Over the years, I have been hounded by tribemates looking for a raise in pay (not unwarranted, but alas, still pervasive). If you want a pay increase to materialize at a faster pace, you must do some homework in addition to your work duties. What follows is the hospitality- manager response I have given to those on the money hunt: Whenever you are being evaluated for hiring, a promotion, or a raise, start with the most significant accomplishments you can cite from your recent professional history. It is both the wide and the narrow definitions of success that will define your evaluation.

What was your specific involvement in achieving strong results, forwarding programs, changing the business climate, and so forth? What were the scope and the scale of your responsibilities? What was your total staff size, including direct reports? Did you have P&L responsibility? What was the size of your budget? Be prepared to quickly and crisply articulate your business results, not just your activities.

Itemizing a track record of your successes is the easiest way for the powers that be to evaluate and elevate you to greater responsibility, and hello, “mad stacks, jack!” Regardless of how well you have performed, seeking more money in the same role might provide incremental increases, but eventually you will slam into a hard salary ceiling. Most organizations usually calculate compensation packages based on titles or responsibility levels and pay grades. Rarely can you break beyond the pre-set ranges.

You must work, plan, dream, and scheme your way to bigger jobs (of course, only through honest and ethical schemes). This is the most direct route to pay raises significant enough to really upgrade your lifestyle. The simple fact is that all persons of the same “leadager” level or title are in a competition for the next opportunity, whether they buy into it, act above it, care about it or not. (Everybody sing: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world…”)

Assuming your performance earns you the right to get your hat thrown into the ring for a promotion, the next assessment hurdles you face are those of pace and progression. Never underestimate the positive effect on your wallet the aggressive pursuit of advancement brings. The death-knell for anyone seeking advancement is having the same level of experience without a promotion for five-plus years. You will then be deemed as not promotable, a poor career manager, and/or lacking drive or talent. Hiring/promoting managers will be wary of you. (“If you can’t do it for yourself, how will you do it for us?”)

If you were to ask a group of assistant managers to cite the major hurdles standing between them and more money, you would quite likely hear the following typical excuses (always someone else’s fault):

• “The company says there aren’t any opportunities right now.”
• “They say I don’t have the enough experience.”
• “My supervisor hassles me all the time.”
• “I’ve got a bad team; they’re holding me back.”
• “I didn’t go far enough in skool.”
• They like Joe/Jill better than me

If you were to ask a collection of team leaders what major issues they consistently assess when deciding to promote someone, you might hear the following:

• Poor transition from an hourly to salary mentality
• Questionable integrity
• Inconsistent follow-up/follow-through on projects
• Denial of accountability
• Lacking initiative
• Poor judgment
• Weak interpersonal skills
• Poor financial acumen/performance.

Ah, here’s a light-bulb moment for you: All of it is deemed to be within your control.

The perspective gap between these two groups is real, and it exists in some form or another in every workplace. The common complaint of my peers who provide the advancement opportunity is not, “Why is this C player acting like a C player?” but rather, “Why is this potential A player content to settle for B or C level performance? What is wrong with him/her?”

In short, if you would like to go fast and far, start off by packing the right bags with the right stuff!

Posted in Becoming a Leadager, Practical Professional Development | Comments Off

Moment of OpportunityBending inflexible policies to gain the upper hand. By Chase LeBlanc

BCM ASKS …
“I’m a catering manager at a large convention hotel. I recently lost a huge piece of business—a corporate group that was planning to hold a week of meetings here—because they wanted us to drop all service charges associated with coffee and tea for breaks and meals. My property charges more than $100 a gallon for coffee and tea, and my manager says both the price and service charges are non-negotiable. He says, “We have to make our money back in this economy.”

As a result of this inflexible policy, we lost the business to a nearby competitor, who, I’ve been told by a friend who works there, relaxed their coffee pricing and service fees to secure the booking. In addition to my hotel losing several thousand dollars in revenue, the lost business has hurt my personal bottom line as far as bonuses go. We also may have developed a reputation as a price gouger and damaged future group booking opportunities. What can I tell my manager that would convince him it’s bad business in 2011 to ignore client demands on pricing?”

THE STAFFING DOCTOR ANSWERS …
Sounds like your SOP (standard operating procedure) ran into re-al-i-ty. Forces within an organization often favor promoting “the way we do things around here,” and market forces from the outside constantly demand fluidity and flexibility.

The cultural advent of auction-based web sites, high-profile outfits with their lowest-price-point positioning, and the economy being in the doldrums have produced an almost inescapable “über shopping” mentality for better deals.

The U.S. military uses a rather nifty device called an “After Action Review,” where the participants compare “the plan” of strategy/tactics to what actually happened and the consequences of decisions made under fire. This knowledge is then reviewed by those who may face the same type of scenarios as a methodology to produce continuous, real-time improvements within the “thinking and action” systems.

There may be a value for you to implement something like this after each event at your property, but more to the point, you might want to cull the best ideas after each event bid or RFP for future use. You need a little groupthink on this one. Poll industry peers or jump into a like-minded chat string and discover for yourself the new realities. How have properties similar to yours addressed the changes in the marketplace? What enticements draw in new business and keep the old?

