Category Archives: Financial & Insurance

Results in Leadership

Getting Leadership Results

In our previous article, Leadership, Back to Basics, the difference between the Characteristic Model of Leadership and the Results Based Model was explored. It was concluded that the Results Based Model provided any individual the best means of performing their leadership role, because it concentrated on the achievement of goals versus the difficult modification of an individual’s personality. The next question is that after this conclusion, how to motivate the team or followers to achieve those desired results.

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Business Metrics

Finding Good Metrics for Business Success

metrics Large organizations, with sophisticated management systems track performance measurements with a religious fervor. What about small businesses and individuals? Do they need and have these measurements of business success? Good metrics go beyond the traditional sales and profit figures from the financial statements. These are measurements of history or time passed. Good metrics measure the present and future trends. They indicate issues that can be addressed in the present, not issues that must recalled from the past.… Read the rest

Keys to Success

The Great M’s of Success

success marketing Those who have studied successful leaders over the last 300 years or more have found certain traits successful leaders had in common that accounted to their achievements.

These success techniques not only helped them forward but also sustained them even in times of depression, recession, or other personal disasters.

The Great M’s of Success in business and life are Mentoring, Masterminding, Marketing, and Motivation.

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Leadership Power

Authority vs. Power

Successful leaders are individuals with high levels of personal power. Understanding the difference between personal power and granted authority is a significant distinction. Many people have the tendency to use the words authority and power interchangeably; however, these terms refer to two very different aspects of leadership.

Authority is the right granted from a person or organization to another to represent or to act in a specified way. For example, a CEO of a company is given the authority by the Board of Directors to run the company. In turn, the CEO places managers in positions of authority over the various divisions, business units, or departments of the organization.… Read the rest

Leadership. Why and How

Leadership, Back to Basics

It is often the case that a Board of Directors, whether it is for a Fortune 500 company or a local non-profit, has to recruit and evaluate candidates for the position of CEO or President. When asked what they are looking for during this selection process, the most common answer is leadership. But why do they look for a candidate with leadership skills and how do they determine if that candidate will be an effective leader. Most importantly, they are looking for a person who can accomplish tasks and achieve results. Let’s consider that way first and then two models for determining an individual’s leadership ability.… Read the rest

Building Trust

How Leaders Create Trust

trust Surveys of employees often ask what is the one attribute they look for in an effective leader. Trust always near the top of the list. Whether you are a manager, supervisor, salesman or team lead it is important to be trusted by those you deal with on a regular basis. Once that trust is lost, it is difficult to impossible to regained.Here are some suggestions on building and maintaining trust.… Read the rest

Your Next Conference

How to Get the Most out of Your Next Conference

Success in your career depends upon how well you manage your professional development. A prime source of this development comes from being a member of a professional association that relates to your career. As a member, you can attend conferences where you advance your skills and meet people who can help you.

Some people, however, treat conferences as a paid vacation. They party, they skip sessions, and they return home with little more than a stack of receipts. That costs them (or their business) money and contributes nothing to professional growth.

Here’s how to get the most out of your next conference.… Read the rest

Use of Time Video

Uncluttering Your Use of Time

The video below show the content of a one-hour workshop to be used for business or organizational meetings. The video is 15 minutes in length and indicates some of the subjects covered in the workshop. Our workshop are not lecture but are facilitated sessions where the participants don’t just sit and listen but become actively involved. Consider for comany meetings, amnnual associatioon meetings and lunchand learn sessions. Contact us for more information.

bob@plangoals.com

Click on the link below

Uncluttering Your Use of Time

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Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe

The Games of Time Management

success

Have you ever sat at your desk and literally played this mental game. Have you ever heard these types of questions or statements rolling through your mind?

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Rewards vs Recognition

Rewards vs Recognition as an Employee Motivator

As a business or organizational leader, we often need to consider ways to motivate people. One business owner was lamenting about the lack of motivation in his sales staff and remarked that if they were all on straight commission there would be a much greater level of performance. Let’s consider two of the most common approaches to motivation; rewards and recognition.

Rewards

Webster defines rewards as, the giving of either money or another kind of payment for something good which has been done. Reward practices we have seen include piecework incentives, sales commissions, and prizes for performance. Piecework was very common in the manufacturing of goods where an employee was paid by the number of products they produced.… Read the rest

Recognition Awards

Employee Recognition Awards Create Progress

awards In difficult situations, when companies are in crisis and can only be saved by major effort, group morale often rises to far higher levels than before. Individual objections and objectives are bypassed in the collective drive to do what must be done. This is where recognition awards take importance. High group morale can enrich individual motivation and performance remarkably! These are two types of awards: planned and unplanned.

