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With all the “be your best self now!” hullabaloo, we can get overwhelmed with what we think we should be doing. We can drive ourselves crazy thinking about all the things we could do to make ourselves smarter, stronger, better. Not long ago, I actually found myself surrounded by whiteboards sketching out all of my self-improvement plans for the year, kanban board style. And while goals and growth plans are great, sometimes the best ideas for change come from an awareness outside of ourselves. I know, it sounds weird to hear a leadership coach telling you to look for something outside of yourself. I’m all about tuning into that courageous and all-knowing voice who can tout your fabulousness–it’s good stuff. But let’s get real: Sometimes the only way to get perspective about what needs to change comes from an outside perspective. Yes, believe it or not, there is often a gap between who we desire and think we are presenting to the world, and the way others see us. Turns out that when you ask the people around you–the ones who see you in action every day and are impacted by the choices you make–where you can grow, their ideas might be a little different than your own.
Via The Learning Factor
While it's relatively easy for competitors to implement technology similar to yours, duplicate your strategy, and even mimic your culture, they can't clone your people. That's why most organizations agree talent is a top priority. At the end of the day, people are your truest form of sustainable competitive advantage. To expand the capabilities of their best asset, most organizations invest in some form of continued development. Research from the Brandon Hall Group revealed the average training budget for large organizations hovers around $13 million. Also, out of all the delivery mediums available (i.e., mobile apps, simulations, and e-learning), classroom settings are still chosen 22 percent more often than any other modality. This research came as a bit of a surprise, given all the advancements in technology. Although the study also indicated classroom settings were effective, I couldn't help but think that many companies are behind the times. As a part of the research, Rallyware, a training platform that delivers adaptive learning solutions, interviewed learning and development thought leaders to get their perspective on how technology will shape the future of corporate training. Through these interviews, five e-learning trends emerged: 1. Employees will learn on the go. I'm not the only one who says yes to projects that I'm not 100 percent certain I can do, right? My motto is say yes and figure it out later. It's risky, but it's also a lot of fun. I can't tell you how many times a YouTube video or an on-demand course from Lynda.com has saved me. Kevin Delaney, VP of learning and development at LinkedIn, realizes that future corporate training must adopt to these types of situations. Two-day workshops aren't efficient enough. We need access to just-in-time solutions that help us troubleshoot issues within minutes. In his interview, Delaney offered valuable insight that foreshadows future learning tools: When employees are stuck, they want the answer quickly. It doesn't help them to sign up for a class that will happen three weeks from now and sit through a four-hour session to get the answer they need this minute. They are more inclined to engage in learning if they can watch a short video that they have access to 24/7 on any device. 2. The learning experience will be highly customized. Different learning styles and varying role responsibilities are making big-box, off-the-shelf learning solutions less and less effective. Now, customized and concentrated learning experiences are critical. Employees need access to content that's relevant, easily digestible, and engaging. Delaney offered some opinions on how personalized training should be delivered: First, don't bore people. Bored people don't learn. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning. Companies need to offer a variety of solutions and focus on creating a one-size-fits-one experience. 3. Learning and development professionals won't create but curate. The amount of content on the web is unbelievable. Udemy, an e-learning provider, has more than 65,000 courses on its site alone. With employees' increased access to content, learning is now a dual responsibility. Learning and development professionals can pinpoint key learning areas and vehicles and employees can be proactive about owning their development. The days of creating a huge list of internal content are changing, says Beth Loeb Davies, director of learning and development at Tesla: At this point, I believe that we don't need to produce our own content in organizations as often as we did before but rather find the right material and deliver it to those who need it when they need it ... People are already learning through alternative media. Our role is becoming to curate resources in the context of the company culture and people's needs. 4. Employees' job responsibilities will be mixed. Many organizations are shifting to flatter and more efficient org charts. However, the same amount of work still needs to get done. It's not uncommon to see employees operating outside their job descriptions. If organizations expect to do more with less, then they'll need to broaden the scope of skills development, says Tom Brown, VP of HR Americas and APAC at eBay: Companies will need to ensure that there are opportunities for their employees to build a quorum of different skill sets which won't necessarily be linked to their job titles. It means that there will be a decreasing emphasis on the career ladder, as we know it. 5. The data-driven approach to talent development will be a matter of course. Data is a powerful validator, especially for cost-center functions like learning and development. Now, through advances in technology, initiatives that were traditionally seen as nice-to-haves can produce quantitative results proving their value. HR (the department in which learning and development professionals sit) will have to adjust, says Kvon Tucker, an Amazon global leadership development partner. HR will need to become more data driven ... Learning experience data will be most valuable to companies, to help them track and correlate the most important experiences to the development outcomes needed for the organization. This is a lot to take in. If leaders want to address all these trends, then they'll have to consider new technology including artificial intelligence, data, and machine learning. These tools are giving leaders the ability to analyze individual behavior and then deliver the right content to the right people at the right time on the preferred device. If you haven't already, take a look at microlearning, big data, and gamification to see if they're the right solution for your organization.
