How to Quit Your Job the Right Way

By Barry | Published: April 5, 2012

“Being at the right place at the right time can only happen when you keep moving toward the next opportunity.” -Arthur Pine

Quit your job the right way - From A Leader Quotes Success!Remember that young engineer we hired several months back?

She quit last week.

Thankfully, her departure had nothing to do with me or the job. She is a talented engineer, and she received an offer she simply couldn’t refuse. Of course, I’m sorry to see her go, and I wish her all the best.

Best wishes aside, though, I am disappointed in how she left. I heard the news second-hand. The hand-off was rough and left out a lot of key information. And I haven’t been able to reach her since. As much as I enjoyed working with her, it’s been a bit of a mess.

And that’s what inspired this post.

In today’s modern world, it’s pretty common to move from one job to another every few years. And, although there is a well-developed etiquette for interviewing and on-boarding, there is surprisingly little information out there on the right way to quit your job.

It’s unfortunate, because there is a lot to consider when you decide to quit your job. What will your boss and co-workers think? What does this mean for the projects we are working on right now? How can we keep – and maybe even improve – our relationships for the sake of friendships, references, and maybe even another job in the future?

There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to quit your job – but, thankfully, doing the right thing is easy. With that in mind, here is a guide to the right way to quit your job.

Start Wrapping Up Loose Ends

Just like Fight Club, the first rule of quitting your job is “don’t talk about quitting your job!” In an ideal world, you will already have a new job lined up whenever you decide to quit your old one. Regardless of whether or not you do, the rules are the same. As you’re planning to quit, you want to keep your new job quiet. This makes sure that you keep your present job as long as you need, and that you manage relationships the right way on your way out.

However, as you are keeping things quiet, you also need to be thinking about making your transition as smooth as possible. You are a professional, and, after you leave, you want your reputation to be of someone who does good work and supports your team, regardless of the circumstances. This is your last chance to make that happen.

We all have a few things that are unique to us in our jobs – the way we do our work, the projects we’re working on, certain files or tools or tricks that help our work come out just so. A few weeks before you decide you are quitting, start bringing these special things to a point where you can pass them on. This can mean finishing incomplete documents, getting your files in order, or developing a short guide to your special information so that the next person knows where to go.

Tell The Right People in the Right Order

When you know you are going to quit, set a date. Clear your calendar on a specific day, and schedule meetings to tell folks that you will be leaving. On the calendar invites, keep the title simple – “John/Marisa Meeting” is perfectly fine. The order of communication needs to go like this:

  1. Your boss,
  2. Close co-workers,
  3. The rest of your regular team,
  4. Other contacts.

Here’s why-

Once you start sharing your news, word that you have quit is going to start spreading. This order ensures both that the information is held confidential as long as possible, and that no feelings are hurt along the way by people hearing about it from someone else.

For instance, your boss is your first stop. Even if this person is your reason for leaving, it is wildly unprofessional for them to hear the news from someone else. At it’s core, quitting is a business decision, and professionalism directs us to make the decision official before we start telling people that we made it. If he or she asks you about where or why you’re going, there is only one correct answer – that this new job is a better fit for you in some way. Then, feel free to share with them how. New or different challenge, better pay match, better location, better family circumstances – these are all good reasons. At this phase, DO NOT get into any workplace issues that may be driving your decision. That is a conversation for another day.

After your boss, you tell your close co-workers. These are the folks you’ve built strong relationships with at your job – they would want to know before the general populace. It actually strengthens the relationship to tell them one on one, share your reasons for leaving, and discuss transition plans. It also opens the opportunity to reach out to them individually for networking, drinks, or other support down the line, after you’ve left.

From there, communicating with the rest of your regular team can be more casual – an email or a common meeting (if your boss is okay with that). You don’t need to go in to great detail – just let them know that you’re leaving, that you’ve enjoyed working with them, and what the transition plan is. If there is some time lag between different folks in this group finding out, it’s usually not a problem.

Finally, it’s good practice to begin letting your other business contacts know after your team does. It doesn’t need to be lengthy, and the message should be similar to what you used for the rest of your regular team. This can take place in the days leading up to your departure, though, and doesn’t need to happen immediately.

