Episoder
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Jeff Cohen of C-Level Roundtable. Jeff Cohen created C-level Roundtable in 2001 to bring a unique blend of state-of-the-art behavioral coaching, driven by his practical business, leadership, and academic experience.
To learn more about Jeff's work, visit https://www.clevelroundtable.com/
If you'd like to be a guest on Masters Of Employee Development, click HERE
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Fredrik Van Huynh of Absolute Internship. Absolute Internship has formed into a leading international internship program. They enable university students and graduates to develop their career aspirations across the globe.
To learn more about Fredrik's work, visit https://absoluteinternship.com/
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Manglende episoder?
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Lisa Mitchell of Green Apple Consulting. Green Apple Consulting helps Talent Management Leaders embed talent programs that drive results and elevate organizational culture. They support you through transformational coaching, consulting, and training for you and the companies you serve.
To learn more about Lisa's work, visit https://www.greenappleconsulting.ca/
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It's the little things that count… especially when running a growing organization. If you want to make your organization the best it can be, you need to be sure that everyone is happy and growing. After all, your business will only succeed when everyone feels supported and has the tools they need to do their job. They are more likely to take ownership of their assigned tasks and feel valued by the company that way.
In this episode of Masters of Employee Development, Mike interviews Jonathan Shroyer, a highly regarded serial entrepreneur, who explains team-building and development, establishing trust within your network, and the need to be within a network of people who're different from you. He also speaks about the importance of expectation-setting and how it can help you avoid overwhelm as a leader. Listen in!
EPISODE 18 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
What are the things you want for your team?
01:38
Development is one of the significant points to consider when building a team – how do you mold your team members into leaders tomorrow? It is less about the goals, responsibilities, and deliverables and more about their growth.
What can you do to develop your team members into leaders?
02:49
1. Start with a listening tour. Understand your people, their talents, and assess how you can help them become successful. Take an inventory of the opportunities you can offer them.
03:25
2. Look out for individuals who aren’t being appreciated well. Try to find natural, non-contrived opportunities to give them appreciation.
03:46
3. Share your leadership story. This way, people can know how you think about the future.
How do you go from being an individual contributor to a company owner?
06:05
Growing into a company requires you to identify your key audience. Understand what your customers need and find out how to serve them better. It is also equally important to ensure your employees’ welfare. Make sure they’re motivated and that you’re addressing any concerns they have in a timely manner.
Why is it important to set expectations before joining a new organization?
08:13
As a leader especially, you need to understand that you’re not an individual contributor. You’re responsible for driving alignment to the vision and managing the people who will contribute to it. Your role is to bring people together to work on the vision and not march ahead alone. Setting expectations will ensure you’re not constantly tempted to single-handedly contribute or get something done for namesake.
How do you make yourself available to your employees to help them grow?
16:54
It all comes down to a balance of execution and development. Surround yourself with people who could aid in your journey, different from you; cultivate meaningful relationships. Be the master o your network.
What is the concept of concentric circles of trust?
21:51
By concentric circles of trust, we mean concentric levels of trust. People in the next higher circle as you are your immediate companions. There’s bidirectional communication in a concentric circle network.
KEY QUOTES:
5:24-5:37
“if you want to achieve something in a year or two years, you need to write it down. It doesn't have to be a complex plan. [...] You could write a one-pager of what you want to achieve in the next couple years, at least you've written it down.”
11:57-12:17
“I think the cool thing about the listening tour is I have a different viewpoint on development than a lot of leaders. I don't think it's my responsibility to develop people. It's my responsibility to create an environment, a culture where people feel like they can dream about their future, try to imagine what it...
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Jeff Wright of Phusion Projects. Innovation and disruption are in their DNA at Phusion. They understand consumers as category agnostic and pursue flavor, brand, and functional benefits above all else.
To learn more about Jeff's work, visit https://phusionprojects.com/
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Kimberly Gerber of iExcelerate. iExcelerate is a leadership and communication incubator. They develop confident, strategic leaders and high-performing executive teams that build inspiring cultures and deliver profitable results.
To learn more about Kimberly's work, visit https://www.iexcelerate.com/
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Tania Cervoni of the Canadian Management Centre. With 20 years of experience in education, training facilitation, coaching, and organizational development, Tania excels at identifying and developing the potential in individuals and teams.
To learn more about Tania's work, visit https://cmcoutperform.com/
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Jonathon Kendall of Virtual Worker Now. Virtual Worker Now is a massive team of world-class experts from all around the globe. Specializing in 9 skill sets, VWN Specialists know how to make businesses work better, scale faster, and make more money.
