Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

What is the big deal about Personal Branding? To be blunt – everything because it is about you and the impression you want to make with other people – whether they are co-workers, bosses, friends, recruiting agents or employers. Let’s be honest, what people think or how they feel about you can directly affect your career or business.

Think about product branding when you go to the grocery store, there are probably some products you buy based on their brand name – such as, some of my favorites are: Pepperidge Farms Croutons and Knorr Vegetable Bouillon.

If the store is out of stock or decides not to carry the product, I shift to a grocer that carries my favorite products. While I am at the new store, I buy other groceries so the first store loses out on my business. The first store may never get a chance to win me over again unless I go there and find my brand name products back on the shelf.

Why am I so loyal to those brands? Bottom line – I know what to expect when I buy the products; there is a clear value proposition. Quality is consistent and I understand how I can use those products when I prepare my meals. Both companies have developed trust with me.

How does that story relate to your personal brand? Ask yourself:

• Do people know what to expect when they work or interact with you?
• Are you consistent in what you say, how you say it or what you stand for?
• How well can you communicate your value proposition?
• Do you stumble when someone asks “What’s your story?” or “Tell me about yourself.”?
• Do you cultivate trust with others?
• How well are you “walking the talk”?
• Do you know what other people think of you? Is their perception different from what you think or hope to be?
• Are you confident with a healthy ego?
• Does your team or organization get what’s important to you or what stand for?

These questions underpin your personal brand development. If you describe yourself inconsistently or communicate with low confidence, it’s a clear signal – your personal brand is suffering.

Depending on your situation, you may need to refine your personal brand message or start with basic confidence building and value proposition development.

Let’s say you decide to work on your personal brand. Here are some of the situations where having a clear personal brand will be useful:

• Instead of being uneasy with your 30 second elevator speech, you will exude more confidence with a personal brand statement.
• Avoid wasting time on organizations whose cultures are misfits.
• Interview more effectively with clear and consistent responses.
• Colleagues and bosses will articulate your strengths and actively promote you.
• Networking events become easier to navigate because you are talking about what you believe in and not what someone has told you to say.
• Increase your messaging consistency – refine your résumé, CV, marketing materials and other social media channels (Facebook, blogging, Twitter) to reflect your personal brand statement.
• Improve team and organizational effectiveness and confidence.

It really doesn’t matter if you are in a job search process or you are now employed – honing your personal brand it can pay off dividends. How has branding helped you or what kind of challenges are you facing as you develop you own personal brand statement?

Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes

What is your opinion on performance reviews? Do you think performance reviews are a valuable tool for organizational effectiveness? Personally, I think it depends on a number of factors and knowing how organizations run, the jury’s out for me. Here’s why.

Not Enough Time

Whoever is in charge of making sure that all the performance reviews are done in an organization knows this only too well. It doesn’t matter if you give the manager 1 or 3 months to complete them, there is always an excuse. The number one excuse is “I don’t have enough time”.

The fact is they do have enough time and probably had all the easy performance reviews done.

The question to ask is “Why don’t they want to do it?” My hunch – not all their employees are superstars.  Managers stall on the difficult ones. Who wants to document their employee’s shortcomings and then be responsible for delivering the negative feedback?

Forced Rankings within Groups

Forced ranking is the process of ranking your employees in order of ability, performance or some other criteria.

Managers are asked to force rank their employees for a number of reasons, such as – to identify who gets bigger increases or who might be at risk during a layoff.  It can create an artificial system for determining true performance because employees are measured against their peers instead of being measured against their performance review results. That’s a message no manager wants to deliver to their employee.

As an example, let’s suppose you have a group of superstars that beat every goal put in front of them and the organization says to force rank your group to figure salary increase percentages. How does a manager tell his bottom superstar that their increase was lower than someone who achieved fewer goals in another group? Where is the fairness in this approach?

Measurable Goals and Behaviors

Performance reviews that use a blend of measurable goals and behaviors get higher marks for me; however, this format makes managers feel uncomfortable.

If a goal is written clearly and has a measurable outcome, that part is a cinch, the only trouble is that someone can make a goal but do it unethically and still be a hero.

The behavioral part is more problematic and challenges managers to 1) write clear behavior goals and 2) discuss behavior shortfalls. Very few managers feel confident in identifying behavior goals or discussing behavior shortfalls without some specific training.

Management hates doing Performance Reviews

It is rare that when I ask a manager if they like doing performance reviews that they say “Yes”. The majority do not believe it is a management tool and prefer to refer to it as an HR process or waste of time.

If the manager is not on board, there is a greater chance the information in the performance review will be sub par. When employees receive feedback that is nonspecific, they do not feel good about their manager or review.

It is time to throw out the Performance Review?

