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Career coaching is crucial for recent college graduates and young people entering the workforce. Though many have scant experience, they’re making choices that will affect their lives long into the future. Research has shown that first jobs are an optimal time for workers to gain transferable skills that follow them through their careers. The first three years in the workforce, in particular, have a significant impact on employees’ growth and confidence. Managers who coach their team members can help them think strategically, chart their courses, and navigate the ups and downs along the way.

When I founded Coach in a Box, a global organization later acquired by the consulting firm BTS, my goal was to bring this knowledge and skill to everyone. Over the course of our work, my colleagues and I gathered records of more than 100,000 coaching conversations to uncover the kind of guidance young employees need most. We studied conversations focused on the issues that employees struggle with most, and discovered four knowledge gaps that arise time and again:

• How to build resilience: the ability to bounce back from setbacks, such as an early project gone wrong or a bombed presentation
• How to influence others: the ability to win others’ trust and respect in order to more effectively execute a role
• How to job craft: the ability to determine what constitutes a meaningful job and engineer a career for greater fulfillment
• How to break out of a mental rut: the ability to challenge personal patterns of thinking in order to identify and solve problems through a different lens

Though all of these skills are vital, each requires a slightly different conversation. When fully and distinctly addressed, the skills can produce outcomes that refine short-term success, as well as long-term career satisfaction. The worker-manager relationship accounts for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. This means that managers who invest time in addressing these issues not only increase employee retention but also build connections that keep their teams inspired, innovative, and doing their best work.

Conversation #1: How to build resilience

When young employees have a negative experience, they tend to beat themselves up. Their self-criticism is often loud, tanking their confidence and maybe their job performance too. This conversation, then, is about allowing employees to voice this negative self-talk — but not dwell on it. It’s about helping them figure out how to balance their thinking, drop their judgments, and focus on the one or two positive choices they can make to learn and move on.

In this conversation, ask questions that will help you figure out what your employee is experiencing:

• How did you feel when your colleague said that?
• What were you telling yourself in that moment?
• What do you think this means about you?

Listen and repeat back what you hear. Once you gain an understanding of where your employee is coming from, follow up with questions that will help them get out of their head and reflect on what really happened. If an employee feels that they cannot make mistakes without losing credibility, for example, you might invite them to reconnect with a moment when they felt good, and ask questions like, “Is it true that a single mistake will cause people to write you off?” Stating aloud the employee’s internal story often will help them see that it is, most likely, fiction.

The last step is to help your employee figure out what choices they can make to navigate future situations differently. Be sure your tone is considerate but free of both emotion (positive or negative) and judgment throughout. Your job isn’t to solve their problem or sympathize, nor to build them up with encouraging feedback. Rather, your goal is to ask questions that will help them learn and become more resilient.

Conversation #2: How to influence others

When an employee struggles with a relationship, a great career coach helps them see the situation from the other person’s perspective and find new ways to engage or build the relationship. An analysis of our data with Singapore Management University uncovered that 39% of coaching conversations with junior employees focused on helping them influence people, build networks, and create desired impacts.

One recent graduate we coached, for example,

One recent graduate we coached, for example, was dealing with a director he found distant and indifferent. During their coaching conversation, his manager pushed him to put himself in the director’s shoes. When the employee considered the scope of the director’s responsibilities, he realized that what he saw as indifference could be preoccupation. He also became more aware of how his own role contributed to the company’s success. As a result, his initial defensiveness was replaced with curiosity, empathy, and confidence. By changing his approach, he was able to forge a completely different relationship with the director, who ultimately became a career-long mentor to him.

In this conversation, ask your employee to think from the other person’s perspective: What would it take to ensure the other person feels heard before you speak? Ask the employee how, with this new insight, they can communicate better in order to build trust. Try to avoid sympathizing (“Oh yes, that director is always like that”) or offering your own solutions. The key is to help the employee discover how to relate differently to this individual on their own.

