Valuing Oneself & Others

How do you measure performance and value your talents?

Have you 'actually' measured your value?

'Perceived value' translates into 'actual value'. That is why the best people are sought after by potential employers and executive search specialists. When these people value your skills, wisdom, experiences and competencies you get compensated more, are recognised and  valued even further. 'Pay for the best' is the truism when it come to employment and employability.

How do you appraise your value? How do you get valued like a precious diamond is assigned a price-tag, or your property/real estate is appraised?

Before your next performance appraisal, do a SWOT Analysis. Born of marketing, and used to assess the value of a brand, SWOT can be used to assess your valuable skills, and Unique Selling Points (USPs). SWOT is an acronym for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. By identifying, in detail and exactness, your Strengths (abilities and capabilities) - you can project your Opportunities (including future value and potential). Your Weaknesses need to be reduced, and converted into competencies or your Threats increase to become your risks.

Do a SWOT Analysis before your next Performance Appraisal interview, job interview, or when updating your LinkedIn profile. 

Leadership Lessons: How do you value yourself? How do you value others? How do you answer questions relating to value, relevance and importance?

Those Race Participants In Their Colourful and Tight Attire

I could not resist posting this, as it comes as a timely reminder to those attempting their first (certainly not last) Ironman triathlon. Having completed a race recently, I appreciate and fully knowledge my partner for constantly looking out for my interests and safety.

I believe that the 10 points mentioned on this t-shirt summarises the ordeal our Iron-mates (a.k.a support crew) have to bear. I admit I do have a preference for designing ‘racations’ (#6), that is, a race combined with a vacation. The trouble with racations is, the vacation only begins a day (at its earliest) after the event (marathon, triathlon) has past. By that time, your body may not be in optimal state to walk fast, especially downstairs; or hold a drinking-glass to your lips, after a long-distance open-water swim.

And, when you can create some mobility in your arms and legs, give full credit to your Iron-mates and shower them with full recognition. Our personal achievements mean less without they being around us.

In Appreciation of Volunteers & Officials

Thank you, Dr Leow Jo Lene for this uniquely attractive piece of recognition!

Have I Told You Lately That I…

Athletes enjoy earning their badges of honour after each race. The finisher t-shirt and medal are evidence of their achievement. It recognizes the runner, swimmer, cyclist or triathlete of what they have accomplished. Thus, you may see a new wave of fashion comprising finisher-tees flooding the malls on weekends. Few people would dare ask you if you ran the marathon, or walked part of it when you wear a t-shirt that boldly states: ‘Finisher of 42.195km’. It’s your shirt, and you earned it!

Employee recognition is a crucial aspect of managing and leading teams. It is a simple way of building rapport with people in your organization. It connects you with the staff who deliver behaviors that those around them appreciate, however may be passive to acknowledge. Recognition is also a universal value that many of us can live with. It is the precursor to reward and, sometimes, its substitute.

Some suggested ways of bringing out the ‘glow’ of your staff and colleagues are:

1)    Catch them doing right (instead of looking for blame). Do it as on the spot. It reinforces useful behavior.

2)    Describe these behaviors of worth to your staff during their one-on-one, quarterly interviews/reviews with you.

3)    Selectively send out personal memos of praise to staff.

4)    Share stories of their successes to staff at meetings. Identify behaviors of worth.

5)    Post case studies of performers on your corporate Intranet.

6)    Openly celebrate team successes. Make an announcement, ring a bell, or blow a whistle.

How else do you brighten up your staff’s day? How do you activate their inner glow?

Accomplishments & Achievements In the Dragon Year

Isn’t it great to accomplish something? What does it feel like to you to achieve something difficult or challenging? It feels good, doesn’t it? Whether it is race certificate, race-tee, or finisher-medal: these badges of merit do add on to our sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Recognition is a value that many can relate to. Which were your achievements and awards in 2011?

Within the area of your profession and career, our achievements may include:

• Promotions
• Incentives
• Enhanced package
• Expatriation posting
• Study grant/scholarship

Outside of your profession/career, you could achieve:

• Challenging physical tasks (run a marathon, qualify for membership in a prestigious running group, swim in open-water, ride around the country, climb Mount Everest)
• Win an award for public service
• Win a competition in your hobby/pastime
• Write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days

My friend, Steven Novick’s list of achievements – as a climber and mountaineer – is impressive. He has climbed the seven summits.

