rethinking organizations from the outside...

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HELPING YOU MEET THE CHALLENGES IN YOUR BUSINESS – RIGHT NOW vol.6, no.1

RETHINKING ORGANIZATIONS FROM THE OUTSIDE IN:talent, leadership, and culture

why new leaders must make an impact within their first 90 days

re-recruit your top talent and win the war to keep your employees

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YOUR SUCCESS TODAY DOES NOT SECURE YOUR SUCCESS FOR TOMORROW

Alliance RPO offers these advisory services and talent management solutions:• Recruitment Process Outsourcing • Temporary and Permanent Recruitment Management • Contract Recruiting • Unbundled Recruitment Solutions • Contingency Solutions • HR Business Logistics • Third Party Management

At Alliance RPO, we are always looking for better ways to improve your business results. We identify and implement the best talent management solutions to address your specific business requirement, achieving the greatest return on your human capital investment.

Our Alliance RPO consultants will develop the most cost-effective pricing option based on your unique business requirements.

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EDITORAnne [email protected]

DESIGNED BYYeen Yong

PUBLICATION TEAMTony ScalaAlexandra TidyElaine Freedman

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Chairman’s Message 4

Management Tips: Get More from Your Employees 6

Five Essentials for Career Advancement 18

Reduce Employee Turnover in the First 90 Days 20

Focus on Drake Asia 21

Five Critical Skills for Team Leadership 26

Employee Engagement: Steps to Fuel the Human Rocket 34

Ten Steps to Become a Magnetic Leader 36

Your Team-Building Exercises May Not Be Creating a Team 38

Measuring the Impact of Absenteeism and Turnover 40

Feedback That Inspires Passion and Performance 42

How to Predict Managerial Success 44

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Dave Ulrich - Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

RETHINKING ORGANIZATIONS FROM THE OUTSIDE IN:talent, leadership, and culture

why new leaders must make an impact within their first 90 daysre-recruit your top talent and win the war to keep your employees


The Blueprint for Organizational Success

Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management thinkers of our time, had only one answer to the question

“How do you run an organization well?” And that was “Make the right people de-cisions.” Drucker believed that talented people were the essential ingredient of every successful enterprise and taught generations of managers the importance of picking the best people.

Leaders who are entrusted with their organizations’ talent selection should be acutely aware of the impact of making the right staffing decisions. After all, people are an organization’s biggest fi-nancial asset, and few activities in busi-ness are more important than hiring the right people. Without them, no amount of money can make a company succeed. I have read that organizations that spend more time recruiting high-calibre people earn a return for shareholders 22% higher than their industry peers.

Hiring capable and productive staff is therefore crucial. And just as important is keeping them on board. No one appreci-ates, or can afford, the high cost of turn-over. When it comes to retaining your top performers, Dr. John Sullivan, Professor of Management at San Francisco State University, shares his thoughts in his article, “Re-Recruit Your Top Talent and Win the War to Keep Your Employees”, starting on page 30. He states, “If you expect to win the war to keep your em-ployees, you must continually ensure that the best offer a top performing em-ployee receives comes from inside your own firm”, which he calls “re-recruiting”


chairman’sM E S S A G E

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to ask his advice on a matter. He replied, “Bill, you have to build the business of to-morrow outside of the business of today.” I never forgot these words of wisdom.

These thoughts were echoed in the Wall Street Journal in 2011 in an article by IBM, celebrating their 101st year of business.

“Nearly All the Companies Our Grandparents Admired Have Disappeared” noted that some of the leaders “were dealt a hand of bad luck and others made poor choices” and stated that the demise of most was because “they were unable to simultane-ously manage the business of the day and to build their business of tomorrow”.

This has been my focus and Drake International’s focus since 1951 — man-aging our business of the day in the nine countries where we operate, all the while being intensely aware of the ever-chang-ing business landscape and innovating and growing our “tomorrow” business. Doing this ensures that we are continu-ously sharing our knowledge to help you manage your business today, and help you grow your business for tomorrow.

R. W. Pollock, Chairman

your own employees. He continues: “Re-recruiting works because it is based on the foundation principle that top per-formers and innovators want continuous excitement, to be doing the best work of their life, and to have a significant impact.” Dr. Sullivan also shares his re-recruiting action steps, which you can follow within your own organization to keep your best employees on board.

Leaders continuously have to fight for the heart, mind, and commitment of all their employees. Professor Sattar Bawany in Singapore shares his views in his article,

“Why New Leaders Must Make an Impact within Their First 90 Days”, starting on page 14. He tells us, “The actions new leaders take during their first 90 days can have a major impact on their success.” He talks about securing early wins and making “substantial progress in energiz-ing people and focusing them on solving the business’s most pressing problems.”

While Professor Bawany talks about the importance of the first 90 days for a leader to make an impact, author Joel Garfinkle advises us how to “Reduce Employee Turnover in the First 90 Days” in his article on page 20.

William G. Bliss, an advisor to entrepre-neurial companies in the US, has put the real costs of turnover into perspective in

Drake’s whitepaper “Employee Retention – Volume Two” (available at drakeintl.com). Turnover figures can easily reach 150% of an employee’s annual salary and up to 200% to 250% for managerial and sales positions. If the average salary is $50,000 a year, the cost of turnover at 150% of salary is $75,000 per employee who leaves the company. For the company of 1,000 employees that has a 10% annual rate of turnover, the annual cost of turno-ver is $7.5 million. This figure should be a wake-up call for everyone.

With this in mind, Dave Ulrich, a professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, advises and reminds us that no leader should be only introspective:

“An organization’s value is defined by the receiver more than the giver.” This very intriguing statement makes you pause and think. He further notes, “With an outside-in focus, committed employees focus attention on work and activities that will deliver value to customers, in-vestors, and communities.” You can read more of his thought-provoking com-ments in “Rethinking Organizations from the Outside In”, our feature article in this issue starting on page 8.

I mentioned Peter Drucker earlier. I had the privilege of meeting him when I was a young man starting up Drake in the early 1950s. After a workshop, I went up to him

DRAKE ASIAThis issue of the Drake Business Review spot-lights Drake Asia and our talent management solutions work in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines. The Drake offices in Hong Kong and Singapore were opened in 1988, with the Philippines office joining the Drake family several years later. Working in countries around the world keeps Drake aware of the ever-changing issues faced by global business leaders and what we need to do as an organi-zation to meet their — and your — ongoing talent management challenges. Hong Kong’s role as a major shipping and logistics hub is evolving and growing rapidly, and Drake Hong Kong’s expertise in providing

temporary staffing solutions to the shipping and supply chain industry is well recognized. Complementing this service is the specialized end-to-end recruitment service within the procurement and supply chain industries provided by Drake’s company Vertical Talent at Drake Hong Kong.Singapore is one of the world’s leading com-mercial hubs, with the fourth largest financial centre. Drake Singapore is actively involved assisting busy companies in Singapore with their staffing requirements. Their recruitment strategy goes beyond traditional methods to ensure that value is added to organizations’ bottom lines.

The Philippines, with a population of about 93 million (2010 census), is considered one of the emerging markets in the world. Drake Philippines plays an active role in the country’s rapidly growing business process outsourc-ing (BPO) industry by providing highly skilled teams to fulfill individual BPO requirements, especially for back-end and clerical services. In addition, ACS Global Recruitment, an affili-ate of the Drake International Group in the Philippines, places skilled and professional Filipinos globally.Read more on Drake’s work in Asia in our special feature starting on page 21 of this issue.

t h e b l u e p r i n t f o r o r g a n i z a t i o n a l s u c c e s s

6 D r a k e B u s i n e s s R e v i e w | V o l u m e 6 , N u m b e r 1 | d r a k e i n t l . c o m6 D r a k e B u s i n e s s R e v i e w | V o l u m e 6 , N u m b e r 1 | d r a k e i n t l . c o m

Get More from Your Employees

M A N A G E M E N TT I P S

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Average isn’t good enough anymore, not in this competitive environ-ment. If you accept average per-

formance from your employees, you’re doing your company a huge disservice. So why do so many of us mutely accept mediocre performance? Perhaps it is because raising the bar isn’t easy; taking corrective action can be unpleasant; and if you haven’t done any of this before, it may not be clear how or where to begin.

One place to begin is examining perfor-mance in your organization using the 20–60–20 percent rule. In nearly any em-ployee group, 20% are strong performers, 60% are average performers, 20% are weak performers.

You have three possible places to begin, but which one’s most critical? Your strong performers are already doing fine under your current management, so don’t waste time fixing what isn’t broken. We’ll come back to them later. That leaves your average performers — your majority — and your weak performers, a smaller but more dangerous group. With whom do you start, and what do you do?

The good news is you can kill two birds with one stone. When you start vigor-ously managing your weakest employees, it makes a bigger impact on your next group up, the average workers.

If you aren’t taking action against under-performing employees — who are unpro-ductive or come in late and waste time or perhaps don’t come in at all, the message you send to your average workers is that there are no consequences for poor per-formance. Remember, your employees are well aware of one another’s behaviour, even if management pretends not to notice. This fosters a culture of apathy and negativity, which drags everyone down.

On the other hand, if you start holding underperformers accountable, many of your average employees may just step it up a notch, all by themselves.

they are hurting your business. Cut them loose, and you’ll send ripples throughout your organization, shaking up other non-performers and prodding average em-ployees to aim higher. As a bonus, you’ll boost morale among your top performers, because it shows that you’re paying at-tention and that you value good work.

According to an old Icelandic proverb, “Mediocrity is climbing molehills without sweating.” If you want to climb moun-tains, not molehills, develop a zero toler-ance for mediocrity. Use the 20–60–20 percent rule to keep your employees moving upward.

Reprinted with the permission of Ray Silverstein, President of PRO, Presidents Resource Organization, a network of peer advisory boards for small-business owners and author of “The Best Secrets of Great Small Businesses” and “Small Business Survival Guide: How to Survive (and Thrive) in Tough Times”. 1 800 818 0150 or [email protected].

Drake P3 predicts the behaviour and per-sonality of potential candidates against the traits of your existing top perform-ers — before you make a job offer.To find out how Drake P3 can improve your hiring success, contact the Talent Management Solutions team.

Australia: 613 9245 [email protected]

Canada: 416 216 [email protected]

Hong Kong: 852 2848 9288 [email protected]

New Zealand: 0800 840 [email protected]

Philippines: 632 753 [email protected]

Singapore: 65 6225 [email protected]

United Kingdom: 020 7484 [email protected]

You have a number of ways to manage poorly performing employees. Start by creating job descriptions and perfor-mance standards for everyone — a step too many small employers overlook. Job descriptions are incredibly useful tools: telling employees what’s expected of them; giving you a standard for meas-uring performance, a must at raise and bonus time; and protecting employers against wrongful termination suits because they are a specific tool for docu-menting problems.

If employees aren’t performing well in their job, determine why. If it is a train-ing issue, make training available, and you may solve the problem. If they are good workers but poorly suited to the job, see if there’s a more appropriate role for them elsewhere in the company. Or if they simply have very poor work habits and you cannot possibly motivate them to improve their performance, you need to do the toughest thing of all — ter-minate them.

Neutron Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, is famous for his extreme managerial practices. In the 1980s, Welch insisted that each year, all department managers rank their personnel and elim-inate the bottom 10% of workers. His theory was that it raises performance expectations and keeps everyone — even stellar employees — on their toes. Fear of losing one’s job is a powerful motivation.

While Welch’s practice was radical, it is also dangerously radical to keep non-performers on board: Plain and simple,

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If you accept average performance from

your employees, you’re doing your company a

huge disservice.

When you start vigorously managing

your weakest employees, it makes a bigger impact

on your next group up, the average workers.

g e t m o r e f r o m y o u r e m p l o y e e s


Rethinking Organizations from the Outside In: Talent, Leadership, and Culture

Strategy is about winning, and winning is less about what an or-ganization does and more about

how customers, investors, and communi-ties outside the organization respond to what it does. Therefore, an organization’s value is defined by the receiver more than the giver.

Competitors can easily imitate traditional ways of creating customer value — quickly matching price, product features, or op-erational systems. But it’s more difficult to match an organization’s capabilities.

Winning organizations understand the importance of their customers receiving service excellence, their investors having confidence in their intangibles, and their communities respecting their reputation.

Traditional organizational structure focused on roles, rules, responsibilities, and routines. Hierarchies became their dominant logic for transformation and strategy execution. Today’s organizations may be defined less by their form and structure and more by the capabilities they create and offer.

So, what does it mean to have a success-ful organization that can deliver unique value outside the organization? We have defined “organization” into three domains – talent (people), leadership, and culture (Figure 1).

Companies that deliver successful out-side-in strategies have line managers as owners and HR professionals as architects. To deliver any strategy, individuals need to be more productive; organizations need to have the right culture; and leadership needs to be widely shared throughout the

F E A T U R ES T O R Y

9

organization. Line managers and HR pro-fessionals who are committed to winning need to make choices to connect the fol-lowing three organizational dimensions to customers outside the firm: • Individual: What talent or human

capital do we need related to external stakeholders — customers, investors, and communities?

• Organization: What organization capa-bilities or culture do we need to meet external stakeholder requirements?

• Leadership: What do our leaders need to be good at to deliver value to ex-ternal stakeholders?

When leaders answer these questions, they build not only strategic success but also long-term competitive advantage.

A deceptively simple formula for talent that makes talent more productive is:

Talent = Competence * Commitment * Contribution.

Going forward, all three elements of this equation need to be considered and in-tegrated to fully manage talent.