Don’t Burn Bridges – Build Them

Once you’ve announced that you have quit, it may be tempting to let your work slide or be a little more blunt than usual with the office punk. Don’t do it! Again, even after you quit, you still leave your reputation behind you. People will be especially sensitive to your behavior at this point, since they think that you are being more honest now than before, since you really have nothing left to lose. (What are they going to do? Fire you?)

Along with that, it has been estimated that 70% of jobs are found through networking – friends, family, and, especially, old co-workers. The team that you are leaving behind may be the lead to your next fantastic job. Don’t freeze them out!

It’s especially important that, as you leave, you make sure that your boss and your team have forwarding contact information. There are almost always a few loose ends that need to be taken care of, and the accounting department needs to know where to send your last check. It also gives them the feeling that, even though you are leaving, you are still want to see them succeed.

Leave Gracefully

On your last day, take the time to make sure your area is clean and ready for the next person to take your place. It may be worthwhile to send a farewell email to the team, letting them know how much you’ve worked with them, and how they can contact you (personally or professionally, depending on your office culture and if you actually want them to call you).

If there is a farewell lunch or dinner, make sure you attend and have fun. Stick with rule #3 – don’t burn bridges – but otherwise let your hair down. The folks are there to celebrate the time you spent working together. Enjoy it!

Remember, Quitting Your Job Is A Good Thing

For some reason, the idea of quitting your job has a very negative feeling in America. It seems to be infused with a sense of frustration or anger, like we’re always leaving the job because we hate it for whatever reason.

And that may be true.

What’s important, though, is that you’re moving on to a better place. Whatever anger, frustration, or disappointment there was at your last job – stays at your last job. The new job is a new opportunity to take on challenges, build new relationships, be a new, more successful you. Quitting is a good thing – it’s another opportunity to grow!

And, if you quit your job the right way, you can make sure that you will have even more opportunities – and be even more successful – in the future.

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4 Tips for Assessing Information and Making Top Notch Decisions

By Barry | Published: March 30, 2012

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” -Robert Heinlein

Facebook is great for a lot of things – staying in touch with family, catching up with old friends, or finding your favorite leadership and success website.

What it’s not good for is finding quality information. Despite all of the campaigns and activism that float around the site, it’s just as easy to spread misinformation as the truth.

Of course, we run into this exact challenge every day as leaders and professionals. And separating good information from the bad has a major impact on our decisions, our leadership, and our success.

What we need is what academics call “information literacy” – the knowledge and skills to sort good information from bad, and make good decisions based on information.

Facebook is a great place to practice.

As an example, here is a picture recently shared by one of my Facebook friends. It was followed by a heated comment about the state of the economy and minimum wage laws.

Rent Example of Assessing Information Quality - from A Leader Quotes Success!

Now, I can’t say whether this information is true or not. Neither can my friend. Regardless of the truth, though, it represents all of the things we need to look for when assessing information.

And these are lessons we can take with us everywhere – whether in our business, financial, or personal lives.

First, Know The Source

Take a second and look at the picture again. The data seems to make sense – expensive states are expensive, inexpensive states are not. But where does this data come from? Who is the source of the picture?

Did you see it? I didn’t either. Although the picture looks very professionally done, there are free applications available that enable anyone to create great-looking pictures exactly like this one.

The first step to assessing quality information is to know the source. Whether it’s a government agency, a private group, or even just a concern citizen, any pictures with information worth knowing are either signed by their creators or have the data source listed. If the creator wasn’t invested enough in their work to put their name on it, you have to question it’s importance.

Even if it is signed, you have to think critically about where the information comes from. There are a lot of interest groups in the US and other countries whose primary goal is to sway the public debate. They make a living out of manipulating data into forms that support their position.

For the most part, data from the US government can be trusted. The US has a long history of accurate information collection, and most private groups arrive at similar results from different sources. (Another benefit to US government data – it’s also free!)

However, if the information comes from a private group or individual, learn a little bit more about their information and interpretation methods. Do they have a specific position they advocate for? Does this information support that? Like in any other walk of life, you have to think critically about what someone is saying – especially if it works to their benefit.

In this case, a little Googling shows that this information comes from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a group dedicated to making housing affordable to those on low incomes. A noble purpose for sure – but also with some incentive to lead to a certain conclusion. What is the next step?