Performance reviews have been around for a long time. The structure and components with in performance review process have evolved, changed or been refined to meet the needs of many other agendas.

So, if management hates or is not good at doing performance reviews, perhaps, it is time to throw it all out and start over.

If you were to do that, what do you think is the sole intent of performance review process? How would you drastically change its role and contribution to the organization?

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

This is a true story about an independent recruiter who wanted to make a career change and work for a company full-time. Over the years, he had successfully completed credentialing as a SPHR and wanted to shift his career to a Human Resources role.

He kept his eye out for some opportunities in his vast network. You are probably thinking – what’s the problem, he’s in the business of matching up people – he should land quickly in the HR career field.

His first interview was with a local company. It was for an HR Manager with heavy recruiting experience.  A couple of days before the interview, his family got some Chinese takeout.

Everyone got sick except for him. They figured it was food poisoning and he was lucky to get a piece of chicken that was not tainted. Without thinking, he had some more of that food the night before the interview and now he was experiencing the aftermath.

He managed to hold it together during the interview though admittedly he was not at his best. Ultimately, the company decided to promote from within for the HR position.

The second interview was with an out-of-state company. It was an internal recruiting job that would allow him to set up a home office and work remotely. This opportunity sounded like the dream job.

The company invited him in to interview and he left one morning to catch the 7 am flight. The only problem is he missed the flight by 5 minutes despite being at the small airport an hour early.

The last interview was with a local company as a Recruiting Manager. On the day of the interview, he mixes up his pain and muscle relaxer medication. The kicker is he took twice as much muscle relaxer medication than he normally takes. You can probably visualize how that interview went.

So, now he is asking himself if he really wants to make a career change and become a permanent employee inside a company. Is there some greater force of nature at work? Is the universe telling him no or it is self-sabotage?

What are your thoughts?

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Lately, I have heard from and work with more people who are working and are not satisfied with their career progression. Here’s one example where a young professional was stalled in her career.

This young professional is a 10+ year employee who is not being considered for promotional opportunities but is continually asked to train others to take over her boss’s position.

She approached me because it had become clear that the company was not going to promote her and she believes she is ready for more responsibility. She was very unhappy and knew it was time to make a change.

What are her alternatives? A situation like this is not always clear-cut and requires some discussion to pull out all the facts. Here are some the questions that I asked her that you should ask yourself:

1. What has her performance been rated as? Is it documented?
2.  Does the company or her boss give constructive feedback?
3. What kind of training has she done to advance her skill sets?
4. Does she have a development plan in place?
5. Does she have an internal advocate, mentor or confidante?
6. What kinds of conversations have others had with her about her career progression?
7. What is the company’s philosophy on employee development?
8. Is she being given assignments that test and stretch her skill sets?
9. How does the company culture impact career progression or promotions?
10. Are job progression paths defined?
11. Does the company have a succession planning process?
12. What kind of activities, behaviors or things is she doing that need to stop (otherwise known as career limiting behaviors?)
13. What kind of activities, behaviors or things does she need to start doing?
14. What kind of activities, behaviors or things does she need to continue doing?
15. Is educational or other credentialing inhibiting her career progression?
16. Can she fix it?

The list could go on…in fact, share your favorite thought-provoking question!

While the background of this situation may differ from your own, my experience is that many of these same questions apply because it is important to understand the big picture. Individual details represent only part of the equation.

It is important to figure out if you are reason career progression has stalled or if the company or its culture is just not aligned with your expectations. Let’s be honest, stalled career progression is often a mixture of both.

There are several approaches and things you can do to increase career progression opportunities. However, the main decision is to decide to stay or go. Your answer defines the priorities and what to do next.

If you stay, the bottom line is you will have to act, behave and do things differently. Remember the adage – if continue to do the same thing – you will get the same results. What to change may be include you skills, political astuteness, relationship building, or possibly increasing your self-promotion.

If you decide to go, the biggest challenge is not to repeat the same mistakes or to let your current company experience unduly influence your next career move.

Don’t blow your opportunity to assess a new company during the interview and selection process. Successful company searches require careful preparation of interview questions and research.

One of the ways my clients understand the areas to explore more fully during their interviews uses the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) assessment process. Your individual HBDI results enable you to devise a balanced interviewing approach by pin pointing the questions that may not be traditionally asked – yet are the deal killers for your career progression.

So if you find your career floundering, think about what changes you can make to put it back on the right track. If you something worked for you – what was it?

Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

When I was 13 years old, my teacher gave me an assignment. Write your life story. You probably think I had a big experience to remember it all these years later. Not even close – I saved my life story and came across it about a year ago while cleaning out my personal files.

It amazed me. On my front cover, I wrote:

This is a story of a person who has happy, funny and tragic disasters happen to her.”