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Maybe your favorite interview question is one of the most common interview questions. Maybe it's one of the most common behavioral interview questions. Or maybe you have a less conventional interview question you like to ask, like those asked by these company founders and CEOs. What is your favorite interview question? To find out, we asked the Inc. community on LinkedIn to provide their favorites, as well as their reasons why. Below are some of the responses; go here and here to see them all. 1. "What is the hardest thing you've ever done?" The answer can be personal or professional. What the candidate accomplished isn't as important as how -- and why. What were the hurdles? What were the roadblocks? Did the candidate seek help? Does the candidate credit the people who helped? The answer also can provide insight into how the candidate defines "hard," and how their perspective align with the challenges your business faces.
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What do you really need to get ahead at work? I get asked this all the time. The answer varies depending on the person, their goals, and my mood, but there’s one answer I’ll never give: “Work hard.” That’s not an oversight or a misstep. It’s very intentional. Whenever I hear some public speaker or Silicon Valley personality talk about how it just takes hard work to really succeed, I can’t help but roll my eyes a little. I’m sick of hearing people talk about working hard, keeping busy, putting their head down, etc. We’ve become too preoccupied with “the grind,” and it’s actually bringing us down.
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Advice on how to improve one’s self is everywhere. It accounts for about 2.5% of all book sales in the United States. Add in speeches, training programs, TV programs, online-products, coaches, yoga, and the like, self-help is a $10 billion industry per year, and that’s just in the U.S. However, research shows that much of the advice extolled may be misleading or even wrong. Several myths about performance persist, despite research and practices that show they are half-truths at best. That might explain why the most likely purchasers of self-improvement books have bought another within the previous 18 months. The first myth-riddled book didn’t work, so they bought another, and maybe another soon after. A recent report in the Journal of Management noted that of nearly 25,000 academic articles on performance, only a fraction include what psychologists call within person variance, which describes ranges, such as that between individuals’ top, average and worst performances. Advice too often mistakenly assumes performance can be compared across people, using the same gauge. That’s absurd. Our observation of hundreds of performance seekers largely confirms the report and has led to delineating a series of myths that hold people back when trying to improve. These assertions are based on a diverse set of fields, including psychology, sports, arts, and leadership. We hope that by dispelling these myths, explaining the reality and offering some sound advice instead, we can help move people toward more effective personal development.
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Every year for the past ten years, Glassdoor announces the top places to work all across North America and parts of Europe. The most unique part of this award? You can only win the award if your employees say so. Glassdoor's methodology for the award includes a collection of anonymous company reviews where employees share their honest opinion on pros and cons of working for the company, overall satisfaction, the CEO, and workplace attributes. They're also asked if they would recommend their employer to a friend. It's a juicy turn of the tables. Within the top 100 best places to work for, the industries that came out on top were tech, retail, healthcare, consulting, finance, and travel and tourism. The top cities included the Bay Area, Boston, and Los Angeles (just to name a few). So, what does it take to be the top of the top?
