2015 Frontier Group Best Human Capital Blogs E-Book

The Frontier Group

Best Human Capital Consulting Blogs of 2015

Thanks for downloading our 2015 Best Human Capital Consulting Blogs e-book. We wanted to share with you some of our most well received blogs that have been published this year.

The blogs that we found resonated the most with our clients and followers were:

• Four Ways Outplacement Firms Can Become More Relevant (published 8/06/15)

• Five Leadership Myths That Keep Your Company From Growing (published 7/29/15)

• Three Lessons or Smart Organizations On The Power of Giving Back(published 4/14/15)

• What Jon Stewart Can Teach Us About Career Transitions (published 3/10/15)

Overview

Outplacement has changed over time – mostly on delivery – but its core mission of helping the employee successfully navigate their way to reemployment is still at the core not changed.For corporate outplacement to remain relevant in today’s cost cutting environment outplacement firms have to focus everything on enhancing the candidate experience by treating them as customers that need to be delighted in order to become followers.

The margin pressures that human resource departments face today are challenging. HR tries their best to provide programs that work but face increasing internal financial demands to accomplish this with fewer funds. What happens is:• Outplacement becomes a purchasing decision managed by RFP’s• The decision criteria focuses on risk mitigation, reputation management and lowering

unemployment insurance costs• Elimination of programs altogether for lower level exempt groups. It is now reported that

50% of executives and managers get outplacement services, only around 37% of administrative and non-exempt employees get the same consideration

This has impacted outplacement firms who are asked to deliver programs at lower costs.

• As a result firms have moved to:• Reduced one on one coaching interaction• More group coaching via webinar• More self-directed learning for candidates• Shorter career transition contract period – less time for firms to work with the candidates• More virtual delivery versus in person interaction with a consultant with local market

expertise

With such a gloomy picture how can outplacement become more relevant?

Four Ways Outplacement Firms Can Become More Relevant

The answer is to intensify the focus on the candidate experience and to treat them like Nordstrom shopper or an online purchaser at Zappos. The focus has to be on helping the candidate land as quickly as possible and providing them with all of the tools and support to help them get there.This sounds simple but in practice what often happens is that the focus of outplacement firms is on the delivery not the candidate. This then leads to all of the efforts at innovation taking place on the delivery – online portals, webinars, and virtual delivery. The focus should instead being on how can we make our candidates more successful? Technology tools are a part of this but the main way to accomplish this is by getting back to one on one, individualized coaching. Programs need to be tailored so that they can take into account each candidate's unique circumstances no matter what the contracted period is.

This will get outplacement back to what it was originally intended to do – get candidates re-employed.So in the context of moving to a more personalized, one on one candidate experience, how can outplacement become more relevant is today’s cost pressurized business world. Here are four ways that it can be done: Focus more of the delivery time on individualized coaching. Group meetings and webinars are tremendous supplemental tools but they should not replace the in person time spent learning how the consultant can best help the candidate. Dedicate more time and resources to tracking candidate performance and reporting back results to the sponsoring company. Most firms have some sort of tracking process for their candidates that result in an Excel file sent to human resources on the progress for the candidates in a given time period. An ideal way to go beyond this approach is to personalize it and report back the specific success stories. HR managers are people who care and I have seen firsthand how taking the extra effort to let them know that one of their former employees has landed goes a long way. It also is important to note that this is the ultimate ROI reporting tool for an HR Manager looking to show that their outplacement dollars had an impact. Make sure that the candidate relationship goes past them landing and into the onboarding process. There is tremendous benefit to having the consultant follow up with the candidate after they land to provide them with advice on how to effectively onboard into their new role. I have been using The First 90 Days protocol written by Michael Watkins for years with great success. Have the consultants maintain the relationship with their candidate for the long term. When outplacement consultant become trusted advisors the process is complete Outplacement is a tremendous service that can provide much needed assistance to transitioning employees. It helps them positively bridge an uncomfortable period in their lives from unemployment to re-engagement. Outplacement can and will be relevant if the focus stays on providing the best candidate experience possible. This can be done by keeping the priority and focus on one on one, individualized consulting.

