Use Social Media to Build Emotional Capital

Many organizations have started using social media tools internally to interact with their employees. However, in our survey of 1,060 global executives, only 30% of executives work for companies that benefited from the internal use of social media.

To understand why the rate is so low it's instructive to compare the social media experiences of two companies we studied.

The first (whose name is disguised to spare blushes) is TEKCO, a technology company. TEKCO followed a traditional approach to an IT implementation. Executives mobilized experts to develop internal applications that mirrored the functionality of Facebook and Twitter, and built a platform that allowed for the creation of internal wiki pages. The company hired many open source technology developers to build new collaboration tools.

For all this effort, the company had very little to show. When interviewed, TEKCO executives had difficulty identifying examples of tangible benefits their company obtained from social media. Contrary to initial expectations, social media adoption improved neither the ease of internal information sharing nor employee morale. Even operational efficiency was unaffected.

The second company (which we will name) is the Northern European subsidiary of Tupperware, the famous food container company. Tupperware took a very different approach, investing less than $50,000 in social media initiatives, but it obtained much more impressive results. Between 2008 and 2011, the turnover rate of Tupperware's predominately part-time sales people (consultants, as the company calls them) fell by 15%. Both the ease at which best practices diffused throughout the company and the company's revenues increased.

What made the difference between these two experiences was that the project's leader, Stein Ove Fenne, managing director at Tupperware Nordic A/S, focused on building emotional capital in driving the initiative. He realized that the prime goal of the social media initiative should be to reinforce employees' positive feelings about the company, their colleagues, and their jobs. Tupperware's SM initiative — like those of other successful SM implementers — did this by focusing on four components of emotional capital:

• Authenticity. What you communicate through social media has to be aligned with how you interact with people in the real world. Employees at TEKCO greeted with cynicism the senior executives' blog posts and podcasts about the importance of community spirit, because the same executives had previously engaged in a massive restructuring that involved layoffs. By contrast, Fenne's messages to sales consultants delivered through social media are consistent with his other actions. He has established personal relationships with many of them by visiting all major centers of activity. He invites key consultants to Tupperware's headquarters on a regular basis and literally rolls out a long red carpet in front of them as a symbol of appreciation. These behaviors are very consistent with his messaging in podcasts, e-mails and blogs about how much the company values its sales consultants' contributions. 

• Pride. Pride is a better motivator than money and relying on financial or promotion incentives to elicit employee engagement in social media initiatives can backfire. When TEKCO executives made employees' contributions to internal wikis for knowledge sharing a part of their performance appraisal, many employees interpreted this as a coercive measure and posted entries of questionable quality only to satisfy the directive perfunctorily. By contrast, Fenne recognized that social media could provide Tupperware with an inexpensive platform for producing "moments of pride" for sales consultants. One of these is the "Tupperware radio show" in which Fenne plays the role of talk show host. Consultants' teams from all over Northern Europe connect through WebTV and post their live comments on a Facebook-type "wall" seen by all participants. Fenne calls on every sales team, asks them to report their results and thanks them for their achievements. 

• Community. Social media users often do not consider time spent on non-work related discussions within social communities as wasted from a professional standpoint. When employees identify common non-work related interests among each other and forge informal bonds, they will eventually start discussing work-related matters even outside of formal work hours. TEKCO stayed away from Facebook in order to avoid unauthorized information leakage; unfortunately, by doing so it eschewed the Facebook-type community platform that would have allowed employees to share information about their personal values and interests that were not always work-related. As a result, the platform never took off. By contrast, Tupperware is happy to encourage communication that is not work-related. Fenne even records short podcasts containing advice on how to lead effective sales force or how to achieve success in their private life. These podcasts are sent as "thank you" gifts to top performers and convey that senior leadership cares about consultants' personal development. 

• Fun. Enjoyment is well known to be a strong motivator of innovation. Yet not one TEKCO executive we interviewed told us that they wanted employees to use internal social networking platforms to have fun. At Tupperware, in contrast, consultants produce best-practice videos that are amusingly self-mocking. One group of Danish consultants portrayed a bunch of Danish men having a cooking competition (using Tupperware products) that was eventually shared through social networking sites and was widely viewed by colleagues and friends. The company for its part releases amateur movies under the umbrella "Tupper Films," some of which contain highlights of Tupperware parties, while the others contain useful tips for product demonstration. This increases the speed with which innovations spread across various countries and regions.

For social media to be widely adopted inside organizations and ultimately produce business benefits, executives first need to change their mindset about using these technologies. They have to realize that internal social media success isn't really about the software but about the emotional connection it creates.

But that doesn't mean you can let your social media platform grow by itself. Although self-organization is a touted attraction of social media, our study shows that the most successful employee communities tend to be actively managed by executives such as Fenne.

Companies that lack active community builders tend to create cold communities without heart and spirit, underutilizing technological infrastructure, generating employee cynicism and destroying what little emotional capital was present.

Finally, remember that context and culture play a role; executives should use locally appropriate means to develop the four pillars of emotional capital. But however the actions to build emotional capital have to be adapted locally, they still need to be done.

