Presentation Self: What a difference a year makes!

It was just about a year ago that I jumped on Meg and Mark’s bandwagon – to revolutionize presentation giving, leveraging the wisdom provided by Sacha Chua’s book selections (Presentation Zen, Back of the Napkin, and Slideology) not to mention her own fabulous examples.  Fortunately, my team (mostly willingly) hopped on the bandwagon too.  What followed was not a smooth ride, but rather a bumpy, exhausting one full of doubt, vulnerability, and yes, tears.  At the end of the journey, though, after months of hard work, 10+ iterations, and heaps of support from colleagues, I found my presentation self.

And so, here are a few words of wisdom if you choose to find your presentation self in 2010:

- It’s not about using beautiful pictures and interesting stories … it’s about finding pictures and stories that tell your story, communicating your material in a way that makes you happy.   If you’re happy and comfortable with your story, you

• will have a better connection with your audience because they will see what’s wonderful about you – quirks and all.
• won’t feel the need to memorize your script (as I did the first few iterations – bad, I know!) because the words will flow naturally.

- Focus on a particular topic and be strategic about your audiences.  Start with those you trust – trust to give you harsh feedback, but also trust to have good intentions.  This combination is key.  Only with this trust could I completely revamp my presentation and head into the next round.  I was blessed to have this audience spend several iterations tearing my presentation apart, because when they gave me the thumbs up, I knew I earned it.

- Don’t underestimate how hard it is to do this.  After you read Presentation Zen, it will seem easy.  Then you’ll try it and you will doubt the whole philosophy.  Keep trying.  For me, the trick was to find the balance between the abstract metaphor and the concrete example.  Ultimately, I scrapped 95% of my original presentation, keeping just the main concept.  But, those early metaphors helped shape my thinking in creating the concrete story.

- Buy yourself a cool outfit to go with your presentation.  (I got a gorgeous, soft red jacket).  Feel fabulous when you tell your story.  And smile when people get what you’re saying.

I have to figure out what my BHAG is in 2010 … any suggestions?  What are you focusing on?

The data suggests you might be wrong

I must confess that as a female, there are few things I like to hear better than, you are right.  It satisfies a need, not unlike scratching a pesky itch.

But the data suggests that I’m probably often wrong (although you can still tell me otherwise and score points if you wish).

Let me explain.

As the lead character in my own story, I am the center of my known universe.  As that central character, I am biologically predisposed to relate what I see and what I learn to experiences, beliefs and values that I have.    I don’t do this with malice it is how I am built.

In many cases, this perspective helps me, it helps me to more quickly understand and process the world.   This ego-centric view can also hold me back,  especially if I am not open to the idea that there are other, equally valid, world-views.

Like me, you might also have some invalid assumptions about yourself.

Here are some things that you should know

• It’s possible you think you are smarter than you are (or not as smart depending)
• It’s possible you rate yourself as a better performer (unless you are a high performer)
• It’s possible you consider yourself better looking
• You are probably more generous about intention for yourself than you are for others
• Most certainly you have blind spots about what you think others understand about you, and what they really do.

To be effective leaders, we need to be aware of the risk that our views might be wrong,  and put strategies in place to keep them from holding us back.

The first and most obvious strategy is, don’t assume, ask.  Ask for feedback, think about what it’s saying.  Revisit the feedback when you make new discoveries about yourself and about your world.  Use this feedback to learn how others see the world, and find ways to help them understand you better by first understanding them.

The second strategy is to get help from others.  Get mentors or coaches who can help you see the world from the perspective of the other person.

In the end, there is a lot more to the advice to walk a mile in their shoes than we probably care to admit.

I might be biased against women in the workplace

Oh my goodness.  I still can’t really believe it myself but it seems it’s true.  It appears that I have a personal bias that suggests that career more closely aligns with men and family more closely aligns with women.

Maybe this should not surprise me, since I care deeply about both, but somehow feel I should get extra credit for having grown other humans in my body, my personal trump card in the gender equality [superiority] game.

How did I get here?  To the idea of taking a test to check for bias?

I was from reading  James Chartrand’s confession that he was a woman writing under a  pen name.  Such a well written and deeply personal story of gender bias blew my mind.  I just could not believe that in this day and age this could still be happening.

But, of course,  there are countless studies that say it is, I just figured it was only things like boards of directors in places like the UK and California, not bias against something as basic as your name.