Next, Assess Complicating Factors

Once we know the source, we need to start considering other factors that may affect the information. Any data only provides a narrow snapshot of the truth, and separating cause and effect is not always obvious. Is there another dimension to the situation that may be skewing the outcome?

What first made me skeptical about this picture was the way it averaged the information across an entire state. If you’ve ever had a meal in both a city and a small town, you probably noticed that your bill was quite a bit different. In general, urban areas are much more expensive than suburban or rural areas. So what numbers, exactly, were the author using for housing prices?

Let’s take an example. Using the cost-of-living calculator at bestplaces.net, I found that the cost of living in Buffalo, NY is half as expensive as living in New York City (by any definition, an enormous city). The biggest cost difference? Housing. Housing in New York City is 5 times more expensive than housing in Buffalo!

So, if you’re comparing income to rent, which do you use – Buffalo or New York City?

And this is just from looking at two cities!

Even if you average the information over multiple cities, the process is even more tricky. What you get for your money varies even within a single area, populations vary widely, and there may be other important market conditions (like rent control) in densely-populated areas.

Again, this is just an example. In every experiment, it is a challenge to tease out the relevant data from all of the noise. And, again, that involves thinking critically. Could there be other factors influencing the information? If so, how does that affect your feelings about the information?

Use A Reality Check When Possible

The next step is to do what engineers call a “reality check” or “gut check” – does this information sound right? The idea is to use some rough data and a couple of basic calculations just to see if the information is anywhere close to realistic.

Let’s take, for instance, my home state – South Carolina. According to the picture, a worker needs to work 74 hours at minimum wage to afford a two bedroom unit. According to the US Department of Labor, federal minimum wage is $7.25, and a two-bedroom apartment costs $500-$600 per month. $7.25 x 74 hours is $536.50. So, this checks out. Essentially, a worker receiving minimum wage spends a little under half their month just working for rent.

However, look again at the subheading on the picture. It says, “In no state can a minimum wage worker afford a two bedroom unit at Fair Market Rent, working a standard 40-hour work week.” This implies that the hours shown are not per month, but per week. This is backed up by the legend, showing “hours per week” needed to afford an apartment.

But we just showed that an employee at minimum wage can afford rent just working one job in a month. He’ll have to watch his budget, but it’s possible – with most of his paycheck to spare.

So 74 hours a week? That simply doesn’t pass a reality check.

Finally, Understand the Conclusions

This is the most important part of the process. Most information we receive is suggesting a specific conclusion. Invest or don’t invest, buy or sell, do or don’t do. These are the everyday decision we make that determine the success of our business and our leadership. This is where assessing information becomes truly important.

So, this is the most critical step – does the information imply what it says it implies?

If we use this graphic again, the conclusion is a little hard to decipher. Given the tone and content, you would guess that the author was proposing a higher minimum wage, or lower rents, or discussing challenges in the economy. My Facebook friend was more direct – he is a vocal proponent of a higher minimum wage.

We have already shown some significant credibility gaps with this graphic. However, if we assume that everything in it is true, does it suggest that something should be done about rents, or minimum wage, or the economy?

That depends on your perspective. If you are more concerned about the impact on business than quality of life, than you may think the data shown is reasonable – people can still afford an apartment, and raising minimum wage would be damaging to business. On the other hand, if you think people receiving minimum wage should be able to afford an apartment on a week’s work, then something should be done.

This is also where we need to consider larger aspects of the discussion. Information, by it’s nature, only cuts to one single fact in the world of facts. Here, we are just talking about pay and rent. However, there are a lot of other facts tied up with minimum wage. For instance, most minimum wage jobs do not pay for health insurance. In addition, these sorts of jobs are primarily held by young people or people without college degrees. On the other hand, nowadays, it is very common for both members of a couple to work, meaning two incomes based on at least minimum wage. How does this information change your perspective on the discussion?

My goal here is not to sway your opinion one way or another on housing or minimum wage or the economy. Instead, it is important for all of us to think critically about assessing information we receive, and in all walks of life – at home, at work…

Or on Facebook. :)

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Can Leadership Training Be Made Too Simple?