Conversation #3: How to job craft

The point of this conversation is to help your employee reflect on what’s most important to them, so that they can shape a compelling vision for their future. Doing meaningful work matters to most people. Those who do not feel a sense of purpose tend to burn out more easily.

Consider the case of one high-flying employee we examined. She worked long hours on a project for her team. Though it was ultimately successful, she was so exhausted by the end that she told her manager she might not be able to commit to her role over the long term. The manager took this opportunity to help her remember why she originally joined his team. He asked her questions to help her regain clarity on what she wanted and what she would need to change to achieve it. She left feeling inspired and excited to forge on.

To inspire your team members in the same way, ask what’s important to them and hone in on what they want:

• What is going on right now?
• How would you like it to be different?
• What is one thing you could do to move toward this vision?

Avoid questions about what others think or expect, and try not to share your personal experiences. Instead, focus on helping your employee identify the situation they are currently in, the situation they want to be in, and what steps they need to take to get there. If they don’t know what they want yet, try to help them find ways to explore avenues they are curious about.

Conversation #4: How to break out of a mental rut

Sometimes an employee just gets stuck when trying to solve a problem. They try once and, when it doesn’t work, they either give up or try again using the same method. Managers can help their team members spot these “rivers of thinking” and paddle their way out.

One recent graduate we coached was struggling to understand why the training events she organized were poorly attended. She kept trying new, creative methods to motivate attendance, and kept failing. Her manager helped her think about it in a different way. He pushed her to get curious about what kind of events people would attend, as opposed to mulling over strategies on how to get people to attend her current trainings.

This new thought process led her to realize that her events were superfluous — all of the information she offered could be found online. What her colleagues wanted was the chance to get advice and support from peers. With that in mind, she launched a highly successful lunchtime networking club.

Use this conversation to help your employee identify their stuck thinking and seek out new avenues of inquiry. Start by asking:

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• What feelings do you notice about it?
• What are you most concerned about?
• What do you observe other people feeling frustrated about?

Your goal is to get them to identify what problem they are actually trying to solve and why their efforts may not be working. Repeat their answers back to them. Once they seem to understand that their current plan of action is flawed, encourage them to think about alternative solutions by considering all of the information they have gathered.

Remember, your role is not to provide solutions. It is to help employees clarify the questions they’re trying to answer, push them to gather perspectives from diverse sources, and reflect on what they’ve learned in order to come up with a new and better strategy.

Building up employees into future leaders requires you to help them adopt mindsets that will shift their attitudes. If they can master those mindsets, they can find satisfaction, stay engaged, and fulfill their long-term potential. The first step is figuring out what your employees need from you so that you can have the right conversations.

By Jerry Connor

Source: https://hbr.org/

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Most of us find it challenging to do our best work when our work environment feels unstable. For example, if you find yourself in the midst of an organizational change, your psychological resources — such as resilience and optimism — may be stretched to the limit. If the way forward at work is particularly unclear, you’ll undoubtedly devote precious energy considering not only the future of the organization, but your personal future there as well. In that context, you might think twice about a risky stretch assignment, even if it could potentially benefit your career and the organization in the long-term. This is often the case if faith in the underlying organizational foundation is acutely in question.

Most organizations struggle to find the right balance between stability and change, which in turn affects individual contributors. But in the race for innovation and digital transformation, the idea of stability has been somewhat lost in the mix, and there are strong indications that we should revisit its merits. If you want to develop an environment where contributors thrive, your workforce must be able to count on some basic things — such as role clarity, timely feedback, adequate resource allocation, and attention to how our work is structured. For example, the retail industry is learning that erratic work schedules likely benefit no one. When employees have a more predictable schedule, productivity increases. Although this finding may seem obvious, things that might contribute to stability generally receive little attention as compared to other topics, such as productivity or agility. Interestingly, the presence of stability could serve as the foundation for those other things. Google’s Project Oxygen, which discovered that psychological safety was related to team effectiveness, was likely only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to rethinking how to bring our best selves to work.