And yet, I gave my daughter a gender neutral name.

I decided to try to test myself to see where I stood in the whole bias discussion.  Not only did the results tell me I am biased, I felt it taking the test.  I could literally feel my brain working much harder to resolve those questions that had career and female together.  Ick!

I must admit I’m still shaken by the result.

We have to face the reality that we are biased.  Each and every one of us.  In America, we are most frequently biased by age, race, height, gender and even attractiveness.

The irony is, that for most of us we really don’t mean to be.  We honestly think that we see everyone as equal but the evidence does not support that. The reality is, that we see the world based upon our own personal experiences.  Our world view is closely tied to what we have seen, what we have experienced, and what we have been exposed to personally.

Social scientists suggest that the key to reworking bias, is experience.  In other words we need to continue to have more role models and we need to continue to see change.

Seeing examples helps us better establish those relationship pairings in our brains that are so strongly rooted in our being. It is entirely possible, that my girls will have a more gender neutral view of the word career.

Or, at least, I hope so.

If you are interested to test yourself here is the link

When will we get serious about Talent Mobility?

We’ve been talking about Talent Mobility for awhile.  We understand that it increases employee engagement.  We understand that it builds better leaders.  We even understand that it is a necessary element in sustaining a successful, global business in the coming years.  And, we are starting to see glimmers of hope – like with Deloitte’s career lattice model – in which employee aspirations and organizational needs are becoming increasingly transparent.

All of these things are pointing to change – change in the industry, change in organizational cultures, change in how we talk about talent.  In fact, industry thought leader Josh Bersin predicts a focus on talent mobility will be one of the top transformational changes in 2010.  DDI hopes so too.  They have placed Josh’s prediction at the top of their 2010 resolution list.

Why is it then that the organizations I speak with seem so far from making this happen? So hopeless??

It’s dang hard, that’s why.  Rationally, it makes sense.  It’s a series of simple equations, really.  If person x moves to job y, person x will benefit.  Job y will benefit.  Company z will benefit.  It’s a big benefit fest – rationally speaking.

Only, people aren’t rational, they are emotional.  And, boy are there a lot of emotions at play when it comes to talent mobility!

I used to think it was about self-interest and that money could fix the problem – incenting leaders and managers to give up people, for example.  But I don’t think that’s it anymore. Sure, it could help.  But it won’t change.  To transform, we need to take the emotional landscape into account.  At the heart of this cultural change to talent mobility is one big emotional puzzle – let’s call it trust and fear.

Let’s climb inside the head of a manager to see what’s really going on:

• I trust myself more than I trust anyone else. Delegating and relinquishing control is hard.  When I find someone I trust to do good work, I do not want to let go of them.  You cannot put a price on that.  It’s like taking someone’s baby away for goodness sake.
• I fear the unknown. I know I have a deadline/deliverable/commitment.  I don’t know *who* is going to do it.  I fear that I won’t get a replacement and that even if I do, they won’t be able to deliver.  Even if I don’t get fired over it, I know I won’t succeed.  I fear failure.
• I don’t trust others to take care of what I have. My emotions don’t stop with holding onto dear life.  Another part of my emotional brain wants my protege to go elsewhere and flourish. I know it’s better.  But, that’s not how I feel.  I feel they’ll do better with me.  Because I trust myself better than I trust others.
• I fear being forgotten. When my star rises above me, where does that leave me?  Will people remember that I got results too?  Will my former star say that I did?  I fear getting stuck and not getting appreciated.  I fear being left out of the process.

When we (HR organizations & business leaders) really start taking talent mobility seriously, we will accept the emotional reality and build it into the model.  What does this mean?  I’m not entirely sure, but here are some ideas:

• Set expectations of mobility on day one of employment/assignment – both for managers and employees, thereby counteracting the issue of attachment.  However, make sure the focus is on results rather than entitlement of moving on no matter what.
• Recognize the strong need for career attachment by finding a “career manager” or “mentor” that will guide both the individual (and the organization!) from job to job, assignment to assignment.  Key is to have this person buy into what’s next without threatening their own position.
• Do a better job of identifying strengths and skills across the organization, to build more confidence that deliverables can get done by an “unknown.”

I really do hope that organizations take Talent Mobility seriously in 2010.  It’s good for everyone!