By Barry | Published: March 20, 2012

“Make complex things simple and impossible things possible.” -Programming mantra

Simple Blackboard for leadership training - From A Leader Quotes Success!In leadership and in life, I like to keep things simple.

In engineering school, I was often accused of making things too simple. I enjoyed working the equations and following the data. However, when it came down to understanding the concepts, I would always use common words and simple diagrams rather than multi-dimensional integration.

Sometimes, I feel the same way about A Leader Quotes Success.

For instance, in my recent post about the two essential skills of leadership, I divided leadership into two fundamental areas – planning and management. Connected to the planning piece, I had two other posts on making fail-proof plans: first, a post about the importance of keeping a safety margin, then another about making your leadership plans fool-proof  by ensuring you keep alternatives ready.

For most folks, these are not mind-blowing concepts. They are simple, straight-forward, and can be used immediately. Most of us already use these ideas in our every day lives, and their connection with successful leadership is clear. You may even sit back and ask yourself who would not have considered this in the first place. I did – even as I was writing it!

The truth is, though, that these ideas are important, and they really do matter. And people really do miss them. I have been performing a lot of leadership training lately, and I see these misses happen every day. The story I shared about my young engineer is absolutely true. Elsewhere in her life, she had used these ideas before – and been successful with them. The trick was that she didn’t use this ideas in the world of leadership. For some reason, these simple tools don’t always come to mind whenever we work in a different area of our lives.

And, clearly, they can make a big difference – between leadership success…and the alternative.

There are two parts of leadership that are, in fact, very difficult. They can be learned, and innumerable leaders have been very successful using them. However, there is no way I have known to create a shortcut. It simply comes from practice.

But those two challenging parts of successful leadership are for another post.

However, the rest of leadership training? Simple. Piece of cake. You just need to know what works and what doesn’t. And that’s why we start with the basics.

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An Essential Leadership Trick To Fail-Proof Planning

By Barry | Published: March 14, 2012

“A first-rate Organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.” -Arnold Bennett

Fail-Proof Your Leadership Plans - From A Leader Quotes Success!In my recent post on the two essential skills of leadership, planning was the piece that separated leadership from management.

But how can we make sure our leadership plans are going to work? How can we make our plans fail-proof?

I was recently reminded of this particular leadership challenge by my talented young engineer. While we were discussing some of the most important issues impacting our business, she brought up a process that has been a consistent challenge – radios.

In our facility, we have dozens of radios shared by several departments. In theory, there should be a sign-out and tracking process. In reality, the departments commit every organizational sin – no sign-out sheets, handing directly from one shift to another, no accountability. No leadership team has ever figured out an effective process for making this work – the urgency of working quickly has always trumped paperwork.

Unfortunately, this causes problems for my part of the business. When radios get damaged, we often don’t know until it becomes a major issue. If one goes missing, we only discover it when our leadership asks us to complete an audit. Skipping the paperwork makes money for The Business, but it wreaks havoc on my budget and politics.

So, as we were looking for problems to solve, my engineer thought this was an important one to take on. We started brain-storming some ideas, and I walked her through the ideas of the essential skills of leadership, especially exercising leadership skills versus just management skills.

After a few minutes thought, she then laid out a beautiful plan that would address all of the concerns – the tracking, the auditing, the accountability. It elegantly met all needs of The Business, my budget, and our leadership team.

“Except,” I told her, “for one fatal flaw.”

She looked over the plan again, then one more time. She walked me through it, sure that my interpretation must be wrong, that I must have misunderstood something.

“It’s not about what’s in the plan – it’s about what’s not in the plan,” I explained. “Let’s walk through it together.”

Leadership Plans Are Always Perfect, But…

Just like my engineer, we all develop our leadership plans with the vision of success in mind. Step 1 leads to Step 2, which leads to Step 3, and so on. All the parts fit seamlessly in to place.

Another way to think about it is like baking a cake.

You start out with all of your ingredients. You mix them in a particular way, cook them in the oven, and voila! You have a cake!

However, our leadership situation – and life in general – is more like Top Chef than a leisurely weekend baking session. We generally know the process to start, but we’re never 100% sure that we will have everything we need, when we need it. We may get to the blending process and discover that we’re out of sugar. What can you do then?