Competence means that individuals have the knowledge, skills, and values required for today’s and tomorrow’s jobs. One company clarified competence as right skills, right place, right job, right time. For example, an emerging trend in the workforce-planning domain of competence improvement is to identify key positions and match people to these. Competence clearly matters because incompetence leads to poor decision making. Competence should start outside in by turning customer expectations into the talent requirements for the future. Committed or engaged employees work hard and do what they are asked to do, but they may be doing the wrong things. With an outside-in focus, committed employees focus attention on work and activities that will deliver value to customers, investors, and communities.

In the last decade, commitment and competence have been the hallmarks for talent. We have found the next genera-tion of employees may be competent — able to do the work — and committed

— willing to do the work; but unless they are making a real contribution through the work — finding meaning and purpose in their work, then their interest in what they are doing decreases and their pro-ductivity wanes.

Contribution occurs when employees feel that their personal needs are being met through their participation in their organization. Leaders who are ‘meaning makers’ help employees find a sense of contribution through the work that they do. Many current frameworks define con-tribution (Figure 2). When employees see how their work creates meaning for others, especially those outside the company, they are more able to recognize how they per-sonally contribute to a greater cause.

Simply stated, competence deals with the head — being able, commitment with the hands and feet — being there, and contribution with the heart — simply being. All three can be connected to external stakeholders to get the right competence, value-added commitment, and meaningful contribution.

Going forward, competence definitions will likely be less about the skills of an in-dividual and more about how those skills match the requirements of the position. Being the employer of choice is insuffi-cient unless one is the employer of choice

Competence should start outside in by turning customer expectations into the talent requirements for the future.

Figure 1

Talent, Workforce,

PeopleLeadership

Brand

Culture, Workplace, Teamwork

Organizational Capabilities

Indiv

idual

Abilit

ies

Dimensions of Organizations and Outcomes of HR work

With an outside-in focus, committed employees focus

attention on work and activities that

will deliver value to customers, investors,

and communities.

r e t h i n k i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n s f r o m t h e o u t s i d e i n


of those employees that customers would choose. In addition, as employees increasingly seek purpose in their lives in general, they turn to work as a setting for finding meaning. Next-generation employees will be more worried about finding meaning and purpose in their lives through social responsibility, an outside-in perspective.

Organization capability — culture

Talent is not enough. If they do not work well together as a team or in their or-ganization, great individuals will not be successful. Some simple statistics show the importance of teamwork over talent:

Going forward, competence definitions

will likely be less about the skills of an individual and more

about how those skills match the requirements

of the position.

Figure 2

Illustrative Drivers of Contribution or Meaning at Work

Daniel Pink Tom Rath (Gallup) Martin Seligman Marshall Goldsmith Dave & Wendy Ulrich

Core books Drive Well being Flourish Mojo Why of Work

Core premise or question

What motivates people?

What would your best possible future look like?

How do people find happiness in their lives?

How can you find a balanced life and career?

How do people find abundance in their professional and personal lives?

Key factors AutonomyMasteryPurpose

CareerSocialFinancialPhysicalCommunity

Positive emotionEngagementRelationshipsMeaningAccomplishment

IdentityAchievementReputationAcceptance

IdentityPurposeRelationshipsWork environmentWork challengeLearningDelight

• In hockey, 22% of the time the leading scorer is on the team that wins the Stanley Cup.

• In soccer, 20% of the time the winner of the Golden Boot (leading scorer) is on the team that wins the World Cup.

• In basketball, 15% of the time the player who scores the most points is on the team that wins the NBA finals.

• In movies, 25% of the time Best Movie of the Year also has the leading actor and 15% of the time the leading actress.

Great individual talent may succeed 15 to 25% of the time, but teamwork matters more.

When we work with executives to define the organization of the future, we ask them a simple question: “Can you name a company you admire?” The list of admired companies varies, but it often includes such well-known firms as Apple, Disney, General Electric, Google, Microsoft, and Unilever. We then ask the executives:

“How many levels of management are in the admired firm?” Almost no one knows.

More important, no one really cares — because we do not admire an organiza-tion for its roles, rules, or routines. Instead, we admire Apple because it seems to

continually design easy-to-use products; we admire Disney for the service we expe-rience; we admire GE because of its capa-city to build leaders in diverse industries; and we admire Google and Microsoft for their ability to innovate and shape their industry. In other words, organizations are known not for their structure but for their capabilities.

Capabilities represent what the organiza-tion is known for, what it is good at doing, and how it patterns activities to deliver value. The capabilities define many of the intangibles that investors pay attention to, the firm brand to which customers can relate, and the culture that shapes employee behaviour. These capabilities also become the identity of the firm, the deliverables of HR practices, and the key to implementing business strategy.

A Duke client study found HR profession-als today are “shifting their focus from individual competency to organizational capability.”1 McKinsey also looked to the future and found that capabilities will become more important than individual competencies: “Nearly 60 percent of re-spondents to a recent McKinsey survey say that building organizational capabili-ties such as lean operations or project or talent management is a top-three priority

11

Figure 4

for their companies. Yet only a third of companies actually focus their training programs on building the capability that adds the most value to their companies’ business performance.”2

Shaping the right organization through a capability lens synthesizes four current approaches to organization thinking (Figure 3 below). Creating the right or-ganization through a culture perspective focuses on defining the right organization values, norms, or patterns. Creating the right organization through a process lens means identifying and improving such key processes as new product develop-ment, continuous improvement, product diversification, order to remittance, and innovation. These processes often stand out through balanced scorecard assess-ments of organization alignment.3

Creating the right organization through core-competencies logic focuses on up-grading functional activities like R&D, manufacturing, quality, marketing, supply chain, HR, and information tech-nology.4 Creating the right organization through a resource view means identify-ing key resources that an organization possesses to create value.5 The capability logic synthesizes and advances these approaches to enable HR to create the right organization.6

Figure 4 above contrasts organization capabilities with individual competencies. The individual–technical cell 1 represents a person’s functional competence, such as technical expertise in marketing, finance, or manufacturing. The individual–social cell 2 is about a person’s leadership ability, for instance, to set direction, communi-cate a vision, and motivate people. The organizational–technical cell 3 comprises a company’s core technical competen-cies, for example, a financial services firm knowing how to manage risk. The organizational–social cell 4 represents an organization’s underlying DNA, culture, and personality.7

In the future, these desired organization capabilities will need to be aligned with external expectations. Leaders should begin to see culture from the outside in. Most often, organizations see culture as their norms, values, and expectations — who they are. We propose that a culture is the identity of the company in the mind of the best external stakeholders (e.g., customers). Apple’s culture should be around innovation because innova-tion is Apple’s core identity. Marriott’s culture should be around service because Marriott has worked to build a service identity. When the outside expectations become the basis for culture and compe-tencies, culture endures over time and adds enormous value.

Leadership brandUltimately, leaders bring together both individuals and organizations to solve cus-tomer problems. But there is a difference between leaders and leadership. Leaders are individuals with unique abilities to guide the behaviour of others. Leadership is an organization’s capacity to build future leaders. An individual leader matters, but an organization’s collective leadership matters more over time. Looking forward, HR professionals will need to not only help individual leaders be more effective through coaching, 360-degree feedback, and individual development plans, but also build leadership depth.

Differentiating Individual Competence vs. Organization Capability

Figure 3

Organization Capability Synthesis

OrganizationCapability

Organization culture or

Archetypes

Business processes

Core competency

Resource view of the firm

Individual Organizational

Technical1

An individual’s functional competence

3An organization’s

core competencies

Social2

An individual’s leadership ability

4An organization’s

capabilities

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1. Duke Corporate Education(2011) Learning and Development in 2011: A focus on the future.2. McKinsey Global Survey Results, Building organization capabili-ties. Sourced at http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Building_or-ganizational_capabilities_McKinsey_Global_Survey_results_2540 3. The process approach to organization may be seen in the balanced scorecard work: RS Kaplan & DP Norton (1992) The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review, Jan–Feb.RS Kaplan & DP Norton (2000) The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment. Harvard Business School Press.RS Kaplan & DP Norton (2004) Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes. Harvard Business School Press. It is also found in process management work:H Smith, P Fingar (2002) Business Process Management: The Third Wave. Meghan-Kiffer Press.M Kohlbacher (2010) The effects of process orientation: A litera-ture review. Business Process Management Journal 16(1):135–52.4. Approaching organizations as core competencies has been captured in work by CK Prahalad and G Hamel.5. The resource-based view of organizations has a more academic tradition in work by: JB Barney (1991) Firm resources and sustained competitive ad-vantage. Journal of Management 17(1): 99–120.R. Makadok (2001) Toward a synthesis of the resource-based view and dynamic-capability views of rent creation. Strategic Management Journal 22(5): 387–401

Reprinted with the permission of Dave Ulrich, a Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group (www.rbl.net), a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He has published over 200 arti-cles and book chapters and over 25 books. His latest book is “HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources”.

Elevate your management process to a relationship, productivity, and behav-iour-modification tool that will drive positive change, develop core compe-tencies, and achieve bottom-line results.

Drake’s online Performance Management Solution focuses on aligning your com-pany’s objectives with the behaviours of your top-performing employees.

To learn more, visit us online at drakeintl.com or contact the Talent Management Solutions Team at:




North America: 416 216 [email protected]

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DG Sirmon, MA Hitt, RD Ireland (2007) Managing firm resources in dynamic environments to create value: looking inside the black box. Academy of Management Review 32(1): 273–92JB Barney (2001) Is the resource-based theory a useful per-spective for strategic management research? Yes. Academy of Management Review 26(1): 41–56.B. Wernerfelt (1984) The resource-based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal 5(2): 171–80.6. The concept of organization as capabilities was briefly intro-duced by I Ansoff, then advanced in 1990 in work by D Ulrich and D Lake, followed by many who worked to identify the key capabilities of an organization:D Ulrich, D Lake (1990) Organizational Capability: Competing from the Inside Out. Wiley.G Stalk, T Hout (1990) Competing Against Time. BCG.The Strategic Effectiveness Architect. FYI Lominger.DJ Collins (1994) Research note: How valuable are organizational capabilities? Strategic Management Journal, Winter: 143–52 7. The concept of capability is laid out in D Ulrich and D Lake (1990) Organization Capability: Competing from the Inside Out. Wiley.It is further defined in D Ulrich and N Smallwood (2004) Capitalizing on capabilities. Harvard Business Review. June: 119–28.

In our studies of leadership, consistent with the logic of creating value for ex-ternal stakeholders, the requirements of effective leaders should be defined from the outside in. Often leadership success remains either inside the company as leaders learn from other leaders in the company who have succeeded, or inside the individuals with emotional intelli-gence or authenticity.

An outside-in view sets the criteria of leadership from the point of view of customers, investors, or communities. For a number of companies, we start to define effective leadership by viewing the company’s commercials or other media presentations. These externally focused broadcasts define the company’s intend-ed brand. We then identify the leadership behaviours consistent with this external brand. When leaders inside the company behave consistently with the expectations of customers and other outside stake-holders, the leadership is more sustain-able and effective. Investors increasingly value firms based on their intangibles, one being the quality of leadership. These intangibles may determine up to 50% of a firm’s market value. When investors have confidence in the firm’s leadership, they place a premium on the firm’s stock price. This leadership premium becomes an outside-in view of leadership.

In addition, leaders may be assessed by 720S not just 360s by asking those outside the company to determine what leaders demonstrate the right behaviours. And leadership training may include custom-ers as faculty or participants in training programs or as sites for job assignments. We have found that about 20% of learn-ing is from life experience. Many of us learn from experience outside of work

— in families, social settings, social net-works, volunteer work, reading, and travelling. When companies encourage and access knowledge from these life experiences, leaders broaden their rep-ertoire. For example, one company uses their philanthropy efforts as development opportunities for high-potential leaders.

Three targets or outcomes conclusion

Having a strategy to win requires think-ing outside in. Winning comes from value created from external stakeholders. Traditional avenues of winning — price, product, and operations — no longer differentiate a company. Organization capability is becoming a course of sustain-able differentiation. Organizations can be mapped onto choices about talent, culture, and leadership. When these choices focus on the outside in, leaders and HR pro-fessionals deliver long-term business value. These three domains become the outcomes for good HR work and the dif-ferentiators for effective leaders.

An individual leader matters, but an organization’s

collective leadership matters

more over time.

r e t h i n k i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n s f r o m t h e o u t s i d e / i n

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P R O G R A M

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ROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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7";%-$"#'5*#'$=%-'(*,#-"')+>'")#+'?@'678.'!*+$%+,*,-'8#*5"--%*+)0'3"A"0*BC"+$'6*,#-*Used by major international corporations, P3 is a costeffective,

webbased behavioural assessment solution that generates an easytoread

report you can use to make an immediate impact on employee performance.

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* This program has been approved for continuing professional development hours under Section A3 of the

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) log of the Human Resource Professionals Association (HRPA).

!""! Learning about P3:

#"" The science behind the assessment

#"" The 4 predictive traits of success and their interactions

#"" Evaluating EQ, leadership styles, and learning styles

#"" Interpreting the reports to get results

!""! Networking with industry

professionals

!""! Earning 13 HRPA CPD hours

!""! Learning how to apply P3 at your

organization:

#""Hiring and managing top performers #"" Seamlessly onboarding new hires #""Enhancing team communication and engagement

#"" Improving succession planning and leadership development

#""Reducing turnover, raising productivity, increasing employee loyalty and job

satisfaction

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Why New Leaders Must Make an Impact within Their

First 90 Days

CEOs are generally considered to have failed when they are unable to meet the expectations of their boards,

shareholders, and the market at large — the company’s stakeholders. This failure becomes official when a company con-firms its decision to initiate proceedings for the CEO’s departure. What factors lead to this dissatisfaction? What is the CEO’s ability to react? And can the top executive be considered a “failure” when receiving a severance package worth millions?

