Yes, it is no longer enough to see someone’s resume to know if he or she is the best person for that meeting planner or assistant’s job.
Long gone are the days when people were rotated through a position to find a match, or when a competitor’s star player signed on for the big bucks only to fail miserably in meeting very high expectations.
A bad hire today implies such high costs, that the future of a company may very easily be in the hands of the person in charge of hiring the best candidate for the job.
Today, you have to look beyond the resume when hiring a leader, because normally that piece of paper is more filled with air than a hot air balloon.
Presently, you have to hire leaders by measuring their cultural compatibility. Instead of regarding only a certain set of skills, first you have to consider the person’s behavior and attitude towards the meeting planner’s environment.
In fact, there are 4 criteria that are crucial when hiring or promoting someone to a meeting planner or assistant’s job:
Attitude
It is not easy, but is a must, to identify a “can do” leadership attitude. This requires observation, open-ended scenario questions, and self-confidence demonstrations.
Behavior
This one also requires lots of observation and assessment, because it impacts everyone within the company.
You have to decide if you need an aggressive, results-oriented, fast-paced leader, or a stable, dependable, and caring one; this based on what the meeting planner or assistant’s job requires, not on your personal preference.
Competencies and cultural compatibility
Every job needs a given set of competencies. Define the competencies and behavioral attributes that best fit the position and see which candidates have them.
The candidate who best fits the competencies needed is the most compatible with your company.
Skills
You should hire a skilled meeting planner or assistant, but do not make his or her skills the decisive factor.
Most candidates will be able to learn most skills; however, not everyone is capable of changing or learning a new leadership attitude, behavior, or competency.
A leader should develop a system that measures a combination of these 4 criteria to find the right candidate.
This process is so vital that many companies hire a renowned leadership speaker and consultant to guide them through it as well as to help them design the right behavior, values and competency assessments, to conduct email and face-to-face interviews, and to thoroughly analyze resumes when hiring and promoting individuals, all of this in order to lower the chances of making a bad hire.
Permission mentoring is the habit of ripening aspiring contagious leaders. It is a crucial step in becoming such a leader, who literally learns from example, and one that must be tackled correctly to be able to get the best out of the person being mentored.
According to a top leadership speaker, here’s how to get into the permission mentoring habit successfully:
Ask permission
Always ask people if they are interested in being mentored. Never assume everyone wants to become a leader, because this is not true.
Some individuals are not interested in becoming contagious leaders, and some others may not be interested in being mentored by you, and this is fine, everyone is entitled to choose what works best for them; thus, it is only wise to make sure you are investing your time in people who truly want what you can offer them.
The good thing is that a very powerful force is activated when you ask and someone says yes, a new level of commitment arises, and the results are remarkable; in other words, a new individual is born.
Create parameters
Your mentoring must have well-defined and approved boundaries. If the goal is for the employee to become a contagious leader, focus on the habits such a person requires and reach an agreement as to what is expected.
Before beginning the mentoring program, ask the employee to self-assess each habit, and compare it to your assessment. Talk about the progress you both expect to see, and establish time limits for each session and for the totality of the program in a way that lets you both get the best out of it.
Focus the parameters on activities and behaviors instead of on results, because the first are the ones that will guide the person towards the desired result, while many outside circumstances can affect the second.
Schedule uninterrupted time
There should be a time exclusively devoted to discuss, review, measure, and offer feedback. Honor the process, and your commitment to being a contagious leader and a mentor, by giving it meaningful time. Never allow the person to feel forgotten or neglected.
Employ involved recognition
A mentoring program is a great opportunity for you to practice the habits and qualities of a contagious leader.
Keep an eye on your attitude, focus on the person’s strengths, and employ involved recognition as much as possible. Pay attention and identify as many opportunities as you can to recognize the actions and behavior of the person you are mentoring.
This is key to strengthening the confidence in their ability to become contagious leaders, and will teach them how to use it themselves.
Never stop measuring
Your job as a contagious leader is to develop many other contagious leaders, and you have to make sure the persons you are mentoring are moving in the right direction.
You must keep track of how each one of them is doing and of how many you have at a certain stage of development, so as to be able to control and anticipate when these individuals are ready to move on.
Contagious leadership is a style that is taught through example, and there are big opportunities out there, in very simple and everyday activities, to shape and strengthen it within yourself and others in your company.
Here we offer you 5 significant ways in which you can celebrate all kinds of success, big or small, in a meaningful and open manner to make contagious leadership stick within your organization:
Go public
Recognizing people for their good work is always effective no matter how it is done; however, if done in a public way, it will produce a massive impact, and its value will last longer.