Quy N. Huy and Andrew V. Shipilov are both professors of Strategic Management at INSEAD, an international business school with campuses in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

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When Your Manager Is Afraid of You

Kate, a 33-year-old marketing associate, sounded exhausted and confused. "It's the weirdest thing," she said. "I started my job ten months ago and got off to a great start. I launched our company's first HTML newsletter. I started a client service training program that got great reviews. My six-month performance review was stellar. Then two months ago, the whole thing started to go sour."

"How so?" I wanted to know.

"My boss has started picking at me over tiny, stupid things," she said. "He told me at my review that he was going to send me to our France office to help them build a messaging strategy, but when I asked him about it recently he said, 'That's something we have to look at down the road,' and walked away. It's like I've gone from being his favorite employee to dog meat."

"What happened between your review meeting and this week?" I asked.

"Nothing in particular," said Kate. "I'm chugging away. I got invited to speak at our annual sales meeting—"

"Hold it right there!" I said. "Who asked you to speak?"

"It was our VP of Sales," said Kate. "I work with him a lot, and he had seen me speak to some client service reps. I tagged along with two of our area sales managers on a big sales call and we won the business, so he likes me for that reason, too. It's cool — my colleagues told me they don't usually let marketing people like me come to those sales meetings, much less ask them to speak."

"So, what other balls have you knocked out of the park lately?"

"There's nothing else," she said. "I created an internal discussion community for the sales team — I guess that's something. Okay, and I pulled our CEO's and our VPs' speeches out of the archives and organized them in a catalog that we can refer to going forward and use in customer communications."

"Sister, please!" I exclaimed. " You've been in the job ten months. You're doing amazing things and changing the energy in your shop. No wonder your boss is terrified. He worries that you'll outshine him."

"Oh, that's ridiculous," Kate scoffed. "My boss has been at the company for twenty-eight years."

"Big deal!" I said. "The VP of Sales asked you to speak at his annual sales meeting. You pulled the executive speeches archive together on your own. You launched a newsletter, you built a training program. You haven't even had your one-year anniversary. What has your boss done in that time?"

"I guess—" started Kate. "I didn't think about that. But why would he worry? He's an executive, for Pete's sake."

"So he has a lot at stake," I said. "He has a lot of status to lose, and doesn't know the outside world you just popped in from. You launched an HTML newsletter and your boss doesn't have a clue how to run the engine if you disappear one day. You're speaking a foreign language that he thinks he should know, and you don't think he's a bit unnerved by you?"

"But he couldn't rationally think I'd want his job," said Kate. "My job is way more fun."

"First of all, your boss doesn't necessarily know what you want," I began, "and anyway if he's fearful, he wouldn't believe you if you said you don't want his job — fear is emotional, he's not thinking rationally. He might even be thinking that you'll do all this great stuff you do, and then leave the company and make him look bad for losing you. The guy has been in his job since you were five years old — he's content in his small box, and you think outside of it. Let's face it, your kind of person scares his kind of person to death."

"My gosh, you hit it on the head," said Kate. "How do I make him un-scared?"

"Very hard to do," I said. "When your flame is big, people pick up on it. Boundary-spanning, frameless people like you can very easily create a disturbance in the Force when they enter a team of boxed-up people. Sometimes that person has to go. Sometimes something shifts in the energy and they figure out how to work together. Sometimes the fearful boss has an 'A-ha!' moment and finally sees the high-mojo person as an ally."

"So your advice is to be ready for anything," said Kate.

"Not in the slightest," I said. "That's way too passive for someone like you. My advice is to do what you're already doing — letting people across the company know what you're capable of. Then, when you're confident enough, level with your boss. Start out by saying something like, 'Sometimes I think that my style or my approach makes you uncomfortable.' Make it easy for him to say anything he needs to get off his chest, if he can rise to the occasion. Be human with him. Amazing, heartfelt disclosures come about when you start human conversations about topics like fear.

"And it shouldn't be this hard just to do your job, of course. In business, being powerful should not a matter of being smarter or more accomplished than people under you. That's all crazy fear-based management baloney. The whole idea of leadership is that when you get awesome people, you just say to them, 'Go be awesome!' Then, with that encouragement, you stand by and let them do great things."

"But that's a real problem," said Kate. "Now that I think about it, my boss was definitely copied on the email when the VP of Sales invited me to speak at his offsite, and he never mentioned getting it."

"Oh shocker, Miss Kate!" I laughed.

At the end of the call, Kate told me she now feels a soft spot for her fearful boss. She never meant to intimidate him. And the wonderful thing about the story is that at no point did Kate think "I'll tamp down my flame so as not to agitate my boss." That's the great thing about growing your mojo — you realize that if one job goes away, another one will appear.

Liz Ryan is a former HR executive, and writes regularly for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Kiplinger’s Finance, and other broadcast outlets and publications. Liz teaches career strategy and branding to MBA candidates at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and to citizens via her webinar series hosted by Northwestern University. She also leads the Ask Liz Ryan community.
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5 ways to find extraordinary employees

Having a hard time getting top talent? Become a good spy and send mash notes to your rivals' top employees.