My story started at the beginning, the day I was born. While I read my life story up until 13, I marveled at what was important to me – the events that stood out and what my perspective was of my family – especially my two brothers. But that was not what struck me as remarkable.

The last page was My Future. It was where I described my dreams as a young teenager.

I’d like to share with you what I aspired to be when I grew up.

In the future, I hope to win some kind of prize as a ribbon or trophy for our big track meet. I hope to be a good runner some day. I also hope to make cheerleading.

In the later years, I hope to go to college like Bowling Green and major in education to become a teacher of mathematics. Or I hope to major in psychology and become a school counselor.

I would also like to find the right man to marry. I think I would like to have four children.

During while I go to college I would like to make some spending money. I have been sort of dreaming of working in the school cafeteria or being an errand runner for some business organization or be a part time typer. I plan in high school to take in very deep math. I also think it would be handy to take shorthand. And besides taking it for the reason later it will also give some extra credits.

I plan to become a good bowler like my mom.

I think I would like to have my house when I get older be somewhere near Ohio because it is a good location in the United States almost in the middle.

Recently someone told me that we have more clarity about what we want to do or be in our lives at age 13 than we do as an adult. After reading My Future, I believe it. I accomplished or superseded the majority of the things on this list – I won my ribbons, made cheerleading, went to college and made career choices consistent with my interests. The only thing I really never did was marry the right man and have four children.

So, if you have your life story tucked away somewhere, pull it out and read it. If you have teenagers, give them the same assignment if they did not get it from their teacher. Have them save it. They will be glad they did.

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

The Pathways to Entrepreneurial Success 2012 conference will be held at Monroe Community College on January 18th, 2012. This event is the creation of Jeffrey Shepard, Bob Spinelli and Sherry Tshibangu and provides information and resources for:

• starting a business
• continuing the success of your parents’ businesses
• expanding new business opportunities outside of Rochester and western New York

Energizing the region’s entrepreneurial spirit helps keep our local talent and fuels our economic growth. Attending the conference will spark new ideas for products and services and expand your network of resources, contacts and customers. Why miss the natural buzz of excitement – especially with a group of people who are passionate about building a future?

This year’s key-note speaker is Tom Herman, President, Adventures in Entrepreneurship who has  15 years of experience in startups. The breakout sessions for the morning and afternoon are repeated except for the Social Media track which is broken into two parts: beginner and advanced.

• Meet the Entrepreneurs
• Basics of Start ups
• Are you an Entrepreneur
• Marketing on a Shoe String Budget
• Morning: Social Media 1 of 2 (Basic)
• Afternoon: Social Media 2 of 2 (Advanced) – Hannah Morgan will be speaking!
• Dealing with Difficult Decisions

It’s easy to register for the conference or more details, simply go to the Pathways to Entrepreneurial Success website. The cost is $25 for a full day of engagement. Students can attend for $15.

Pathways to Entrepreneurial Success is more than a once a year conference – their website provides more resources and information for you to refer to throughout the year.

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

Every day you face problems. Sometimes the problems are easy to solve and sometimes you face a problem that throws you a curve ball. When you face those situations, what do you do? Bring in an expert? Learn a new problem solving technique? Give up and walk away?

Problem solving methodologies define a process for solving a problem. The process may incorporate other skills necessary to problem solve effectively, such as decision making, creativity and teamwork. I’ll work on providing you a list of some of these resources in future blog articles. For now, let’s address problem solving.

The next time you get that stubborn problem, think about using one of these two problem solving processes:

• The 8D Problem Solving Process
• The Six Sigma DMAIC

The 8 D Problem Solving Process

The 8D Problem Solving Process uses the eight disciplines with a strong emphasis on team involvement. The 8D Problem Solving premise is that the sum of a team’s parts will produce a better outcome than each individual contribution added up separately. The eight disciplines are:

1. Form a Team – the team should include cross-functional members. Ideally, assemble a whole brain team for better decision making.
2. Describe the problem by getting the information directly from the source – the customer, client, supplier or employee.
3. Containing the problem is your quick fix so to prevent the problem from spreading any further.
4. Define and verify the root cause of your problem; this is perhaps the most difficult step. Any root cause you identify should be correctable. To find the root cause, make sure you are asking the 5 Whys.
5. Formulate and verify corrective actions for your problem. Your corrective action plan should identify the owner of the plan, steps, completion date and reason for making the correction.
6. Correcting the problem is where the work gets done. Confirm that the results are satisfactory.
7. Prevent the problem from recurring again by implementing any devices, procedures or processes. This step is different from correcting the problem.
8. Congratulate your Team! Recognition for a job well done goes a long way – consider one of these 20 Ways to Recognize your Employees.

