Archive for the Talent Management category.
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
With 2012 staring us right in the face, I thought I’d dust off an old post as a useful reminder as you plan the year ahead – ”help” is not a dirty word. I have always believed asking for help is a sign of maturity as a leader. I think John Lennon said it best: “I get by with a little help from my friends.” So my question is this - are you easy to help? Think about it…do you make it easy for others to want to help you, or is your demeanor such that most people won’t lift a finger to assist you in a time of need? How many times during the course of your career have you witnessed executives and entrepreneurs who desperately need help, but either don’t recognize it, or worse yet, make it virtually impossible for someone to help them? In today’s post I’ll address the importance of positioning yourself to be helped…
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Bonus or no bonus? That is the question. This is the time of year where expectations are high, and so is the volume of chatter around the water cooler in anticipation of that great corporate tradition…The year-end bonus. So what’s it going to be this year…a turkey, an extra paid day off, a cash bonus, stock/options/warrants, something creative or nothing at all? Complicating matters further for CEOs, Boards, and Comp Committees attempting to determine what to do about bonuses is all the recent media attention and public outrage in regard to what is perceived by many to be excessive, frivolous compensation. In today’s post I’ll take a look at the well intentioned but often misguided practice of year-end bonuses…
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
All sizzle and no steak is not a formula for leadership success. If your organization looks good, but lacks substance, then I would submit this unfortunate condition is a reflection of your leadership team. Great leadership isn’t meant to be proprietary – it’s not exclusive, but inclusive. In fact, truly great leadership cannot be contained – it’s contagious and destined to be transferred to others. You see, it’s not how a leader positions themselves that matters, it’s what they do. The truth of the matter is that weak leadership really isn’t that hard to detect – it’s disengaged, aloof, arrogant, dismissive, disingenuous and self-glorifying. In today’s post I’ll share some thoughts about how to spot leaders who shouldn’t be…
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
When it comes to leadership, I can share the issues of creating and delivering on expectations are no small matter. In fact, understanding how to come out on the right-side of the expectation curve can often be the difference between being viewed as an average leader and one held in high regard. Let me make this as simple as I can; managing expectations is gamesmanship – aligning them is leadership. Moving the goal posts by arbitrarily raising and lowering expectations creates confusion, and is often an intellectually dishonest exercise. Aligning expectations doesn’t need to be difficult – set them, align them, stick to them, and execute on them.
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
As much as some don’t want to hear this, there is an “I” in team - there is simply no getting around the fact that teams are comprised of individuals. If you crush the individual character and spirit of those who form your team, how can your team operate at its best? It cannot. The strongest teams don’t weed out or neutralize individual tendencies, they capitalize on them. The goal of a leader is not to clone him/herself, but to harness individual strengths for the greater good of the team, and for the overall benefit of the organization. This is best accomplished by leveraging individual talents; not stifling them.
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
If your organization confuses loyalty with tenure there is trouble on the horizon. Put simply, tenure kills productivity, and ultimately tenure kills culture. If your business rates tenure higher than performance as a measure for employee evaluation, it’s time for you to consider updating your talent management practices. So, what’s wrong with tenure you ask? In principle very little; but in practice virtually everything. Think of any organization that has mediocre talent, where management has frustrated you with consistent under-performance, or where cavalier attitudes and a sense of entitlement overshadow a focus on productivity & performance, and I’ll show you an organization that embraces tenure…
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
In the text that follows I’m going to poke holes in a process generally accepted as productive, when it rarely is. I’ll likely take some heat over this, and while this post works off some broad generalizations, in my experience having worked with literally thousands of leaders, they are largely true. More than $60 Billion dollars is spent each year in the U.S. on employee training. More than 25% of those dollars are spent on “Leadership Training.” Here’s the thing – when it comes to leadership, the training industry has been broken for years. You don’t train leaders you develop them – a subtle yet important distinction lost on many. Leadership training is alive and well, but it should have died long, long ago…
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Creating a talent advantage begins with smart hiring. That said, it never ceases to amaze me at the number of people who are charged with hiring who possess absolutely no skill at doing so. While I rarely meet a CEO who is completely comfortable with turning the hiring process over to HR, most of them still seem to acquiesce and do exactly that…”Who should do the hiring?” is a question that more CEOs should spend time pondering. Here’s the thing; Anyone can make a hire, but not all hires are good hires. Smart leaders do more than just hire smart people – they have a smart hiring process and/or methodology. In today’s post I’ll share my philosophy on the best way to insure that you hire tier-one talent.
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Review any list of positive leadership traits and “passion” will undoubtedly rank near the top – rightly so. In most cases passion is an asset capable of carrying you through tough times, sharpening your perspective, revealing purpose, and helping you succeed in the face of overwhelming odds. You’ll find no shortage of content describing the positive attributes of passion, but few that examine the downside of passion, and trust me, there is a downside. On more than a few occasions I’ve witnessed passion run amok resulting in untold harm. Virtually any positive trait when taken to extremes, misunderstood and/or misapplied can quickly become a liability. So, in today’s post I’ll examine the downside of unbridled passion…
By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
I have read a tremendous amount of information over the last several months on the topic of toxic work environments. While these articles tended to stir the pot a bit, they were in my opinion mostly missing the mark. The articles should have been written on the topic of poor leadership. Toxic work environments can only exist where a lack of trust and respect are present, and this can only occur in the absence of sound leadership. Let me be as clear as I can - the phrase ”toxic work environment” is code for bad leadership, becasue a toxic culture simply cannot co-exist in the presence of great leadership. In the text that follows you’ll find the truth about toxic cultures…
