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Essential Skills for Inclusive Leaders

Coaching

Knowledge Transfer: Increase Your Training ROI

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During one of my programs on Creating a Learning Culture, a participant asked, “How can we demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for our training dollars?” While I’m not a financial wizard, I can tell you that it’s easy to multiply your training value with knowledge transfer activities.

What Is “Knowledge Transfer”?

Knowledge transfer is a fancy way of saying “telling other people what you know.” There are countless ways to conduct knowledge transfer. Some companies even invest in expensive software for this purpose. But if you want to improve team cohesion, interpersonal methods go a long way toward building trusting relationships.

Raise Your Hand… Politely

Perhaps you’re the self-appointed Hermione Granger of your team. You can share what you know without being a know-it-all. Try asking for accountability from your team. For example, you might say, “I just read a blog post on knowledge transfer. With that in mind, each time I attend a professional development webinar, I plan to write a brief synopsis to share with the team. Will you hold me to that?” If you do this every time your boss sends you to training, it shows you’re serious about your professional development. It also shows your manager that you’re a good investment.

Look for Cross-Training Opportunities

Ideally, everyone on your team has different skills and strengths. Reserve a few minutes during team meetings or schedule monthly cross-training sessions so each person can share. These can be formal or informal. The goal may be to actually train team members on different tasks or simply to create a greater awareness about what each person brings to the team.

One-on-One Opportunities

Use formal and informal mentoring programs, manager/employee coaching sessions, and other one-on-one meetings to talk about professional development activities happening in and around the team.

Lunch & Learns and Book Clubs

Lunch & learns are a great way to introduce new concepts. They can also be used to help a new team member “show what they know” and add value while they’re still getting up to speed. Anyone can lead a lunch & learn, and you can even rotate the responsibility.

Your team can form a book club or use rotating “book report-outs” to keep up-to-date on your industry, customers, and skill sets. Better yet, bring in your customers as experts to speak to the team! They’d love to tell people in your office about the challenges they face and how you can better serve them.

Amplify Learning Opportunities

If you’re a member of a professional association , see if you can host member webinars for your team. That way, you’re paying one registration fee (or membership fee) and sharing the direct benefits with the whole group.

If attending as a group isn’t an option, you can still pass along topics of interest to people in your organization. Forward the notification email with a subject line that says, “I thought of you, have you seen this yet?”

How are you getting the most from your team’s training & development investment? Tell me in the comments!

Why Create a Learning Culture?

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Why Create a Learning Culture?

Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In other words, your strategy will go nowhere if your culture doesn’t support it.

I would take this a step further and say “culture IS strategy.” Any goal that you intend to reach will fail, unless your culture is aligned to that goal.

The Insurance Industry as an Example

If you work in the insurance industry, the purpose of your work is to keep a promise. Whether you work for a carrier, agency, brokerage or service provider, you play a part in fulfilling a past promise made to a policyholder.

Because of this, everything we do has to be aligned to long-term customer service. The best way to support our customers is to stay on top of, or even predict, what they need. We must then continually learn how we can better meet those needs.

Ultimately, insurance does two things:

  1. It makes all economic investment possible, and
  2. It helps people on their worst day.

If we are to maintain our promises in the future, we need to stay out in front of what’s coming. A learning culture can help us do that.

According to the Association for Talent Development, top performing organizations are five times more likely to have learning cultures, compared to lower performing organizations. It’s not hard to imagine that these companies are high performing because of their learning cultures.

The High Cost of Low Engagement

Across all industries, Gallup (“State of the American Workplace,” 2017) estimates that 34 percent of annual salaries lost to disengagement. When employees are disengaged, they are not as productive and not innovative. If employees don’t feel safe, they can’t contribute to their fullest.

Let’s think about what this could mean for a single Fortune 500 company. Consider, for example, a company that has 30,000 employees with an average salary of $56,000. This company spends $1.7 billion in annual salary, exclusive of benefits such as health insurance and 401(k) match. This fictitious company stands to lose $570 million each year due to disengagement!

That’s the impact on just one company. Now think about how much this costs the industry as a whole. The cost goes beyond lost dollars. It also includes the loss of any innovation could have happened with one-third of our staff. Think of the products and services that aren’t being created or implemented, or the number of customers who aren’t being served.

Such a loss is a tragedy for the industry, our economy, and the clients we serve.

Learning Cultures Build Engagement

Providing ongoing learning challenges is essential to employee engagement. Younger professionals, in fact, are motivated as much by learning opportunities as by other benefits.

Based purely on engagement savings, companies can see a tremendous return on a relatively low investment. When you further contemplate the “time value of potential” for these employees, the dividends are immense.

Learning Cultures Represent a Long-term Investment in Talent

It’s no secret that industry leaders are worried about a talent crisis, or talent cliff. Roughly half of our knowledge workers are on the verge of retirement. When they go, they will take institutional knowledge with them. The insurance industry is not alone in this. Other industries face similar challenges.

Folks coming in early- or mid-career have much to learn about the industry. To make matters worse, there are fewer newcomers. It’s easy to see the knowledge gap that looms.