Steven Novick - survivor - has successfully climbed all seven of the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest.

What will be your achievement and accomplishment for this year? Which items on your bucket list will you cross off this year? Dare yourself.

Ranking & Your Place In the Universe

How much does ranking matter to you?

Every year, we are exposed to rankings of countries in numerous categories of interest: best airport in the world, safest country, least corrupted country for business, most tourists, etc. Both print and broadcast media play up and leverage on these data, accolades and awards; and countries, committees and communities do challenge these well-intentioned measures if they discover that they pale in comparison to others.

At the workplace, we have performance appraisal and ranking – your chance for promotion hinges on this. If your work is noticed, and you are known as a performer among the managers, you may have a better shot when they do their confidential ranking process. In sports, ranking indicates your performance against others within a race, the sport, and your competitive peers. The processes of peer-ranking and peer-appraisal (especially in 360-Degree Feedback System) can also yield useful information and feedback.

British uber-triathlete, Chrissy Wellington just ranked as the fastest woman over the Ironman-distance in Challenge Roth. She was the fastest woman, broke the world record timing for women, and ranked fifth overall! That means that she out-performed many male professionals in that race. Singaporean 5,000-metre track specialist, Mok Ying Ren was a SEA Games gold medalist in triathlon who excelled in marathons and half-marathons since he made the shift to single sport.

The reason why we race could include:

1)    Motivation to finish a course.

2)    Motivation to complete a physical event for the first time.

3)    To compare our personal performance against previous data.

4)    To gain confidence with each better performance.

5)    To review evaluate our performance, racing strategies, and analyse our results and investment.

6)    To test our physical and mental limits to a new challenge.

7)    Benchmarking our performance against others in the same field.

This two-year-old blog on leadership was #2 on Google Search on ‘Leadership Lessons’ over the last two weeks, and slid down serpentine fashion to top-50, then back up at #2, just behind two major print/online magazines. Realistically, this should happen due to a myriad of factors like SEO ranking and positioning. The more active you are in your content provision, are up-to-date, contemporary, and in your connections (networking) the more likely you will gain a higher prominence. We also moved from relative obscurity to #86 for Leadership Blogs measured against a comprehensive cache of online tools. What these measurements do is encourage us to do better, and provide more useful content to our loyal readers. That is why engagements (comments, feedback, requests) are useful to lead us to where you would like to go.

I did share that I placed three positions off my rankings in running races and multi-sport races over the past year, and I used these results to steer my training and racing strategies towards better recent showings. I evaluated my results, analysed them, and then adjusted my strategies to meet future goals and ambitions.

Leadership Lessons: Be aware of the various ways to raise awareness of your top performers on your team. Help find ways to recognize your team throughout the year. Place them in a place of most potential (as Dewitt Jones stated). Use reference points and guideposts to measure your staff performance, and create new strategies to help them excel. Ensure that each member is more than adequately trained, exposed, experienced and prepared for any conditions and exigencies. Teach them to cook and eat. Life is about experiences that we can relish in!

Give More Ka-Pow With the Power of Wow!

Conventional wisdom and practice suggests that we ‘catch people doing wrong’. That’s right – pounce on them when they commit errors, err, and live their erroneous ways. Right?

There are ways. Seek the road that leads to your results, or take the road less travelled. Blame and shame, are two ways; proclaim and name, are another two ways. One empowers, while the other robs you of your enthusiasm, motivation and eagerness to perform better.

How do we empower people? Empower means ‘to give power’. How much empowerment have you given lately? Empowerment requires that we give up part of our authority and still retain the responsibility. We do not absolve ourselves of the responsibility – comes with the title and role.

Do like what two-time cancer survivor, Sean Swarner did – empower yourself through others!

Perhaps, encourage others through their performance may be just as useful. Here are several ways to do it:

1)    Write a recognition note with a specific example (evidence of feedback).

2)    Post a story of what your team did well on your company’s intranet. Most intranet portals are under-utilised and, predictably, become digital white horses through time. Apply positive Facebook enthusiasm when you post.