1. Build your bench
View scouting for talent the same way you do customer acquisition so you always have top people in the pipeline. Keep an ongoing list of potential hires and stay in touch regularly by, for instance, e-mailing articles that will educate them about your company. That's the advice of Brad Smart, author of Topgrading and president of the consultancy Smart & Associates. Also: Ask your key executives to suggest candidates every month.

2. Play in the right sandboxes
"Hang out where the people you're looking for hang out," says Mark Lancaster, CEO of recruiter EmploymentGroup in Battle Creek, Mich. For instance, to find an executive who can handle a merger, attend meetings of the Association for Corporate Growth. Or advertise in publications your targets like to read. One CEO friend hired a great CFO for his organic market after attracting 40 great applicants in one week through an ad on Treehugger.com.

3. Try guerilla tactics
Of course, the best talent is working for someone else. Steve Hall, founder of online auto marketplace Driversselect in Dallas, finds out who's winning industry awards by reading trade publications -- then phones the winners to ask for their professional advice. That's how he found a great services manager. For entry-level gigs, he leaves notes on cars parked in restaurants' employee-of-the-month spots suggesting that the workers contact him about a new opportunity.

4. Tweak the job description
Struggling to find the right systems engineer, Jennifer Walzer, CEO of tech firm BUMI, rewrote the job description she was circulating to draw those with the right cultural fit for her New York City tech firm. She added "highly developed sense of irony and a touch of snark," and got 125 applications with five great candidates, one of whom she hired. That's up from the 120 applications -- with zero strong candidates -- she received with a standard, HR-style job summary.

5. Become a celebrity
Not every executive can be a Richard Branson, but if you want top people to approach your company for jobs, it helps to become your industry's version of a rock-star CEO. How big? Write a book or speak at key events. Shortcut: Hire a ghostwriter through a site like MediaBistro.com or use Advantage Media's "Talk Your Book" program, where you can actually dictate a book in a single day. View it as an investment in shrinking your recruiting budget!

Verne Harnish is the CEO of Gazelles Inc., an executive education firm.
This story is from the October 29, 2012 issue of Fortune.

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Digital Staffing: The Future of Recruitment-by-Algorithm

Americans are now spending more time on social networking sites than on all other sites combined. Facebook alone has more than 1 billion users — that's 15% of the world's population and almost 50% of internet users, and they spend an average 15 minutes a day on the site. And that's just one site; imagine if you added in Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Weibo, Renren, Orkut, and on down the list.

As a consequence of spending so much time online, we now leave traces of our personality everywhere. Indeed, unless you have never used Amazon, Gmail, Spotify, Tripadvisor,Netflix, or any multitude of other sites, you will have not one, but multiple online profiles. In the beginning, the profiles were of interest only to those websites, which customized our consumer experience by offering us products congruent with our preferences and values ("if you bought this movie, you may want to buy..."). However, our online behaviors are now also of interest to recruiters and employers, who are desperately trying to translate them into "digital reputations" and use them to find talent online. I see three reasons that employers are likely to find their future leaders in cyberspace.

First, the web makes recruiting easier for employers and would-be employees. For instance, a company with 100 employees will probably have close to 100 employees on Facebook or LinkedIn, and each of them will have at least 100 connections on these networking sites — this means targeting 10,000 people who are first-degree connections, and since they will have at least 100 connections each, the job ad could reach over 1,000,000 if we include second-degree connections. For employees, killing time on Facebook or Twitter while at work may not be that pointless after all — it can help you find a more desirable job (or be found). Indeed, 1 in 6 job seekers credits social media with helping them find a better job.

Second, the web makes recruiting less biased and less clubby. Most recruiters are already using social media to identify talented employees outside their usual networks. According to a 2012 survey by Jobsite, 54% of recruiters use Twitter, 66% Facebook, and a whopping 97% LinkedIn, as recruitment tools. While this widens the pool of recruitees, recruiters are still subject to the same biases that operate in the physical world (notably prejudiced inferences about someone's character or values based on their appearance). However, it is easier to create and implement reliable methods online than offline, where chemistry and subjectivity will never be eliminated. Conversely, digital reputations capture many hours of online behaviors, and unlike with stocks, with human beings past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

Third, web analytics can help recruiters become more efficient. Big data can provide the best answer to the big questions in talent identification, if we ask the right questions of the data. Not only is there an abundance of data, it is also getting easier, quicker, and cheaper to generate more (relevant) data. Data aggregation algorithms are growing exponentially — Klout may not be the best measure of "social influence," but it is still useful and fairly reliable, and future alternatives will no doubt be improvements. Data integration — combining people's multiple profiles into one — is the next step, and it's already happening. Soon, it will be easy to know that the person who buys Colin Dexter books on Amazon is the same person who streams Inspector Lewis on Netflix, checks out the Randolph Hotel TripAdvisor, and searches for flights to Heathrow on Kayak. If you've ever shopped for a pair of shoes on Zappos and then seen those same shoes advertised to you the next time you visit Facebook, this has already happened to you. The question becomes: how can recruiters put all these pieces together to quantify potential hires?