Furthermore, if we are to retain new employees, we need to make sure we’re actively engaging them. How better to engage than in a learning environment where professionals can build skills, knowledge, and confidence in their roles?

Improved Customer Service

Finally, customer service improves significantly in a learning organization.

Bersin & Associates reports that companies with learning cultures are 34 percent better able to respond to customer needs and 58 percent more likely to meet future demand. The combination of these, remember, is the very promise of insurance: to be there for our customers when they need us most, at some undetermined point in the future.

What’s more, Bersin tells us these companies are 46 percent more likely to be first to market and 17 percent more likely to be a market share leader.

Creating a learning culture, then is critical to the top line, the bottom line, long-term growth, and customer satisfaction and retention.

Why would we not to create a learning culture?

 

How Long Will You Continue to Work? Combating Age Discrimination

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Age discrimination is gaining more attention in the media, as Baby Boomers’ influence in the workplace is dwindling. Millennials now comprise the largest segment of the workforce. Ask anyone over 50: it’s tough to compete with tech-savvy, confident 20-somethings who know how negotiate wages, benefits, and company culture. During several recent conversations within and around my Associate Network, the topic of age discrimination has been dominant. For Baby Boomers who still consider themselves “mid-career professionals,” job security, health insurance coverage, and financial stability are significant concerns.

Author’s note: This article is an excerpt from my book, Network Beyond Bias.

The author of the following embedded essay wishes to remain anonymous. I take that trust seriously, and I am happy to have a platform for this story to be told. I have added some links and subheadings, but left the content otherwise unchanged.

Facing Age Discrimination in a Job Interview

The interview was, in my opinion, proceeding well. I had done my research about the role and associated responsibilities; I was asking as many questions of the hiring manager as the hiring manager was asking of me; my skills matched what the hiring manager expected the ideal candidate to possess; and it seemed like a mutual respect had been established in a short time frame. In an instant, though, all that changed – all because of one question: “How long do you think you’ll continue to work?”

Thinking that somehow I had not heard the question correctly I asked, “Could you repeat that question for me?”

“Yes. How long do you think you’ll continue to work?”

The thoughts that immediately flew through my mind are inappropriate to share as anger swelled up to the surface. Waves of anger, in fact. It took me time to damp down the anger and become composed to the point of where a clear thought came to the forefront, “No way will I answer this question.”

There was a long period of silence. The answer to the question finally came out, “I refuse to answer that question.” I knew that I had just ensured the chances for landing the job were nil. Even if I had answered the question with a time frame, my odds would have only slightly improved. Why? Because it was apparent the hiring manager had determined I was of the age where I would presumably retire within the next five to ten years. It was equally clear this hiring manager was hesitant to take a chance on a worker who may retire in the not-so-distant future. I had run up against age bias regarding older workers in the workforce.

It is important to note I recognize the situation as an age bias regarding older workers. I do so as there is also age bias regarding younger workers. Think about all the quips one hears ranging from someone is a “dinosaur” (older worker age bias) to being a “newbie” (younger worker age bias).

Age Discrimination Is Illegal in the United States

So, age bias is age bias, right? Not so much. A web search for “age discrimination in the workplace” yields 510,000 results. You can find scores more by varying the verbiage in your web search. Nearly all of these articles and news items deal with age bias against older workers  defined as workers 40 and above, consistent with the Age Discrimination Employment Act of 1967 (see 29 U.S.C. § 631). Gosselin and Tobin, authors of “Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM” (ProPublica, March 22, 2018) provide detailed documentation and research suggesting a pattern of targeting older, highly paid, good performing employees at IBM from 2012 through 2017. Older workers, it seems, may indeed be facing more age bias than younger workers.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. As a hiring manager myself, I see my job as finding the right person for any open position. I acknowledge and address any biases I may have about the “ideal” candidate in order to ensure no candidate is overlooked because of my biases. Recently I have asked recruiters to scrub resumes of dates in order to ensure I don’t try to figure out how old the applicant is or how long an applicant has been in a certain position. My experience with this approach has been positive as a more diverse group of applicants ends up in the interview pool. It benefits not only me but my organization as I do find the right person for the position.

I challenge other hiring managers to challenge their biases and find ways to give all applicants a fair chance. Had the hiring manager cited above done just then this blog post might not have happened. As it stands, am happy not to have been selected after such a question.

Age Discrimination Will Affect Us All, Eventually

Although I belong to Gen-X, I can see that the large populations of Millennial and Gen-Z workers poses an imminent threat to my own career longevity. As such, I am seeking to educate myself now so I have enough runway to manage the risk. I’m curious as to how others see themselves “aging out of the workforce.” Do you think you’ll be able to leave on your own terms? If not, how will you manage the gap between your last day on the job and your retirement?

Choose the Best Candidate, Not the Most Obvious One

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When you make a decision about your own career, you want to consider the most important factors and make the best choice. If you are a hiring manager, you must also make decisions about other people’s careers. Taking on this level of responsibility requires you to understand and guard against your own biases. After all, your objective is to choose the best candidate, not the most obvious one. This article provides some insights into making more informed hiring decisions.