Fail-Proof Your Leadership Plans

Previously, I wrote about using safety margin to help protect your plans. If some random event made you run short, planning just over requirement ensured you always had enough.

Fail-proofing your leadership plans takes this challenge to the next level. The goal is to identify the must-have stages in your plan – the areas where the whole plan falls apart if this part doesn’t come through. Then, figure out your alternatives. What’s Plan B if Plan A doesn’t work? Who is Person B if Person A calls in sick? What is Proposal B if Proposal A is too expensive? It’s not just about a safety margin at this point – it’s about insuring your leadership plan against a sink-or-swim possibility.

With our cake analogy, it’s making sure you have an alternative available if you run out sugar. Ask a neighbor? Use some Splenda? Or, my wife’s preferred method – grab some honey? All of these are great options, and they ensure that your cake comes out sweet, rather than not coming out at all.

So, let’s go back to my young engineer. What was the hole in her leadership plan?

Herself. The plan was built around regular audits and rotating equipment – but she was always the one doing the work. From one perspective, it made sense – the rotation was a bit complex. But, if she was ever sick or got promoted, her leadership plan would fall apart. The next person wouldn’t know what hit them.

Fortunately, fixing this part of the leadership plan was easy. We figured out who the back-up personnel would be, and how we could use our existing business processes to institutionalize the work. Managing the process no longer relied on us – anyone in the department could make sure the work got done.

And, with that, our leadership plan is now fail-proof.

How about yours?

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The Two Essential Skills of Leadership

By Barry | Published: February 20, 2012

“Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.” -Warren Bennis

Learn more about the two essential skills of leadership from A Leader Quotes Success!If you were going to break leadership down into its essential skills, what would they be?

This is the question I keep asking myself recently.

You might remember that, several months ago, a young engineer was added to my leadership team. In the last months, she successfully mastered the technology and achieved a position of respect within the team. She is now at the point in her leadership development where she needs to start focusing on, well, leadership.

The challenge is that she, like me, has a very organized way of looking at the world. We manage possibilities and ambiguities, but we like to keep topics orderly as best we can. And leadership is about as messy a topic as you can get.

So, is there a way to take the mess out of leadership? To make the concept of leadership easy to follow? Or perhaps, at least, make leadership simpler to understand?

After a few weeks of thinking on the challenge, I think I may have it – the answer to simplifying the idea of leadership.

So simple, in fact, that leadership can be viewed as two fundamental, essential skills.

Read More »

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When Does A Successful Leader Say Yes?

By Barry | Published: February 14, 2012

30 Lessons for Living - Shared by A Leader Quotes Success!I received an unexpected treat the other day. Dr. Karl Pillemer, the guiding force behind the Legacy Project at Cornell, commented on my recent post about wisdom choosing happiness. Dr. Pillemer, thank you for your kind words – I greatly appreciate your insight!

And, readers, if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend checking out his book – 30 Lessons for Living – which includes some of the best advice received in the Legacy Project, and life lessons we could all learn from.

In his comment, Dr. Pillemer connects another key lesson to leadership:

“The elders offer a strategy for avoiding career regrets: “Say yes.” As one elder told me, “You should say yes to new opportunities unless you have a very compelling reason to say no.” They provide many examples of saying “yes” to a new leadership position (even if they were afraid of failure), and how such decisions were life-changing.”

On a personal level, I couldn’t agree more. Say yes to lunch with friends, to new activities, to new roles that stretch your boundaries. If something doesn’t turn out the way you expect, you always have a chance to do something different. I love to recommend leadership and management as a career path. There are few experiences more energizing than helping a person succeed at a new skill, or seeing a team finally gel.

On a leadership level, though, you need to use this rule with caution.

Saying “Yes” to Leadership Success

In some ways, being a leader is like being a parent. You see a bigger picture than your team, and it is your responsibility to lead them in the right direction, to help them grow.

So, when you say “yes”, you need to make sure the decision is the right one for the leadership path you have set. It’s not just you that you need to consider. In fact, you should be the least of your worries. For the most successful leaders, the first people they think about when they make a decision is their team – because these are the people who are going to be the most impacted. A small decision for a person in upper level leadership may mean a huge change in course for those they supervise. Is saying “yes” the best decision for your team?