Happy Holidays!

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Side note: I just finished the first chapter of Jason Seiden’s new book Super Staying Power in which he illustrates (superbly) the effects of emotions on decision-making.  Thanks for the knock in the stomach and some clarity, Jason!

photo credit: gadgetvenue.com

Awesome HR Carnival Poetry

April “Clement C. Moore” Dowling at PseudoHR has posted “HR Carnival – ‘Twas the night before.” It’s a delightful read and has the side benefit of bringing to you a diverse selection of posts from the HR blogosphere.

You’ll find over 25 interesting articles, nestled amongst fine prose that tells the exciting tale of HR Carnival Eve. This is sure to become a classic, told by parents to their children in years to come as they wait for the arrival of HR Carnivals yet to be. Go check it out and get in on the beginning of this tradition!

We Shouldn’t Promote People Based on Merit

Researchers have recently done some modeling around various approaches to determining promotions – they have discovered that randomly promoting people v.s. those who perform well in their current jobs results in a more effective organization.  They say this is due to the Peter Principal, where people who add considerable value in the organization are promoted out of the jobs they excel at and into those they can’t handle – performance in their previous job wasn’t a good predictor for performance at the next level.

So I’m ready to put my employee number in a hat, how about you?

All kidding aside, I think this preferable state of randomness reveals an opportunity for software vendors – the challenge is to dig deeper into HRMS data so that true indicators for future performance can be established and surfaced when the time comes to decide who should move up.

You can check out the NYT article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/magazine/ideas/2009/#r-2

Find Others’ Strengths

Finding your own strengths is quite useful.  It can help you find a better job fit.  It can help you hone your development activities.  It can help you sell yourself in an interview.

It’s less obvious that finding others’ strengths is valuable.  But, it is.  In fact, understanding and utilizing others’ skills can be exponentially more valuable.  After all, you are just one person and you can only do so much.  Partnering with others allows you to multiply and broaden results.

Paradoxically, if you don’t know what others are good at, your collaboration efforts are likely to suffer.   You might ask them to help you with something they are not good at.  This will disappoint and frustrate you, taking up time and energy.  You might think they are a weak player as a result and fail to benefit from their unique talents.  Collaboration is likely to break down into conflict or cease altogether.  Opportunity is lost.

This is a bleak picture, but something that can be easily remedied by observing and appreciating the strengths of those around you.

• Managers, you can help by working with your team members to identify strengths, share these across the team, and promote them across the organization.  You have the power to create an environment of appreciation and value.
• HR practitioners, you can help by providing strength finding tools to employees and by offering a simple mechanism for individuals to share and promote those strengths.  You have the power to foster a culture of effective collaboration.

Secrets of a successful talent review

Well, folks, we’ve just been through a talent review here.  You might think the process is fairly well understood and everything should just go smoothly, but of course, real life is not that smooth, and nor is a talent review.

One of the problems we faced was around the calibration of performance ratings.  Specifically, employees with a performance rating of 3 don’t get on the shortlist of top talent; those with 4 or 5, have a chance, but naturally we’re looking for high potentials among that population.

In the talent review, we discovered that some groups had been very strict with their performance ratings, and that other groups had been lenient.  For example, when sales quota was a key measurement of performance, some groups gave quota achievement of 100% a performance rating of 3; other groups gave quota achievement of 90% a performance rating of 4.  Result:  those cheap (easily won) 4′s distorted the shortlist of talent for that group; the hard won 4′s in other groups came closer to our true definition of top talent.

So what’s the secret of success?  I’ve always said that effective performance management is the true foundation of effective talent management.  You have to have a good grip on who the top performers are before you can start segmenting that group down to find the high potentials.  And in a large organisation, you’d better be sure that the measurement of performance is the same across groups, otherwise it destroys the credibility of the talent review.

My key learning for 2010 is two-fold:

• We have to publish crystal-clear guidelines for groups regarding how to score performance based on key measurements.  We need a consistent approach across all groups.
• After the majority of performance ratings are in the performance management system, we need a comprehensive calibration exercise, especially for those groups that will later do a talent review.  If we don’t make some effort to calibrate, the talent review itself becomes an exercise in performance calibration, when we really want the talent review to focus on high potential top talent.

Leave a comment with your views on calibrating performance and the impact on talent review.