Four Ways Outplacement Firms Can0 Become More Relevant (continued

There is common agreement that leadership is vital to bringing vision, creativity and results to organizations. It is also said that there is a “shortage of leaders” and that organizations are doing an ineffective job in developing their leadership pipeline. Here are five leadership development myths that are holding companies back. Dispelling these myths will get companies back to effective leadership development.The dictionary definition of myth is a “widely held but false idea”.The trouble with myths though is that they can continue to exist even after the facts are presented. This is the case in regards to leadership development. There are many myths in circulation that somehow continue to exist.Here is a list of the top 5 leadership development myths.

Myth 1 – Leaders Are Born – Not Developed. Greg Smith, President and Lead Navigator of Chart Your Course International, summed it up this way

“Many people still think leaders are born not made. This can't be further from the truth. Most people have the potential to become good leaders. Leadership is not like a diet pill. Like most learned skills, it takes time, training, and lots of trial by error. The key ingredient making people good leaders is the ability to care about others. The second ingredient is a sense of purpose, vision or mission. A good leader charts a course and provides direction to those they lead” There are natural born leaders. We all know someone who fits this profile. There are others though that become leaders over time. Maybe they assume the mantle during a crisis or become entrepreneurs. The facts are that leadership can be sourced and developed from all parts of the organization. Smart management should always be looking throughout all levels and functional areas for employees with potential.

Myth 2 - Leaders are charismatic. Greg Smith goes no further to say that the myth that charisma is essential to leadership is not accurate. Leaders have the ability to articulate a vision, find means to get everyone on their team to embrace the vision and work with their team on getting the tasks done to make the vision a reality.This does not necessarily require a charismatic, extroverted personality. While charisma can definitely help a leader there are many examples of quiet/reserved leaders that were highly effective. Some examples are Bill Gates, Dwight Eisenhower and John Wooden.

Myth 3 – Leadership development should only be done at the top.Jim Finkelstein and Elizabeth Mead of FutureSense explain this myth in this way“When creating a leadership development model, the executive team, or c-suite, is typically the first to engage in the process. When it comes to leadership models, the conversations, strategic planning, etc. frequently stay at the highest levels of leadership. Yet engaging the leaders in the middle level of an organization in the planning and building of a model adds tremendous insight and value. After all, mid-level leaders are the direct link to organizational success". The trap that many organizations fall into is thinking that leadership is only done at the senior level. This top down approach leaves major voids in the organization in the critical areas where things really get done. Moving leadership development programs further down the ranks will produce significant results. One of the bigger challenges facing organizations from developing a winning culture is the mindset that leadership only resides in the C-Suite. The facts are that middle management

5 Leadership Myths That Keep Your Company From Growing

Myth 4 - Effective leadership is based on a working understanding of the assumed and the hidden decision making cultures.Finkelstein and Mead in their blog: The Three Myths of Leadership Development that effective leaders learn how to get things done by understanding the formal decision making process (org chart, titles and functions) and the informal decision making process (influencers). As they wrote:

“Unearthing the unspoken acknowledges the "hidden culture" within an organization. This is the stuff that is asked after the meeting or at the water cooler. It is how decisions are made (or not made) and the "unofficial" way to get resolution to a problem. Asking about the unspoken gives a voice to what is really happening in your organization, above the surface and below it. Most organizations build leadership development plans around an assumed culture and forget to ask what the unspoken culture is. Failing to do this will render a leadership development model less ineffective than it could be. By openly talking about your company's unspoken culture, be sure to identify and distinguish between the "real versus ideal" cultures. Dig deep into what's unspoken in your organization and make it safe to enable change to occur, from all levels throughout. Now... go make it happen. "Myth 5 – Training Does Produce Sustainable Changes in Behavior.

Thomas Smith and Dr. Colin J. Hahn in their blog “Leadership and Soft Skills: Development Myths Exposed” point out that:

“This is the most stubborn myth to dispel as most development efforts fail to achieve the expected change in behavior. But, this conclusion begs the question by assuming that the training was designed properly. What if the format of the training itself is the issue? Time.Com recently published an article called “The Real Reason New College Grads Can’t Get Hired’ that identified the lack of soft skills as the leading factor in the (un)employability of new graduates. This work triggered another study that examined soft skills development for graduating students found that the highest ranked learning methods for leadership and soft skills for students entering the workforce were: Experiential Learning– Role Playing and Demonstration– Team working methods– Case Studies/Problem Solving– Extra-Curricular ActivitiesThis list is notable for what it doesn’t contain: nowhere on this list are lecture-driven instructor-led training sessions or rote eLearning content. Yet, those two techniques are the dominant methods for delivering soft skill training. Is it any wonder that training fails to demonstrate real results when it is delivered via ineffective methods?" Leadership development can become a reality when its myths are replaced by the reality that:– leaders can be trained– there is no one model for a leader– leadership is at all levels of the organization– leadership involves knowing how to get things done formally and informally– leadership training is most effective in action rather than by lecture