Do it immediately
The most important thing for an employee is to celebrate his or her successes. The sooner you praise their achievements, the bigger the impact this will produce on them and on everyone else within the company.
On the contrary, the longer you wait, the more the person will grasp that you are being insincere in your spotlighting, involved recognition, and vibrant communication efforts.
Be precise
Don’t just come out and say, “Well done, Amy!” Specify what was it that the person did that was so outstanding, special, and worthy of praise.
For example, something along the lines of, “You did an amazing job solving the situation, Amy. The customers truly felt tended to and are very excited about working with us again in the near future. This kind of response is what will get us far ahead. Thank you for caring so much”, would work wonders.
Focus on the strengths
If you want to take someone down and annul every possibility of taking advantage of that person’s qualities, nag them incessantly by pointing out what’s being done wrong or is missing.
In contrast, if you are truly committed to excellence and to seeing the positive in everyone and in everything, focus on the strengths people have and on how you can potentiate them in benefit of your company and that person’s life.
Announce all accomplishments
Any successful action, no matter how small, is a good excuse to celebrate.
Celebrate good habits and qualities, instead of celebrating numbers:
>Send handwritten “God job!” notes regularly to your employees’ homes. You have no idea how such a note from the CEO will make an employee feel. Everyone will know about it in less than 24 hours.
Give this a try: Take a pen right now and spend 10 minutes handwriting five praising notes for five people in your team. Tell them why you value them, and be specific.
Next week, write one note per day; the following week, write two daily notes, and start paying attention to what happens and how things begin to change.
Even without feedback, you will see the difference.
> Honor even the smallest accomplishment, and involve the highest levels of the organization in the celebration.
>Establish a ‘Contagious Leader of the Month’ program. Everyone votes, and the winner gets to participate in a contagious leadership lunch with the CEO.
>Create a ‘Contagious Leadership Wall of Fame’, showing pictures of all these leaders doing what they do best and with a legend explaining why each one of them is being honored in such a way.
There are endless ways to celebrate success. A good leadership speaker can guide you in the process of discovering what works best for your company; nevertheless, it is just a matter of envisioning your organization and getting creative; it is all about having lots of fun and becoming highly productive.
One of the easiest ways to promote a contagious leadership culture in your company is to be constantly aware of the obstacles that hinder it.
Intelligent leaders work on eradicating the conducts and actions that discourage the behaviors of contagious leaders in order to make the good arise by itself.
Here are 4 wise and simple strategies to stop energizing the contained and to start turning your company’s ways into contagious leadership ones:
Stop praising erroneous behaviors.
True contagious leaders are congruent; constantly, in every decision they make.
Let’s say a director whose style emulates that of a tyrant, who cares only about the bottom line, who is three-times divorced because work is his religion and expects it to be everyone else’s, gets promoted to vice-president. What do you think is being praised here?
Make it right to be a contagious leader.
In order to develop contagious leaders you have to commit to doing it.
Just decide that contagious leadership is the right way to go, decide that it is ok to be a leader instead of just a manager, and embody that decision every single day and in every single thing you do.
Before you know it, your behavior will become… contagious.
Get personally involved in the process.
Developing a contagious leadership culture project cannot be delegated; you have to be deeply involved in the process if success is your goal, even though this may not be your only role.
In order for such an initiative to work, you must be a contagious leader yourself, you have to honor and reward contagious leadership behaviors and examples, and you should teach others to become such powerful leaders.
This is basic, because the contagious leadership approach implies a big cultural change for the majority of companies, and it doesn’t work hands-off, as management does.
Select a CLO- Contagious Leadership Officer
Give a hand-picked someone¾as advised by in the lines of a leadership speaker and advisor¾ a meaningful title, a big office, a lot of money, and unlimited authority to put into action, measure, and honor success all the way through your organization.
So many of us long for the “good old days” when the good guys finished first. It seems as though those days have been replaced by all the “bad boys” winning the big games and gaining all the notoriety and huge pay days. Well, we have news for you; the good old days may still be with us.
We recently traveled to Baltimore to visit relatives and participate in a fund raiser for the Baer School, which Bev’s sister Debbie Kastendike, her uisband Graham and their sons Eric and Christopher and his wife Ashley are deeply involved with. The plan was to have an affair at the Legends of Sport Heroes right near Camden Yards where to Baltimore Orioles still play. A special treat would be an appearance by Joe Flacco, Quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. With all the controversy about and around “star athletes” these days I wasn’t so sure that the QB’s appearance was anything worth getting all excited over. Boy, was I wrong!