If you think this is scary, you may want to consider the alternatives: missing out on a better job, spending ages updating your CV, completing dozens of individual job applications, or living your life entirely offline (which would be a very lonely life indeed). Furthermore, being a luddite will probably damage your career. Recruiters will deem candidates unemployable if they fail to find information about them online — unless you are hiding an undesirable history or do not exist, you are now expected to have an online profile.

The big implication is that you need to invest a considerable amount of time managing your digital reputation. The only thing worse than not having a profile is having an undesirable profile. Indeed, your chances of being headhunted online are inversely related to the amount of inappropriate self-disclosure found in your Facebook or Twitter profile. Egosurfing — self-googling — is now more important than updating your CV.

We will soon witness the proliferation of machine learning systems that automatically match candidates to specific jobs and organizations. Imagine that instead of receiving movie recommendations from Netflix or holiday recommendations from Expedia, you receive daily job offers from Monster or LinkedIn — and that those jobs are actually right for you.
Now if only we could send our avatars to work while we stay in bed.

Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is an international authority in personality profiling and psychometric testing. He is a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL), Visiting Professor at New York University, and has previously taught at the London School of Economics. He is co-founder of metaprofiling.com.

No Joke: 70% of Your Employees Are Job Hunting

No Joke: 70% of Your Employees Are Job Hunting:
A new survey offers tough medicine for bosses. How can you thrive in a grass-is-always-greener world?
The Internet has made it easier to find nearly anything, whether it's that perfect picture for your new apartment, the coolest new restaurant in town, a rare collectible or--apparently--a new job.
And, according to a new CareerBuilder survey, that means companies need to face some stark realities about the behavior of today's employees and job seekers--namely, that the two groups are one and the same.
The job search site polled more than 1,000 Americans to ask about their job-hunting habits. What the company learned is that the idea of contented employees toiling away without a thought to their next gig versus "active" jobseekers poised over the classifieds red pen in hand is as dead as in-store movie rentals and celluloid camera film.
Everyone, it seems, is basically always looking for a job. And that includes your employees. The survey found:

• 74% of people are either actively searching for a new job or are open to new opportunities.
• Nearly 35% of people begin preparing for their next job within weeks of starting a new one.
• 24% say job searching is a regular part of their weekly activities.
• 69% of workers say searching for new opportunities is part of their "regular routine," with 24% searching as frequently as once a week.

Obviously, these results have much to offer recruiters who traditionally have distinguished between 'active' and 'passive' candidates. "Kill the idea of the passive candidate--passive candidates don't exist," comments CareerBuilder's managing director of social and mobile strategy Eric Owski. But what lessons does the survey offer for small business owners?
In short, don't get complacent, not about retaining your doubtlessly restless talent, or about cultivating your image as an employer for the many already employed folks who are nevertheless on the lookout for their next opportunity.
"Candidates are likely researching companies in some form or another before they even apply. Employers need to make sure they have a presence on the various platforms candidates are using as information resources - such as their career sites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn - in order to connect with candidates and control their message," says CareerBuilder's vice president of corporate marketing and branding, Jamie Womack, for example.
Are you overestimating the loyalty of your employees?

Are You at Risk of Employee Fraud?

Are You at Risk of Employee Fraud?:
No matter what business you're in, it can happen. Don't get blindsided by fraud: Know when employees are likeliest to steal.
Do you wonder whether you could ever be the victim of employee fraud? Stop wondering--you could. "Something like three out of every 10 businesses will have employees who steal," reports Janine Driver, author of You Can't Lie to Me, who spent years training FBI, CIA, and ATF agents in how to spot dishonesty.
No matter what business you're in it can happen, she says. "One dentist worked with the same assistant for 30 years," she says. "Then her house was being foreclosed, so she forged his signature cosigning a loan." The woman paid her loan and the fraud would have gone undetected--except that the bank sent the dentist a congratulatory note when it was paid off. "It's not the homeless person out on the street stealing from us, but the person we trust," Driver says.
In spite of her expertise, it's even happened to her. With a busy speaking schedule, Driver had a management company handle her bookings, as well as invoicing and processing payments. One day, out of curiosity, she followed up a text from her bank acknowledging a deposit--and discovered that the payment had come from a booking several months earlier. Come to find out, the company had been withholding money, often depositing it long after the payment was received. "At the time, they owed me about $8,000, but they'd been borrowing and paying back for years," she says. When she consulted an attorney about it, he told her she was the sixth fraud victim to contact him that month.
The fraud 'triangle'
If fraud is widespread and even the smartest pros don't always see it coming, how can you hope to protect yourself? Begin by being aware of what Driver calls the fraud triangle. In the fraud triangle:
1. The employee has access to money, valuable goods, or other assets;
2. The employee is facing some financial pressure, such as a child in college or a looming home foreclosure;
3. The employee can somehow justify his or her actions, perhaps feeling that he or she deserves higher pay or should be compensated for extra time on the job.
If all three elements are present, Driver says, the likelihood of an employee committing fraud are very high. Protect yourself by making sure you're aware if any employees are facing financial difficulties. You want to know so you can be understanding and helpful, but you should also keep in mind that an employee in this situation is likelier to turn to crime. Obviously, you need to be especially vigilant of anyone who has access to your company's bank accounts.
How much of this résumé is true?
Though you can never completely screen for fraud, Driver says careful hiring can help reduce the risk. For one thing, she recommends getting a credit report before signing someone on, a step that more and more employers, including the federal government, are taking. If someone's facing the sort of financial trouble that might lead him or her to steal, chances are it'll turn up.
She also recommends asking job-seekers to certify that all their answers will be true at the top of an application--before they fill out the rest--rather than at the bottom where it's traditionally found. "If people have already lied, they'll mentally justify it and sign," she says.
You can take that method a step further by having a two-part interview process, she adds. Begin by having a preliminary interview with an associate. At the end of the interview, the associate tells the applicant that while he or she seems like a good candidate for the job, you're meticulous and will check every single item--so any inaccuracies should be corrected before the person's résumé gets passed along to you. And then the associate should ask: "On a scale of 1 to 100, how accurate is it?"
The answer will be illuminating, Driver promises. "Almost no one will say 100%. They'll say 90%, so you ask about the other 10%." The answer might be that the applicant can't remember whether a job started in May or June. Or it could be that he or she was fired from a previous position.
This tactic can be surprisingly effective. "We see it in law enforcement," Driver says. In one interview, an agent asked a suspect how much of his statement had been true. "99%" came the answer. So the agent asked which 1% was inaccurate. Answer: "My involvement in the crime."