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Some days you get to work early, work nonstop, and head home without being able to figure out what you actually accomplished. Everything rushes past you in a blur of emails, meetings, and errands, and your to-do list remains more or less untouched. You’re always going to have a few workdays like this no matter what you do. But if they start happening regularly, you may have a problem on your hands. If that’s the case, then it’s time to start looking for systematic failures, not just one-off fumbles. And ironically enough, the best place to look may be at your to-do list itself. What better record do you have of the tasks that you’re consistently failing to achieve? These are a few common to-do list items that might be getting in the way of your more important goals. If you can cut them out–even just for a day or two–you may be able to regain your footing.
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Kids are back in school. Pumpkin spice lattes are back in Starbucks. It’s official: Summer is over and the year is winding down. But before it does, there might be a goal or two you committed to back in January that you’d still really love to make good on. Don’t worry–falling short on your New Year’s resolutions is totally normal. And even if you missed your chance to get back in the saddle at the six-month mark, there might still be some things you can do to make headway between now and the holidays. One tactic that might help? Cutting back. Sometimes all you need to jump-start your progress is to ditch some of your routines, bad habits, and maybe even some of your other goals so you can redirect your energy where it counts. For inspiration, here’s what five Fast Company contributors–in their own ways, all experts on productivity and self-management–are kicking to the curb in order to end the year on a high note.
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All the data suggesting that coding is rapidly becoming an essential skill for any job–not just one in tech–only tells one side of the story. The other side indicates that soft skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, attention to detail, and writing proficiency top the list of what hiring managers find missing from job seekers’ personal tool kits. But according to theWorld Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, one the job skills that will make a candidate competitive in the job market of the future is emotional intelligence. The WEF predicts it will be among the top ten in 2020. How emotionally intelligent are you now? There are several ways to test it (including one that’s so accurate it’s creepy). The good news is that even if you’re a bit deficient on some traits, emotional intelligence can be improved. Here are some suggestions on boosting your EQ right away.
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We get it, finding a mentor can be difficult and time-consuming. But when you do find one (or two), they can save you from making costly mistakes that can set you back in your career. Simply put, having a mentor will improve the quality of your decisions and provide opportunities that won’t be available to you otherwise. There’s this idea that that mentors are older people with established careers and well-honed skill sets who provide guidance to younger mentees, but this isn’t always the case. The key to success is selecting the mentor who best suits your needs at any given stage of your career: entry level, middle management level, or executive level. If you’re an entrepreneur or creative person, you can think of these stages as early career, mid-career, and advanced career.
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You’re a pretty rational person, or so you think: You’re often good at thinking logically and keeping your feelings out of it, right? Wrong. (Sorry!) It wasn’t long ago that people believed emotions and logic were two completely separate things, operating independently of one another. But breakthroughs in brain science have made it clear that that’s far from true. It turns out that our brains are incapable of making fully unemotional decisions. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. In fact, you can use that cognitive reality in your favor to build relationships, network, and gain influence.
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Traditional goal setting focuses on the beginning and the end—start strong and keep your eye on the prize. Unfortunately, that process doesn’t work for every kind of goal, says Scott Young, author of How to Change a Habit. “A lot has been taught around the classic self-help style of Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins where you have a clear goal, you visualize it, write it down, and focus on the starting point,” says Young, cofounder of the career development course Top Performer. “Some goals, though, aren’t clearly sequential.” The middle can and should be your starting point when you’re setting a goal where you’re unclear of the level you can achieve within a particular timeframe. This is especially the case with daunting, unfamiliar goals where you don’t yet have a strong sense of the big picture.