To learn more about Jonathon's work, visit https://virtualworkernow.com/
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Anthony McGinnis of Powell Software. Powell Software helps companies meet the challenges of the hybrid workplace, with a digital workplace built for everyone and accessible to everyone. They improve the employee experience, helping companies write their own “future of work” by leveraging the talent of their entire workforce.
To learn more about Anthony's work, visit https://powell-software.com/
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What is the one thing that makes your employees want to grow with you in your organization? Research shows that value alignment is one of the many factors that define employee satisfaction in an organization. Are your employees aligned with
your organizational values? Do they have the curiosity humility to lead forward? In this episode of Masters of Employee Development, Mike interviews Brittany from Credly. Brittany explains the importance of values and learning in an organization and the steps organizations can take to ensure employee satisfaction and growth. You’ll know why employees are best motivated to stay in your company when they’re in for their personal development. Tune in to the conversation to learn more!
EPISODE 14 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
What must you do to lead, listen, coach, and develop with curiosity?
11:30
To lead, listen, coach, and develop with curiosity, you need to leave your ego at the door. Step into any situation knowing that there will be other people in the room with strengths better than yours. You will have to hire people, even on your team and your direct reports, who are more talented than you. How do you assess if a company’s culture is enhancing or clashing?
13:29
Discover if your goals and vision are in alignment. Are you and your team working towards the same goal? Are you able to enhance or broaden the skills of your team members? How do you find humility in an individual?
19:05
Knowing a person’s motivations, the hierarchy of needs, and “why” could help you assess their humility component. We all have a previous history that leads us forward in life. As a leader, one must create an emotionally safe environment for people so they can open up and share their dreams and insecurities. What systems does Brittany’s company have in place to ensure continuous learning and development? How is it implemented there?
26:31
Brittany shares that her company encourages continuous learning by providing financial benefits for their employees to do that. They also have a culture that promotes open conversations about goals and motivations between employees and leaders. They help their employees find an alignment of their dreams with the companies. Why is it good for people to be in service for their personal development?
32:52
When you’re in service for your own personal development, you adapt to any change and challenge quickly because you want to grow along with your company. You’ll also have to be accountable, own your mistakes, and learn the mechanics of the company properly, which can only happen if you’re in there for your personal development too. Brittany’s best advice for you.
37:14
You don’t need a college degree to become a true professional. Skills-based hiring is the future. The leaders of tomorrow will only look for candidates and who have the skills, motivation, curiosity needed to move forward in their careers with the company. They should care about the organizational mission and need to invest their time to help you move forward in the organization.
KEY QUOTES:
12:13
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12:38
“You need to be looking for culture enhancements, you need to look for Team enhancements, you need to hire people who are smarter than you who can challenge you in different ways who can challenge you to be a better leader, and can help you get the job done, the best thing that you can do as a leader is to get rid of the blockers that are going to stop and stifle your direct reports and your teams from being able to do their job well.”
23:09
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23:17
“Humility means I don't have all the answers, we don't have all of the answers, (but) we have to keep our eyes wide open. And we have to be lifelong learners.”
37:14
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37:28
“A lack of a college degree is not a red flag. But organizations that require things like a college degree, may have signs of a...
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If you want to build a successful and sustainable company, you know that employee engagement and retention are critical. One of the ways to think about keeping employees engaged is to encourage them to chase things that they're really passionate about. Helping them chart their own growth path is also highly beneficial for any company, as you get to work with people passionate about their job.
In today’s episode, Mike is joined by Jonathan Finkelstein, CEO of Credibly, a company that helps organizations make better human capital decisions based on an individual’s unique skillset. Jonathan and Mike talk about many areas of employee development, including assisting them to discover how to grow into a role other than that of a manager, encouraging learning, paying them what they’re truly worth, and helping them unlock their true potential.
Tune in to learn more about being an efficient and welcoming leader.
EPISODE 10 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
What are the challenges to developing leadership in today’s times?
13:42
The most significant leadership challenge is going from a startup to a complete growth mode or having a more established company do digital transformation. A leader cannot continually work on the same challenges. They need to solve one entirely or proceed with the next at once. And that happens through technology, people, or partner support.
What are some of the things that keep people from passing on their legos to others?
16:25
The first thing is constraints on time. It takes time to invest in doing something better, and when there’s a lot going on, you cannot imagine adding more to your plate simultaneously. The second thing is knowing when to put something on the side or saying that good enough is good enough.
Talk to me a little bit about your leadership pipeline.