The actions new leaders take during their first 90 days can have a major impact on their success, so how does one best take charge in a new leadership role? Transitions are pivotal times, in part because everyone is expecting change to occur. But these are also periods of great vulnerability for new leaders who lack established working relationships and detailed knowledge of their new role. New CEOs who fail to build mo-mentum during their transition face an uphill battle, which in the final analysis may never be won. Once the battle is lost, a CEO’s reputation may be so tarnished that another leadership opportunity may be difficult to come by.

Six leadership passagesCharan, Drotter, & Noel’s 2001 Leadership Pipeline model (Figure 1) sets out the dis-crete career stages and critical transition points in the leadership pipeline, where each passage represents a fundamental change in the skills and values that are important and the activities that must be prioritized and allocated more time to avoid transition pitfalls.

At Passage Six of the Leadership Pipeline, leadership transition pitfalls for CEOs commonly occur for two reasons:1. CEOs are often unaware that this signifi-

cant passage requires changes in values.2. It’s difficult to develop a CEO for this par-

ticular leadership transition. Preparation for the chief executive position requires a series of diverse experiences over a long time, at best carefully selected job assignments that stretch them

The actions new leaders take during their first 90 days can have a major impact on their success.

and allow them to learn and practise necessary skills. Though coaching might be helpful as an adjunct to this develop-ment process, people usually need time, experience, and the right assignments to develop into effective CEOs.

According to Dr. Michael Watkins, author of the best-seller The First 90 Days (HBS Press 2003), the greatest trap new leaders fall into is believing that they will con-tinue to be successful by doing what has made them successful in the past. Leaders who have become successful by relying on certain skills and abilities too often fail to see that their new leadership role demands different skills and abilities. And so they fail to meet the adaptive challenge. This does not mean that new leaders should ignore their strengths. It means that they should focus first on what it will really take to be successful in the new role, then discipline themselves to do things that don’t come naturally if the situation demands it.

15

Dr. Watkins adds that another common trap is being overwhelmed by the under-standable anxiety the transition process evokes. Some new leaders try to take on too much, hoping that if they do enough things, something will work. Others feel they have to be seen taking charge and so make changes just to put their own stamp on things. Still others experience the “action imperative” — they feel they need to be in motion and so don’t spend enough time up front engaged in diag-nosis. As a result, new leaders end up enmeshed in vicious cycles in which they make bad judgments that undermine their credibility.

In my executive coaching engagements with CEOs over the past 10 years, I ob-served that leaders who underperform typically fall into these common traps.

First, they isolate themselves as a conse-quence of over-reliance on financial and operating reports and quantitative analy-ses to assess their new organizations.

New CEOs, especially those with a colle-gial style, often believe that subordinates deserve a chance to prove themselves. However, retaining team members with their record of mediocre performance is seldom advisable. Retaining direct reports who are not up to the task squan-ders precious time and energy, which leaders might be directing elsewhere. While it is inappropriate to be unfair or expect miracles, new CEOs should impose a time limit, say six to twelve months depending on the severity of the problem, for deciding who should remain on the senior management team.

Leadership BlindspotsGood leaders make people around them successful. They are passion-ate and committed, authentic, cou-rageous, honest, and reliable. But in today’s high-pressure environ-ment, leaders need a confidant, a mentor, or someone they can trust to tell the truth about their be-haviour. They rarely get that from employees or board members.

Professional executive coaches can help leaders reduce or eliminate their blind spots and be open to constructive feedback, not only reducing the likelihood of failure and premature burnout, but also providing an atmosphere in which the executive can express fears, failures, and dreams.

For a new CEO, the most impor-tant goal is building momentum towards achieving priorities, the objectives the new leader wants to achieve within the near term. Success relies on securing early wins and laying a foundation for deeper change. The transition process requires a deeper assess-ment of organizational capabilities and change that supports a more focused set of priorities. Following this learning period during transi-tion, vision and coalition building are critical to success.

The greatest trap new leaders fall into is believing that they will continue to be successful by doing

what has made them successful in the past.

Figure 1

Passage Six

Passage Five

Passage Four

Passage Three

Passage Two

Passage OneManager of Self

Manager of Managers

Business Manager

Enterprise Manager

Manager of Others

Functional Manager

Group Manager

They spend too much time reading and not enough time meeting and talking. They want to know the organization before venturing out into it. The resulting isolation inhibits the development of im-portant relationships and the cultivation of sources of information. Consequently, the new leader becomes remote and un-approachable. In short, new leaders must get out and become acquainted with their organizations quickly.

Second, new CEOs must not enter the firm with a well-defined fix for organi-zational problems. Some CEOs rely too much on technical solutions, changes to organizational structure, or the ma-nipulation of measurement and reward systems. New CEOs fall into this trap through arrogance, insecurity, or a belief that they must appear decisive and es-tablish a directive tone. Unfortunately, employees become cynical about these superficial solutions and hence reluctant to support change.

w h y n e w l e a d e r s m u s t m a k e a n i m p a c t w i t h i n t h e i r f i r s t 9 0 d a y s


Hitting the ground running

By adhering to a number of core princi-ples, new CEOs can manage a success-ful transition and make an impact most effectively within the first 90 days of their tenures. First, they must effectively use that priceless period before entry to absorb information about the organiza-tion and begin to plan. Before assuming the new role, the CEO should understand as much as possible about the organiza-tion’s strategy, its strengths and weak-nesses, and should have formulated some hypotheses to begin testing.

It is also critical to secure early wins. Within the first 90 days, a new CEO must have made substantial progress in energizing people and focusing them on solving the business’s most pressing problems. A quick, dramatic impact is important, and tangible improvements must motivate employees.

New leaders must produce results quickly while being assimilated into the organi-zation. While early wins can help a new CEO get off to a good start, they are not sufficient for continued success. Deeper foundations must be extended for the cultural change necessary to support sustained improvements in the organiza-tion’s performance. A new CEO must lay a foundation for long-term improvements that focus on diagnosing cultural prob-lems and taking early actions that begin to change perceptions. A new leader must get people to think differently and con-sider new ways of operating. Cultural

To be successful, new CEOs must manage themselves. A clear head can provide a substantial edge, as can emotional balance. Exercising clear-headed judg-ment, staying focused, and maintaining emotional evenness are all critical factors. It is important to maintain perspective and avoid isolation. The most common cause of failure is not technical — corpo-rate strategy, technologies, or functional aspects of the business — but rather a failure to read and react to political cur-rents or to manage the internal chal-lenges of the transition. New leaders are more likely to succeed if they build and use a balanced network of technical, po-litical, and personal advisers.

Leaders must identify the right goals, develop a supporting strategy, align the architecture of the organization, and figure out what projects to pursue to secure early wins.

Leaders at all levels of the organization must demonstrate a high degree of emo-tional intelligence in their leadership role. Emotionally intelligent leaders create an environment of positive morale and higher productivity, resulting in sustain-able employee engagement.

For leaders in transition, relationships are great sources of leverage. By build-ing credibility with influential players, they are better able to gain agreement on goals and commitment to achieving those goals.

Relationship management skills are criti-cal for leaders in a new situation, as they are not the only ones going through a transition. The way they handle their new role affects, to varying degrees, many people both inside and outside the leader’s direct line of command. Put another way, leaders negotiate their way to success in their new roles.

Reprinted with the permission of Professor Sattar Bawany, CEO & Master Executive Coach of Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global). CEE provides executive coaching and leadership development solutions for challenges posed by a multigen-erational workforce. For further information, visit www.cee-global.com or www.linkedin.com/in/bawany. Email: [email protected].

Every organization needs to ensure they have the right leadership on board — leaders with the people skills required to steer superior performance.Drake’s Leadership Development Solution uses behavioural assessments, coaching, and workshops to deliver the insight your people need to become better leaders. To find out how Drake’s Leadership Development solution can inspire your current leaders, improve productivity, reduce turnover, and attract top performers to the company, contact the Talent Management Solutions team.

Australia: 613 9245 [email protected]: 416 216 [email protected] Kong: 852 2848 [email protected] Zealand: 0800 840 [email protected]: 65 6225 [email protected]

change can be initiated by setting up pilot projects, changing the way perfor-mance is measured, helping employees develop new perspectives on customers and competitors, building up islands of excellence, or collectively envisioning new ways to operate.

D B R

The first 90 days is a priceless period

during which a new leader can absorb

information about the organization and begin to plan.

Within the first 90 days, a new CEO must have made

substantial progress in energizing people and focusing them

on solving the business’s most

pressing problems.

w h y n e w l e a d e r s m u s t m a k e a n i m p a c t w i t h i n t h e i r f i r s t 9 0 d a y s

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DON’T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO IT YOURSELF?

Drake offers a full suite of HR solutions that you can use to augment or outsource your current recruitment process.• Creating Job Descriptions/Advertisements • Creating Top Performer Profiles • Résumé Screening • Behaviour Interviewing • Background Checks • Reference Checking • Skills Testing • Behavioural Assessments • Organizing Career Fairs and Open Houses• Onboarding and Orientation

For more information, contact a Drake office nearest you or visit us online at:drakeintl.com


Five Essentials for

Career Advancement

Knowing what you need to do to manage your career and super-charge your “promote-ability” is

fundamental to getting ahead. However, many managers and executives fail to un-derstand how to create the opportunity for promotion and quick advancement and may never reach their full potential.

Look closely at those who rise quickly to the top of any organization to discover what the most successful managers do to get promoted. If you have been in the cor-porate or professional world for long, you probably have had a chance to observe the rising stars within the organization. Most people see the superficial reasons for the rapid rise but miss the funda-mental skills and actions that drive their success. While you may detect a number of advancement factors, five significantly influence your success: self-knowledge, self-promotion, visibility, professional brand, and exceeding expectations.

1. Self-knowledgeYou cannot build a career advancement plan without accurately assessing your current strengths and value adds. This is not some esoteric concept: If you know what you are good at, believe in your strengths, and solidify your belief in what you want to contribute to the organiza-tion, you will empower your attitude. You create an image, or perception, that you are someone unique because you have a belief about your strengths and your positive intentions to contribute to the company. This reinforces an element of your self-esteem that you can add value. You have this strong inner belief about your value. You believe you deserve to be recognized for your value, and are com-mitted to earning increased responsi-bility and advancement. Once you have thought through your strengths and ca-pabilities to add significant value to the organization and have the inner focus to believe that you will contribute and rise to the top, you have the foundation to move to the other fundamental factors.

2. Professional self-promotionYou must have a plan to promote yourself, which you execute at every opportunity. Professional self-promotion is the active management of your image, inside and outside the organization. No one else is consistently going to make sure you are visible to the people that count — this is your responsibility. Important people must recognize that you exist, so you must stand out to the right people. Demonstrate that you are working hard. Excelling at what you do and contrib-ute is a given (or should be). You will fall short of being widely recognized if you think your contribution speaks for itself. Identify all those people who can make a difference. You need people of influence to know who you are and what you con-tribute to the organization. Be adroit and professional but seize every opportunity to share what you have achieved and accomplished that is a value add. If you are not getting important opportunities,

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3. VisibilityYou have to become known. People of influence need to have a clear image of you in their mind’s eye. Being seen in the right places, with the right people, on a regular and consistent basis is visibility control. One workable technique is to be absolutely current and aware of what the company is engaged in, who is driving initiatives and what’s happening. Being in the know and maintaining an active list that connects the top people with their projects, assignments, and challenges will put you in visibility control. Look for ideas and references that could add value to what the most influential people are dealing with at any time. Find opportuni-ties to run into them, catch them after a meeting with a group of others so they will see you interact and say something like ”I understand you are working on (dealing with, leading) such-and-such, and I ran across an (article, report, refer-ence) that might be of value.” Then, share it in public. Try to attend open meetings, press conferences, public and community meetings where an influential leader is speaking or participating, and then catch them at a break or on the way out and engage briefly or introduce yourself if you have not met formally. Take control and be creative. Get people talking about seeing you with so-and-so or at important events.

4. Professional brandingYou are your most important asset in creating promote-ability. Those you work with and interact with inside and outside the organization will quickly create a per-ception of you and your skills and abili-ties. Your job is to package yourself and present your professional brand at every opportunity. You must create your brand image and then walk and talk your brand, and people will quickly develop a percep-tion of you and your qualities. Will peo-ple’s perceptions be the image you want of you and your value? You have to define yourself clearly and differentiate yourself from other aspiring employees. Whatever level or job position you have today, you must have a solid and evolving brand image as a rising star that you are capable of promoting. Every week, ask yourself how you can position yourself this week to gain visibility and display your profes-sional brand in a quality way. Then set a plan that promotes your brand in some way and journal the activities and results as part of your self-management plan.

effort and behaviour must be noticeable and stand out in every situation. Ask for more responsibility. Finish your assign-ment early and ask if you can help other members with their assignments. To advance, to create promote-ability, you must stand out in a positive way. Even when your current responsibilities do not offer new projects and assignments, find something that will enhance your job, help others, or add value to your manager or other influential people. It is not enough to do your job well; you must excel and stand out in the view of others. Look out for opportunities to add value and lead. Do not accept the current situation. There must be a way you can do things better, differently, and faster. Develop improvements with more impact on the company or customer. Put your mind to it and don’t accept going through the motions as in any way a pattern for advancement.

The fundamental factors involve building and executing a plan to make yourself stand out and be recognized. This involves taking action. Be purposeful in everything you do to make yourself visible or recog-nized by people at all levels. Manage up with more senior influential people. Be your own career agent, responsible for managing every aspect of your profession-al brand, image, and awareness campaign. Never think that this is too much trouble or something that is unnecessary. The top performers — those who were perceived as rising stars and who advanced rapidly to important positions and leadership

— exhibited these five key factors. These stars developed their strengths and pro-moted themselves at every opportunity. They became consistently visible to the right people, created their professional brand, and exceeded expectations.

