Innovations over the past year has begun to deliver its seminars using over the internet, through what we call Virtual Learning Experiences (VLEs). They are much more interactive than webinars, using devices such as polling, case studies, and interactive exercises to create an experience almost parallel to that of the classroom. We deliver them usually over the course of about an hour to and hour and 15 minutes. You can visit a couple of examples of them at the following page http://www.innovint.com/services/small-acts-of-inclusion.php . The idea is that it is a lower cost way where people can experience sessions from the comfort of their desktop. This will never replace live classroom training, but is a nice tool to use in addition to the other efforts your organization is making in a given area.

In this time of economic uncertainty, having transformational leaders is crucial to the success of our organizations.

Leadership is the ability to influence the thinking, commitment, and behaviors of others.
Transformational leaders are able to:

• Facilitate the proactive adaptation to change on the part of others;
• Understand and manage the relationship between the human dimensions of work and exceptional performance;
• Understand and manage a spectrum of people, competencies, and styles;
• Understand that the external results one produces is a direct consequence of one’s inner motivation;
• Have an in-depth understanding of one’s self.

Leadership/Management Support—A Personal Assessment

Instructions: Take five minutes to evaluate yourself in terms of your overall workplace performance in a leadership and/or managerial support role. Use a scale of 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest) for each statement with respect to employees under your supervision or those you work with.

1. I am skillful at facilitating both the professional development and personal growth of employees I lead/supervise.
2. I am comfortable working with people who have beliefs and values divergently different from my own.
3. I ensure an environment where high performance is expected and achieved.
4. I ensure, by measurement, a “worker-friendly” environment where employees experience work-life quality and balance.
5. I proactively engage in personal and professional growth.

For the item where you feel as if you rank the lowest, find a colleague or friend outside of work that you trust to give you honest feedback on  two to three Small Acts of Inclusion® might be able to incorporate immediately that would have an impact.

Innovations recommends our course Leading During Turbulent Times—The FuturePerfect Leadership Model as the first step in implementing positive change in the workplace. For more information on transforming your organization please contact us.

If you liked this self-assessment, you might also like our free High Performance Leadership Self Test at www.innovint.com

Dealing with Differences is a challenge whether it is at home or in the workplace.  Here are a few key tips that can help with the process.


1. Realize that how we view the world is through our unique reality— our reality is not necessarily right or superior to others.
2. Be willing to acknowledge that we all have biases and prejudices—tell the truth.
3. Consider the possibility that most insensitivities are unintentional—assume most people are well-intentioned.
4. Be open to feedback when you experience conflict that involves diversity—have the courage to admit that you might have been too quick to judgement or that you might have offended someone.
5. Create experiences and friendships across diversity differences—experiencing others in relationship is the most powerful way to create diversity!
6. Be willing to confront your fears of experiencing differences—have the courage to change and grow, it is key to our survival.
7. Be willing to explore issues of human equality—we all seek to be superior to others in some way.
8. Remember, diversity is a process of continuously learning through experiencing the differences in others–create a relationship with someone with whom you have the greatest prejudice!

Here are some quick tips that we suggest for active listening:

1. Maintain an open mind – Make a conscious decision to be open and receptive to challenging dialogue.
2. Focus on the person – Attempt to avoid all distractions and give the person your undivided attention.
3. Control your emotions – Focus inwardly when you experience a reaction to what is being communicated to understand the emotional message of the person.
4. Show interest – Smile or nod when you agree; avoid shaking your head in disagreement even when you are not convinced of their ideas or opinions.
5. Formulate overall impressions – At regular intervals, summarize in your mind what is being communicated.
6. Evaluate the content – Evaluate the content of the communication, not the person or his or her style of delivery.
7. Read between the lines – Listen for hidden messages between the lines using your intuition. (Subliminal communication)
8. Practice makes mastery – Remember, mastery comes with practice; particularly of non-verbal cues or messages.

If you incorporate these simple steps each day, you will see significant improvement in the quality of your relationships with others, both at the workplace and in other parts of your life.

Danny

With the release of our free online empowerment program only a couple weeks away, I thought I would provide some tips on becoming more personally empowered.

1. Assess your present level of personal empowerment.  Honestly evaluate your present level of personal and professional mastery of your job by soliciting input from a broad spectrum of sources.
2. Assess the quality of your performance. Determine whether your performance falls below, meets, or exceeds expectations.
3. Assess your level of commitment. If your performance is below expectations and you are sufficiently skilled for your present job, seriously reexamine if you are committed to meeting the expectations of
your present job. If not, make plans for doing something else.
4. Determine the new skills you require. If you feel you are committed to meeting the expectations of your present job, write, in detail, the new personal and/or professional skills you require, based upon expanded
responsibility and accountability.
5. Acquire a mentor/coach to hold you accountable. Acquire a mentor or a coach to assist you and hold you accountable to your commitment, based upon the consistent results you produce.
6. Overcome your self-limitations. When you encounter a barrier, have your mentor facilitate you in overcoming it. Remember, it is ultimately your responsibility to take charge of overcoming your selflimiting
belief(s) by designing and performing challenging assignments.
7. Define a new challenging area of activity. If you meet or exceed your present job expectations, describe a project or an area of activity that you would enjoy which involves significantly expanded responsibility
in terms of the acquisition of new personal and/or professional skills.
8. Expect new learning opportunities to occur. Begin the project, utilizing and/or learning proven professional methods and knowledge. If difficulties or problems occur, apply steps 5) and 6) above.

I’ll have more on Empowerment in the coming days.