The Six Sigma DMAIC

The Six Sigma was originally developed by Motorola in 1986 and the DMAIC provides a structured approach to understanding and addressing your identified problem. There are essentially five phases to this model:

1. Define the problem or project goals
2. Measure the problem through data collection
3. Analyze the data and identify the root cause and corrective actions
4. Improve the current situation by identifying solutions
5. Control the situation to prevent occurrence

There are many more problem solving models used in business today, what is your favorite and why?

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

The Rochester Professional Consultant’s Network (RPCN) is a progressive networking group in Rochester for consultants or anyone starting a new business. It is the go to place for finding experts and resources to help people and businesses.

If you are thinking of starting your own consulting business, RPCN is offering five half-day workshops to help jump-start or restart your consulting business. Read the full details at the RPCN Consulting Bootcamp sign up page.

In this workshop series, you will find a unique set of presentations, workshops and panel discussions led by consultants or experts who have been there and done it. The topics include:

• Define Your Services, Customers and Benefits
• Plan Your Consulting Business
• Market Your Consulting Services
• Price Your Services
• Finance Your Business
• Decide on Legal Business Form, Taxes, Liability and Insurance
• Present Your Business Proposition to Prospective Clients

The hands on workshops will urge you to apply what you learn while you are learning it. Whether you are a new consultant or are ready to reinvent yourself, the RPCN Bootcamp will give you the resources and guidance for success!

Here are the details:

When

Feb 7, 14, 21, 28, Mar 6, 2012

Five Tuesday mornings, 7:30 AM-12:00 (7:30-8  Registration and Continental Breakfast)

Where

At High Tech Rochester (HTR), Lennox Tech Center, 150 Lucius Gordon Drive, Henrietta, NY

Price

Early Registration:

• RPCN Members* $95
• Non-Members $165

After January 13:

• RPCN Members* $125
• Non-Members $220

* RPCN members must be logged into the website to receive the discount price.

Join RPCN today and pay the Member Bootcamp Price (Includes $95 One-Year Membership):

• Joiners: Early Registration: $190
• Joiners: After January 13: $220

Register for the RPCN Consulting Bootcamp here and be one step closer to running your own business.*

*UPDATE* The RPCN Consulting Bootcamp is SOLD OUT for this session. Get on the waiting list for the next one through the same link!

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

This is a story of Alice. She is an assistant retail store manager and she has a handicap. Alice has multiple sclerosis (MS). Her disability is not clear even though she has had it for many years. She fights it daily and she tries not to let it show.

If you looked at Alice you would see a fit woman in her late 40′s. Staying healthy by working out – this is one of the ways she has kept the disease from progressing more rapidly. She knows that stress is a trigger and her workout schedule helps to reduce stress in her life.

Some of the symptoms of multiple sclerosis are not always blaring to the casual observer. Because Alice has had this disease for a while, she knows how to cover it up.

If Alice becomes stressed or overtired, the symptoms rear their ugly head – she may lose coordination or stumble, experience cognitive confusion or battle speech problems.

To her boss or co-worker, these symptoms signal a performance issue even though her disability has been documented. It is easy to forget about disabilities especially if they are not clearly evident every day. The easiest disabilities to remember are physical disabilities. It’s hard to ignore what you can see.

The toughest disabilities have symptoms that are subtle, sporadic or manifest themselves cognitively. Sometimes it is not clear if the disability is causing the behavior or if your co-worker is a bad performer. The fact is disabilities create limitations and no matter what you think someone can do, they may not be able to do it or do it as well as you.

So what can you do to help a co-worker that has a disability? As discussed earlier, stress reduction is one of the triggers and there are some things you can do to help reduce stress for someone with a disability.

The natural assumption is that stress is self-imposed. Consider this – stress is also caused by other people and their biases.

People close to Alice cause stress every day and they probably don’t realize it. A majority of workplace stress is initiated by her management and her co-workers in their day-to-day interactions.

Here are some situations that cause workplace stress:

• Weight restrictions are ignored
• Training fails to accommodate cognitive or physical limitations
• Use of the handicapped parking space is challenged despite a state approved disability license plate
• Work schedule fails to give adequate rest time between shifts
• Disability related behaviors are criticized – openly or privately
• Poor performance becomes the main focus of disability related behaviors

Here’s the reality. What her co-workers and management do not see is that she collapses when she gets home. It takes a lot of energy and focus to stay positive and do her best at work. Every day she faces workplace stress because her co-workers do not see her disability and assume she can do what they do naturally.

Alice hears non-supportive comments about her disability through the gossip and workplace grapevine. The comments are hurtful. Instead of her boss and co-workers trying to help her, she feels like she’s fighting a workplace battle every day.

It’s enough to deal with her disability privately and she tries not to call attention to herself. Alice does not complain she simply wants to be treated fairly. Being treated fairly does not mean she expects to be treated equally because she will never be on an equal playing field with the healthy.