Reprinted with the permission of Mike Moore, founder of MD Moore Marketing, a company dedi-cated to developing programs for busy managers and executives, based on real-world experience and the input from successful managers. For more information, visit plan-delegate-manage.com and managementleadershipzone.com.

5. Exceeding expectationsConsistently putting forth the extra effort and doing more than expected in every situation is critical and overlooked. Aspiring managers almost always say they are giving 100%, but that is not the case. We tend to judge others by their behaviour and judge ourselves by our intentions. Aspiring people may intend to go the extra mile and perform above expectations, but their behaviour often fails to match their intentions. Your work

you need to pinpoint projects, commit-tees, and other activities where you can add value — something you can have an impact on that will get people’s attention. Volunteer some time to the project, find resources or information that might be of value to the project, and share it with the leader or manager of that project. Get involved in a community project spon-sored by the organization.

D B R

Professional self-promotion is the

active management of your image, inside

and outside the organization.

You must have a solid and evolving

professional brand image that you are capable

of promoting that supports you

as a rising star.

f i v e e s s e n t i a l s f o r c a r e e r a d v a n c e m e n t


is taking place — by both the trainer and the trainee. Consider a formalized checklist so that the new employee can quantify learning and measure progress.

5. Eliminate poor managersOne company had two sections that per-formed similar functions: One had steady employees; the other had 100% turnover each year. The difference? The managers. When dealing with poor managers, con-sider the savings that comes from either a remarkable retraining of them or their replacement. The most common reason employees leave a company is dissatis-faction with the boss or management.

Don’t spend all that money training new hires just to see them leave for your com-petition. When you follow these five steps, you can reduce turnover in the first 90 days and retain your valuable employees for years to come.

Joel Garfinkle is a top US leadership coach, who has worked with many of the world’s leading companies, including Google, Amazon, Starbucks, Deloitte, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Ritz-Carlton, Citibank, and Microsoft. He has written seven books, including “Getting Ahead: Three Steps to Take Your Career to the Next Level”. Visit www.GarfinkleExecutiveCoaching.com to learn about his books and executive coaching ser-vices, access over 300 free articles, or subscribe to his Fulfillment@Work newsletter and receive the free e-book, “41 Proven Strategies to Get Promoted Now!”.

Reduce Employee Turnover in the First 90 Days

D B R

Why not manage your turnover in advance? Exit interviews facilitated by an expert third party give you deeper and more accurate information than inter-views conducted in-house. They generate the data you need to end unnecessary turnover and improve operations.

To learn more, visit us online at drakeintl.com or contact your nearest Drake Office.

High employee turnover dramati-cally affects the bottom line of your company. When you add up the cost

of temp staff, severance packages, unem-ployment benefits, advertising, recruiting, and lost productivity, you’ll find each em-ployee turnover can cost 150 to 250% of the total compensation.Take these five steps to keep your worker retention optimal.

1. Hire top talentSpend the time, effort, and money to hire the best employee you can afford. An excellent employee adds much greater value to the company than an average worker. In the hiring process, be trans-parent about who you are, how you act, what you do. Surprises aren’t good: It’s much better for your new hires to know in advance they’re expected to be in phone contact 24/7 rather than after they take the job. A major cause of turnover in the first 90 days is the job not being what the worker expected.

2. Orient properlyHave a smooth functioning employee retention and training program. Make sure it tells new hires what they need to know. At the start:

• Review job descriptions and expectations.• Lay out your company’s service phi-

losophy and ethics.• Restate company rules and regulations

— dress codes, professional standards, communication methods. Also explain health and other benefits and how to get them.

• Go over schedules, overtime, safety and security procedures.

• Review the company’s unique selling po-sition and show how the employee’s work will influence the company’s success.

• Make sure the employee’s work area is appropriately outfitted and they have the passwords and accesses needed to do their work.

Consider assigning a buddy or mentor to coach them through the company culture and let them know:

• Who has the knowledge they need• Who is the go-to person for each issue• Who are the clients, vendors, and staff

with whom they will interact• Other essential connections and ways

of doing things

3. Invite feedbackHave periodic reviews to give feedback to the new hire as well as measure per-formance goals or see if the new person is meeting teamwork expectation. Make sure the communication is two way. For the first weeks and months of employ-ment as appropriate, have a check-up at the end of each day to answer any questions the new employee has. Simple problems of new hires, such as where to mail a letter or who can help with computer trouble, slow their work, create tension and frustration, and may result in poor feelings toward the company. To retain your new workers, make it easy to get questions answered and problems solved. In periodic reviews, check to see how well employees feel they are pro-gressing. Do they think the orientation process was effective? Are they feeling integrated into the company? Are there any lingering questions?

4. Encourage trainingMake sure your new employees get into the training classes they need to best function in their jobs. If training is by peer mentor-ing, check frequently to make sure learning

A major cause of turnover in the first 90 days is the job

not being what the worker expected.

21

Manila

Hong Kong

Singapore

The goal for any recruitment strategy should be to attract a top performer who will reach a high level of pro-

ductivity in a short time frame and stay with your company for a long time.

Putting Permanency Back into Placement

f o c u s o nDRAKE ASIA


At Drake Singapore, we understand that finding staff that generate long-term value and help your organization reach its goals cannot be left to chance. We offer clients a recruitment strategy that goes beyond traditional methods and a permanent staffing solution that adds value to your bottom line.

When you need to hire permanent staff, our recruitment consultants work with you to understand your objectives and workplace environment. We then analyze and identify the key skills, knowledge, and behaviours required for the position.

Before presenting a short list of the very best candidates, your Drake Singapore consultant has already performed a series of indicative tests to evaluate the likeli-hood of the candidate’s success in the role through Behavioural Description Interviewing (BDI) and Drake P3.

Behavioural Description Interviewing

When we meet the candidates for a face-to-face interview, we use BDI techniques to explore and appraise their skills, per-sonality, and performance potential. Thus we are able to:• Explore specific situations and accom-

plishments that highlight the candidate’s behaviour under certain conditions.

• Compare the candidate’s responses against the criteria defined in your ideal behaviour profile

• Examine the candidate’s ability to adapt and modify their behaviour under varying circumstances.

Drake P3To complement BDI techniques, we also use our own powerful psychometric profil-ing tests. The Drake Predictive Personality Profile (P3) is an advanced behavioural and personality profiling test that meas-ures behavioural traits and identifies top performers, allowing you to hire more

effectively. Generating easy-to-use, in-depth behavioural profiles, P3 is more ac-curate and time efficient than traditional pre-interview and selection methods.

At Drake Singapore, we understand the importance of having the right employee to reduce the costs associated with turn-over. To find out how we can improve your company’s productivity and bottom line by selecting candidates with the best fit for your organization, contact us at 65 6225 5809 or email Russell Harrison at [email protected].

Drake PI+The successful hire is just part of our partnership togetherOffering our clients a recruitment strate-gy that goes beyond traditional methods

12 Steps to Selection SuccessOur 12-step candidate selection process ensures that we provide you with the right people with the right fit for your organiza-tion so you can make a confident hiring decision.

Our best-of-class recruitment services starts with the job evaluation and job description preparation through to screen-ing and Behavioural Description Interviewing. We also offer psy-chometric and assessment skills testing to help ensure you hire the right person the first time.

Reference checking is another critical step in our recruitment process. Once the new hire is on board, we provide an after-place-ment service to provide assistance and advice by monitoring the new employee’s progress throughout the three-month trial period.

has never been more important. Hiring staff requires the most challenging de-cisions leaders have to make, as hiring mistakes are costly and negatively affect the bottom line.

As your strategic hiring partner, we have the expertise and innovative technology to ensure that you hire the best person for the position and that they are on-boarded successfully. As a result, you can count on new employee productiv-ity, accelerated results, and significantly improved talent retention.

Our Drake PI+ Productivity Improvement Plus service helps bridge the gap between placement and new hire integration. A complimentary service for our platinum clients, Drake PI+ provides:• Drake P3 New Hire Integration and

Team Communication reports — tools to help you understand the commu-nication style of your new employee in relation to the rest of your team. Facilitating communication and in-terpersonal relationships improves engagement and alignment during the initial onboarding stage.

• Drake P3 Behavioural Assessments — an advanced behavioural and person-ality profiling solution that identifies the performance characteristics of your successful employees. This helps you identify the traits best suited to your corporate culture and to the spe-cific position and reduces the costs associated with turnover.

• Drake Talent Management Webinars — access to our webinar series show-casing exciting guest presenters cov-ering a wide array of HR topics.

To find out more about our Drake Singapore hiring and onboarding solu-tions and how we partner with you for hiring, onboarding. and retention success, telephone 65 6225 5809 or email Russell Harrison on [email protected].

d r a k e s i n g a p o r e

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Permanent recruitment solutions

Whether you are an employer seeking skilled and productive permanent talent or a candidate looking for your next posi-tion, Drake Hong Kong is committed to understanding the needs of its clients and the individuals we represent.

Over the past 25 years, our reputation for addressing and meeting ongoing and challenging recruitment requirements has grown from strength to strength. Our consultants are industry experts with specialist experience across multi-ple sectors, including IT, telecom, retail/luxury, and banking and financial services. We work closely with local companies in Hong Kong as well as with major multi-national organizations.

Temporary recruitment solutions

Hong Kong’s shipping and supply chain industry are major areas that rely on Drake Hong Kong to provide tempo-rary staffing solutions. We provide fully

assessed and screened individuals just right for all temporary work requirements.

We have the experience and expertise to meet your specialized staffing needs for office personnel, accounting staff, general labourers, skilled trades, warehouse and dock assistants, forklift drivers, shippers/receivers, construction workers, and more.

The better the fit, the better the hire

All of our recruitment processes are un-derpinned with the Drake P3 behavioural assessment tool, which we use as part of every selection process. Drake P3 predicts the behaviour and personality of poten-tial candidates against the traits of your existing top performers — before you make a job offer. This provides you with the confidence you need to make the best hiring decision.

Drake P3 provides employers with ob-jective, science-based behavioural and personality profiles. The P3 report lets em-ployers understand candidates’ personal strengths, leadership style, decision-mak-ing style, energy level, motivational needs, and stress levels — insights that are not usually learned through the application and interview process.

Our behavioural and rigorous interview techniques, together with our Drake P3 assessment tools and Drake P1+ on-boarding reports, differentiate us in today’s Hong Kong recruitment market. The payoff is that our talent manage-ment solutions enable you to reduce turnover and increase productivity by hiring people with the right skills and expertise and with the right fit for your organization, not just the job.

Making sure you have the right people on your team and that they work well together is critical to the success of any company. Drake P3 is an online assess-ment solution that reveals a person’s natural tendencies, communication styles, emotional intelligence, motiva-tional needs, decision-making abilities, energy levels, and more.

To find out how Drake Hong Kong can find you the perfect fit for your organi-zation and staffing needs, contact us at Hong Kong 852 2848 9288 or email [email protected].

Procurement and supply chain recruitment solutions

Vertical Talent, a Drake International company launched in Hong Kong early in 2013, specializes in providing an end-to-end recruitment service within the procurement and supply chain industries.

Using our best-practice recruitment methodologies, Vertical Talent recogniz-es the importance of securing the right technical fit with the behavioural com-petencies for your organization. Hiring only experienced recruitment consult-ants means you benefit from our deep understanding of the market and our ability to thoroughly screen applicants before submission. This reduces the time you spend on recruitment and the risk involved in making an external hire.

Our service focus, industry experience, be-havioural tools, and recruitment method-ologies provide the trusted solutions you need for your procurement and supply chain recruitment needs.

In September of this year, one of our biggest clients needed 10 to 15 experienced headcount overnight. It was initially a challenge due to location and below-market-rate salary, but with diligence and a pool of ex-perienced workers, the Drake Hong Kong team managed to fill the requirement. We are now getting more business from the client based on our ability to deliver in a short period of time.

“We were in a bind trying to find a fluent English speaker for a position that would require in-teracting with C-level executives from international firms. Drake quickly came through with an excellent candidate who pos-sessed a positive attitude, was a quick learner, and brought a higher level of energy to our sales floor. We couldn’t be more pleased, and will utilize Drake for future staffing needs.” Managing Director, Asia – Financial Services Publisher

Proven Talent Solutions to Meet Your Recruitment Needs

Of all reasons for job failure, 87% are due to personality, not ability.

d r a k e h o n g k o n g


Opening Doors to the Future of BPO

Business process outsourcing (BPO) has proven and continues to be a preferred and efficient cost-effective business so-lution. Companies use back- and front-office outsourcing for a variety of reasons: They offer cost efficiencies, enable focus-ing on core competencies, and provide needed expertise in certain areas.

In the Philippines, the BPO industry is continuously growing, with a rise of 15.6% in 2013. It employs more than 1.6 million people in over 20 sectors. The country serves as one of the growing hubs of BPO in the world. Currently, the Philippines is number one for voice services and number two in non-voice complex services.

The Drake Manila office provides BPO ser-vices to improve oganizations’ efficiency and effectiveness. As your partner, we appoint a highly skilled team to fulfill your individual BPO requirements espe-cially for back-end and clerical services, like general data management, recruit-ment and processing, accounting, secre-tarial, and similar administrative work.

Your Drake BPO partner benefits:• Access to a highly skilled, motivated,

and competent workforce • A decrease in overhead expenses (up

to 40%) to increase earnings per share

• No down time from turnover• An office equipped with solid IT Support • A strategic location in Manila’s Central

Business District

Drake Manila’s BPO services provide teams that are qualified and capable to meet your individual requirements and to support your company’s business and bottom-line objectives.