5 Leadership Myths That Keep Your Company From Growing (continued)

Cross cultural competence is a becoming increasingly critical for organizations to build a winning culture. This is true for a large multinational company or for a local manufacturer who has a diverse workforce.The Frontier Group approach to developing cross cultural competence within the organizations that we serve is to have targeted. How can cross cultural coaching grow your business? Elevate the level of empathy and understanding to people who have different values and world viewsThe foundation to developing cross cultural competence is the recognition that we are not all alike and that you cannot assume that everyone shares the same world view as you. Despite the many similarities that you may see between yourself and another person from a different culture you need to go deeper into really understanding them. Examples of the differences are:• In the USA we place a high value on speed, control and self- reliance.• In Germany however they place high values on order, planning, organization and delivery on commitments.• When you compare the lens on how these two cultures view the world you can see where misunderstanding and conflict can

emerge. This is where cross cultural coaching can help. A skilled coach can help everyone begin to understand their differences and identify signs for how they can adjust their communication so that it is received in the manner that it was intended.

Develop a more effective communication process to allow everyone to understand and be understoodEffective communication is the key to building winning teams and organizational culture. This is an ongoing challenge to every organization and can be even more important when they are operating in a diverse/multi-cultural workplace.Erin Meyer in an interesting HBR Blog “How to Say This is Crap In Different Cultures” (https://hbr.org/2014/02/how-to-say-this-is-crap-in-different-cultures) discusses how different cultures handle feedback. More direct cultures (like the USA) are called upgraders and tend to use words like absolutely, totally or strongly to amplify their feedback. Other features of direct cultures are:• Get straight to the point• Openly confront issues or difficulties• Engage in conflict when necessary• Express opinions frankly• Say things clearly, not leaving much to interpretation• Indirect cultures (like Asia) use more downgraders that feature words that soften criticism such as kind of, sort of, a little, maybe and slightly. Some other features if indirect cultures are:• Focus not just on what is said but how it is said• Avoid difficult or contentious issues• Avoid conflict if possible• Express opinions and concerns diplomatically• Count on the listener to interpret the meaning Build respect and embrace diversityCross cultural coaching can help employees learn how to respect and embrace the diversity of their team. This is important whether it is teams working on the shop floor, senior management interacting with the senior leadership headquartered in another country or any other combination. Diversity brings a wealth of insight, experience, cultural reference and perspective to complex business challenges. A well rounded difference of opinion can lead to better decisions.Respect for diversity will also help organization’s talent acquisition, onboarding, retention and productivity. All of the key HR metrics will be improved if teams and people can work better together through mutual understanding and respect. Creating cross cultural competence takes work and outside coaching can help provide the guidance towards building a winning culture.

Why Cross Cultural Coaching Can Build A Stronger Culture

This week is National Volunteer Week. It is a time when we can recognize and appreciate others that give their time and treasure in support of others. There are three powerful lessons that smart organizations can learn on why they should encourage their employees to give back.Lesson 1 - It deepens the connection between the organization and the community.Every organization is more than an economic entity whose sole purpose is shareholder/owner wealth creation. Organizations are made up of people who live in the communities they are located. These people have causes and charities that they believe in. Smart organizations see that they have a deeper connection to their communities are look for ways to help. This makes good business sense.