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You’ve probably been taught that giving compliments build relationships. In the self-help classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie stressed the importance of “giving sincere and honest appreciation” to others in life and work. He’s not wrong, but the thing is that showing real appreciation is difficult to do. How many times has someone given you a “compliment” and you just know they’re trying to get something from you? Compliments can easily veer into flattery and feel insincere, leaving the recipient wondering about the giver’s hidden agenda. Here’s what it takes to avoid all that–it’s easier than you think.
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Automation isn’t a simple struggle between people and technology, with the two sides competing for jobs. The more we rely on robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, the clearer it’s become just how much we need social scientists and humanities experts–not the reverse. These four skills in particular are all unique to us humans, and will arguably rise in value in the coming years, as more and more companies realize they need the best of both worlds to unleash the potential from both humans and machines. AI and machine learning are extremely useful for solving straightforward, predictable problems and finding patterns no human would ever be able to spot in big data pools. But they’re less helpful in sussing out issues where it’s not a given what the problem actually consists of. Say a patient gradually stops taking her medication, and an algorithm picks up on that fall-off early on. That’s great, but you still need a human being to ask why and contextualize the reasons–with a full understanding of what it means to live with chronic illness. For instance, is the patient simply forgetting to take her medication, or actively choosing not to? Is there an alternative remedy that suits the patient’s priorities and lifestyle?
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What do you really need to get ahead at work? I get asked this all the time. The answer varies depending on the person, their goals, and my mood, but there’s one answer I’ll never give: “Work hard.” That’s not an oversight or a misstep. It’s very intentional. Whenever I hear some public speaker or Silicon Valley personality talk about how it just takes hard work to really succeed, I can’t help but roll my eyes a little. I’m sick of hearing people talk about working hard, keeping busy, putting their head down, etc. We’ve become too preoccupied with “the grind,” and it’s actually bringing us down.
Via The Learning Factor
2017 was an exciting year for talent acquisition. We prepared for Generation Z. Leaders realized how critical it is to recruit female talent. Organizations focused on offering attractive benefits that supported employee development and even infertility. With all that progress, it'd be a shame to take two steps back in 2018. Dive into the new trends before it's too late. This is what you need to concentrate on when hiring in 2018: 1. Focus on adaptability.If we learned anything in 2017, it's that corporate stability is elusive. One week your company is leading the industry, the next the CEO is facing a series of scandals. If your workforce can't thrive in changing conditions, they won't achieve long-term success. Andreas Pettersson is the chief product officer of the video cloud security company Arcus. The company is currently in the middle of a big hiring push, and they're approaching talent acquisition in a new way. Pettersson pointed out that in the past, organizations looked for employees who adhered to a rigid plan. That is no longer the case. "For today's most agile teams, a set plan is no longer a feasible or successful strategy for product development," he said. "In 2018, rather than technical skills defining the gold standard recruit, ideal candidates will fit seamlessly into the team, thrive in an empowered environment, and focus on solving the problem at hand." This will be true for all industries, not just tech. Assemble a team that can keep up with the changing business environment. Look for candidates who have a wide range of experiences. Check out LinkedIn and reach out to candidates who have successfully transitioned from one industry to another. This is one sign that they are adaptable. 2. Know your ABCs: AI, blockchain, and chatbots.We've been talking about artificial intelligence for years. But we're just starting to see useful applications when it comes to hiring. Newer software saves hiring managers countless hours by pre-screening candidates. Brian Christman is the vice president of people at the digital freight marketplace Transfix. He also has over a decade of experience helping companies like Etsy and SiriusXM scale. "By leveraging big data and machine learning, recruiters are able to cast wider nets," said Christman. "They become more efficient in building high-quality pipelines, and ultimately can better predict the skills and attributes of prospective candidates that will have the highest probability of success." Find an AI tool that will grow with your company. For example, Mosaictrack uses technology similar to IB's Watson to read through resumes like a human. Over time, it becomes more attuned to the skills and cultural factors you need. This leaves hiring managers more time