Recruiting Star Talent? Do This First

Recruiting Star Talent? Do This First:
When it comes to top hires, the questions people ask tell you far more than the answers they give.
When I interview, I don't ask many questions. Instead, I simply open with, "What can I tell you about the company?" It forces candidates to think of questions to ask me, rather than inviting them to recite canned, rehearsed responses about their background and goals.
When the interviewee finishes answering my first question, I continue, "What else can I tell you?" I do this over and over again for most of the interview.
Probably for this reason, a current employee told me he felt intimidated during his interview with me. But I was surprised. I'm not trying to be tricky. It's a legitimate question. I learn a lot more about someone--and his thought processes--from the questions he asks.
I have found that the smartest, most agile and innovative people are those who ask a lot of questions. I pay careful attention to the quality of the questions job candidates ask, the way they ask them and listen to the answers, and then construct follow-up questions. This process tells me if candidates are good learners, and gives me an idea of how they navigate the unknown.
It also tells me a lot about what's important to my interviewees. For example, if someone asks me about technology, she's likely a person who thinks most about the product and innovation. If the first questions she asks are about vacation policies, that's also very telling.
I usually wrap up my interviews with two simple questions. The first is: "What are you not good at?" This often throws people off. They're used to giving a "pitch" about their strengths. But I explain that I need to know what they're not good at because, as a manager, I need to help them develop. And I need to make sure I can either help them develop in that area of need or surround them with other people who can.
My final question is: "Do you want this job and would you be successful doing it?" I explain that I hate firing people, so I need them to be honest with themselves and with me about whether or not they truly feel they could be superb in the role.
To summarize, here are my questions:

What can I tell you about the company? What else can I tell you? What else can I tell you?

What are you not good at?

Do you want this job and would you be successful doing it?

Remember, you learn a lot more from the questions people ask than the answers they give.

How to Manage Creative Geeks

How to Manage Creative Geeks:
Some of your company's most creative employees may thrive on social rejection. So how do you make them part of a functioning team?
Much of your company’s success may depend on kernels of ideas that keep you on the cutting edge. In that sense, we’re all dependent to some degree on creative people, those individuals capable of coming up with the new formula, the new technology, or the new process that will change the game.
But there’s a problem. It’s not a consistent problem and not one that is endemic to all creative people, but it is a problem. Creative people often possess certain attributes that can make leading them a bit difficult.
Creative people sometimes operate most effectively on the outside of the collective. They often find themselves rejected by the group, and at times, they take the initiative and reject the group themselves. They may seem, at times, to be more entranced by their own thoughts than whatever problem the collective is trying to solve. Isn’t that the world of the creative geek?
There’s increasing evidence that a sense of social rejection actually fuels creativity, which makes things even harder for a leader trying to inculcate some sort of esprit de corps. Research by Sharon H. Kim of Johns Hopkins University, Lynne C. Vincent of Cornell University, and Jack A. Goncalo, also of Cornell, has recently found that the more that people feel excluded from a group, the more they may resort to creative endeavors. (This work is scheduled to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology.)
This isn’t true for everyone. It does hold true, though, for those with a so-called "independent self-concept”--those who don’t need the group to feel whole and self-confident. The authors write that “for individuals with an independent self-concept, rejection will reinforce their desire to differentiate themselves from others, and that mind-set should, in turn, lead to more creative outcomes.”
So how do you lead strong, creative individuals who operate outside of the group while making sure that they don’t feel totally rejected? How do you make sure independent outsiders don’t become idiosyncratic rebels? In short, how do you lead the creative geeks?
There are three things to keep in mind:

• Incorporate their creativity. Consciously reinforce the idea that creative geeks fit into a larger collective effort. Make it as clear as possible that their ideas are important in moving the agenda of the group. This brings creative geeks in while enhancing their self-worth and celebrating their creativity.
• Engage them through dialogue. Ask creative geeks what they’re doing. Ask how you can be of assistance. Coach them, and partner with them as much as possible.
• Establish parameters. Within your company, you need to set boundaries for your most creative people. Though you want to give them enough space outside of the group, you also need to monitor them to make sure that their agenda does not spin out of control, putting the interests of the larger collective in jeopardy.