18:41
I believe that not everyone wants to be a manager ultimately. That's not the only sign of success and growth. You can be a leader without managing people.
In our leadership pipeline, we see individual definitions of professional growth and success. At our company, we have managers meet their team every week, and represent people who either are or have just become managers at the company. We have a lot of people who are first-time managers who didn't have management experience before they joined the company.
What are your growth goals for people who don’t want to become managers in the future?
24:03
Firstly, you can't assume anything about any one person. I believe the best way to understand what somebody considers success and growth is to talk to them and check in regularly. We try to understand what happiness means to every person.
The other thing is, when you open up new roles, don't just look at the immediate team where that new role is opening, but look at other parts of the company that are going to benefit from it.
What is your criteria for hiring new employees?
28:12
We try to break the mold from traditional hiring practices. We believe people are super-reliant on resumes and referrals -- the two primary ways to hire better and think it's supercritical not to go back to the same tried and tested waters because that leads to stagnation.
What do you train your people on?
33:41
We help people unlock their true potential in their own teams. We try to elevate and amplify their potential. A lot of our weekly meetings are dedicated to a training or learning topic where we're either sharing our best practices or using our network to develop our teams. We provide professional development stipends to every member of the team to seek advice or figure...
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Your host, Mike Acker, talks with Jonathan Finkelman of Credly. To create a world where every person can achieve their full potential based on their verified skills, Credly helps organizations make better decisions based on trusted information about what people know and can do.
To learn more about Jonathan's works, visit https://info.credly.com/
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Your host, Mike Acker talks with Frida Polli, CEO, and Founder of Pymetrics. A platform that helps companies build the workforce of the future, using behavioral science and audited AI technology, resulting in more diverse teams and more efficient processes. In this episode, you'll hear about cognitive brain function, data science, cultural values, and more!
To learn more about Pymetrics, visit https://www.pymetrics.ai/
If you'd like to be a guest on the Masters of Employee Development podcast, click HERE
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In this episode, your host Mike Acker talks to Restaurant 365's Tony Smith about being data-oriented, employee retention, growth, and more.
Connect with Tony Smith:
https://www.restaurant365.com/press-release/restaurant365s-ceo-tony-smith-receives-2021-ocbj-innovator-of-the-year-award/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-t-smith
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Your host talks with RS Raghavan f Animaker. A platform for beginners, non-designers & professionals to create Animation and Live-Action videos for every for all types of content channels.
To learn more about Animaker, visit https://www.animaker.com/
If you'd like to be a guest on the Masters of Employee Development podcast, click HERE
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Time and dedication are the biggest challenges faced by developing leaders. Being a leader requires you to balance your time between your leadership duties and your personal life. You need to ensure employee development and well-being, while also making sure that their individual goals align with the organization’s overall objectives.
In this episode, Mike is joined by Marianne Scarzello, an internationally recognized speaker on leadership, management, service and customer relations. She shares tips on employee development, interdepartmental communication, and valuable advice for new CEOs and HR representatives for developing a productive work culture.
EPISODE 5 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
What are some challenges to good leadership?
6:20
Time and dedication are the biggest challenges that we observe in developing leaders. Leaders should also make sure that the employees are given adequate time to attend training sessions and to learn new skills. Sometimes all the work can be overwhelming, so you need to break it into step by step. The leaders should also make sure that there is a proper two way communication between them and their employees.
What are some steps you can take to make sure that the employees
have adequate resources for their development?
8:02
I generally take a long walk around the office during which I interact with the employees. I ask them about their work and what work based challenges they are facing at the moment. Those conversations can go a long way when it comes to understanding the situation and getting a better idea of the current scenario.
What criteria do you look for when selecting someone for the team?
10:31
They need to have a drive to learn and grow. It’s important for them to prove that they need to make the current situation more efficient. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. The person needs to take the effort to improve and make the necessary changes. Another criterion to look at is interdepartmental communication. That’s a huge factor when it comes to smooth running of the organization. If you feel like your team is doing something that is not necessary, you need to intervene and make changes. So that extra communication and the willingness to go and talk with other teams is a big criteria for us.
How do you consistently train people?
12:34
In the case of supervisors, I constantly ask them to get feedback. I train them on getting feedback. We are not getting anywhere if we don’t get adequate feedback, especially when it comes to training employees. You've got to understand how to make your team be the best that they can be. It’s a challenge to train to ask feedback, because no entry level employee is going to give negative feedback voluntarily.