Danny

Ever heard the phrase, “good help is so hard to find these days”? Any HR manager or executive is familiar with the daunting task of trying to find the perfect fit for their company. Today’s workforce is more demanding than ever and every employee must contribute to the overall success of any organization. In response to this, Dr. Guillory released a white paper this week entitled The Age of Human Potential—Talent Management. This paper is the first part in a two part series on the subject. Dr. Guillory describes talent management as, “an initiative designed to source, attract, recruit, develop, advance, and retain highly competent employees.” In his white paper he proves the cost per benefit ratio of each stage of employee recruitment and retention.
The stages are:

• Sourcing – establishing a system and criteria for identifying highly motivated, multicultural individuals for potential employment.

• Attracting – presenting a compelling case to potential recruits that are interested in your organization.

• Recruiting – the collective effort of an organization to show a potential employee that his or her future is best realized by their employment.

• Developing – providing the opportunity and support necessary to an employee for their continual expanding potential.

• Advancing – providing the opportunity for employees to attain higher positions of responsibility, as a result of mentoring, coaching, and visible opportunities, in proportion to performance.

• Retaining – the result of the proactive, professional development of an employee.

Business objectives have continued to evolve over the centuries as technology presents us with more efficient work tools and more challenging tasks. Dr. Guillory shows this progression over time and suggests that every organization develop a talent management support system that continuously monitors the efforts of employee well being.

Recently the subject of work life balance has found a new awakening. The concept of balancing our personal and business needs isn’t a new phenomenon however it’s become an increasingly growing trend with the development of information technology. Business week recently released a report on the demand for and necessity of work life balance during a recession.

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/special_reports/20090326work-life_balance.htm. Recent studies have shown that even with the technological breakthroughs that have helped make daily tasks simpler, we can still find ourselves stressed and time crunched. These studies also show that in a stressful environment, productivity and employee wellness progressively decline, killing an organization’s profitability. These recent finding have spawned the new age of work life balance. Where employees work in their most productive time scales and shift their focus to the appropriate task at hand.

Some of the steps that Fortune 500 Companies are implementing include:

1. Telecommuting – When employees work from home, they not only create more work time by saving the daily commute, but they also save the overhead cost of a rented or owned business facility. One of the biggest innovators in this is Capital One who is promoting a work from home option to all levels of management.
2. Flexible Schedules – The Corporate Executive Board conducted a research survey asking employees what the most important aspect of their employer was. They found that “In the current economic environment, work-life balance now ranks as one of the most important workplace attributes—second only to compensation.” Their article describes this balance as “The gift of time.” Many large companies offer their employees free time for education, physical fitness, or personal errands. Or they may offer company gym memberships or discount meals as a way for employees to make the best use of their daily time.
3. Education – Many of us just don’t know where to start when it comes to balancing our lives. What is the most important activity we do every day? What activities will help me be more productive? These questions are all addressed in each of our Work Life Balance Workshops. We recently added a resource to our website called Creating Sanity. This is a free self evaluation that we offer workshop participants to help them balance their priorities.

This month Innovations International celebrates its one-year anniversary in becoming a virtual organization. Our employees all balance their home and work life while assisting our clients with successful initiatives in leadership, diversity, creativity and work life balance. The learning we experienced has given us the in depth knowledge that we bring to each of our clients as we assist them in making a similar transition.

Kathleen DiFrancesco
Director of Marketing
Innovations International

Our organization moved to a virtual office last year and the result for us has been better than we anticipated.   However, along the way there are a number of different things that we learned:

1)   Overcommunication is necessary–When we are in a traditional office environment, we tend to pick up many things just by osmosis…spontaneous conversations that come up, impromptu meetings that are called, etc.   Even though it may seem like overkill, it is absolutely vital to be very clear on your meaning, and ask questions if there is any doubt.

2)  The technological tools–Before going virutal, we took a great of time exploring different options for tools that we could use to replicate our communication patterns, and also to save money.   Most of the tools we identified were either free or low cost, and all are internet accessible.   For free applications, we selected Skype for our in house calling/chat tool, Gmail for our email addresses, and Google Calendar for our organizational calendar.  For low cost tools, we chose Egnyte as the virtual server, Ring Central for our virtual PBX, Highrise for our customer database, and Basecamp for project management.   We also have begun holding virtual conferences, and now use Webex as the tool for those events.  Switching to this internet based system has probably saved us 15% in operating costs.

3)  Connecting with other resources–We have also opened up to using Elance as a resource to help us staff up on projects that require skills outside of our core competencies.  Many clients have needs that now cannot be filled by their in-house teams and are looking to us to fill the gap in related areas.  As a result, we now have a trusted team of people that we have identified through Elance who are able to ramp up quickly on our projects.  We have been happy overall, although I would add that our best experiences have been when a project was clearly definable in terms of a result, rather than a result that was more subjective.

4)  Flexibilty–Our team loves the flexibility and the ability to balance work and home life.   Some employees do their creative work at 5am and begin sending in the results of their work, while others make work late into the night.  I am able to work in between taking my children to school, and then soccer practice in the afternoon, fitting things in both before and after. Life unfortunately does not fit neatly into boxes, so this flexibility has made us view our work and our lives in a different way.

5)  Relationships are still the key–Being virtual actually has made the need for quality relationships even more important.  Being isolated with time to reflect on something can result in thoughts running wild, so picking up on cues in someone’s voice or tone can serve as a guide in figuring our someone’s emotional state.   Don’t ignore your instincts….if you think you “hear” something, ask them, because there is probably something to it.

It has been a great experience, and I will share more thoughts on this soon.

Danny