The other consideration for saying “yes” in leadership is staying the course. We have all known or heard of people in leadership roles following every new craze as it comes down the line. Every time a new book comes out or they go to a new seminar, the leadership direction takes another turn. What they don’t realize is that each change in direction costs a little bit of their credibility. They may be following the fad today…but what about tomorrow? It doesn’t take too long before their team questions the direction of their leadership. And once you lose credibility, you lose a lot of your leadership power.

To Dr. Pillemer’s point, though, saying “yes” is essential to successful leadership. You can’t move forward without choosing a direction. Saying “yes” means opening yourself to opportunity, to embracing the future and all of the potential it holds. And when you find the right direction, take your team with you.

I recommend you say “yes” for virtually anything that comes your way. Just take an extra minute before you say “yes” for your whole team, too.

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Two Effective Decision-Making Steps Most Leaders Miss

By Barry | Published: February 7, 2012

Cake - a key tool for effective decision-making and leadership. From A Leader Quotes Success!Why does an inmate have a better chance for parole at 9AM rather than 4PM?

The answer is important for all of us who make a lot of decisions on a daily basis.

In a fascinating paper, Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso examined “Extraneous factors in judicial decisions”, looking at if factors other than judicial oversight somehow influenced judges’ decisions over the course of the day. What they found was a significant “break effect”. Essentially, favorable rulings would start at a rate of about 65% percent at the beginning of the day, and would drop to zero over the course of a few hours. Once the judge came back from a break, the favorable rulings would then jump back to about 65%…and slowly drop again over the next few hours.

What causes this dramatic change – and what does it mean for leadership?

In a book published last year, “Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength”, authors Roy Baumeister and John Tierney researched exactly that question. They came up with two basic causes that everyone faces.

The first cause was low blood sugar. The brain uses sugar, particularly glucose, to run. When we start getting low on glucose, our thinking becomes sluggish. We tend to take mental shortcuts – our perspective becomes shallower and less nuanced. We start acting on our gut rather than thinking matters through. This leads to less-effective decision-making. It could be the leader who chooses the short-term over the long-term, or the employee who misses a few entries in their report.

The other cause was what the authors call “decision fatigue”. Saying that the brain is like a muscle is a cliche, but it’s also very true – the more we use it, the stronger it gets. And, just like a muscle, if we use it constantly throughout the day, eventually it will get tired. We get stronger and more adept at it over time – but any body builder will tell you that there are only so many reps you can do, no matter how hard you train.

And leadership decisions are one of the central ways that we flex our “brain muscle” throughout the day.

So what can we do as leaders to make more effective leadership decisions?

Thankfully, the answers are as straight-forward as the causes.

The first technique is to keep your blood sugar regular. Rather than having three large meals in the day, make your meals smaller and eat small snacks between them. Nutrition experts call this technique “grazing” (versus “gorging” on three large meals). Grazing prevents large spikes in your blood sugar – and the large crashes that come afterward. Keeping up your blood sugar doesn’t mean drinking lots of soda or stocking up on candy bars (although that works, too). You can get the same effect by eating fruit, yogurt, or bready, low-fat snacks like Wheat Thins.

The second technique is simply to make fewer decisions in a day - leadership or otherwise. Baumeister and Tierney note that the most effective leaders don’t make the most decisions in a day – actually, the opposite. They deliberately structure their day to both smooth-out the decision-making load throughout the day, along with making fewer extraneous decisions. Deciding what to eat for lunch or the best tie for your suit drains your decision pool as much as corporate take-overs and mobile leadership techniques. So, take little steps like bringing your lunch to work, or laying out your clothes the night before.

The third technique is to make sure you take mental breaks throughout the day. In our fast-paced world, it’s easy for a busy leader to roll straight from one meeting in to the next. However, doing this is just like continuously working that muscle without letting it rest. Taking a short break between meetings gives you a chance to rest your mental muscles – along with providing an opportunity for that snack. :)

By taking a few simple steps – simplifying your day, grazing instead of gorging, and taking regular breaks – you can start making more effective decisions overnight.

And that’s worth a good, sugary treat.

Did this post have just the right balance of savory and sweet? Then join A Leader Quotes Success! Get the best tips and trick on leadership and success delivered straight to your inbox! No cost, no obligation, no spam – it’s the best deal you can get!

