Organizations large and small benefit from the use of retained executive searches. Each nonprofit, and even each department within a nonprofit, has a unique set of leadership needs, and retained search is one way to plan an organization’s future. For the use of a retained search to be effective, it is important for clients to know why they should work with such a recruiter and what they can expect from doing so. Drawing on my experience as a recruiter for the nonprofit sector, I offer some situations where the use of a retained search firm is a good strategy for success: When you need to cast a wide net I’ve worked with a wide range of organizations, from those having budgets less than $500,000 to those having budgets close to $100
As a recruiter for the nonprofit sector, I often find that candidates see my role as one of a sentinel hired to prevent them from gaining even just a glimpse at a dream job opportunity. But, it doesn’t have to be that way! By understanding the roles and relationships of all participants in the job search process, everyone can benefit. In my next post, I’ll address how clients can best work with a recruiter. Today’s focus is on the relationship between the recruiter and the candidate. Before starting a relationship with a recruiter, it’s important to understand the recruiter’s role. Simply put, a client hires a search consultant to navigate the process and then relies on the consultant’s assessments and decisions about candidates.
I am working with a experienced client who just accepted a leadership position with an organization on the other side of the country. To displace his rumbling sense of guilt at his act of “disloyalty” – did he place his own career interests ahead of his allegiance to his current organization where he has been treated well for the past 13 years? – he is anxiously wondering how to prepare himself for his new role so that he makes and has a strong, positive impact from the start.
In preparing to work with him, I consulted Michael Watkins’ excellent book The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders. Here are some “Rules” to follow, based on his kernels of advice, that all people embarking on a new job can adopt to accelerate their time to productive performance.
Fredia Woolf, founder of Woolf Consulting, blogs to help people improve their workplace effectiveness and optimize their careers. As an organizational consultant and leadership coach, she works with clients to increase insight, inspiration and impact. She can be reached at fwoolf@woolfconsulting.com.
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I am on vacation this week on Cape Cod. It has been a very hot summer, and I was looking forward to a pleasant week of relaxation, enjoying the warm sun, long walks on the miles of golden beaches, biking along the sand dunes and indulging in fresh seafood and summer ice cream cones as I strolled around the harbor watching the boats bobbing gently in the cooling ocean breeze. These images kept me going during the sweltering, pressure-filled weeks of deadlines and to-do lists running up to this vacation.
Now we are here, and the reality has not at all lived up to its billing. We are in the third day of a nor’easter that has brought high winds and driving rain. The cottage we rented has become claustrophobic. We have ventured to the beach every day layered to the hilt with our inadequate summery clothes; the sea is grey and wild, and we come back drenched and shivering. And, the forecast calls for the return to brilliant warmth and sunshine on the day we are leaving.
Now, isn’t this typical?
It strikes me that this experience is a metaphor for all of life’s expectations, and it is a good reminder for me to practice what I preach. Instead of bemoaning my fate and the miserable weather, I choose to look at the situation through a different lens. Instead of feeling like a persecuted victim of circumstances and of the rain gods, I am determined to stay appreciative and to enjoy the unexpected, unintended pleasures of a series of wet days. Recognizing that I am just not going to get that easy feeling of wellbeing that lovely, warm days bring, I have to put my expectations aside and work a little harder to get the dopamine and other “happiness hormones” into my brain.
Instead, think of all the wonderful compensations! My beach walks are bracing and, coming back with red cheeks and soaked clothes, I’ll remember them forever. I spare the world the uncomfortable view of my lumps and bumps in a swimsuit and spare my skin from nasty solar radiation. I can go to matinees at the local movie theater and watch escapist movies. I can complete a jigsaw puzzle. I can read to my heart’s content. I can produce this blog on time. I can try out new recipes. I can spend time with my significant other without any pressure to do anything. I can laze around and not feel guilty. And on and on. I’ve convinced myself. From now on, my vacations will be in November!
So, what does this have to do with you as you run your organization or search for your next job?
Everything.
What this blog is actually about is Managing Your Expectations and Reframing – the famous mindshift technique that helps the Danes — who have the worst weather in the world — constantly score at the top of the happiness league tables.
Here are some questions to consider if you want to master the technique:
What is it you expect from your colleagues? Bosses? Family? Job search? Organization? Self?
How do you react when those expectations are not met? Are you angry? Frustrated? Resentful? Do you feel you have been persecuted? Victimized? Unfairly treated?
Well, think again. Take a good hard look at those expectations, and remind yourself that they are simply a story you told yourself. Also, remind yourself that you are quite capable of telling yourself a different story more closely aligned with reality.
Voila! You have just learned the secret of happiness. Shift those mind-limiting, closing-down expectations. Open yourself to reinterpreting what is actually going on, and the world becomes a different place. Suddenly, you see things differently, you experience them differently, you react differently. And then, your luck seems to change.
Try it out, and let me know how you do.
Fredia Woolf, founder of Woolf Consulting, blogs to help people improve their workplace effectiveness and optimize their careers. As an organizational consultant and leadership coach, she works with clients to increase insight, inspiration and impact. She can be reached at fwoolf@woolfconsulting.com.
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I am reading the novel Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey. It is based on the travels of a young French nobleman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the United States in the early 1800s and wrote about the young country. His observations about the American “character” and society were captured in his work, Democracy in America. I am not madly enjoying the book, but I am sufficiently intrigued by the human characterization of a developing nation to press on.
What strikes me is, at that time, everyone was in some form or other an “artist” or an “entrepreneur”. In the absence of rules and a strict blueprint for acceptable behavior, the human spirit seemed inventive, daring, courageous, self-reliant and devious. When employment was unstable and social structures in flux, people were forced to live off their wits and to make things happen for themselves.