Leading creative outsiders is a balancing act. Feelings of rejection can stimulate creativity, but you need to make sure the creative geek feels like part of the group. In leading creative team members, make sure they have enough space to operate as outsiders, but give them enough opportunity to be part of the team. While these people may be independent and creative, and even may relish the role of outsider, they also look for social recognition and a sense of belonging.

How to keep employees you can't afford to lose

How to keep employees you can't afford to lose: Even in this sluggish job market, your best people always have other offers. Here's how to entice them to stick around.
Dear Annie: I liked your column about the art of quitting gracefully, but unfortunately several of my most talented and experienced direct reports seem to have read it, too. Three of them have quit (gracefully) in the past three weeks, and certain others seem less enthusiastic about their jobs than MORE

9 Hiring Tips Learned the Hard Way

9 Hiring Tips Learned the Hard Way:

I've hired hundreds of people, and fired a few too. Here are the best recruiting insights I've gleaned the hard way.

When you're hiring, you're growing. That means business is good. It's easy to let that euphoria go to your head and, in a rush of enthusiasm, hire great people who, nevertheless, could be wrong for the job, or your business.

During my career, I've hired hundreds of people and fired a few too. Here are some of the most important insights I've gleaned the hard way:

1. Write up a job description that matters.

The best job descriptions don't just outline duties, responsibilities, and necessary skills. They also articulate how you want the work to be done, and the moral climate in which the company operates. If you're a fiercely competitive company that likes to pit teams against each other, say so. If customer or patient care is critical, don't assume that a candidate's empathy is a given. I'd say the how often matters more than the what but it's so hard to measure that most people prefer to ignore it. Do so at your peril.

2. Know the talent you already have.

Are you sure there isn't internal talent that might seize an open opportunity? Internal hires tend to do better than outsiders so if you promote from within you're likely to reduce your risk. You want to encourage the talent you already have so work hard to discover what you have before you go looking for more.

3. Align your values with your hiring process.

There's no point saying teamwork is important and then letting one person make the hiring decision. If you say you value instinct, then doing a wide array of personal and professional assessments probably isn't the way to go either. If you value creativity and risk-taking, don't set ridiculously hard problems that humiliate the people who can't solve them.

4. Use professional assessment tests for senior leaders.

Every HR professional I've spoken to argues that interviews don't work; everyone is so hopelessly biased that, however lengthy the interview process, results are just too subjective. So bring in a professional assessor who can match evaluations to the skills and qualities you are looking for. Using an outside assessor can save you from yourself because she won't be swayed by likeability.

5. Listen hard for dissenting voices.

If everyone loves your preferred candidate, something is wrong. No hire is perfect and there should be some dissenting voices around the table. What are the candidate's weaknesses? They may not be critical but they must exist and it's better to identify them (and figure out how to accommodate them) early.

6. Watch the salary negotiation like a hawk.

How people manage money will tell you a great deal about how they'll handle partners and customers. If you don't like what you see, pull the plug.

7. Start with a trial period.

I don't think you ever know anyone until you see them in action (and vice versa). So agree--for both your sakes--to a joint review after one to three months. Give very honest feedback and ask for it too. No new hire is ever as alert and insightful as at the beginning. Most companies lose all sense of how they come across to outsiders so this feedback is precious.

8. Assign mentors.

Most organizations are bad at explaining themselves. Each new hire should have someone she can turn to with questions. And, of course, this mentor should not be her boss. It's also important that everyone in your company is good at mentoring; if you're great with co-workers, you're more likely to be great with customers too. Mentoring new hires is excellent leadership training.

9. Never sell your organization.

Interviewing should be all about unfettered exploration, not persuasion. You shouldn't sell your company, and the candidates shouldn't sell themselves either. What you're after is an intelligent, adult discussion about what constitutes success within your company and within the candidate's professional and personal life. The stories have to be honest and fit.