Lesson 2 - It creates a deeper shared sense of purpose between the company and the employee.A recent issue of Fortune magazine had the list of great companies to work for and showed that many of these firms provided employees paid time off to volunteer. These smart organizations see the importance of connecting their employees with the community and put their money and resources behind that commitment. In return they get an engaged and dedicated team.Lesson 3 - It helps each participating employee develop empathy and perspective.Helping others gives us deeper insights, a better sense of how others see the world and a greater perspective on what we have. By giving back you can see the power of what you can do to personally improve the life of someone. At The Frontier Group I am very proud of volunteer involvement of everyone on our team. It reflects the quality of the people we work with and shows that business can be about more than revenue and margin enhancement. Here are some of the activities that we are involved in.Patrick Lynch- President• Special Pops Tennis – Board Member and East Roswell Park Training Academy Leader• 21st Century Leaders – Co-chairman on SHRM volunteer initiative• Year Up – Youth Mentor John Richardson – Vice President, Senior Consultant• C3G (Christ Centered Career Group) at Northpoint Community Church – Job Coach• Lake Lanier Association – Vice President• St. John's Northwestern Military Academy – Fundraising and alumni affairs volunteer Nadine Walley- Senior Consultant• Life Lesson’s at Hotel Equities Career Ministry - Lead Facilitator/Director• St. Ann’s Career Ministry - Job Coach and speaker• Beth Shalom Jewish Transition Services - Speaker• Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber of Commerce Workforce Development Committee and Healthcare - Sector

Lead Paula Pope – Senior Consultant• Roswell United Methodist Church (RUMC) Job Networking Ministry - • Grief Share - Leadership Team/Facilitator• MUST Ministries - Summer Lunch Program volunteerRichard Morgan – Senior Consultant• Roswell United Methodist Church (RUMC) Job Networking Ministry – Co-leader of Resume Review• Warren Ezra – Vice President• C3G (Christ Centered Career Group) at Northpoint Community Church – Job Coach• Smart organizations see the power in encouraging their team to give back.

Three Lessons For Organizations On The Power Of Giving Back

As the saying goes, "the grass is always greener on the other side." What I mean is, when many people look at successful people, all they see is the successes that got them there. Then they spiral into a pity party with themselves thinking "I'll never be as successful because I'm not as lucky as 'fill in the blank.'" Unfortunately, what many people don't see is the perseverance it takes most of these successful people to get to where they are.For example, many look at the past 15 years of Jon Stewart’s career on The Daily Show and think that he had a meteoric rise to the top or that he had a well thought out career plan.

Actually, he had many career transitions. He needed time early in life to sort out everything and decide what he wanted to do. His success is a great model to study for people who want to develop great careers.

Jon Stewart did not leave college and immediately launch his comedic career. He had a lot of career transitions along the way. Consider the jobs that he had after college as referenced in Wikipedia:• Contingency Planner for the New Jersey Department of Human Services• Contract Administrator for the City University of New York• Puppeteer for children with disabilities• Soccer Coach at Gloucester High School in Virginia• Caterer, busboy and shelf stocker at Woolworth's• Bartender at the Franklin Corner Tavern and City GardensEven after he made up his mind to develop a career in comedy he had a number of letdowns and setbacks. These included:Losing out to Conan O’Brien to The Letterman Show• Being passed over as the host of The Late Late Show (went to Jimmy Kimmel)• Having several series cancelled due to poor ratingsThis is more than a lifetime of disappointment and setback. But today we now see a successful performer at the top of his profession: winner of nineteen Emmys.What does this tell us?There are four lessons that you can learn from the career success of Jon Stewart.Career paths are not straight linesSome of us are fortunate to know what we want to do very early in life. The vast majority, though, need to learn by trial and error. This should teach us not to be afraid to try new things and new career transitions. Who knows where they will lead us.Experience builds over timeIn an earlier blog commenting on The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, I wrote that professionals with successful careers seek out new experiences and challenges for the ability to grow their knowledge base and expertise. Moving to a new opportunity does not have to always be about more money or a better title. Growing your experiential learning curve is important.Perseverance is essentialJon Stewart is a great example of how to not let setbacks derail your hopes and ambitions. Work hard at knowing what you want and give yourself permission to pursue it.Never stop looking for new challengesEven at what one would think is the top of his game, Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show to pursue something new. This is a lesson to everyone who wants to put their career on auto pilot. Always look to push and grow yourself.

What Jon Stewart Can Teach Us About Career Transitions

Thanks For Reading Our Best Human Capital Blogs of 2015

Thanks for reading our Best 0f 2015 human capital consulting blogs.

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Patrick Lynch is the President of The Frontier Group, a human capital consulting firm that specializes in:

» Outplacement» Executive Coaching» Talent Development» Assessments

The Frontier Group has offices in Atlanta and Charlotte and can also provide national delivery thru its strategic alliance with Lincolnshire International.

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