To find out how Drake Manila can support your BPO functions, contact us at [email protected] or email [email protected]. Alternatively, call us at 632 753 2490.

Introducing High-Calibre Skilled Workers to the WorldASC Global Recruitment, an affiliate of the Drake International Group in the Philippines, works across a series of ver-tical markets to place skilled and profes-sional Filipinos globally. Since 1998, ASC has facilitated the sourcing, processing, and deployment of over 9,000 healthcare professionals and skilled workers around the world. In the Drake Manila office, ASC is an experienced and dynamic team of skilled recruiters and process managers.

Harnessing the talent of quality nurses in the Philippines

The increasing demand for health pro-fessionals in the United Kingdom drove ASC at Drake Manila to create a solid and stable procedure for sourcing high-quality candidates. This includes man-aging each candidate in the end-to-end process including Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) Licensing and visa appli-cation, scheduling of English proficiency exams (IELTS), and constant coordination with Drake International in London to ensure a smooth and efficient process.

Focus on line workers for industrial and hospitality industry

Over the years, ASC has created a pool of educated and highly-skilled workers in the Philippines who serve as value-added assets to organizations. These workers are deployed for recruitment projects to Qatar, Australia, New Zealand, and nu-merous other countries around the world.

ASC Global Recruitment at Drake Manila follow robust established and tried pro-cesses to deliver the best solutions to our clients.

Drake Manila offers a diverse range of talent management solutions such as permanent recruitment, Drake P3 assessment, team building, training and other services to ensure that you hire and retain the right people with the right skills and expertise. For more information on these and our Global Recruitment services contact us at [email protected] or call 632 753 1522.

BPO is a preferred and efficient cost-effective business solution.

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We are Passionate about Procurement and Supply ChainVertical Talent is a market leader for recruitment within the Supply Chain, Procurement and Logistics industries. Our team has developed a solid reputation for our consultative approach, working closely with both candidates and clients to understand their immediate and long-term objectives and make fitting placements. Vertical Talent’s specialist consultants meticulously assess the capability and potential of each candidate to present a high-quality shortlist.

In addition to our recruitment services, Vertical Talent offers HR solutions through our parent company Drake International, including:

• Onboarding services• Staff surveys• Psychometric assessments• Training and professional development• Outplacement services

• Exit interviews• Safety training and injury

management services• Employee Assistance Programs

AUSTRALIA 1300 057 464 | CANADA 1800 GO DRAKE (463 7253) | HONG KONG +852 2848 9261 NEW ZEALAND 0800 840 940 | SINGAPORE +65 6225 5809 r e c r u i t @ v e r t i c a l t a l e n t . c o m | w w w . v e r t i c a l t a l e n t . c o m

The Vertical Talent Difference

Dedicated candidate care consultant

A refined onboarding program with every placement

Personality profiling tool - Drake P3

Boutique firm with global infrastructure

A range of productivity improvement services

Independent salary benchmarking portal


Managing a department versus leading a team: Is there a difference?

Much has been written about the differences between leadership and management: Basically,

leaders lead people; managers manage tasks. This difference is even greater between managing a department and leading a team, especially a team with members from several departments or divi-sions. More and more institutions and com-panies are using cross-functional teams for special initiatives or major projects.

Both managing a department and leading a team involve: • Providing direction and leadership

to others• Planning• Meeting goals and objectives• Managing activities/tasks• Working with people

The key difference lies in the responsibil-ity for performance management.

Typically, managers are responsible for managing the performance of the people in their departments. The manager hires, conducts performance reviews, and

Five Critical Skills for Team Leadership

Without organizational authority, team leaders must influence others and inspire them to meet the goals of

the initiative or project.

provides coaching and counselling if nec-essary to improve employee performance.

Team leaders, on the other hand, are re-sponsible for leading teams of people who may not report to them. Without organizational authority, team leaders must influence others and inspire them to meet the goals of the initiative or project.

Creating a positive team climate and influencing others

To effectively influence team members, a team leader must create a positive climate in which they are motivated to complete the required tasks. Team members need to feel that they are being heard, appreciated, and truly part of the team. Creating this positive climate in-volves key skills that help leaders earn the respect of their team.

Five critical team leadership skills

Five critical skills help team leaders (and managers) effectively influence and dem-onstrate respect for their team members. 1. Understanding behavioural styles2. Listening and effectively communicating3. Giving praise4. Handling criticism5. Using problem solving and persuasion

instead of criticism

Each skill builds on another. Recognizing behaviour helps leaders more effectively listen and respond to team members. Giving praise and accepting criticism helps leaders earn respect. Involving people using a problem-solving style helps engage them and demonstrates respect for their knowledge and experience. Finally, using problem solving and persuasion instead of criticism helps team leaders positively influence others’ behaviour.

Creating a positive team climate is an effective way to build trust on cross-func-tional teams. Members who trust each other and their leader are more effective in meeting their goals.

To help them implement their critical projects in today’s environment, higher education institutions and organizations are turning to project management. Key to this are teams formed around the specific goals of a project and effective leadership guiding them.

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1. Understanding behavioural stylesUnderstanding behaviour and behavioral styles helps to lead teams more effec-tively. Behaviour is peoples’ actions and reactions, both verbal and non-verbal. It is what can be seen or heard by others and usually invokes some sort of reaction from other people.

Different behaviours cause different types of reactions. For example, one person may react angrily and verbally attack an angry person who is yelling at them, while another person may respond to that same angry behaviour by retreating and becoming submissive and apologetic.

Understanding this concept is important for team leaders because their behaviour

— verbal and non-verbal — affects the behaviours of members of their teams. For example, if you commented to a team member, “Your attitude in our meet-ings is awful,” that person might react defensively, become angry, or verbally attack. The statement comes across as a judgment.

On the other hand, if you commented, “You have been quieter than normal in our meetings recently,” the reaction might

be quite different. In this situation, you are citing behaviour — what you see or hear the person doing or not doing. This more objective comment would probably lead to more open conversation about the situation.

Understanding the behavioural styles of others allows team leaders to more effectively interact with them.

Creating a positive team climate is an effective way

to build trust on cross-functional teams.

another. Listening is a skill that can be learned and should be practised.

The skill of listening is important in all aspects of our life and especially when leading a team. When you listen to another person, you demonstrate respect for that person. As Henry David Thoreau said, “The greatest compliment ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought and attended to my answer.”

Effective listening means actively listen-ing and involves working to overcome many of the barriers to listening by asking questions, removing distractions, and listening with the intent to report.

3. Giving praiseSometimes the simplest positive actions toward your team members can have a powerful impact on the cohesiveness of the team and earning respect. Follow these five simple tips for giving effective praise to your team members.1. Be specific. Blanket praise does not

communicate what was done to deserve the praise and may come across as insincere. Often vague praise comes across as an “atta boy” without substance.

2. Listening and effectively communicatingLeadership expert Stephen R. Covey says,

“Seek first to understand, then be un-derstood.” This principle is key to effec-tive interpersonal communication and can make or break success in leadership, teams, and other relationships.

Covey’s statement seems like a simple concept. In reality, we all struggle with effectively listening to others. If we think of the characteristics of poor listeners, chances are all of those characteristics can apply to each of us at one time or

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2. Be genuine and share how the be-haviour made you feel. People always know when someone is genuine usually through their words, tone, or body language.

3. Be immediate and timely. If you wait too long to share the praise, it loses its impact and gives the impression you did not have the time earlier to thank the person.

4. Don’t mix praise with criticism. Mixing criticism and praise confuses the person you are trying to praise.

5. Don’t overuse praise. Overused praise becomes meaningless and loses its effectiveness.

4. Handling criticismMark Twain said, “I like criticism, but it must be my way.” None of us like to receive criticism, and our immediate re-action is to become defensive or deny the criticism. As a result, we often do not hear what someone may be saying to us. We are too busy thinking about how we’re going to respond instead of really hearing what the person is trying to tell us. The criticism may hold an element of truth that could help us grow as in-dividuals if we were not so defensive. In addition, our image would improve if we could be in control during times of conflict and confrontation that often comes with criticism.

Effectively handling criticism involves two critical skills:• Absorbing criticism. The basic tech-

nique for handling conflict and criti-cism is the ability to absorb criticism without becoming defensive or angry. This involves using words that ac-knowledge the other person’s point of view and accepting that it might be true under certain circumstances but without necessarily accepting it as true.

• Clarifying criticism. One of the best techniques for coping with criticism involves asking questions that put the burden on the criticizer to clarify

what they mean. This tool is the most difficult and yet most powerful for dealing with criticism.

5. Using problem solving and persuasion instead of criticismMost people respond defensively when receiving criticism. They may act hurt, blame others, make excuses, or even deny the criticism. They may also become angry and aggressive. Finally, they may psychologically withdraw.

Criticism is an attempt to influence someone to change their behaviour. Constructive criticism can:• Enhance job results• Provide ongoing personal and profes-

sional development• Reduce stress and create psychologi-

cal security• Improve interpersonal relationships• Develop the ideal organizational

climate for teamwork

Two effective ways to giving criticism are the problem-solving approach and the persuasion approach.

The first to use when providing criticism to team members is the problem-solving approach, which emphasizes solving the problem by getting the team member involved, listening to their views, and depersonalizing the criticism.

If using the problem-solving approach has not worked through a situation, a team leader can use the persuasion ap-proach. The leader does more talking than listening and appeals to the per-son’s interest or desire, thereby showing understanding of the person’s concerns and issues and stressing the potential positive outcomes.

Managing versus leadingMany of the same interpersonal skills are necessary to effectively manage a

department or lead a team. However, leading a team without the performance authority requires the abilities to influ-ence others, demonstrate and receive respect, and create a positive climate of trust. The five skills discussed in this article can help you be both a better manager and a stronger team leader.

Written by Kay Roman and reprinted with the permission of Collegiate Project Services, dedi-cated to assisting our higher education clients assess, select, prepare for, and manage the im-plementation of enterprise technology systems with a focus on change management and or-ganizational development. Collegiate Project Services is a vendor-neutral consulting firm that has worked with more than 180 institutions in the last 24 years. To find out more, visit us at www.collegiateproject.com.

Making sure you have the right people on your team and that they work well together is critical to the success of any company. Drake P3 is an online assessment solution that reveals a person’s natural tendencies, commu-nication styles, emotional intelligence, motivational needs, decision-making abilities, energy levels, and more.Any time person-to-person or person-to-job fit is an issue, Drake P3 can help. To find out how Drake P3 can help you, contact the Talent Management Solutions team:

Australia: 613 9245 [email protected]: 416 216 [email protected] Kong: 852 2848 9288 [email protected] Zealand: 0800 840 [email protected]: 632 753 [email protected]: 65 6225 [email protected] Kingdom: 020 7484 [email protected]

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Re-Recruit Your Top Talent

If you expect to win the war to keep your employees, you must continually ensure that the best offer a top per-

forming employee receives comes from inside your own firm. For this to happen, management must periodically approach top talent and recruit them again, or re-recruit them, just as if they were a new external prospect.

Although I coined the term “re-recruit” over 20 years ago, it is still an effective retention tool. Its basic premise is that you must re-energize your best employ-ees every few years by either redesigning their jobs or offering them a new one that is clearly superior to what any external recruiter might offer them.

Managers should periodically change and update what the company has to

offer during the re-recruiting process. Re-recruiting is necessary because even if your top performers are loyal and have not actively applied for a new job, they are still constantly being identified, assessed, and contacted by corporate recruiters and by employees seeking out potential em-ployee referrals. Your desirable employees will also be identified indirectly through benchmarking efforts and having their ideas and work viewed and/or read on the Internet and on social media.

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Why re-recruiting is effective

Re-recruiting your own employees is a powerful and proven retention and pro-ductivity improvement approach.

1. Re-recruiting can keep them out of a rut: Even well-treated top talent will eventually get bored or want a change of pace. Research has shown that en-tering a rut can occur as often as every

18 months, so new opportunities need to be offered frequently.

2. Employees have continual contact with recruiters: Because the best em-ployees are contacted up to five times a week, managers must realize that top talent doesn’t need to apply for a job to get an external offer. Unfortunately, many managers are naive, not realizing that recruiter and referral contacts are continuous because the Internet and

social media make finding and com-municating with top talent so easy.

3. The process makes internal offers more exciting: Re-recruiting works because it is based on the foundation principle that top performers and innovators want continuous excitement, to be doing the best work of their life, and to have a significant impact. To ensure that that these three things are contin-ually happening, re-recruiting requires that you assign responsibility to both

...and Win the War to Keep Your Employees

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while those offering internal opportuni-ties are likely to be more reserved.

In addition, external recruiters never mention any downsides at their firm, so your employee will hear only about the rosy side of any new external opportunity. Therefore, your job is to assure that the best offer a top performer receives comes first from within your firm rather than from an outside recruiter.

their manager and HR to maintain that excitement. And by sharing the respon-sibilities, you increase the likelihood that several individuals are making sure that targeted employees periodi-cally receive superior internal offers that meet each of these three factors.

4. Unexpected recognition can be pow-erful: Because re-recruiting is not a scheduled event, employees are often surprised and very pleased to hear that the firm thinks highly enough of them to recruit them again without the pressure created by an external offer. Obviously the same exact offer by the firm in response to an external offer would not be viewed as positively. In addition, because it happened once, most employees will assume that they will be periodically re-recruited in the future if they stay.

5. Being first with an offer has an impact: If their current firm makes their re-recruiting offer first, the odds are high that the employee will stay because of inertia, co-worker and family pressure, and the fact that there is no counter-offer to compare to.

6. Typical internal opportunities are not driven by competition: Because managers take many employees for granted and are not aware of exter-nal competition, internal offers are likely to be as much as 25% lower — in rewards, excitement, and learning

— than the verbal offer that they re-ceived from an external recruiter.