It could be argued that, outside of certain well-established institutions, conditions two hundred years ago bear some resemblance to those today. Everywhere we look today, the rules are changing. The old codes and expectations of employers and employees are outdated. The way we work and the way we think about work is splintered and fragmented. In a 24/7, wired (or wireless?) world, work is everywhere and nowhere. The job we have today is not necessarily the job we will have tomorrow because funding or positions can dry up overnight, industries and priorities can change, whole organizations and jobs can implode.
In short, we would do well to be able to use some of the skills that the early settlers in this country had to develop, skills not dissimilar to those of the artist and of the entrepreneur. Here are some of them:
Times were tough in America two hundred years ago, and, for many, they are tough today. But, with an artistic, creative eye for an opportunity, and with an entrepreneurial, can-do spirit, you can ride the waves of change and fashion a career path for yourself that others will come to admire.
Fredia Woolf, founder of Woolf Consulting, blogs to help people improve their workplace effectiveness and optimize their careers. As an organizational consultant and leadership coach, she works with clients to increase insight, inspiration and impact. She can be reached at fwoolf@woolfconsulting.com.
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In preparation for an upcoming workshop I am conducting with a Board of Directors, I have been rereading the excellent book Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen. The need for this workshop arose during the last Board Meeting I facilitated when it became clear that the work of the Board, and consequently of the organization, was hampered by poor communication.
People often adopt a myopic attitude at work. They focus on what they, themselves, need to do, lock themselves into their own universe and are often blissfully unaware of the impact they have on other team members or stakeholders. Communications are scattered via cyberspace, and electronic noise proliferates while human voices grow silent. Unity, community and alignment are increasingly difficult to achieve.
How can you get your organization to feel “whole” and your people to want to contribute their best efforts to furthering your organization’s goals?
Try the 5 P’s.
Purpose
This goes deeper than just “Goals and Objectives”. People work with varying degrees of diligence to accomplish the goals and objectives outlined in a strategic plan or handed down by a manager. But, to really buy into the purpose of their work, they need to see the links between what they do on a daily basis and the big, organizational goals. This isn’t always completely clear, so it’s your job as an employer to help connect the dots between the two.
More important than intellectually understanding their work, employees have to care about it if they are to rally behind the organization and its goals. If this spark is ignited, people will want to participate by contributing their time and talent to solving problems and furthering objectives.
There is a cognitive element to inspiring others in that, as an employer, you have to help employees understand the business or market realities of your organization including financials and competitive intelligence. There is also an emotional element to this equation; those working for the organization must have something that connects what is personally meaningful to them about the products, services, culture or mission of the organization. Once people connect the organization’s goals with their internal worlds and understand why their individual work and efforts matter, they will buy in.
Plan
To be particularly productive, people need a sense of structure. They need to clearly understand who is responsible for what, when tasks are due and what they are expected to deliver. They need to grasp whom their actions affect. They need a road map outlining where they are now and where they are headed. Once these issues are outlined, give your employees the freedom to plan for themselves how to best accomplish the tasks at hand (as long as they know they will be both supported and held accountable).
Process
It is often taken for granted that people will work well together, and if often comes as a surprise when there is conflict or inefficiency in the workplace, both of which are counterproductive to working toward the organizational goals. Take time to establish basic ground rules so everyone knows the expectations of their behavior and their productivity. By doing so, much annoyance and even heartbreak can be avoided. Have people decide together what kinds of behaviors are and are not acceptable, desirable and necessary. Have processes in place to help deal with conflict and increase efficiency. For increased effectiveness, be clear about who is invited to meetings, who is cc’d on emails, what meeting agenda will be covered and what documents will be shared. For those who work virtually, it is even more worthwhile to spend time designing processes to enable better working together as this investment always reaps great rewards.
People
It’s a funny thing that organizations generally encompass a straight-forward, focused mission but are comprised of a whole variety people, each having a different style of working, communicating, seeing the world and responding to it. Helping people recognize their own skills, strengths and preferences is a good starting point for a successful organization; enabling them to harness the talents of others for the general good is the secret to a more engaged, motivated and committed workforce. Employers who take time to develop “soft” skills – the two most effective being better listening and real-time constructive feedback – will allow people to build relationships, to express their “authentic” selves at work and to accomplish their work while enjoying it.
Practices
Predictable practices are how culture is created. When leaders model best practices, those practices get “baked” into the DNA of the team or the organization. When you repeat ways of doing things that have proven effective over time, you will be surprised to see how small details can have major, long-term impacts on performance.
Fredia Woolf, founder of Woolf Consulting, blogs to help people improve their workplace effectiveness and optimize their careers. As an organizational consultant and leadership coach, she works with clients to increase insight, inspiration and impact. She can be reached at fwoolf@woolfconsulting.com.
How many of you can honestly say you know exactly what you want to be when you grow up? Maybe you already have it figured out, and maybe you are already living and working it. If so, does your resume know?
Every day, I work with clients, and every week, I speak to hundreds of job seekers — all of whom have no idea what they want to do in their professional lives. And when I ask them about their aspirations, I receive the blanket, “I just need to feed my family,” or “I just need a job – I don’t care what it is.”
Search firms are useful job market intermediaries. They are used as brokerage firms and clearing houses between organizations and individuals. The experience and expertise of professionals in these firms in finding, filtering and evaluating candidates can be extremely useful. But, there are limitations to using such firms, and it is important to understand what those are before determining how to best use a firm for your needs.
At times, organizational life by virtue of its structure has the capacity to stamp out the human spirit. It can shut down the spark of creativity, cramp boldness and individuality and perpetuate mediocrity. The result is a pitiful waste of human potential. Careers fail to flourish, learning dries up, and opportunities for positive change and growth wither on the vine.
Yet, it is possible to undo the damage and unleash the