Take Time to Reflect

As I find myself here in the lull between Christmas and New Year, it feels like the perfect opportunity to reflect on 2011 and start to plan possibilities for the year ahead.

Have you taken time over the past year to notice your achievements? If so how have you celebrated your successes? Perhaps most importantly how you can learn from this year’s challenges?

So as you venture into 2012, take a few moments  to consider these questions:

1. What were your 3 greatest achievements over the past year… and how have you shared and celebrated them?
2. What difficulties have you faced… what are the most valuable lessons for you to learn?
3. Now just relax and allow yourself to imagine… where would you like to be, in your life, this time next year? Allow yourself to visualise:
   Where will you be?
   Who will you be with?
   What will you be hearing and feeling?
   And what will be your first step?

You may want to consider these questions on your own or have fun, sharing them with a friend or partner.  Whatever you choose do post some of your answers here…

The best kept secret of effective networking Part 2

In the previous article, I wrote about networking as being a method of beginning a relationship that would become mutually beneficial over time. The person who taught me this, by her own demonstration of this approach, was Rhona Hutchon, then working at the recruiters Hudson, now a director of Harvey Nash Scotland. I first met Rhona at an event in 2000. Rhona approached me and asked good, open introductory questions. She soon discovered that my company then had only 6 people and no budget to recruit, let alone use an agency. Where others would have glazed over and walked away, Rhona took an interest in me and found out a little bit more before elegantly leaving the conversation (incidentally, by introducing me to someone who she thought might be interested in my service), leaving me feeling good about the meeting. Some time later, Rhona sent me a small snippet she thought I might be interested in. A few months later she invited me to an event where she thought I might be able to meet some potential buyers. And so it went on, with Rhona actively building the relationship.

Our company began to grow rapidly, and guess who the only recruiter was that we trusted and respected enough to do business with us? Since then, Rhona has probably placed over 20 recruits with that company. In return, we recommend Rhona to everyone we speak to – a true illustration of a relationship that has been mutually beneficial over time.

When you are next planning to go to a networking event, try the following simple action plan:

• decide ahead what you want to achieve, in terms of how many new relationships you plan to initiate
• enter the event with a smile – it signals friendliness and approachability, and also gives you self-confidence
• ask open, general questions to learn as much about the other person as possible
• listen and look out for opportunities to offer something that will help the other person
• don’t try to push your CV, product or service. Remember that you are just starting the process of building up trust and respect
• always follow up on your promises. Send that article, or pass on that contact
• keep in touch. You never know when that new relationship will deliver benefits

7 Leadership Attributes

Leadership skills: 7 Key attributes for exceptional leaders

We take it for granted that leaders have good communication skills, can motivate people and get results. This article explores seven advanced competencies that set truly great leaders apart.

1 – Courage
A true leader is prepared to go out on a limb to get results. Be prepared to face difficult or risky situations with resolution, self-possession and confidence. Motivate others to follow in such situations. Go for it.

2 – Vision
Have a clear purpose and be able to paint a picture of your vision to others. Mediaeval leaders used symbols on their shields and banners representing their cause, which acted as a rallying point for their followers. What is on your banner?

3 – Inspiring Followership
Why should I follow you? What makes it worth my while? Identify what motivates your followers and capitalise on it. Take notice of their level of willingness to follow you, and adjust your behaviour, communication and example-setting to build their willingness.

4 – Serving
“I lead by serving, I serve by leading”. Serving in a leadership context is a two way street. The leader serves a higher purpose, whether it is a corporation, a deity or an ideal. The leader also serves their people. When you give to those around you as much as you expect them to give to you, you will be rewarded by respect and trust from motivated and inspired followers.

5 – Advocacy.
Present compelling arguments in favour of your cause, idea or policy. Actively demonstrate support for the issue. Be ready to speak fluently and passionately about your cause. Great leaders are inspirational when talking about or debating their cause.

6 – Decision-Making
Sometimes it’s tough; sometimes it feels like any decision you make is full of pitfalls, but as a leader you have to make decisions. So make your decisions with conviction, display confidence in your decisions, take ownership of them and follow them through to implementation.

7 – Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs show agility, speed of response and independence of thinking, driven by the awareness of threat from competition or market conditions. An entrepreneurial leader harnesses this sense of urgency to get results. Leaders with this attribute dream big dreams and achieve big goals.

The best-kept secret of effective networking Part 1

In business, much is made of networking. And yet many of us dread going to networking events because of the pressure of finding new people to talk to, or because we never quite know what to say in our “elevator pitch”. Other people make networking into a competition to see who can get the most business cards. In this article, we offer you a different way of looking at networking that can turn a challenge or a chore into a productive and above all enjoyable activity.