External recruiters beat internal manag-ers at selling. Even if your top performers receive excellent internal opportunities, these are unlikely to be sold as effectively as external recruitment. Internal openings are usually merely posted, and no internal recruiter proactively contacts employees to tell them how exciting they are and how the employees would be a great fit. Internal offers usually come from man-agers who are not as skilled at selling as trained recruiters are. An external re-cruiter is likely to continually rave about a potential recruit’s talents and potential,

Re-recruiting action stepsThe concept of re-recruiting is pretty simple. You apply the tools and strate-gies of external recruiting to your top current employees. Instead of waiting and having to compete against other offers side by side, a manager proactively makes a compelling internal offer first to their top talent.

1. Make re-recruiting a goal: Start by adopting the premise that unless they are re-recruited, no one will stay at your firm longer than 18 to 24 months. Drop loyalty from your vocabulary and assume you must continually excite top talent if you are to keep them. Make “the best offer will come from the inside” the goal for both managers and HR. Make successfully re-recruit-ing a percentage of top-performing employees each year part of a man-ager’s bonus criteria.

2. Develop a re-recruiting toolkit: HR must accept responsibility for develop-ing an effective re-recruiting approach and work with your external recruiting function to come up with how-tos and sample templates for managers to use. This toolkit should also include a list of the possible re-recruiting options (e.g., flexibility, pick your own project, pick your own leader) that managers can offer to their re-recruited employees. Consider putting up an internal online re-recruiting forum to exchange ideas and to share problems.

3. Identify and prioritize re-recruiting targets: Require managers to identify

who they would classify as “regret-table turnover” within their team. Prioritize those employees and focus your retention efforts on those em-ployees you would most regret losing.

4. Identify top performers who are at risk of leaving: Although re-recruiting all top performers is a good idea, limited resources may force you to focus your retention efforts on those individuals at a high risk of leaving in the near future. Recruiters can help by identi-fying which jobs and job families are being targeted by external recruiters. HR should help by developing a list of precursors or indicators that can help a manager assess whether a tar-geted individual employee is at risk of leaving. At-risk indicators may include average length of time in previous jobs, the number of frustration and excite-ment factors, whether an individual is overdue for a raise or promotion, and whether an employee feels underused.

5. Put together a list of re-recruitment excitement factors: Provide managers with an updated list of approved factors that have routinely excited employees in past re-recruiting efforts. This list can help individual managers create an effective re-recruiting offer each time.

6. Put together personalized retention plans: Because you are targeting only top performers, you can afford to personalize retention plans that meet the unique needs of individual employees. For each target, HR must work with the employee’s manager to understand the “frustrators” that are causing them to think about leaving, the likely turnover triggers that might cause them to begin a job search, and the appropriate set of personalized re-tention actions to use to counter each turnover-related factor for this indi-vidual. The retention plan should also include goals, intermediate success measures, and who will be account-able for each step of the plan.

7. Approach an employee to re-recruit them: Starting the re-recruitment

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Making sure you have the right people on your team and that they work well together is critical to the success of any company. Drake P3 is an online assessment solution that reveals a person’s natural tendencies, commu-nication styles, emotional intelligence, motivational needs, decision-making abilities, energy levels, and more.

Any time person-to-person or person-to-job fit is an issue, Drake P3 can help. To find out how Drake P3 can help you, contact the Talent Management Solutions team:

Australia: 613 9245 [email protected]: 416 216 [email protected] Kong: 852 2848 9288 [email protected] Zealand: 0800 840 [email protected]: 632 753 [email protected]: 65 6225 [email protected] Kingdom: 020 7484 [email protected]

process can be awkward for a manager, so provide them with a rough script. Start with a phrase like “Because you are one of our most important employ-ees, I would like to talk with you today about updating your current role so that it is more exciting, challenging, and meaningful. I would like you to help identify how we could change and update your role over the next few months so that you enthusiastically look forward to coming to work each and every morning.”

8. Identify internal re-recruiters and help sources: The very best firms like Cisco and Booz Allen Hamilton have desig-nated internal “movement teams” of their own recruiters that proactively seek out and move top talent. If you can’t afford a mobility team, provide training on the re-recruiting process to your managers as well as the names of your own recruiters who are willing to advise and coach on how to excite a recruit, even a current employee.

9. Process: Because the job marketplace is continually changing, your re-re-cruiting process needs to be continu-ally updated and improved. Six months after re-recruiting an employee, inter-view them and find out what worked and what didn’t work. Also conduct a

“failure analysis” any time an employee who was targeted for re-recruiting quits.

Some additional actions to consider

1. Get help in identifying who and why: Ask your current employees to help you

“keep the team together” by identify-ing those in the team they feel are at risk of leaving and what would cause them to leave. “Why do you stay?” in-terviews with targeted employees can also identify the factors that make individuals stay and the factors that might cause an employee to leave.

2. Understand external offers: Identify the elements of typical external offers for each key position by looking at those

your new hires received. Ask executive search professionals to periodically update you on the offers that similar pro-fessionals are getting in the marketplace.

3. Prepare an instant response: When your employees actually get an external offer, prepare an instant counter-offer strategy and action plan so that you can respond immediately and effectively.

4. Make praise and recognition routine: Without making it appear staged, peri-odically tell your current top employees how important they are and how much they contribute. Consider asking them for the professional courtesy of notify-ing you when they begin a job search or even consider an external offer.

5. Identify frustrators: Periodically ask your top-performing employees what frustrates them in their current job. Ask what factors restrict their pro-ductivity and innovation. Use that in-formation to remove frustrators and barriers to success. For the very best employees you want to re-recruit, ask them to describe their dream job and where they would like to be in the next year, and then work to provide it.

Final thoughtsThe concept of re-recruiting is really quite simple. Periodically update your original job offer — the one when they started

— or with their last promotion, so that it appears new, fresh, and exciting to a top-performing employees. And don’t just settle with re-recruiting once. Assume that it will be necessary to update their offer and their job periodically if you expect people to stay loyal and productive.

If you expect to win the war to keep your employees, you must forever bury the notion that the best employees will naturally stay at your firm without your periodically taking proactive actions. Employee retention is problematic because we live in a world where the minute after a manager does something to anger or frustrate an employee, they

can react by applying for a new job by simply pushing a single button on their smart phone. And even if they never push that application button, managers need to realize the best, because of their vis-ibility, will be found and contacted on a regular basis by either recruiters or employees trying to make a successful referral. Taken together, that means that in a world full of job offers, both the first and the best job offers come from inside the employee’s current firm.

Used with the permission of Dr. John Sullivan, Professor of Management, San Francisco State University, and a thought leader on strategic talent management and human resource practice. For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.drjohnsullivan.com.

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To soar to the top of your industry and extend the distance between you and the competition, you need

to tap into the core of what makes people go above and beyond to do their very best work.

The growing urgency to foster greater employee engagement for business success should come as no surprise. You might even be saying that’s why you keep pushing people to dig deeper and work smarter. Sounds logical, but the truth is, people don’t like being pushed. Truly engaging with employees gets them tuned in, turned on, and eager to go the extra mile — because they want to do it, not because management expects them to do it.

An effective leader needs to know how to inspire and engage workers, not prod and push them. Some managers try to do that with pep talks and incentives, but those are short-term solutions that only scratch the surface of what’s possible with a fully engaged workforce. So what’s the difference? It starts with an understand-ing of what engagement looks like. The

definition created by the Conference Board hits the mark pretty well: Employee en-gagement is “a heightened emotional connection that employees feel for their organization that influences them to exert greater discretionary effort to their work.”

from all other living creatures — free will and imagination.

We’ve all heard the phrase “free as a bird”. If you watch a bird flying around, you might think it looks like it’s free to do whatever it pleases. In actuality, birds are only “free” to do what they are pro-grammed to do. They are programmed to fly. They are programmed to eat bugs and seeds. They are programmed to build nests, lay eggs, and bring baby birds into the world. The bottom line is that all animals operate from a program without much choice about what they do.

People, on the other hand, have the human gift of free will. Not only do humans have a choice in what they do, they actually can’t function at their best if they aren’t allowed to use that innate gift.

The second quality that’s unique to human beings is their imagination. Unlike animals, people can imagine and conceive of things that do not occur in the natural world. They can envi-sion building magnificent structures, writing great novels, and even flying

The two key phrases in that definition are “heightened emotional connection” and “greater discretionary effort”. In the end, you can’t have one without the other

— at least not on a sustained basis. So how do you create an effective emotional connection? Fear of losing a job is cer-tainly an emotional trigger, but fear and anxiety eventually burn people out and rarely produce the best results. Tapping into a positive emotional response starts with a basic understanding of two quali-ties that make human beings different

Truly engaging with employees

gets them tuned in, turned on, and eager to go the extra mile.

Employee Engagement: Steps to Fuel the Human Rocket

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like a bird. Imagination is the ultimate source of all innovation. People can do those things not because they are more intelligent than animals but because they can imagine — and then they can use their free will to operate outside of their “animal programming” and bring the things they imagine into existence.

What do imagination and free will have to do with creating a world-class work-place? Plenty. In the end, anything we do in the workplace to undermine those uniquely human qualities cuts at the heart of what sparks and enables people to go above and beyond and perform exceptional feats. It is crucial to under-stand that no amount of discipline and direction in an organization can surpass the motivation to excel that comes from the innate ability and desire that people have to imagine and create.

However, if everyone is out using their imagination and free will to do whatever they please, how do you maintain disci-pline and keep things from flying out of control? By themselves, imagination and free will are not enough to bring out the best in people or organizations.

Besides being driven by those special human forces, employees also want some sense of order and predictability in their lives. In the workplace, it’s essential to have order and alignment if you want to get anything done successfully as a team. Employees understand that. In fact, they expect it. But how can freedom and control work together?

Let’s compare a human being to a rocket. Start with the engines that propel the rocket forward and up in the air. With people, that’s imagination and free will — the part that produces innova-tion, breakthroughs, new ideas, even the desire to excel. Then, we need stabiliz-ers so the rocket doesn’t wobble out of control. Think of that as security and self-esteem for people. Without that kind of stability, employees get “wobbly” too. The third piece is the guidance system. Just like rockets, people need a clear sense of direction if they’re going to wind up

at the desired destination. For human beings, those directional requirements are responsibility and accountability. People need to be clear on what they’re responsible for, and they need to be held accountable for doing it.

When all three of those dimensions come together in perfect balance — imagina-tion and free will, security and self-es-teem, and responsibility and account-ability — you have a “human rocket” that can soar to great heights and produce extraordinary results.

The key to making it all come together is understanding that people need to have some say in the way the systems are designed and operated. There’s a misconception that employees complain about working in an environment that’s ruled by “command and control”. In truth, it’s only the command part that people hate. When it’s done right, control is just another word for predictability. People just don’t want to work for a parent or a drill instructor and have those controls imposed on them all the time.

The principles of the “human rocket” can be applied to just about every aspect of people management. One example is how to get employees engaged in continuous improvement efforts. Most organizations say they are eager to get employee input on how to do things better. But if you ask employees why they don’t come forward with those ideas, you get such typical responses as “No one really cares for my opinion” or “It won’t make much difference” or “I might get in trouble” or “It’s not my job” or “I’m not sure how to do it” or “The boss wants me to stick to getting the job done.”

Overcoming those barriers and getting employees to step up and offer new ideas starts with making improvement part of the day-to-day operating culture. It has to be a true system, not a one-off program. It needs to be part of what people eat, sleep, and breathe every day. It takes a whole different mindset for managers and supervisors alongside a new set of skills and expectations for

Whatever way that system is designed, its power comes back to the basic principles of the “human rocket”. In particular, the system has to fuel the engines of im-agination and free will — those uniquely human gifts that are just waiting to take flight when people are encouraged and supported in doing what it takes to build a winning team.

Reprinted with the permission of Les Landes, President of Landes & Associates (www.landesassociates.com), management consultants in organizational com-munication, employee engagement, marketing, public relations, and continuous improvement systems, and creators of the “ImaginAction System” tool for getting employees engaged in systematic continuous improvement. Landes is author of multiple articles and the recently published book

“Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement”.

When staff are challenged and engaged, they become a more productive, re-sponsive, and passionate workforce. This, in turn, leads to improvements on your bottom line.Drake Training can assist you to maximize efficiency and productiv-ity through our network of training programs and resources.

Contact us in AU on 1300 362 262 or [email protected]: 632 753 2490 or [email protected]

Getting employees to step up and offer

new ideas starts with making improvement part of the day-to-day

operating culture.

managing employees. Then they need the right tools and procedures to make it easy for people to bring those ideas to the table, not just once in a while but on a systematic continuous basis.

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How do the leaders of top compa-nies create and nurture an invit-ing workplace filled with fully

engaged and enthusiastic employees? The best leaders engage employees, set the example by showing how to play well with others, and inspire people by dem-onstrating that every action they take is relevant to them and to their constituents.

The best leaders know how to listen, make a promise and deliver on that promise, and make the necessary invest-ment to engage their employees. They motivate, inspire, and energize people by connecting the vision, values, purpose, and business goals of the organization to individual values and needs. Take these 10 steps to improve your leadership and become a magnetic leader.

review what happens. Reflect on what you are learning and how you are changing.

4. Recruit and retain the right peopleIdentify what makes individuals successful in your culture and recruit for those skills. The culture will keep them loyal and happy and exceed all expectations. Improve your interviewing and listening skills so you can hear what your people are saying. Take immediate action when you identify something that needs to be improved.

5. Engage, empower, and enrich your employeesInvite them to become part of your vision. Empower them to be a force of change and be enriched by your culture. Give them a role and the responsibility for implement-ing solutions to major business issues.