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Two Essential Buy-In Strategies for Leaders

By Barry | Published: February 1, 2012

“What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.” -George Bernard Shaw

Leaders discussing essential buy-in strategies - from a Leader Quotes Success!Over the last few weeks, there is a question I’ve been burning to ask a very experienced leader. I met with a plant manager in one of my supported buildings recently – and, after the usual pleasantries, I finally got a chance to ask.

“Gary, how do you create buy-in with your team?”

In the time I’ve known him, Gary has skillfully led his fellow leaders through one challenging change after another. He seems to have a gift for helping people understand what is happening, why it’s happening, and getting them to support it.

But my question caught him by surprise.

He was silent for a minute as we walked the floor of his plant.

“It’s hard to say off-hand. You need to use different approaches for your peers and your employees, you know,” he finally said. “There are some similarities between the techniques, but the differences are crucial.”

“Let’s start with your peers,” I suggested.

He smiled as he leaned in to me conspiratorially.

“There’s two that I use the most often. But telling you right at the start would be too easy. You tell me – what do you think they are?”

I smiled – classic Gary. Without hesitating, I said, “My first guess would be to make them part of the decision.”

I then told him about the recent project that had started this line of thinking. I was leading my peers through developing a new process, and I wanted to ensure that they not only understood it, but supported it. So, I went around to each member of the group individually and shared with them a rough draft I’d put together. After a few minutes of explanation, I asked them what they thought, and how they could help. It turned out that each person was interested in a different, unique niche of the project. We worked together to flesh that niche out and make it fit with the overall process. It was a long and exhausting process, but the final result was worth it – a more successful product than I could have imagined, and with complete support from the group.

Gary nodded approvingly. “That’s a great one – fundamental, even. I’ve used that many times myself. The second buy-in strategy is similar to the first, but even easier. What do you think that may be?”

I thought about it for a few beats, but didn’t quite see what he was suggesting.

“It’s so subtle and effective, I’ve even slipped it in to this conversation. What do you think now?”

After a few more seconds of thought, I began chuckling quietly.

“That was smooth, Gary. The second strategy is to ask for someone’s input.”

“Exactly!” he said with a flourish. “They don’t necessarily need to add anything to the project, or actively contribute to it. It’s just a matter of seeing it first, sharing their thoughts on it that helps them buy in.”

“So why would we do one and not the other?”

“It’s a matter of strength,” he said, weighing the options with his hands. “Who do you think is going to be more invested – the person who has given their opinion, or the person who has spent their time working on it themselves?”

“The second person, of course.”

“Exactly. But, that’s a pretty big time investment, and not everyone is willing to do the work. But everyone likes to be asked – especially by their leaders.”

“True,” I acknowledged. “I’d like to pick your brain on why this works – but we should save that for later.

“-if that’s alright with you,” I added.

“It is,” he said with a wink. “Thanks for asking.”

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Is A College Degree Required for Success?

By Barry | Published: January 27, 2012

How important is a college degree to success?

What if we started with some of the most successful people in America – our billionaires?

Let’s take the top 15 wealthiest Americans, according to the 2010 Forbes 400. Of these 15:

  • 6 inherited their wealth. (4 Waltons, 2 Kochs)
  • 5 have four-year college degrees. (Buffet, Bloomberg, Page, Brin, Soros)
  • 4 don’t have four-year college degrees. (Gates, Ellison, Adelson, Dell)

In other words, only 33% of the top American billionaires are successful, at least in part, due to a college education. Not a great sign for fans of education! (Although, as an engineer, I’m proud to note that three of those five degrees are in engineering or computer science. :) )

But this is a bit of a red herring. Fifteen people is not many, and being a billionaire isn’t a perfect measure of success. I mean, America is the world leader in number of billionaires – but even we only have 412 of them. That’s 1 for every 750,000 Americans.

So how do the rest of us measure success?

Let’s compare those having a college degree to those without any college training. If we go by income, the picture looks like this:

Wage Premium of College Degree Holders vs. those with just a high school diploma - presented by A Leader Quotes Success!

As you can see, people with a four-year college degree now make nearly twice as much as people without a college degree. That’s a huge margin – and it adds up over time. Various sources estimate that this difference can add up to $500,000 to $1 million dollars over a lifetime!