What intention do you have in mind when you go to a networking event? Most people focus on things like “How many business cards can I get?”, or “I want to meet as many new people as possible”, or even “Who can I meet that will offer me a job?”. You may have found that these approaches tend not to work. Or at least, you might collect lots of business cards, but you are really no better off than if you’d bought that many names from a list. I recently received an email from someone who said “It was a pleasure to meet you at the recent event”. I wasn’t even at that event – but I had lent my cards to a colleague who had run out. The person sending the email hadn’t even noticed that my name is female and my colleague is male. As you can imagine, that didn’t create too good an impression with me.

Let me offer you another way to look at networking – why not see every event as the opportunity to begin a relationship that will be mutually beneficial over time? There are lots of important parts to that challenge which I will explore in turn:

to begin

The networking event is just the first opportunity to meet someone. It is naive to hope to close a deal with someone on first meeting, so why should a networking event be any different. Like any other relationship in life, start with the basics of getting to know each other. Everything else will build on this basis.

a relationship

In business, the idea of a relationship is undervalued, and yet all transactions fundamentally boil down to interactions between individuals. This means that the underlying human relationship is an essential in all business dealings. Time invested in creating, developing and maintaining relationships will always pay dividends. The networking event is the opportunity to create new relationships. If I have started two new relationships out of one event then I am pretty happy – certainly happier than if I’ve collected 50 business cards, but can’t actually remember the people behind any of them. Chances are, those people won’t remember me either.

mutually beneficial

This is the absolute key. We’ve all met the seasoned networker with the polished elevator pitch, who works the room with military precision, and glazes over as soon as they think that you won’t be a potential buyer. On the face of it, these people have a great strategy, but think what they’re missing out on. If they walk away from me leaving me feel worthless (to them) I’m unlikely to hold any great feeling of loyalty or commitment to them in return. So as and when I DO have a need for their product or service, guess what? I won’t be calling them any time soon.

On the other hand, what has worked for me, and will work for you too, is to assume that there’s always a way in which I can offer the other person something of benefit to them. This might simply be an article I think they’ll be interested in, or it might be a contact name that they’re looking for. Once, it was a lift to a crucial football match. The thing is, it costs me nothing but a small effort to find out how I can help, and to make that thing happen. Then, when they have a need for my product or service the chances are that I will be favourably in their minds when they’re ready to buy.

over time

The final thing to remember is that networking is not about instant results. The person you meet at networking may turn into a valued client, and this only happens when you have built the relationship, and earned trust and respect. The more you invest in the relationship the more you will understand the other person’s priorities, values and needs, and the better placed you will be to meet those needs.

Preparing for a competency-based interview

An increasing number of employers are using Competency-Based Interviewing techniques. If you apply for a job and are told that the interviewer will use this technique, this article will explain what a Competency Based Interview is, and how you should prepare for it.

Well done – you’ve been invited to an interview. But here’s the rub. They’ve told you that they use “competency based interviewing”. How should you prepare?

First, it helps to understand a little about this technique and why employers use it. In a traditional interview, the interviewer will ask you questions designed to let you show that you have the skills and knowledge needed to do the job. However, it is also important that you fit in with the team, and with the employer’s culture and style. A competency-based interview is designed to ask you additional questions about your character, soft skills and personal attributes that let both you and the employer determine whether you fit their needs. These are called “behavioural competencies”.

This is in your interests – you wouldn’t want to work in a place where you stick out like a sore thumb.

A competency-based interview will spend about half the interview on your job skills, and about half on your behavioural competencies. The interviewer will assess these by looking for evidence of how you have acted in real situations in the past. Here are some steps to help you to prepare for the interview, and advice to keep in mind when you are actually at the interview.

Before the interview:

1. List out all your attributes and characteristics that you think will be important both to you and to a future employer. For example, are you good at handling detail or are you a strategic thinker? Are you good at creative problem-solving or do you develop and follow careful procedures? Are you a logical thinker or are you intuitive?

2. For each attribute, think about one or two real situations in your current or recent jobs which demonstrate how you have used this attribute. The interviewer will want real evidence of what you did to prove that you have this attribute, so having some prepared before you get to the interview will show that you have thought ahead, and will save you from those dreaded “mind’s gone blank” moments.

At the interview:

1. Be honest about your attributes. If you were to convince an employer that you love precise detail because that’s what they are looking for, when really you are a big-picture person, you would soon be caught out once you’d started the job.

2. Take time to think before you give your example. Don’t just rush in with one of your prepared situations if it doesn’t show that you have what they’re looking for. Ask yourself whether this is the best example you can think of to illustrate the attribute they are interested in.

3. Be willing to ask the interviewer to clarify. If they ask you a vague or ambiguous question, rather than asking them “what do you mean?” you could say “do you mean such-and-such?” and show that you have at least tried to interpret what they’ve said.

4. Take time to ask the interviewer about the environment and the people. This process is as much about you evaluating their attributes as the other way round.

Most of all, take a deep breath, relax, smile and show that you know your own strengths and are prepared to illustrate them with real examples. Good luck!