What to do when you find yourself underutilized

One thing I’ve noticed about high achievers is that they  hate to be bored.  In fact, I think that underutilized is probably the biggest risk of loss indicator for a high achiever.  With achievers it’s  results that builds energy.

Underutilized = less results = badness.

Ironically, being underutilized can happen in concert with being overworked.  You can be completely busy and underutilized.  Some would describe this as soul destroying, or more specifically, I would (and have).

If you find yourself in this situation you need to do an analysis of your job mix quickly, to see if there is something you can do proactively to re-work the job to give you the right sense of achievement.

Sometimes, though, reworking the job is just  not an available option.  Maybe what you want to do will not be available for some time,  maybe you don’t have the kind of job that can be better aligned with your interests.

What do you do then?

At this point you have a few options.

You can wallow in self-pity and spiral into a bad attitude OR you can take control of your situation.   The first step in taking control is to do some self-analysis to determine what kind of challenges you need in your life and set them for yourself.

You could…

Work on your network.  Work on giving back to your community.  Work on being more available to your family.  Work on treating yourself better.   Give yourself new goals to achieve.

The key is to do something proactively to control your energy and your situation.  If you don’t do that, you are degrading your self esteem and you are setting yourself down the path of negativity.

Being underutilized sucks, I know this first hand.  But allowing that lack of utility to imact your confidence is much worse.   At the risk of being a broken record I must repeat, your career is yours to manage.  If your company is not utilizing you properly it is your job to fix it.

Is it Time to be Optimistic Yet?

Again, a trick question. At the end of the year, especially ones that have had so much turmoil, uncertainty, and economic pain, thoughts turn to whether the next year will be any better. It’s the same psychology behind setting resolutions and so forth, i.e. January 1 presents a “new beginning” or a “fresh start.”

People generally like to know what the future holds so they can either look forward to the good things that will happen or do something to avoid the bad things.* Businesses are the same. We then look at the past to try to spot trends, check what the experts say, do “wisdom of the crowds” investigation, etc. As always, the rule about everyone’s opinions still applies.

At Steve Boese’s HR Happy Hour last night, the topic was “2010: Looking Ahead” and some prognostications were thrown around. Naturally, whether to be optimistic or not also came up and it was interesting to see the different reactions to that. On one end, some folks want proof that it was time to feel good about the future. On the other end, some folks see optimism as the driving force to making things turn out good no matter what. The real answer to the question comes from taking a bit of both and understanding how an optimistic outlook coupled with an acknowledgment of harsh reality is key.**

In other words, realize that there are no guarantees about what the future holds and that waiting until everything is proven is a recipe for constant disappointment and/or missing out. However, also realize that things won’t always just get better on their own either (at least not for you or in the way that you had hoped), so you need to be taking conscious actions that weigh the risks and rewards. This includes the conscious decision to take no action (as described so well by Mark Stelzner.)

These decisions and actions are not always as simple as we’d like them to be and that’s also behind why we always wish for exact predictions. We say, “Tell me what the right move is so I get the most benefit without making any mistakes!” A short reflection on where unemployment is today shows how well predictions have worked out so far.

So now, companies are looking ahead and asking what to do when the day does come that hiring picks up and they worry they’ll lose their top talent. Point solutions like “do more training”, etc. are suggested, but more integrative solutions are called for that take into account the complex interplay of turnover, career development, engagement, talent inventory, and business strategy.

No one really knows what 2010 will hold, so there is no “perfect play.” Instead, companies need to think through the different ways that things are likely to go and take proactive steps today that will leave them options to take when it becomes more clear what conditions really are.

So the real answer perhaps is that there isn’t necessarily a “right time” to be optimistic so much as it benefits you to have an optimistic outlook both to keep yourself going (i.e. believe in yourself and you can prevail) as well as to keep your mind tuned to spotting opportunities (i.e. take prudent risks). At the same time, you need to confront the facts as they stand today and the very real possibility that conditions won’t get better for everybody in the near future.

*”Flash Forward” presents the interesting prospect of what would happen if people really did have a glimpse of what their situation would be in six month’s time. It addresses the classic issues around prophecy without context, determinism, destiny, and free will.

**see the “Stockdale Paradox” as described in Jim Collins’ “Good to Great“:

“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” – Jim Stockdale

Photo by allieosmar