Planned Awards:

1. Recognition Awards

On its basic concept, recognition awards are effective ways of increasing and boosting people’s morale. It encourages them to be accepting of and have a desire for change at all times. The change they will make is not entirely for the advantage of the company, but to their own personal achievement as well.… Read the rest

Best Practices in Performance Management

Recognition as Part of Performance Management

Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria.Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:

pays attention to their work
provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop
judges their performance objectively

Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.

Appraisals

Traditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet his or her boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis.… Read the rest

Avoiding Employee Failure

The Downward Spiral of Employee Performance

As a manager or organizational leader, you must be constantly aware of the environment you create. The environment can prove to be one where people perform well or one where people feel unappreciated and destined for failure. In a March 1998 article in Harvard Business Review, The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux discuss this exact situation.

Have you ever experienced a situation in an organization where, although you have been appointed to a responsible position, you don’t seem to be part of the in-crowd. Meetings are held without extending you an invitation. Your superior by-passes you, talking directly with your subordinates when requiring information or making decisions. You inclusion in social functions is often an afterthought.… Read the rest

Employee Absence

Steps to Stop Absence and Make People Happy At Work

absence If you’re an employer or manager, then work place absence is costing you money, inconvenience, and upsetting your customers. So we all know, not all days taken off work are due to genuine sickness. Many employees “take a sickie” because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work.

The challenge for employers and managers is to make people happier at work. If people are happy at work, they are less likely to take a day off every time they wake up with a stuffy nose.

Some bosses think that paying more money, improving job security, or working conditions is the answer. It isn’t and it’s also something that can be very hard to achieve.… Read the rest

Micro-Management

Six Danger Signs You May Be Headed to Micro-Management

1) Do you monitor and manage tasks or do you identify and train to essential competencies?

Do you want to know the big difference between due diligence and a core competency? Here’s a classic example: Collecting 50 business cards per day is an act of data procurement, while training to a 60% conversation to appointment ratio is focusing on an essential component to ensure your sales team’s success.

Don’t focus on accountability to tasks but enlighten to identification. It’s much more important to teach your people the ‘business’ of the business they’re in. If you currently have your sales team accountable to tasks, then you’re merely ‘managing’ tasks. In order to become more effective, you should be training on measurement of competencies so your people can ‘run their own business.’… Read the rest

Learn to Build a Great Organization

A Successful Organization Starts With You

So often we hear from the owner of a business or the manager of an organization lament about the performance of employees or associates. They speak of it as though they were having an out-of- body experience in which they were completely separated from the activities of the group. When I hear these types of comments, I am reminded of an old Greek phase, translated to the fish rots from the head down.

Leaders often feel helpless in changing the performance of a group. There are many practices and personal work habits that they can adapt which will make a difference. Let us look at three areas and look at behaviors and how each affects others in the group.… Read the rest

The Listening Side of Communications

Really Good Listening Habits Are Hard to Find

Listen

When is the last time you had a conversation with someone where you really felt like the person you were talking with was engaged in the conversation and was really interested in what you were communicating?

Their body language, eye contact, and tone of voice were focused and inviting and surrounding distractions seemed irrelevant. Every one of us can remember a meaningful conversation and what it felt like to “be heard.” Being heard is an important component to how we measure our self-worth and self-confidence.… Read the rest

Performance Management

A Performance Management Approach to Retaining Key People

employee Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:

pays attention to their work
provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop
judges their performance objectively

Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.

… Read the rest

Employee Motivation

Does the KITA Method of Employee Motivation Work?

The most difficult dilemma business and organizational leaders face is that of motivating employees and staff. Sure there are marketing issues and financial issues that are difficult, but motivation seems to be the most difficult one to address. In a January 2003 Harvard Business Review article, One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? , Frederick Herzberg presents conclusions on this subject. So what is the KITA method of motivation? Does it work? What does work?

KITA Method of Motivation

KITA is short for Kick in the A__. This method may be employed either in a negative manner or a positive manner. It can be employed either physically or psychologically. A negative physical KITA can result in retaliation, physical or otherwise, and in today’s society, be looked upon harshly.… Read the rest

Employee Performance

Managing Employee Performance

team

Many managers fail to realize how their actions, attitudes, and communications affect the performance of a team or group of employees. They place the responsibility for performance on others and not themselves. Management success only comes when they learn to practice some basic principles of leadership and become someone who the employees wish to follow. Here are seven of these principles.… Read the rest