What Makes an Exceptional Employee

Dona DeZube — an HR professional – recently wrote an excellent, concise article on www.dice.com.  Whether you’re an employee seeking promotion or a business owner hunting for high-caliber employees, her advice will help!

Everybody knows what makes for exceptional employees. They’re team players who are dependable, smart, and talented. So what lifts an employee in to the ranks of “outstanding?” How about this list of nine attributes from BNet blogger Jeff Haden:

1. uniqueness
2. social smarts
3. adaptability
4. inquisitiveness
5. focus
6. the urge to tinker with the status quo
7. a desire to prove they’re right
8. they praise others in public
9. they complain in private

Of these, I think social smarts and focus are the most important. Workers who read social signals poorly lose friends and make enemies no matter how well and how often they come up with process or product improvements. And those that don’t have a focused intensity — a real passion for what they do — are unlikely to be peak performers.

For HR professionals, the question is how do we foster a workplace that encourages, develops and rewards the quirky thinkers who not only come up with great ideas, but have the drive to see those ideas through?

What’s worked for your company?

What No One Tells Creatives

I like, I like!

Are you a “Creative”?  I am.  I love stringing words together in sentences.  I’m an avid, prolific, life-long writer.

But have you ever hit the BLOCK?  Or have you ever started doing your creative thing, to discover that you’re not very good?

Ira Glass says that’s normal.  Who’s Ira Glass?  I’m not sure but he must be important.  Check out his message to us Creatives.

 

Keep creating.  It’s cool.  You’ll do better.  Just don’t stop what you do best.

Wasting Time Productively

Wasting time is not a waste
-Seth Godin

In fact, wasting time is a key part of our lives.

Wasting time poorly is a sin, because not only are you forgoing the productivity, generosity and art that comes from work, but you’re also giving up the downtime, experimentation and joy that comes from wasting time.

If you’re going to waste time (and I hope you will) the least you can do is do it well.

Who’s your motivation?

According to Seth Godin….

The world is more and more aligned in favor of those who find motivation inside, who would do what they do even if it wasn’t their job. As jobs turn into projects, the leaders we need are those that relish the project, that jump at the chance to push themselves harder than any coach ever could.

Who is your Boss?

Seth Godin, Marketing guru, had this to say about working for yourself VS working for corporate America. Love it!
–

The Taskmaster Premium

How much are you paying for the privilege of having someone else tell you what to do?

Example: if you go to your gym and work out for an hour, the cost of that session is zero.

Hire a personal trainer to follow you around and give you instructions and that’s $70.

If you take a job as a freelancer writer doing short service pieces on assignment to a local paper, you might earn $3 an hour. Which is about 97% less than you’d earn if, like some writers, you dream up amazing pieces, write them on spec and turn them into blogs, books or films. This writer doesn’t wait to get hired. He hires himself.

If you do publicity for an agency, working hard and precisely following the VP’s and the client’s instructions, you might earn $25 an hour. On the other hand, when you do your own PR, when you build a sensation and turn it into a following, you might earn many times that. (And enjoy it more).

Work for a coal mine and make minimum wage. Discover a coal mine and never need to work again.

We happily give up our freedom and our income in exchange for having someone else take responsibility for telling us what to do next.

How much are you giving up?

Seth Godin Cares

Seth Godin says it best. Today’s blog of his. We’d all benefit from applying what he writes here:

Caring

No organization cares about you. Organizations aren’t capable of this.

Your bank, certainly, doesn’t care. Neither does your HMO or even your car dealer. It’s amazing to me that people are surprised to discover this fact.

People, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of caring. It’s part of being a human. It’s only when organizational demands and regulations get in the way that the caring fades.

If you want to build a caring organization, you need to fill it with caring people and then get out of their way. When your organization punishes people for caring, don’t be surprised when people stop caring.

When you free your employees to act like people (as opposed to cogs in a profit-maximizing efficient machine) then the caring can’t help but happen.