One Employee Message That Should Never Be Mixed

One Employee Message That Should Never Be Mixed:
Vision, goals, and guidelines all are important. But not as important as this.
It's incredibly easy to send mixed messages to your employees.
For example, you can tell your employees that quality and customer satisfaction are vital to your business's success... but that message can easily get lost when weekly, daily, and even hourly productivity results are splashed across every bulletin board in your facility.
The key is to help your employees find a larger meaning in what your company does--and in what they do.
But that's not easy.
Productivity vs. Quality
Years ago I worked in a run-and-gun book manufacturing plant: Our goal wasn't to produce the highest quality product possible; our goal was to avoid customer complaints while maximizing productivity.
Publicly management might have disagreed with that goal, but since there is often a difference between what is said and what is expected, on the shop floor we were well aware of the real expectations. Numbers mattered--a lot.
(Keep in mind I don't disagree with striking a balance between quality and productivity. Commodity production, especially when price is the major competitive factor, requires meeting quality expectations while maximizing output and minimizing costs. Exceeding quality expectations is fine, as long as it doesn't slow you down or cost you more.)
In the mid-80s our plant expanded its printing and binding capabilities to include Bible and hymnal production. Convincing publishers we could reliably manufacture Bibles and hymn books wasn't easy for our sales force; one publisher even sent a vice president to talk to everyone at the plant involved in producing their work.
I only remember one thing she said: "You aren't running books," she told us. "You're running Bibles."
At first I assumed she was speaking from a religious perspective. Years later I realized her statement carried a larger meaning. Her point was that a Bible can be more than just a book: It can also be a cherished gift, a source of comfort, or an heirloom passed on from one generation to the next.
In short, a Bible can take on a meaning greater than the words it contains. Unlike a "regular" book, a Bible might be more than just a book to be read once and placed on a shelf; it could, over time--even if a page is never turned--become an item that takes on real significance in a person's or a family's life.
So can almost anything.
What's the Larger Meaning?
What your business sells--no matter how transitory--may turn out to have a larger meaning. The restaurant you own doesn't just serve food; your restaurant may create a touchstone for a family's memories. The smartphone you sell may not just store music and images but could provide the soundtrack and photo album of a teenager's life. The clothing you sell might be worn on the first day of school or on a first date.
At the time I didn't take her message to heart. I stayed focused on out-producing the other crews and trying to set production records.
In large part that was my fault, but some of the responsibility does rest with the expectations our management team set. They occasionally told us to run quality Bibles--but they constantly measured how fast we ran those Bibles.
The products and services you provide can at times make a lasting impact in a customer's life. Help your employees understand how they sometimes provide customers with a lot more than a product or service.
Maybe that is better quality; maybe that is better service; maybe it's the recognition that most purchases have an objective and an emotional component, and that emotional component must be supported during and after the sales process.
Whatever you provide, help every employee find the meaning in what they do.
That's the most important message of all--and one that should never be mixed.

How to Make Smart Hires, Even if You're CEO

How to Make Smart Hires, Even if You're CEO:
CEOs are generally the worst people to do their company's hiring. But most entrepreneurs want to do this themselves. Here's how.
As your company grows, the most important and hardest decisions will be those about who gets hired and who gets fired. Forget what you hear about technology giving companies a competitive advantage. The only sustainable competitive advantage is provided by talented, committed and passionate people.
Unfortunately, CEOs are among the worst possible people to do their company’s hiring. This nugget comes courtesy of my friend Jay Goltz, a successful Chicago serial entrepreneur. Jay notes that CEOs tend to be:

• Short on time, and often, distracted
• Bad listeners. They’re always selling themselves and their businesses rather than asking and learning about the job candidate
• Too good-natured and trusting, and not skeptical enough to ask the hard questions.

Yet most entrepreneurs at least want to have a hand in hiring. How can you give yourself a fighting chance of doing a good job? Here are a few ideas and rules that have helped me over the years:
Check the facts. Nicely.
People lie on their resumes all the time. So it’s perfectly reasonable to ask detailed questions about a resume and to take everything on it with at least a grain of salt. It is not perfectly reasonable, however, to assume the worst about someone simply because you find something on his or resume to be a bit puzzling.
For years, I looked younger than my age. I once flew to France for a huge meeting involving millions of dollars. I walked into the room and was treated so shabbily by these folks that I was dumbfounded. I had lunch and went right back to the airport and flew home. I later learned that when my alleged business partners first saw me, they didn’t think I was old enough to have done everything listed on my resume. Instead, they instantly decided I had been lying. I wasn’t. It was a real lesson in managing information and expectations.
Look for accomplishments, not credentials
Degrees are nice to have, but a candidate’s ability to get things done is what matters. There are plenty of “smart” people out there who aren’t people smart. If the new person can’t get along with the natives as part of an effective and collaborative team, then his or her book smarts don’t mean squat.
Look for the best person for the job, not the best person
Too many CEOs think that they should hire any great person who comes along, and figure out a good job for them later. As important as it is to have super-talented people, trying to “warehouse” them is a losing strategy. Get a clear job description, understand the criteria for a successful candidate, and fill that particular job.
There are no easy jobs
Every candidate should have the basic required skills. But the right prospects are the ones who have the ability to get the job done. Ability is the result of mental and physical toughness, resourcefulness, and powerful concentration.
Age and wisdom are not the same
At some point, young or first-time CEOs often think they need to add some “grown-ups” to the management mix. This is a sure sign that they’re scared. They’re scared of being alone and responsible; scared of being in way over their heads; and scared that they’re going to screw things up. These hires generally fail miserably, because the new person doesn’t have the requisite energy and enthusiasm, isn’t comfortable with the rest of the employees, starts off by criticizing the way the entrepreneurs runs the business, or is just way too focused on financial and compensation issues. Beware.

