work in a coordinated way," Kochan said.
"It's the combination of a particular discipline or specialization and these abilities to navigate the modern world" that are key skills in a global workplace, Kochan said.
"Slowly, in the best schools around the country, from the grade schools to the high schools, we're beginning to see a little more emphasis on teamwork, conflict resolution, communication. In the best universities, we're seeing it. But we're not seeing it spread rapidly enough to really meet the nature of the skills that employers are looking for today," Kochan said.
3. Think creatively
As technology increasingly allows for job automation, again, communication is the key.
"What's critical for a successful work force in a developed economy … is the ability not just to analyze but to synthesize and tell a story," said Ravin Jesuthasan, a Chicago-based managing principal in the work-force-effectiveness practice of Towers Perrin, the Stamford, Connecticut-based firm offering human-resource and financial-management consulting services.
When workers have only basic analytical skills, the "cost differential makes it difficult to justify keeping that work in this country," Jesuthasan said.
Flexible thinking is also critical. "If I'm running a team and I have a problem, I want different people to give me a different point of view. This requires individuals who are curious, cognitively flexible, tolerant of ambiguity," Suárez-Orozco said. "In the era of complexity, most problems are not black-and-white problems."
4. Take the lead
If you could bottle the qualities that make someone a leader, it would be a valuable product in the increasingly global workplace. Companies want to see people who can communicate their ideas and then encourage people to follow.
"Globalization and competition create chaos because change accelerates," said Kurt Ronn, president of HRworks, a national recruitment firm in Atlanta.
"The constant of 'I'm going to do the same thing tomorrow that I did yesterday' evaporates in a global economy."
"When the world changes ... you need people who can lead other people in a direction."
"There is a lot that's being done in terms of developing leadership talent," Jesuthasan said. "There's a lot of coaching--that industry has taken off in a big way in the last two to three years, the whole leadership-development space."
5. Head overseas
For executives, experience working overseas will often set you apart, said Jamie Hale, a Dallas-based practice leader in work-force planning at Watson Wyatt, the consulting firm.
Clients often say that executives without overseas work experience "can't appreciate how different cultures operate and how business is done [in] a global organization," Hale said.
That desire for expatriate experience ties in to the need for good communication skills, Hale said. The companies she consults with often feel people who've worked overseas understand that need for good communication better than others.
"They can appreciate firsthand what it's like to not be there side by side, and know how important the communication aspect is. If we're always in the corporate office, we can't appreciate that the guy in China isn't there with us. If we're in China and we're trying to work with the people at corporate [in the U.S.], we can appreciate that difficulty," Hale said.
6. Ready, set ... ask questions
You know what the skills are; now how do you go about learning these essential yet abstract skills? Take new classes, try your hand at projects or skills you've never tried before, Ronn said.
"You're going to have to start taking risks," he said.
That means asking questions and assessing your current actions. "What did I do today? Did I analyze any data, did I research anything? Did I create a project?" Ronn suggested as questions to ask. "Did I teach it to anybody else? Did I go into a situation that I wasn't comfortable with and ask good questions?"
And, the message to college students? "Stay in college. Complete your degree. Get a good disciplinary foundation in whatever career is of greatest interest to you, follow your interest, and balance that with a good broad ability to communicate and work effectively in groups and teams," Kochan said.
"Then, once you graduate, your education is far from over. You have to continue to keep it up-to-date."
(Adapted from Andrea Coombes, MSN Encrata, 2007)
Rays of Hope (Stories/Parables)
The Ass in the Lion's Skin
An Ass once found a Lion's skin which the hunters had left out in the sun to dry. He put it on and went towards his native village.
All fled at his approach, both men and animals, and he was very proud that day.
In his delight he lifted up his voice and brayed, but then every one knew him, and his owner came up and gave him a sound cudgelling for the fright he had caused.
And shortly afterwards a Fox came up to him and said: "Ah, I knew you by your voice."
Moral: Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.
- Aesop's Fables |
Thank You
On behalf of all of us at Rising Sun Consultants, we want to thank you for reviewing the April edition of our Rise & Shine Newsletter and we want to wish you all good health. As always, we invite you to visit our website (www.risingsunconsultants.com) and to enjoy our latest book review and white paper.
Until next month: Always Keep Your Eyes on the New Horizon! |