1. Develop your visionMake sure you have a vision with the purpose and values to make it real. State where you are going clearly. State your purpose simply. Express your values — the things you use to guide every action people take at work — directly.

2. Identify your leader typeKnowing who you are and the type of leader you are helps not only you but also others to identify where, when, and how to best behave and act to focus their time and energy to achieve the goals and objectives you set out for them.

3. Track your leadership development progressKeep a leadership log to document what you do and what happens. Regularly

Ten Steps to Become a Magnetic Leader

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6. Create a work environment that fosters creativity and innovationGo beyond simply improving the physical environment. Focus on how people feel. Evaluate the energy when you walk the floors. How connected to their teams do virtual or remote workers feel? Make changes to ensure that the work environ-ment fuels your objectives and helps to achieve your goals.

7. Appreciate and reward your employeesDevelop and deploy a schedule that regu-larly and meaningfully rewards employ-ees to create a culture of appreciation. Assess and improve the way you reward people so that you are sensitive and re-sponsive to the differences in age, educa-tion, maturity, and demographics.

8. Focus on things that inspire your peopleIdentify what inspires you and your employees. Do they need more educa-tion and training, more creative time and cross-training opportunities, well-ness programs to promote less stress and better health, or even a sabbatical? Develop and improve the key programs that your people need to stay engaged and loyal.

9. Improve the most important things firstIdentify your major short comings head-on. Identify what boosts your progress and what holds you back. Are you a poor listener, a technophobe, or do you yell and rave? Admit it. Then take action to get help, fix your problem, and improve your own performance, skills, and abilities.

10. Visualize the futureIdentify where you see yourself in 10 or 20 years. Define the characteristics of

the leader you want to be and what the future looks like for you. Describe how you’ll balance your personal and work life and how you’ll build loyalty and trust.

Be a great leaderGreat leaders lead magnetically by fully engaging and empowering people, trans-forming them into innovative thinkers and major contributors. Appreciating effort and rewarding results generates loyalty and impacts profitability. The best leaders go beyond cultivating their skills: They create a culture of leadership by inspiring others to lead. • They use leadership like an engine of

innovation that runs on change, truth, communication, and vision. Great leaders make a difference in the lives of their people, organizations, and the processes that cultivate the business.

• They want workers to bring their brains to work. The fastest way to lower organizational IQ is to create a culture of followers. Employees who follow the rules and never think outside their job descriptions don’t contribute to organizational success.

• They appreciate and acknowledge their employees. People want and need more than money to be moti-vated. They want that basic emotional human need — to feel appreciated.

• They create loyalty. Leadership is not an ego game but rather purpose driven. Frances Hesselbein, CEO of the Leader to Leader Institute, lauded for her role as CEO of Girl Scouts of America, says: “Great leaders put their purpose first — never their own egos.”

• They know that leadership has an impact on the bottom line. Leadership requires adapting to changing forces in the marketplace, managing gen-erational differences, and embracing social responsibility and philanthropy. In summary, it creates a healthy envi-ronment that is a powerful force on productivity and profitability.

• They own an authentic personal brand. In the age of social media, personal

brands grow and spread on Twitter, Facebook, and the Blogosphere. Every leader needs to preserve their honesty, integrity, and personal image.

• They hold themselves accountable. Many use the Get REAL approach to leadership: Recruitment to attract the right people and retain them; Engaging, empowering, and enrich-ing employees by providing the right environment for success; Appreciating people with money and recognizing their efforts that go above and beyond their job description; Leadership that leads to loyalty. Leadership is first about purpose.

When leaders attract the right people and engage, empower, and appreciate them, they foster loyalty, productivity, and profitability.

Reprinted with permission of Dianne Durkin, founder and president of Portsmouth-based Loyalty Factor LLC, a training and consulting company. Contact her at [email protected].

Every organization needs to ensure they have the right leadership on board — leaders with the people skills required to steer superior performance.Drake’s Leadership Development Solution uses behavioural assessments, coaching, and workshops to deliver the insight your people need to become better leaders. To find out how Drake’s Leadership Development Solution can inspire your current leaders, improve pro-ductivity, reduce turnover, and attract top performers to the company, contact the Talent Management Solutions team.


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Your Team-Building Exercises May Not Be Creating a Team

Team leaders have a perennial dilemma: How can they educate, engage, and develop their group

in a substantial way that helps the team become better?

Team-building is often seen as the fun add-on to a meeting devoted to science, sales figures, and quarterly goals. Activities are varied: ropes courses, golf, trips to the desert, horseback riding, soft-ball, cooking school, and many others. Were these experiences useful toward the goal? If the goal is a fun distraction or an open afternoon, then these experi-ences create shared memories and are often a welcome opportunity. But the goal is rarely just to have a fun afternoon. Leaders want teams to trust better, to un-derstand at a deeper level, and certainly to communicate with one another in useful ways beyond one afternoon.

Building a team requires three basic ele-ments, and they are the same perpetual needs that all team leaders have: engage-ment, education, and development — all with a twist.

Engagement with a twist Sometimes it’s simple — like a handshake

— and other times it’s complex — like securing buy-in for a high-dollar project. But engagement always involves obtain-ing a “yes” from the other person. This agreement begins a cooperative relation-ship that seeks to align goals, minimize a judgmental response, and keep the momentum going, even during the natu-rally tough times that are bound to come.

The commitment of marriage, for example, is usually symbolized by an engagement ring; while in business, com-mitment is demonstrated with a signed letter or contract. In both instances, en-gagement is an agreement that both parties will move forward and seek more specific agreements. When people are engaged in both the marital and busi-ness context, a feeling of security assures each person that they will work together.

This agreement cannot be secured in one event. Just as hospitals have a heart monitor on every patient, team leaders must constantly monitor the telltale signs of stress, unrest, and frustration. This involves listening to what the team says and what they don’t say, and maybe what they cannot say.

Here is the twist: Listening closely to both the words and the feelings of your team members allows you as the leader and those who work for you to feel your engagement. Paraphrasing and empathy are the perennial, highly reliable skills that will help you steer clear of becom-ing judgmental. When you are in tune with your team members’ unique “heart-beats” of engagement, you will know when somebody becomes an outlier. Only then can you use your other skills to bring them back aboard.

Engagement always involves obtaining a “yes”

from the other person.

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Education with a twistToo many meetings are based on lec-tures, a repetitive structure that might have worked for multiplication tables in primary school. When teaching adults, presenters actually waste valuable edu-cation time thinking that dumping data, spreadsheets, bullet points, and manuals onto people will somehow enlighten them.

The word “education” comes from the Latin word “educare”, which means “to lead out” or “draw forth from”. Socrates knew this when he asked questions to

“draw forth from” his students. While this might make sense on paper, it is a more significant shift in how we can really en-vision meetings. We still usually run our meetings with a speaker or presenter who often says, “Is it okay if I take ques-tions later?” These people will then read their PowerPoint aloud, droning on and on, while the audience reads each slide and then waits for the presenter to finish.

Instead of a 60–90-minute lecture, con-sider these formats.• The presenter doesn’t see this as “my

time”, but sees “our time” as an oppor-tunity for the team to talk with one another about the essence of the issues

• The team divides into groups of three, brainstorms three or four concerns for the future, and then has the expert facilitator give a 10–12-minute reflec-tion on each of the concerns

• The meeting is simply a Q&A session• The expert asks the audience ques-

tions, guiding the team toward an-swering the question “What do we need to do to prepare for the future we want to make?”

Here is the twist: When we forget that education is really about drawing forth from our collective experience, we waste

incredible resources present in our teams. Witnessing this collective knowledge is a strong formative element for a team. This is often what scientists experience working on a project in a “think tank” session, or what a Broadway cast feels on opening night.

Development with a twistThis is the most important — yet most often ignored — element when build-ing a team. In an effort to move forward quickly, many leaders start sharing the

“take-aways” from the experience before the team has caught their breath. When team leaders say, “I hope that you realized this horseback riding taught us to better listen to one another just as we did with our horses”, they risk the team saying,

“What? I thought we just learned there’s some beautiful scenery here!” Instead, team leaders should consider asking:• What did you notice when you tried

to steer your horse too hard?• What did you learn about your col-

leagues’ lives during the ride?• For those who have never been horse-

back riding, what skills did you learn?• Aren’t those skills some of the same

that we need in our office?

Here is the twist: Just as we rely on crock-pots to slowly heat and meld a meal’s flavours together, we must allow the indi-viduals to apply the lessons for themselves.

Team-building with a twistSo, it is okay to take the team golfing, horseback riding, or out for drinks, but don’t think that activity alone will build the team any more than a reception with fine wine and tasty cheese will foster interesting conversation at dinner.

Reconsider how you educate and how you think about education, because everyone will learn more when the collective team experience is drawn forth. Finally, under-stand that the act of looking back on what the team learned and experienced together is a vital part of becoming a team and building one.

Kevin E. O’Connor, CSP ([email protected]), is a fa-cilitator, medical educator, and author. He focuses on teaching scientific and technical professionals how to influence and lead teams of their former peers. He presents and coaches over 175 times a year around the world to corporations, individuals, associations, and non-profits about how to move teams from conflict to consensus. His latest book,

“Fearless Facilitation: The Ultimate Field Guide for Engaging (and Involving!) Your Audience”, is avail-able in bookstores and online at www.kevinoc.com.

Listening closely to both the words and the feelings of your team members allows you as the leader and

those who work for you to feel your engagement.

Making sure you have the right people on your team and that they work well together is critical to the success of any company. Drake P3 is an online assess-ment solution that reveals a person’s natural tendencies, communication styles, emotional intelligence, motiva-tional needs, decision-making abilities, energy levels, and more.Any time person-to-person or person-to-job fit is an issue, Drake P3 can help. To find out how Drake P3 can help you, contact the Talent Management Solutions team:


Canada: 416 [email protected]



Philippines: 632 [email protected]

Singapore: 65 6225 [email protected]

United Kingdom: 020 7484 [email protected]

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y o u r t e a m - b u i l d i n g e x e r c i s e s m a y n o t b e c r e a t i n g a t e a m


Measuring the Impact

of Absenteeism and Turnover

Too often executives and HR agonize over absence and turnover statis-tics, and their adverse impact on

mission-critical outcomes, finances, and the ability to attract top talent to the business. However, a direct link may not

exist between absenteeism and turn-over. Absenteeism often can’t be avoided, when it comes to colds, flu, visits to the


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But this information will show only the results of the problem, not its causes.

Absence could indicate poor manage-ment style or culture, lack of personal development for employees, lack of chal-lenge or excitement, or even overwork or stress, and these will eventually flow into turnover.

The impact can be greater than just finan-cial. There may come a tipping point, when the business, or part of it, can become paralyzed by too much talent leaving.

Six actions to reduce turnover and its effects

1. Identify the employees, teams, and talent that are essential to the busi-ness, and grade them in importance.

2. Assess the “at risk” people by using a percentage score of the likelihood that an individual will leave within 12 months: The higher the percentage score, the greater the likelihood of the

individual leaving. Then try to identify other employees who could be promot-ed into the post if the worst happens.

3. When you notice that a talented em-ployee is taking short time off — half days or whole days over a short period, meet with them to discuss the issue and determine the real cause.

4. Employees often leave to increase future employability. Younger em-ployees in particular may be attracted to a business that’s offering training and development. Consider offering similar development opportunities to employees to retain them.

5. Use performance reviews to deter-mine the “contentment” of employees and to record their ambitions.

6. Use exit interviews to determine if there is a pattern to why people are leaving. If they are saying the reason is money, determine how much more they’re being offered. If your staff are leaving for a small increase in salary, the reason may have more to do with poor management style or lack of career progression than the pay.

Reprinted with the permission of Stephen Harvard Davis, founder of Assimilating-Talent, which works with organizations to integrate senior executives into new positions and with restructured teams to make them more profitable faster. He is a sought-after speaker at high-profile conferences and a broadcaster on business issues. For more informa-tion, visit www.stephenharvarddavis.com or email [email protected].

Why not manage your turnover in advance? Exit interviews facilitated by an expert third party give you deeper and more accurate information than in-terviews conducted in-house. They gen-erate the data you need to end unneces-sary turnover and improve operations.To learn more, visit us online at drakeintl.com or contact your nearest Drake Office.

dentist and doctor. Turnover is normal and breathes life into a business.

Absence and turnover become a problem when they begin to affect profitability. Leaders need to continually analyze the situation because a rise in employees asking for “days off” to deal with doctor appointments, childcare, and so on may be linked to turnover. However, remem-ber that an employee will probably have decided to leave a job four to six months before they give notice to their boss. A period of short absence, requested or not, should ring alarm bells, particularly if the person in question is considered top talent.

Assess the impact on the business

Increased absence and turnover will in-crease workload and management time, as well as induction and training costs, legal fees, and recruitment costs. A very high turnover may also affect business image and how the business is viewed as an employer. A poor image could affect its future ability to attract the talent it needs.

Measure impact by analyzing:• unauthorized absenteeism• authorized absenteeism for single

days or part days, which could indi-cate interviewing

• turnover, displayed for department and employee grade

• management time taken to manage absenteeism and turnover

• recruitment costs• training costs as a result of turnover• results of exit interviews

• staff surveys to establish attitude to management style and culture

You will also need to assess lost op-portunity costs, however difficult to measure. Often the figure doesn’t make the bottom line but research into the problem indicates, particularly in sales, that when a talented person leaves a business, the opportunity costs can be up to ten times the salary.

Investigating patterns between absence and turnover will help identify talent at risk of leaving. Once identified, it’s then possible to take action to reduce the risk of staff leaving — if you want to.

D B RA period of short absence, requested or not, should ring alarm bells, particularly if the

person in question is considered top talent.