Dream Job

This is truly my dream job.  It’s what I do best: 

Public Relations Manager

Public relations managers specialize in protecting and promoting their client’s image or brand. Anything that is written, broadcasted or published about an organization must go through the PR team, as do any scheduled appearances or interviews. They are responsible for making sure their client’s name stays reputable; putting out fires (so to speak); issuing statements when necessary; drafting press releases; pitching their client to media outlets and so much more.
Salary: $89,683/year

Courtesy of CareerBuilder.com

Bad Service: The Fastest Way to Kill Advertising

Don’t take my word for it.  Read the surprising stats here:  

http://bit.ly/fOnr71

Innovating Client Interaction

Looking to please your clients?  Start from their first interaction with your company and walk through each step of your customer process.  You may find surprising ideas to increase Customer Loyalty!  Check out an excerpt from the recent fastcompany.com article “Strategy by Design” by Tim Brown…

Any real-world strategy starts with having fresh, original insights about your market and your customers. Those insights come only when you observe directly what’s happening in your market. As Jane Fulton Suri, who directs our human-factors group, notes in her book Thoughtless Acts? (Chronicle Books, 2005), “Directly witnessing and experiencing aspects of behavior in the real world is a proven way of inspiring and informing [new] ideas. The insights that emerge from careful observation of people’s behavior . . . uncover all kinds of opportunities that were not previously evident.”

Very often, you can build an entire strategy based on the experiences your customers go through in their interactions with your organization. Service brands have a horrible habit of focusing on the one interaction where they think they make money. If you’re running an airline, there’s an awful temptation to focus all of your attention on what it’s like to fly a particular route on a particular aircraft. In fact, you can track backward and forward a whole series of interactions that consumers have with you that are very relevant. If you start to map out that entire journey, you begin to understand how you might innovate to create a much more robust customer experience.

Try this today.  The faster you implement the ideas you discover, the more quickly your company can grow!

Trade in your shoes today…

Ask yourself this question, a “Mini Poll” if you will….

 

WHAT IS IT I WANT?

 

When you walk into the mall – aside from specific items on your “To Buy” list – what is it you are looking for?

 

For instance, why do I find myself standing in the Starbucks line time and time again?   What am I seeking to get from them?

 

Ridiculous!, you say.  You’re clearly jonesing for caffeine.  But I look deeper and realize that what I really want is…

 

Warmth.

 

Intimacy…

 

That “coffee house” feel of friends gathered round, wittily dissecting the week’s political events and celeb scaries, deconstructing America’s economy and offering their two cents on who will be its savior, sharing laughs and lingering over lattes….

 

Aha, I’m exposed!  I go there for the warm fuzzies Starbucks gives me!  This explains why, time and time again, my eye’s drawn to the stack of cheesy holiday knick knacks and displays this coffee chain is famous for…. and why I fall for the “yummy of the day” 60% of the time, every time. 

 

So try this on for size: Dress like a citizen, a normal window shopper who would waltz into your store/ company/ bureaucratic red tape infested global conglomerate.  Pretend you’re “one of them” today and ask yourself, What am I looking for?  What do they need from your business that draws them into your orbit in the first place? 

 

Oh no, these things are often more than what’s simply tangible.  Yes, perhaps they do want your cutesy, overpriced, 100% organic doggie treats!  But what else are they hoping to get from their purchase?  First ask yourself, What kind of person spends exorbitant amounts of money on items their canine will swallow whole and vomit on the carpet in under 10 seconds?  Why, lonely women of course!  And Granolas, those passionate environmentalists who equate animals with humans.  Once you’ve nailed the WHO – that you’re appealing to Paris Hiltons and PETA people – you are well on your way to discovering WHAT they want. 

 

Next step: Wrack your brain – and your staff’s – for every conceivable way you can deliver these goodies (the customers’ values!) to them.  And not just the doggie treats my friends.  We’re talking the bag they go into, the checkout girl’s friendly smile, the warmth that floods their hearts knowing their Princess Poodles is getting the best of the best. 

 

Then press these buttons as often as you can.  

 

In essence ~ Give your customers what you want.  Warm fuzzies.  Attention.  And thoughtful additions (free chew toy per 12-treat order)!  Now go get ‘em, tiger!