Both personal and organizational stability have always mattered — we’ve simply relegated them to a lower priority in many companies. But can we ever really become fully engaged with our work if a minimum level of stability is not present? Can an organization survive for 50 to 100 years or more if core stability isn’t acknowledged and carefully considered?

After spending years as an organizational development advisor, I’ve now adopted a “lens of stability” through which to view key elements of work and organizations. During discussions with leaders, managers, and individual contributors, it became apparent to me that work, and the ability to complete projects effectively, is often about seeking the sure footing that we need to move forward, which allows us to fully access energy and strength.

It’s time for organizations to circle back and invest considerable resources in enhancing stability. Organizational practices such as clearly communicating your mission and goals, along with strategies to accomplish them, can help. But in my experience, many sources of stability can be easily overlooked when leaders and managers are addressing other issues deemed to be more urgent. To counter this, we must make a more concerted effort to bring stability to the forefront of our minds — and apply this thinking to individuals’ needs. This includes the practice of being mindful of the role of stability and how it can positively affect our work every day. There are some key topics to consider and apply, including the following:

1. Acknowledgement of the psychological contract. The psychological contract is an often unstated exchange agreement, or set of promises about what we bring to our work and what we expect to gain from our employers in return. Sadly, once stressed or broken, this contract is very difficult to repair. Reviewing the health of these contracts is a unique opportunity to increase stability, and in turn, to retain valuable employees, as psychological safety has been shown to correlate with outcomes such as job satisfaction, commitment, performance, and trust. Managers can address psychological contracts more openly by having regular discussions about what is being exchanged in the employee/employer relationship. This can help clarify goals, drive performance, encourage developmental conversations, and help employees begin to explore career planning. Also, as things inevitably shift within the organization, there should be ongoing discussions about how the changes might affect the work and the individual. During times of major change, psychological contracts should be revisited often. For example, goals and performance metrics should be recalibrated from time to time, and certainly, after any organizational changes take place.

Managers can use the following questions as a starting point to broadly explore the psychological contract:

Has the employer/employee exchange agreement been openly discussed with your team members?

Do contributors feel that what they receive from their work is equitable, considering what they might be investing?

Are perceived promises about work and career paths largely upheld?

2. Psychological capital. Positive psychology also offers us opportunities to build workplace stability. Studies have established a clear positive relationship between psychological capital (PsyCap) and a number of desired workplace outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and psychological well-being. These “HERO” resources include:

Hope. A belief in the ability to persevere toward goals and find the methods or paths to reach them.

Efficacy. The confidence that one can put forth the effort to affect outcomes.

Resilience. The ability to bounce back in the face of adversity or failure.

Optimism. A generally positive view of work and the potential of success.

We can apply this construct in real-time by asking the following questions:

1. Are the elements of psychological capital (HERO variables) present?
2. Do team members believe that they can accomplish their goals successfully?
3. Have you openly discussed with team members situations or past experiences that could weaken one of the HERO elements?

3. Psychological safety. William Kahn, professor of Organizational Behavior at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, defined psychological safety as “being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career.” While the concept has been studied for decades, we are only just now truly acknowledging the importance of its role in our work lives. Psychological safety allows both individuals and teams to face real-time challenges in a manner that is open and honest. When safety is present, developing issues may surface much earlier, allowing a more complete or effective response. However, if team members detect that the environment cannot tolerate or process such issues, they may back away and demur — even if they feel this would ultimately serve the best interests of the team and organization. To assess the level of psychological safety in your own organization, ask yourself these questions:

Do you feel that team members share both ideas and problems openly?

Have there been past events that have occurred organizationally or within the team that would affect openness?

Has trust been disrupted in some manner for a particular individual?