Joe Flacco impressed each of the 200 people there, including the biggest doubting Thomas of all, me.
Joe Flacco and the Kids of The Baer School
Joe and more Kids
Eric Kastendike, Joe Flacco and Christopher Kastendike
Joe Flacco and Ashley kastendike
Joe and another Baer School Charmer
To watch him was to learn about him. He began quietly, appearing a bit shy at first. Then as we entered the room where the kids were he began to be more lively. For the last picture above he actually asked if the little girl would like to have a picture taken. He didn’t presume she wanted the shot, nor did he walk away relieved that he avoided yet another inconvenience. No, he asked if she would like a picture.
Most of these kids had no idea who Joe Flacco is, nor did they care. They only knew that he enjoyed being with them, paying attention to them, talking with them, smiling with them. They loved him for that and so did the delighted people that came to help the Baer School.
That night, we all saw a side of Joe Flacco, and perhaps other “star athletes” that made us revisit our attitudes toward all athletes. Perhaps they are not all thugs and bad boys. Perhaps a few, like Joe Flacco, are really good guys that just dress up like athletes and happen to get paid a lot of money for doing so. This doesn’t make them bad. In fact, it just helped prove a really important point for all of us. Despite what the world may look like from time to time, good guys really do finish first.
Spend your day looking to peoples greatness instead of trying to find fault and see the results:
* More fun
* More Productivity
* More Trust
* More Confidence
* More Results
Most people have a long list of IRRITATIONS that continue to bother them, over and over again. They learn to accept them as part of life. The IRRITATIONS may come from relationships, violations of boundaries, the work environment or annoying things that for some reason people allow to remain in their lives. Sometimes, IRRITATIONS are a result of our own behavior. We allow these IRRITATIONS to become sources of stress and frustration. When our lives are full of IRRITATIONS, it is impossible to break away and take the journey towards mastery in our lives. You cannot ride a horse with burrs under the saddle, at least not for very long. Similarly, you cannot have a smooth ride in life while accepting the IRRITATIONS you currently allow.
The first step in conquering your life IRRITATIONS is to identify them. The next step will be to develop strategies to rid your life of all IRRITATIONS. What I want for you is to have an IRRITATION FREE LIFE. Is it possible? Absolutely!
Decide today to do something about your top 3. You can either accept them, change them or rid yourself of them. Whichever way you choose, it is up to you.
Passion Counts, it sells, it inspires and people respond to passion. So, if you are not naturally passionate how does an aspiring leader get passionate. The 3 E’s of a Passionate Leader are:
Frank Shankwitz, Founder, The Make-A-Wish Foundation with John Hersey & Beverly Belury
Frank Shankwitz is a Prescott, Arizona resident and a 37 year veteran of the Arizona Highway Patrol. He’s a cop, always has been, probably always will be. He has seen bad things happen everyday for 37 years and you would think his outlook on life might be colored by that. Not Frank Shankwitz! This big man has an even bigger heart. That’s how he was able to make the world a better place for 230,000+ kids with life-threatening diseases since 1980.
In 1980 Frank was contacted by a fellow-officer about a 7 year-old boy named Chris who was dying from leukemia and only had a few days to live. Frank learned that Chris’ hero’s were Ponch and Jon from the television show, “CHIP’s”, and that Chris had a wish; he wanted to be a Highway Patrol motorcycle officer when he grew up.
Frank was one of the primary officers from the Arizona Highway Patrol responsible for granting Chris’ wish, which actually went way beyond the little boys expectations. Chris, is the first and only Honorary Arizona Highway Patrol Officer in Arizona. Frank attended Chris’ funeral in Illinois and on the way home thought about how he and a few others had made this little boys last few days very happy. He wondered why it couldn’t be done for others. Within six months The Make-A-Wish Foundations was operational and was in the process of granting it’s first official wish.
Nearly 30 years later The Make-A-Wish Foundation has 65 U.S. Chapters, 31 in other countries. Over 3500 wishes have been granted in Arizona alone since then while over 230,000 have been granted worldwide, one every 40 minutes.
We have said many times before that great leaders, what we call Contagious Leaders, come from a place of contribution. We can’t think of a better example than Frank. So, if you still believe that one person cannot make a difference, let us suggest that our new friend Frank would disagree.
Contagious Leaders see their primary role as providing clarity in an increasingly unclear world. These leaders practice being clear in vision, setting expectations and demonstrating desired behaviors.
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