Preparation Is Critical

If you’ve done your homework, you’ve already positioned yourself to make a good hiring decision. By carefully crafting and strategically distributing the job description for your posting, you have ensured that your slate of candidates is as diverse as possible. You’ve followed scoring criteria for evaluating resumes and conducting fair interviews. Now it’s time to for the hard work: making a hiring decision.

Choose the Best Candidate with Predetermined Criteria

You should already have a weighted scoring system for the job’s key qualifications. When all the interviews are complete, compare your scores with those of other interviewers. Be sure to talk about differences in the scores.  If someone has reservations about a particular applicant, dig into their concerns to find out why. Do those concerns reflect the limitations of the candidate or the biases of the interviewer? Be diligent in uncovering interviewers’ biases.

One way to check your process is to be very transparent with your applicants and with the existing team. If you can clearly state how your “winning” candidate scored relative to other applicants, you’ve probably done a good job. On the other hand, being unable (or afraid) to articulate what drove your decision is a sign that you made a biased hiring decision.

Break Scoring Ties with a Skills Assessment or Work Simulation

Even the best scoring criteria can result in ties or results that are “too close to call.” When you have two or more applicants that seem very similarly qualified, there are a number of ways to break the tie without relying on your gut.

  • Ask your finalists to complete a skills assessment or aptitude test.
  • Provide your finalists with a real-life problem that your team or company is facing.
  • Request a writing sample.
  • Schedule time for them to deliver a presentation or a similar indicator of how they would perform on the job.

Whichever method you use, ensure once again that your evaluation criteria are determined in advance. Then add the new data together with the original resume and interview scores. In other words, try to make your decision as objective as possible. That way, you can really drive to the best decision, not the candidate that you like the best.

Remember that Soft Skills Are “Teachable” Too

Many employers admit to secretly administering a “beer test” in interviews. The “beer test” is a measure of likability and is a direct expression of our affinity biases. If likability is important to you, make it a factor in your criteria. Just don’t make it the only criteria, nor the most important one.  Remember that your goal is to choose the best candidate for the job, not the best candidate for you.

Keep in mind that soft skills, including likability, can be taught. Often, managers think that we can only teach technical skills. When we think this way, we’re really missing the boat. We may have people who are very technically capable but who lack some of the soft skills. But none of us was born knowing how to have empathy. We weren’t born knowing how to present to a room of people. And most of us weren’t born good listeners.

We had to learn those skills, too, at some point. Maybe we’ve turned them into strengths, or maybe we just grit our teeth and continue working on them. Regardless, we acquired them somehow. Challenge yourself and your leadership team with questions about how can you help the highest-scoring candidate improve the skills (whether technical or interpersonal) that they lack. That way, you’ll be sure to choose the best candidate from the applicant pool.

My Book, My Business, and My Mission

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I recently connected with Executive Coach Andre Boykin of Capital Idea. The first question he asked me was, “What are you creating in the world?” I loved the way he phrased the question. And I hope he doesn’t mind that I will be using it in the future. Later that day, I had an equally energizing conversation with Poised for Excellence author and Founder & CEO of WordSmith Rapport, Karima Mariama-Arthur. By speaking with these experts, I found myself becoming clearer about my mission and how I can best articulate it.

My (First) Book

My book, Network Beyond Bias, will help working professionals assess and improve the diversity of their networks. I based the book on four guiding principles:

  • People don’t recognize their default behaviors, nor are they aware of who is missing from their professional networks.
  • Many people are interested in the diversity & inclusion initiatives underway in their companies and industries, but don’t understand the role they can play.
  • The more connected we all are, the more opportunity we will create for ourselves and for each other.
  • Leaders can be anywhere, and should be everywhere, at all levels of an organization.

My Business

I started Lead at Any Level® to promote leadership, diversity & inclusion, and career management skills for busy professionals. My current offerings include public speaking engagements, training sessions, and one-on-one mentoring. Assets to-date include a blog, a growing and engaged social media audience, and several original presentations that can be adapted to a variety of audiences.

As my business grows, I plan to expand into consultancy. My mission, ultimately, will be to help companies find and develop their “hidden” leaders, transform their workforce demographics, and accelerate organic growth through well-connected, emotionally intelligent employees.

In the meantime, I am also looking for strategic partnerships that will allow me to build lasting relationships while fulfilling my mission.

My Background

My background includes 20 years in Information Technology, with over a decade in progressive management roles. I am a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner, hold two bachelor’s degrees from Indiana University, and serve on two national diversity committees. I am a member of National Speakers Association and have advanced communication and leadership awards from Toastmasters International. My presentations include original insights and content you won’t find anywhere else. Recent audiences range in number from a few dozen to several hundred, and have included insurance professionals, association executives, university faculty, military veterans, and college students.

My Invitation to You

Are you on a mission? Do our interests and goals overlap? Let’s Get Acquainted!