Every year we have a day dedicated to training where we go to another location. We work on communication and efficiency. The recent activity we did was where we had each team write down one of their drawback points, which they didn't know how to fix. Then we took that piece of paper and we gave it to the next team. They wrote down a potential solution from that point of view. We did that three more times. So by the end, we had full potential solutions that we could then discuss. I think that this actually brought people to look at the whole company as the team rather than the individual units.
What is some advice you would like to give a fresh HR director or a CEO?
19:00
You need to focus on the individuals rather than only the end results. You have company goals as well as
individual goals. You need to learn how to align those two.
According to Dr. Daniel Pink, the three elements of intrinsic motivation are: autonomy, mastery and...
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If you have employees that just sit there, without being challenged or learning new things, then it’s likely they are going to leave for another company. They will feel like their growth has been stunted and that the other company will provide a better opportunity for them to continue their education.
Create a culture that encourages learning where everyone can learn from each other and grow. Dave Anderson, our guest for today’s episode, shares some of the key points of creating such a culture.
Companies who foster a challenging environment where people are constantly learning new skills will be able to attract employees who want to continue growing in their current position or those who aspire to grow within the company. Tune in to learn the tips to generating the most efficient work team for your company.
EPISODE 4 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
What is it that makes people want to stay with the company and grow and develop?
3:54
It’s the culture of the organization that makes people want to stay. People want to be where they feel like they have a voice. You don’t always have to agree with them but it’s important that they feel heard and respected. One of the core values of Dave’s organization is entrepreneurial spirit. Another one is a positive mindset. We need people around us to have the same value systems. A culture andenvironment of learning and growing is necessary. How can you make sure that all the employees are on the right track?
5:48
This lies in having the right mix of team members. Dave’s organization wouldn’t have survived if it was just 100% scattered all the time.You need to have the right balance of various team members that continue to challenge the others. What significance does entrepreneurship have in organizations?
8:13
Not everybody is an entrepreneur, but there is not a single person who doesn't have ideas. There lies the real sense of entrepreneurship. We need to provide an environment where people bring ideas to the table.
Entrepreneurship is a very broad term that's interpreted in many ways. Dave interprets it as the ability to come up with ideas. That’s what we try to develop. Entrepreneurial spirit is really an “idea” spirit. Creativity is not exclusive to creative people. Walk us through the process after brainstorming to implement ideas.
11:53
When you have a lot of ideas it’s important to bring in other points of views. The next thing you have to do is to check if the idea fits in with your core business. Also make sure that the idea is going to help advance the business in the direction you wish to pursue. If it doesn’t fit in with the core business, save it for later campaigns or you can use it for an offshoot company. An offshoot company is a company, group, or organization that has developed from a larger one. What's your process of developing people into different roles of leadership?
15:14
It’s always hard when you bring somebody in from the outside. They need to really understand the culture and the way you do things. When I hire people for our company, I’m not worried about their college grades. I look for mindsets. I take in people with an attitude of learning and growing.
After a while, if they want to leave the company, their leaders need to accept that. Think of it as a positive point that we're helping develop people, even though their loss to the organization sometimes hurts. What do you keep in mind in terms of training your team?
18:16
The number one thing is learning and growing. When we hire people, we ask the question, ‘how do you learn’. It's important that you stay current in your learning. Apart from this it’s also important that you educate yourself on business, management and emotional intelligence. I believe in a very diverse catalog of learning material. That for me is the number one thing. All of our team members have a path of growth outlined for them. We try...
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Hiring the right people is one of the most challenging things for any leader - and when you’re an emerging company, it gets even more complicated. Erin Roeder is the COO at Workspace, an enterprise SaaS company for commercial real estate. She joins Mike in this episode of Masters of Employee Development to share the pointers to building effective leadership skills. Erin and Mike talk about hiring people who align with the company’s overall vision and objective, the challenges faced in the early years of your leadership and how to overcome them. Listen in!
EPISODE 03 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
Do you have any advice for someone in the early phase of hiring or developing someone?
4:49
For someone in the early phase of hiring, they've got to know what they need. As a manager, if you don't know clearly why you're hiring, it's very hard to see succeed. Because you can't hold yourself accountable for a person gaining the skills to contribute in that way. So figure out what you need, and what success in a role looks like. And then back into the steps to get there. What are some of the major challenges experienced on developing leadership?
6:42
One of the challenges is to cultivate creativity and vision. You need to find a way to execute your idea, find smaller building blocks, and enable those who display that vision and creativity. What do you mean by finding your vision?