Outsourcing: New Pressures to Stay Home, Old Reasons to Go Abroad

Outsourcing: New Pressures to Stay Home, Old Reasons to Go Abroad: Has outsourcing run its course in the wake of the recession and complaints from U.S. politicians about stubbornly high jobless rates? Exports from emerging markets fell markedly in 2009, and more companies are thinking harder about the unknowns of going abroad. But the cost savings in Asia are still highly attractive to multinationals, and export levels went up again in 2010. What's more, China's workforce is gearing up to manufacture an ever-wider range of products.

How To Train Your Managers -- Leadership Training For Employees

How To Train Your Managers -- Leadership Training For Employees: In many small companies, there is no formal manager training.  People do well, they get promoted.  Small companies can’t afford to have an internal University or to send all aspiring managers to external training.  If something needs to be done, it often needs to be done immediately, so your motivated employees will jump in to fill the breach and the next thing you know they are managing a small team or project.

4 Non-Traditional Ways People Can Manage Their Careers Better

4 Non-Traditional Ways People Can Manage Their Careers Better: We are indeed living during some of the most interesting times in American history.   People are incredibly uncertain about what decisions to make in their careers; while concurrently, they are searching for happiness.  As NBC News reported last week, the number of men and women suffering from acute anxiety is increasing – and our stressful, fast-paced lifestyles are to blame.    Most people are not just operating in survival mode, they are in a state of denial.

Why You Can Get Fired for Doing Your Job Well

Why You Can Get Fired for Doing Your Job Well: I'm often asked what it takes to excel at your job. As we get into the 21st-century economy, where you hear companies laying off people left and right, I can tell you this: if you do everything you’re asked to do – every single thing – and you do it

The Most Important Interview Question Never Asked

The Most Important Interview Question Never Asked:

I have been hounding my business partner, our CEO, Dave Elkington, to share a very powerful question he has tested in the hiring process over the eight years of interviewing candidates in our growth company, InsideSales.com. He finally relented to sharing in this guest post. - Ken

Dave:

Build Trust: 6 Foolproof Steps to Train Employees

Building trust in an employee is very much like teaching someone to drive. You don't just hand him the keys on the first day and let him take the car for a spin while hoping for the best. You have to show him how the car works, what the rules of the road are, and how to handle emergency situations successfully. Only when he can drive you to a destination without incident can he be trusted to take the car out alone.
So how do you create that trust with an employee?

1. Start everyone as a passenger. 

When a new employee joins our team, he spends a significant amount of time learning our products. He is taught our computer system and our order fulfillment process. Finally, he role-plays the correct way to help customers get what they need. Throughout this training period, he does not talk to live customers or touch actual orders; instead he is kept in a classroom-like environment, much like a student taking driver's ed. Only when he is able to pass a product exam, successfully enter a test order, and impress me with how he handles difficult sales obstacles is he able to move on the next level.

2. Put the employee behind the wheel--in the parking lot.

Just because an employee has been successful on the written road test does not mean he is ready to drive. In phase two of our trust-building process, a new team member is given real responsibilities, but performs them in an off-road setting, still quarantined from customer contact.

Whereas before, he was only allowed to enter test orders, he will now enter actual orders that come in via our website. Because the orders are real, he must enter them correctly, anticipate problems, and make sure they are handled in a timely manner.

Essentially, he is given the chance to sit in the driver's seat, but can only drive around the parking lot, because another team member will be double-checking all of his orders for potential errors. When his orders are error-free, I trust him to take the next step.

3. Let the employee take a drive around the block.

Driving is difficult at first because it requires the use of many skills at once. At this level, the employee must put together all the product knowledge he has acquired, use our computer system accurately, and do both with a live customer on the line. In order to make it a little less frightening (for both the employee and me), a new employee practices by shadowing a senior rep on calls.

The senior rep takes the order, while the new employee listens in, silently getting his cues from the customer, and using them to enter the order on his own computer. At the end of each call, he prints and compares his order to the order taken by the senior rep. Once he is successfully typing in the same thing as the senior rep, and several orders are done correctly, he can be trusted enough to go further.

4. Time to try the open road.

You will never know if someone can actually drive until you let him do it. As a business owner, I find this is the hardest stage because there are real consequences. The employee is now in control of the order-taking situation, but a senior rep will be shadowing him to make sure the order is done right.

Even if the new staffer makes a mistake, the customer will not suffer, and the mistake can be used to teach how to make a better choice the next time. This allows me to let the employee drive, but with the safety of my foot close to the brakes, just in case. Once the mistakes diminish, and the employee feels comfortable in most situations, he can be trusted to take the car out alone.

5. Licensed and ready to roll. 

At this point, the employee trusts that he knows enough about our product, procedure, and mission to be able to drive without a problem from point A to point B. I also trust that he will be able to do that.

6. Send him on his way.

Once the new rep is out on the road, I fully expect he may have some minor fender benders along the way. Being okay with that is the final speed bump in the two-way street called trust.

Vanessa Merit Nornberg: In 2004, Vanessa opened Metal Mafia, a wholesale body and costume jewelry company that sells to more than 5,000 specialty shops and retail chains in 23 countries. Metal Mafia was an Inc. 500 company in 2009. @vanessanornberg