to develop relationships with top talent. Blockchain technology is another tool that will be gaining momentum this year. It was developed for exchanging bitcoin, but now there are wider applications. Blockchain allows for a faster interaction with information by two or more parties. Everyone has the most up-to-date information, no matter how many people are using it. Imagine how that could simplify team hiring. Instead of scrolling through an endless chain of messages to see what each person thought of a candidate, use blockchain technology. This will assure that each individual can easily add their own opinions and see those of everyone else. Finally, chatbots are beginning to make a big impact. The technology saves hiring managers from wasting time on candidates who are a bad fit. Put a chatbot on your company career page. Then potential candidates can interact with it and ask questions. Bringing things full circle, the chatbot can then deliver that communication to AI software. If there are signs that this is a strong candidate, you can make direct contact with them. 3. Make recruitment and marketing BFFs.Google for Jobs, which debuted in 2017, will impact how organizations craft job listings in the coming year. "Now recruiters have to think about how they are marketing their openings, which keywords you use, the schema behind how you set it up and ultimately what specific personas they want to attract," said Teri Calderon, executive vice president of human resources at technician staffing firm Field Nation. Chances are your hiring team has no idea how to optimize a job posting so it will appear on the first page of Google. Offer training that explains to them why this is important. Provide a list of researched keywords that your ideal candidates will be searching for. This will ensure that the best talent applies with your company first.
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Team brainstorming seems like a good idea--at least, on paper. What usually happens is this: the company is experiencing a tough problem that no single person seems able to solve, so someone decides that more minds means more processing power, and before you know it you're all gathered in the conference room. One or two people churn out bad idea after bad idea, while everyone else stares at the wall or multitasks. There are no major breakthroughs and most of you are irritated at the waste of time. Sound familiar? Why is this such a problem?
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Being more productive is about working smarter, not harder, and making the most of each day. While this is no easy feat, getting more done in less time is a much more attainable goal if you’re not sabotaging yourself with bad habits. Following are 16 things you should stop doing right now to become more productive.
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Copywriter. Designer. Illustrator. Filmmaker. With how competitive the world has become, it’s no wonder why we’re obsessed with titles. Focusing on a speciality makes you more appealing to employers and shows clearly where your skills lie. It’s easier to focus on doing one thing great. Yet a growing crop of research and anecdotal evidence suggests that spending time and energy on unrelated tasks, hobbies, and interests can actually supercharge our ability to learn and grow, making us even better at all our work. Here’s the excuse you need to branch out and try something new:
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Every office runs into some form of distraction that plagues the workplace. Distractions are incredibly common and can damage productivity, focus and employee morale. In fact, a 2015 survey from Oxford Economics found that employee satisfaction and productivity are affected quite negatively by distractions in the workplace specifically caused by cubicle setups. However, cubicle farms aren’t the only reasons distractions occur. Here are some of the most common distractions plaguing the workplace and how employers can easily overcome them.
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I can admit it now; I was completely clueless about a lot of things in my first job out of college. From navigating complicated office hierarchies to knowing exactly what to wear in the workplace, and just exactly how I was supposed to figure things out myself when I had no idea what I was doing. It took me a while to understand the etiquette and unspoken rules of the workplace that now seem so obvious. Of course, I learned with time and would probably not trade my then-naivety for anything else. It did, after all, force me to learn lessons that are so drilled in my head now as a working person. If it wasn’t for my cringeworthy expectation that I was always going to be given clear instructions and then realizing I was wrong, my brain wouldn’t be set to the “automatically anticipate needs” mode that it’s on today. If it wasn’t for me being completely unhappy (and useless) in my first job, I might not have been brave enough to take the plunge and pursue the career that I really wanted.
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Receiving feedback is hard. Here are some tips on how you can be better at it.
The truth is, we can’t always control the feedback we receive; we can only control how we choose to accept and use it. And learning how to use it wisely can be a game changer.