When a talented person leaves a business, the lost opportunity costs can amount up to ten

times the salary.

m e a s u r i n g t h e i m p a c t o f a b s e n t e e i s m a n d t u r n o v e r


Feedback That Inspires Passion

and PerformanceAs a manager, it’s your job to help

people reach higher levels of per-formance. It’s your job to reach

inside yourself to find the interest, words, and passion that encourages others to tap into their potential. It is your respon-sibility to give the support, guidance, and feedback that changes lives.

To do it well, you must genuinely respect the people you influence and sincerely desire to contribute to their growth. Your intent determines whether what you say and do is discouraging or affirming.

Successful feedback validates what others have done well and guides them in the direction they need to go. It’s not a once-a-year conversation; it’s an ongoing dialogue that motivates behaviour and inspires excellence.

So why do most managers wait until the end of the year to give feedback to their employees? What is it about our business culture that inhibits immediate conversations about what’s going on and what can be done better?

Part of the problem is that today’s jobs are increasingly knowledge based, tech-nology oriented, and isolating. We aren’t used to having straightforward conversa-tions about disagreements and perfor-mance challenges. As a result, manag-ers need to have the ability to influence others and create cohesive teams. To be successful managers, we need to give and receive feedback at the time it is warranted. Effective feedback includes these features.

1. Engaging conversationsEngaging conversations help others to agree with you about what they need to do. If an employee is often late getting to work, help the employee to understand why their behaviour has to change and then ask them to commit to being at work on time. Be clear about what will happen if the agreement is violated, and be prepared to enforce the consequences.

If someone on your team has made a mistake, ask: “At the time this happened,

Successful feedback is not a once-a-year conversation but an ongoing dialogue that motivates behaviour and inspires excellence.

what were you thinking?” Take time to show you are interested in what this person is saying. Then ask: “What do you think you can do differently next time?” or “What ideas do you have for how you can avoid doing that in the future?” Let the employee come up with the answers. The point is to examine the facts, not to make the other person wrong.

2. Proactive approachTo be proactive, you have to observe what people are doing and be seen making these observations. This gives you the opportunity to eliminate mistakes as or before they happen. Don’t be afraid to analyze mistakes openly with your direct reports, peers, or even your own supervisor.

It can be hard to develop this skill as few organizations foster a non-judgmental atmosphere, and people are scared they will be punished if they are honest about what they’ve done. As a manager, you have to earn the right to be trusted based on how you handle errors and mistakes. Modelling trustworthy behaviour takes time, and you must be serious about this commitment. Avoid punishing someone for an original mistake: This creates fear and inhibits trying new things. Whenever possible, encourage people to apply their creativity. If you can, let them test their

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ideas in a safe environment that won’t directly affect the business.

Learning to give successful, immediate feedback is a process. In time, people will welcome your feedback because they trust your intent and your desire to help them improve.

3. Communicating expectationsEmployees often fail because they don’t understand what is expected of them. Set clear expectations when employees first come to work and hold them to these until it’s time to up the ante. Managerial employees are expected to have certain skills in place, and expectations can be increased over time. At all levels, expecta-tions should be identified and agreed to by both parties.

4. Suspending judgmentWhen there is a problem, be a detective. An assertion is not proof or evidence and you may not have the story right. Before you make a decision, ask questions to help you understand the contributing factors of a situation and be open to other points of view. Accept that people can do the wrong things for all the right reasons. Sometimes mistakes happen because someone is trying to improve the process; it just didn’t work out.

opinions or emotions. When the problem is defined, you can lead the conversation toward a resolution.

Important characteristics of feedback

Feedback must be:

1. SpecificBase your conversation on the behav-iour you are addressing, what took place, and what is expected. It should never be about liking or disliking the person or finding fault or blame. It should be about identifying the problem and having cor-rective action identified and understood.

2. DescriptiveUse clear, descriptive language. If pos-sible, demonstrate what you are looking for and have the employee do it to make sure they’ve understood. State the ideal: Paint a picture about what the future could look like if the person realizes a higher potential.

3. Immediate and confirmedGive your feedback as soon as possible, and check for understanding by asking the person to summarize the points that were made.

4. A two-way conversationOne of the best ways to gain trust and develop your own effectiveness is to ask for feedback and accept it graciously. If the feedback is sincere, find the truth within it and change your behaviour accordingly.

If you are not used to giving immediate feedback it may seem awkward at first. The key is to be respectful of the other person and use direct but affirmative language. • Use “I” messages. Own what you say and

use another person’s name and com-ments only if you have their permission.

• Use “and” instead of “but”. Defences go up when you say: “You are doing a good job, but...” Use “and” to transition

to comments on what the employee can do better.

• Talk about “what went well” and what you “want done differently”, rather than the judgmental “what went right” or “what went wrong”.

• Be aware of the non-verbal messages you are sending through eye contact, gestures, and tone of voice.

• Avoid using such absolute terms as always, never, all the time. They are rarely true and can make people defensive.

If you keep an open dialogue going with those you supervise, there should be few surprises. As you are learning to give im-mediate feedback, keep the end in mind. What you say and do has the power to change lives. As a person in authority, you have the job and responsibility to lead others with your example, conviction, and feedback. In time, people will welcome your interaction, and you will make valu-able contributions to their success.

Reprinted with the permission of Jim Dawson, of ADI Performance, a division of ADI Marketing. Jim trains professionals in the successful strategies of leadership, communications, and management. You can reach him in the US at 770 640 0840 or by email at [email protected].

Good leaders are anxious for development, and Drake’s assessment solutions, coach-ing, and workshops deliver the insight they need to be better leaders. Inspired leaders improve productivity reduce turnover, and attract Top Performers to the company. To learn more, contact Drake.


5. Handling conflictConflict is inevitable. If handled appro-priately, conflict can lead to greater un-derstanding and new ideas. Ask ques-tions and listen for the cause of the disagreement. Let those involved speak their minds, and never invalidate their

Employees often fail because they don’t understand what is expected of them.

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How to Predict Managerial SuccessSuccessful managers possess four key

qualities, and any glaring weakness in these areas should be a red flag to any

executive, hiring manager, or HR specialist looking to promote someone into a mana-gerial or leadership role. These 4 Cs are:• ability to manage Conflict• Communication skills• self-Confidence• a Conscience

A fifth C is Competence, sound technical knowledge of one’s business without which a manager quickly encounters dif-ficulties, but as that’s fundamental, we focus on the four.

ConflictA good manager has to be able to handle conflict, “the currency of management”. You often get it from all sides: sometimes unreasonable demands from those above you and howls of protests from those below. Being able to balance conflicting needs in a reasonable and effective way

— satisfying the general while maintain-ing the troops’ loyalty — is critical. While you don’t have to love conflict, and most people don’t, you have to be somewhat comfortable in the fray. You can’t be a conflict avoider.

CommunicationGood managers are effective communica-tors. Any relationship, personal or business,

flounders on weak communication. You can’t be emotionally stingy when praise for an employee is deserved, or say nothing when corrective action is needed. Really effective managers are intuitive, percep-tive, and open and honest communicators.

ConfidenceManagement is no place for the emo-tionally fragile. When you are regularly buffeted from above and below, you have to be able to “take a punch” and come back the next day, or more likely within 10 minutes, with a positive attitude. An ample dose of self-assurance, though not cockiness, is a valuable asset.

ConscienceThe best and most respected managers have a conscience. They are solid role models. They want to do the right thing, for both their own management and their employees. Some might say that all you really need to succeed is the ability to please your own boss on the backs of your direct reports, and it does happen. But over the long term, managers of this type pay a high price in terms of low em-ployee morale, productivity, and retention. It’s possible they’ll “succeed” in their own careers, but they won’t be respected.

Good managers — those who are engaged and working at full produc-tive capacity — are hard to find. This is

why it’s important for organizations to choose the right people to promote into managerial and leadership roles. You may not be able to absolutely predict who will succeed in management but you can look carefully for certain qualities whose absence will make success very difficult. The ability to handle conflict, communicate effectively, possess con-fidence, and act with conscience are at the top of the list.

Reprinted with the permission of Victor Lipman, a business executive, journalist, and writer. He is the founder and principal of Howling Wolf Management Training, LLC. You can follow him on Forbes, Facebook and Twitter and through his blog, “Mind of the Manager at Psychology Today”. Visit www.howlingwolfmanagement.com for more information.

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Drake P3 predicts the behaviour and per-sonality of potential candidates against the traits of your existing top performers

— before you make a job offer.To find out how Drake P3 can improve your hiring success, contact the Talent Management Solutions team.

Australia: 613 9245 [email protected]: 416 216 [email protected] Kong: 852 2848 [email protected] Zealand: 0800 840 [email protected]: 632 753 [email protected]: 65 6225 [email protected] United Kingdom: 020 7484 [email protected]

Any glaring weakness in four key areas is a significant obstacle to managerial long-

term success.

Really effective managers are intuitive,

perceptive, and open and honest communicators.

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SOUTH AFRICACape Town 27 21 425 3300Durban 27 31 266 2460East London 27 43 721 3201Port Elizabeth 27 41 363 8141Sandton 27 11 883 6800

CANADAAlbertaCalgary 1 403 266 8971Edmonton 1 780 414 6341 (For NWT contact Calgary)

British ColumbiaVancouver 1 604 601 2800Vancouver Drake Medox 1 604 877 0690Powell River Drake Medox 1 604 485 2508

ManitobaWinnipeg 1 204 947 0077Winnipeg Drake Medox 1 204 452 8600

Newfoundland & LabradorContact Halifax 1 902 429 2490

New BrunswickMoncton 1 506 862 1808

Nova ScotiaHalifax 1 902 429 2490

OntarioBelleville 1 613 966 7283Brockville 1 613 342 2653Cornwall 1 613 938 4777Hamilton 1 905 528 9855Kingston 1 613 542 3790London 1 519 433 3151Mississauga 1 905 279 9000Oakville 1 905 337 9898Ottawa 1 613 237 3370Toronto 1 416 216 1000Toronto West 1 416 762 4414Whitby 1 289 316 0591Drake Medox 1 416 762 2647Drake Childcare Solutions 1 416 762 2647

Prince Edward IslandContact Moncton 1 506 862 1808

QuebecMontreal 1 514 395 9595Quebec City 1 418 529 9371

National Services – CanadaDrake Talent Management Solutions 1 416 216 1067Drivers Overload 1 877 465 6235Vertical Talent 1 800 463 7253

Drake LocationsUNITED KINGDOM

London 44 (0) 207 484 0800London Medox 0800 111 4335International Medox 0800 012 1490Bury St Edmunds 44 (0) 7581 342 486Chesterfield 44 (0) 1246 202 120Coryton 44 (0) 1375 665 628East Midlands 44 (0) 1332 233 943Stockton 44 (0) 1642 546 090Swansea 44 (0) 1792 203 654Wembley 44 (0) 20 8908 1523York 44 (0) 1904 567 317

Port Distribution Services – United KingdomBirkenhead 44 (0) 151 906 2775Liverpool 44 (0) 151 949 6550Purfleet 44 (0) 170 886 7000

UNITED STATESFloridaPlantation 1 954 424 9331

THE DRAKE GROUP OF COMPANIES

Drake ActualizerAustralia 61 3 9245 0245www.drakeactualizer.com

Drake WorkWiseAustralia only 1300 135 600www.drakeworkwise.com

EnglishlinkDrake Englishlink 61 2 9273 0500www.englishlink.com/corporate

Huntel GlobalCanada [email protected]

KryterionUnited States 602 659 4660www.kryteriononline.com

Predictive Performance International – Owners of Drake P3Canada 1 416 216 1022Australia 61 3 9245 0245New Zealand 64 9 379 5610USA & International 1 917 863 0030www.predictiveperformanceintl.com

47

OUR PERMANENT STAFFING SOLUTIONDOESN’T STOP

WHEN YOUR NEW EMPLOYEE

STARTSReducing the number of days it takes for an employee to become fully productiveenables them to contribute more quickly to your bottom line.

Using Drake P3, the Drake Productivity Improvement Plus (PI+) solution can beimplemented in under 15 minutes. PI+ does not replace any other onboardingactivity; PI+ supplements it.

You Will Bene! t From:Removing barriers, enabling team integration to be faster and more effectiveImproving the productivity and performance of your new hire and the rest of the teamReducing the likelihood of a fall-off in the early weeks of the new job

Only Drake provides PI+. And like Top Performer Pro! ling, PI+ makes Drake placement so much more

e" ective than any other

To take advantage of PI+ at no extra charge, contact the Drake office nearest you.


1. When hiring permanent staff, do we have a Top Performer Profile that candidates must match rather than relying on the old-fashioned method of resume reviewing, unstructured interviews, and gut feel?

2. Do we have in place today a proactive staff retention program, which includes a concrete employee engagement program?

3. Could I write down the top three motivators of each one of the individuals reporting directly to me?

4. From our exit interviews, can we name the top three reasons why people have resigned from our company in the last 12 months?

4 Potentially Embarrassing

Ask YourselftoQuestions

How many did you say yes to?Our suite of Talent Management Solutions is designed to increase

the return on your human capital investment and your bottom line;

Onboarding & Orientation

Leadership Development

Team Building

Employee Assistance Programs

OH&S Training & Consulting

Performance Management

HR Outsourcing

Succession Planning

Executive Coaching

Psychometric Skill Assessments

Enterprise Surveys

Exit Interviewing Programs

Knowledge Management Systems

Learning Management Systems

Training & Development Courses

Permanent & Flexible Recruitment

Call Centre & Payroll Outsourcing

Employee Retention

Outplacement

Employee Engagement

Recruitment Process Outsourcing

For more information, contact a Drake office nearest you or visit us online at:

DRAKEINTL.COM

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