When we hope to retain a valued employee or help them excel, we often look to factors outside of our own organizations such as external training, salary benchmarks, perks, or titles. However, it might be wise to look inward and first consider the psychological constructs that contribute to stability within the work environment. Identifying the issues that are preventing an employee from feeling psychologically supported at work will go a long way toward helping your most valued employees to move forward confidently and do their best work yet.

By: Marla Gottschalk

Source: https://hbr.org/

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Many businesses lose customers each day without not necessarily knowing why their customers leave. Others stay unbothered whether customers return to them or not as their main focus is on making a profit; forgetting that customers can make or unmake their success. G.S. Alag, the renowned author of several management books, says that “a satisfied customer is the best source of advertisement”.  If we grant this as true, then the question that predictably emerges is “are your customers advertising for you?”

Some customers are loyal but a minority who mostly help generate a large portion of sales, the impulsive ones make purchases without much convincing provided conditions are right, discounted customers mostly buy during markdowns, the need-based ones make purchases with a specific product in mind while the wandering customers are not sure what they want to buy.

As a business owner, you should know your customers through and through and commit to ALWAYS giving them the best of service in order to keep them coming back. In fact, if a business understands customer needs and develops products or services that provide superior satisfaction, these products will sell easily.

Imagine a customer going to xxx firm and getting a horrible first impression. That could lead to a loss of sales from that customer and many other potential customers because bad news spreads faster than wildfire in harmattan. Highlighting the value of customer endorsement in his bestseller, Wind In Your Sails, David J. Greer says that “a customer talking about their experience with you is worth ten times that which you write or say about yourself.” Hard to deny that. Isn’t it?

As a business, win the loyalty of current and potential customers with each opportunity you get.

• Be receptive
• Give them a listening ear
• Help solve their “problems” and make recommendations
• Be prepared to assist customers to make a good choice should they be wandering
• Give your customers the best of service and they will keep coming to you.

It is not rocket science, we all like to repeat experiences that are fulfilling.

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Wondering why you don’t get responses to the emails you send to recruiters, employers or top executives?

Emails usually serve as a first introduction to professionals, who most likely receive hundreds of emails just like yours on a weekly basis. Chances are that without the right first impression, your email will either be ignored or left unread, even if you are an excellent candidate for a vacancy or offer.

Here are some guidelines on writing professional emails that will improve your chances of getting responses:

Have a clear email subject:

ALWAYS include a subject when you are sending emails. Hiring managers who receive emails without subjects will most likely ignore them, as this is a mark of unprofessionalism. Your subjects should be clear and precise to help the recipient know what the email is about. This will ensure that your recipient gives your message the needed attention or priority, as most people open emails based on the subject.

Use a professional email address:

Choose an email address that has your name or initials to help the recipient easily identify you, especially if you have already met them in person or on another platform. Email addresses such as: bigbooty12@yahoo.com sexymama@gmail.com, cats2dogs45@gmail.com, etc. are not appropriate in a professional setting and should be avoided.

Use a professional salutation:

Expressions such as “Hey” “Sup” or “Yo” are informal, and should not be used as salutations in professional emails.  “Dear” or “Hello” are most appropriate in this context.

Proofread all your emails:

Typos, spelling mistakes and other grammatical errors are sure to create the wrong impression. In some cases, they may even convey a lack of seriousness or rule you as unfit for the vacancy you may be applying for. For this reason, ensure that you always read over your emails before you click the “Send” button to make sure you catch and correct all potentially embarrassing errors.

Check your fonts and pay attention to formatting:

Always use professional, readable fonts when sending emails. Examples of great fonts to include Arial, Times New Roman, and more.  Also make sure the font sizes are not too small or too big. We recommend that you use a font size between 10 and 12.

When next you are sending out an email, make sure you have at least followed the above mentioned guidelines to get the attention of the recipient of your mail.

Credit: https://www.inc.com/business-insider/email-etiquette-rules.html

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