3)    Submit a report of the success story in your corporate newsletter; twist your editor’s arm to get the story in. Make a pitch for space. Print newsletters have a certain permanence that online versions don’t.

4)    Spread a success story over the social media platform: tweet, blog, or submit a Facebook announcement.

5)    Give a WOW-cher (voucher) today! That is a special note that announces to the person what you appreciate about them. Allow them to trade that note for a gift.

6)    Re-gift. Give somebody a present of an unused item (not things you intend to toss out). Avoid returning them their gift to you.

The downside of a lack of recognition extends to former-champions and national sports athletes who have been ignored after injury prematurely ended their career.

Leadership Lesson: Take care of others who have provided and assisted, in our past. Be grateful for small things. No small gesture of kindness is too small to be ignored. Demonstrate your sense of gratitude to another person.

His Name Is Earl: Making Good on Your Word

In the popular television series, My Name is Earl the reformed protagonist focuses on ticking off his karma list. His list, formed after a near-fatal accident, was born of having disappointed or bullied people in his life form his past and present. Only when he has satisfactorily achieved his goal of righting his wrong, does he then scratch the goal off his list. Eliminate then erase.

Do you have a karma list? Are there things in your life you would like to enhance or improve on? Is there a relationship that you thought long and hard about renewing? Have you gotten things off your chest lest you develop regret later?

In business, we may have disappointed our customers and clients. How do you make amends? Before it escalates into something beyond our control, how can you provide service recovery? Small gestures of kindness and generosity can make a difference, however small. Give without consideration for receiving. Appreciate what it feels like to give instead of taking. Not everything that we do has to be conditional, or have a catch.

Go out of your way to delight a friend. Create surprises. Help a person feel good about themselves. Catch your staff doing right. Praise. Give recognition. Offer useful feedback. Make a recommendation. Project good and positive energies into the universe. What goes around, might come around.

Leadership Lessons: What will you do better tomorrow? What will you seek to correct in your relationships? Which practices will you shift from worst to good? Which have you identified as your best practices in your company?

Benchmarked Against the Best of the Best

It feels good to be noticed; it is sign that you have created attention and attraction. Recognition is a useful value to bestow upon others. Most staff appreciate being recognized; they feel important and valued. Yet, one man’s meat is another man’s poison and opinions differ on performers and their peformance. I have yet to discover an Asian leadership website/blog that ranks high with other international ones. I hope that 2011 will feature distinguished Asian leadership/management bloggers.

One of the collaborative sites I share the honour to be with is on AllTop Leadership. One of our fellow bloggers recently featured the top-50 leadership sites. Founded by Guy Kawasaki, author of many business books including The Art of the Start, and The Macintosh Way – this mega-site of blogs features top-notch leadership authors, including leading book authors and consultants. I hope to review Mr Kawasaki’s new book Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, just before it is launched in early-March.

Please read the blogs featured on my site. Certainly, bloggers who are endurance athletes (and leaders in their own fields) have a special place in my heart. Some are regular bloggers (almost daily) that makes for frequent reading. It is like catching up with old friends and their adventures, and we are indeed friends. All readers of this blog and the recommended ones are all friends!

8 Ways To Recognise Your Staff

Recognition is a precursor of rapport. Rapport is that set of skills that connects people on an interpersonal way. Too often, staff tend to equate recognition with monetary rewards. Although, on a pragmatic level, employees highly value money (as it is a certain motivator) it is temporal in its effect. After you have blown the whole pile, what happens to your motivation level? Does it wane off?

So, I decided to poll my audience about their thoughts and experience with non-monetary forms of recognition. I thank my Facebook respondents for their recommendations and observations.

1. Public recognition

2. Gen Y would like you to give them an all expense paid Ironman race. Generation X would like you to finish an Ironman race in their name.

3. Give them a simple note of appreciation, done in front of the other staff.

4. On simple praise - it goes a long way!

5. A simple thank you. It’s really appalling that some patients don’t say thank you after seeing their doctors nowadays.

6. Compliments: direct and indirect. Who doesn’t enjoy the occasional compliment?

7. Send them a handwritten note, or e-mail with your appreciation of a job well done.

8. Give publicity of your high-performance team in your corporate newsletter and online newsletter.