I don’t know about you – I could certainly do with an extra $1 million bucks in my pocket.

If we look at unemployment rates, we see a similar picture. The unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher was 4% in December of 2011. For high school graduates with no college? 8.7%, over twice as bad. The number is even worse for those with less than a high school diploma – 14.3%. This means that college graduates have over an unemployment rate over 3.5 times better than those without a high school diploma!

So, does a college degree equal success? It’s not a guarantee – even with a college degree, 4% of those looking for a job hadn’t found one yet. But, by every measure, having a college degree makes your chances of success much, much better.

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Posted in A Leader Quotes Success, Achievement, Business Success, Financial Success, Key to Success, Personal Success, Understanding the World | Leave a comment

How Important Is Great Leadership?

By Barry | Published: January 17, 2012

“Mentoring is all about people — it’s about caring, about relationships and sensitivity. As it becomes increasingly in vogue it is becoming too formulated — concerned with performance metrics, critical success factors, investment and spending. It’ll be a disaster.” -Rene Carayol

What is the true importance of great leadership? From A Leader Quotes Success!

We’re only a few weeks into the new year, and it has already been one of my most dramatic years as a leader.

The first week of the year, my focus was on getting people promoted. A mechanic on my team tested into a higher pay grade a few months back, and we finally got through the red tape. In an even greater success story, a leader I’ve been mentoring for few years passed his promotion exam with flying colors, and my team agreed that he was ready for the big time.

I’ll be honest – promoting people is the fun part of the job. :)

On the other hand, the theme of this week has been turndowns. We recently interviewed a few internal candidates for an available position, and unfortunately they all missed the mark.

This post is inspired by one of these candidates.

Great Leadership

A friend once explained the difference between her old boss and her new one. “If my old boss asked me to drink some Kool Aid from a strange carton, I’d do it without a second thought. If my new boss asked me, I’d do it – but I’d make him drink it first.”

A great leader is one you can trust automatically. You know that they have your best interests at heart, and that makes you feel comfortable working for them. They may expect a lot out of you – because they know you can do it. They help you understand where you fit in the team, and what you can do to become better.

On a day-to-day basis, it makes work easy. In the long term, it means less stress, less turnover, and greater productivity.

When I think of great leadership, I think of the man I’ve been mentoring for a few years. He has had his ups and his downs, but through it all, he knew he had steady partners in me and his other leaders. And, after a lot of hard work, he’s one of the best I have on my team.

Poor Leadership

This candidate who inspired this post – we’ll call him John – has been with the company for several years. He’s an exceptional employee – on time, on point, great attitude, and excellent work. I genuinely enjoy working with him.

This is the third time he’s interviewed for this job.

The first time he was turned down, he was told he needed more education. So he went back to school, got an additional degree, then waited patiently until there was an opening.

The second time he was turned down, he was told by a different leader that he needed more experience. He moved around to a few different roles to get more exposure, and again waited patiently for an opening.

This time around, I was one of the interviewers. In the interview, he showed a lot of potential – but not enough knowledge to qualify for the job. Our feedback was simple: study. Study these particular subjects. Ask for our help, and we can point you in the right direction.

Unfortunately, when I gave John his turn-down feedback, he showed what poor leadership can do.

He talked about his efforts and his feedback. He said it felt like he had wasted years of his life, waiting and working for this role. He distrusted the hiring process, and questioned whether his peers could live up to the same standards. He said he kept getting mixed messages about what he needed to do to be promoted – and openly wondered whether he had a future at our company.

Frustration, confusion, mistrust, anger, dis-engagement – these are the fruits of poor leadership.

Leadership for the Future

It took a while to turn the conversation with John. We walked him through the hiring process. We told him how bad we felt that it got to this point, but we loved having him on the team and wanted to see him succeed. We couldn’t undo the poor leadership that had happened before us – but we could promise to do right by him going forward.

Being a leader is hard work. It requires mastering a dizzying set of skills that never seem to fit together. It’s difficult to measure success and easy to lose your bearings.

But the joy is in seeing the growth in your team. Seeing the work you all can achieve together. Feeling that rush as you see those you mentor achieve things they had never done before.

Great leadership isn’t just important – it makes all the difference.

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