8:38
If you think about the job of a leader, a super important non-negotiable component is that the leader should get everything done. And that's sometimes harder than you would think. The other job of the leader is to follow through on the promises, build the systems, tools and processes to get it done. We have to find our vision for the organization in five years. Tell us about your leadership pipeline, how you are identifying people with a vision and creativity.
10:37
I believe that the best individual contributor should be on a path to management or leadership, and they can be the same or two different things. In the development of leadership, we're looking for some core skills - judgment, ability to motivate a team, ability to listen to multiple perspectives with an open mind, and then come to your own conclusion, an understanding of accountability. Those are some of the things that we think about in coachability because so much of leadership and management depends on being able to learn and adapt based on the feedback that you get from the people you work with. Things to look for in a team.
14:02
One thing is to be specific. There's a baseline intellectualism that we look for. We have a standard tool called a Wonderlic that we use as a first screening mechanism. If you don't score a certain score as a baseline on the intellectual component of the Wonderlic, we stop there. We have exercises for different roles that are designed to assess things like problem-solving, writing skills, communication skills, technical skills. So depending on the role, we may look at that. The other thing that's important for us to know is what it means to be a fit with a company. We evaluate how a candidate maps against those five values. And that one is a little bit more of a feel, and a little bit less evidence based. Do you have any closing advice for our listeners?
21:48
I’d say invest in yourself. Find other people who are managing teams or processes in a different way that you can learn from. Find a coach or peer but make sure you keep moving too because that's how you can best sustain growth in the team, in any organization.
KEY QUOTES:
2:41-2:48
“I think the first three months we set ou,t as we do with all our employees merely is -what you're responsible for doing is learning.”
4:10-4:16
“We break our organizational planning into quarterly periods into 3, 6, 9 and 12 month intervals and goals.”
5:30-5:49
“We look at the scorecard, both as a...
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Carter Malloy is the CEO and founder of AcreTraders, a real estate investing platform
that makes it easy to buy shares of farmland and earn passive income, starting
in just minutes online.
In this episode, Mike discusses the work environment dynamics with Carter,
reviewing corporate management and employee relationships. Carter reveals the
challenges he had to face while building up a potential work team and how he
approaches talent diversity, cultural differences, office transparency and open
communication in his company.
Carter believes in establishing a competitive work atmosphere, right from the hiring
process to the policy of letting employees go. Tune in to learn about the
different strategies for optimizing company profits while cultivating a healthy
work environment.
EPISODE 2 SUMMARY & HIGHLIGHTS
Can you talk about any one of your employees who you helped to achieve tremendous success?
4:20
It’s hard just to pick one employee because all forty of our employees are exceptionally skilled and capable.
Our newest employee, let’s call her Allegra, was selected for “the office manager” position for achieving tremendous growth in a really short period. We had a rigorous selection procedure, and Allegra was the perfect choice for the post. We always make it a priority to have brilliant people, regardless of their position because we want them to grow.
What is the most recent challenge you faced when it comes to developing a potential team?
6:54
In our company, we don’t believe in putting people in roles. We want them to build the company. This mindset is the biggest challenge to maintain.
While selecting candidates, we do not care what their role in the company will be; we want them to grow while helping them along the entire journey. Also, since we are huge believers in talent diversity, we only hire phenomenal people who can significantly help the company. That can sometimes be a downside.
Another constraint is time. The hiringprocess often takes longer. Moreover, we have to let people go sometimes.
What are some of the cultural values that go into this mindset?
12:49
We believe in talent, diversity, freedom and responsibility. We also believe in proper communication in the company. We go over things multiple times before we conclude.
In corporate strategy, communication is the key. By being open with one another, you incorporate transparency. Your employees tend to have great ideas. They could also receive great feedback and criticism. Frequent communication also entails one-on-one meetings between the manager and the employees. We also do not allow talking behind others' backs. If you have something to say, we encourage you to say it upfront. This helps build trust and strengthens relationships.
What are some of the tips that an HR director can incorporate into his role?
18:47
Contrary to popular belief, an HR director has a considerable influence on the company. The CEO trusts the HR department to set the cultural tone. They are to challenge the CEO and work to develop policies and approaches that can benefit the company.
Could you talk to us a bit more about the concept of company density?
20:26
Organizationally, we are very complex with multiple products, initiatives, cross-functional teams and shared resources. We try to have exceptional employees in our company. Once an average employee comes in, they set the bar low for all the other employees. It leads to a poorer quality of work from the employees. People are naturally competitive. They want to grow. So if you surround them with other great people, they end up being more productive. That is the idea of talent density - having...
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