The art of negotiation is found in your ability to evaluate the priorities of the folks on the other side of the table. They will want many things, but rarely does one side get all it’s after. Your objective is to give up the least painful parts in order to gain the most positive parts from your point of view. To do that, you must decipher what your counterpart’s weighted values are on those same items. In your case, for all you know, the folks on the other side may have been given the mandate, “Whatever you do, don’t come back here with any service charges associated with coffee or tea,” and were released from any other constraints.

Perhaps they had movement available elsewhere in the contract. Maybe you could have secured the event if you gave in on the service charges in exchange for a signed agreement (with a favorable deposit) for their next meeting. Their boss and your boss might have deemed that a workable deal.

There is also one crazy-like-a-fox-idea: Compete with yourself. Concede the coffee/tea service charges in exchange for “full boat” (you charge them back) on all sales at, for example, your “NRG Recharge Station,” where you offer fresh fruit smoothies, top-of-the-line energy bars, drinks, etc. If you match your “better choice” offerings with the interests of the attendees, you might have a win-win on your hands. The other party gets to proclaim what hardnosed bargainers they were, while you imprint a memorable experience on future guests and come out with more money in your pocket.

Chase LeBlanc is the founder and CEO of Leadagers, LLC, and is a hospitality management performance coach with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. He is also the author of High Impact Hospitality: Upgrade Your Purpose, Performance and Profits!

Posted in Hotel F and B: Staffing Doctor Column | Comments Off

Recently, I observed my five year old during his various machinations to prepare for a morning trip to the store. There’s a lot for him to do. Change out of PJ’s, find shoes and socks that match (or not), grab rhino and silver (not red) water bottle. Stuff crayons, string, and bendy wire into pockets (just in case), then check for battery life in action toy or video game. Hat, wrong coat, one glove, and game on!

I was chuckling to myself as I watched my giant, self-invented armadillo waddle to the car literally trying to hold his act together. As he was clambering inside the vehicle I spied something unusual. Peeking out of the back of his pants was not the customary one tag confirming inside-out underwear, but the heretofore unseen two tags, representing the unique choice of wearing two pair of underwear at the same time.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

I just caught the WSJ story about how Delta Airlines, after getting crushed in customer service ratings is sending all of its agents to charm school. It seems that Delta had a problem – an awful big problem– showing customers that it cared about them.

Personally I’ve had a brutal past couple of weeks at the hands of “customer service” providers. From this week’s hit-parade, I’m choosing to share the interaction between myself and the apron-wearing-neo-troglodyte who was working as a cashier at a big box retailer and never stopped inhaling his super-sized soda as I set my items down and stepped up to pay. I waited until he had his fill (which would be me in a display of extreme patience) and then as the paying customer inside of me said “Wow, you just got dunked on by a full-blown uncaring attitude,” I slightly nicked him back with an upbeat, “That’s not much of a greeting” …to which he responded, “You’re lucky I didn’t spit it in your face.” Later, you can ask me how everything “after” unfolded, but for now I think most everyone is on the same page; there is an increase in super-sized sodas and a decrease in super-good service.

ZENNERS

All of the above brings me to Zen. Much of my formative years were spent in Boulder CO, home of the University of Colorado, Naropa Institute and Jim Collins . For those of you who do not happen to be regular users of the word “Namaste,” Boulder is also the home to many climbers and runners in pursuit of Zen, whom some unenlightened locals have been known to call “Zenners.”

I left Boulder awash in “-isms.” If you have any contact with the Left Coast’s farthest outpost, it is likely that you will saddle up next to Ram Dass’s book and famous quote, “Be here now!” (I have always taken that to be both an instruction and admonishment). By living in the present moment, you offer yourself the best chance to make the most of that moment and subsequently the most of your life.  The powerful and distracting habit of thinking about “what’s coming” or “what happened“ only undermines your best present efforts.

CHECK YOUR UNDERWEAR AND NEW ZEN CUSTOMER SERVICE

It pains me to say this, but my kid’s brain starts doing doughnuts in the parking lot just hearing the words, “Let’s get ready to go.” All his efforts are just a smash and grab at the goal of “being ready” to the best of his 5-year-old-ability. We are working on getting him to slow down through the understanding that he is not going to be left out/behind by the rest of us. Now with less distraction he can fully devote himself to each task (underwear: check, double-check), get it right, and move on to the next step.

It may seem a bit “out there” to the folks responsible for the hiring, training, and developing of customer service employees to take a step back and begin by first teaching the concept of “full presence in the present moment” as a base line for success, but I’m going to do it anyway. Like many problems, “better customer service” might be best tackled by breaking it down into the lowest common denominator.

There is also a way to say this that might speak more directly to those holding more of a “Western mindfulness,” as handed down by parents, coaches, teachers, and parole officers everywhere, PAY ATTENTION!  Focus your intake receptors, stop cramming your craniums with up-to-the-millisecond minutia, maybe unplug an orifice or two, and you will have a better chance to make a little magic with what is before you – NOW!

This Zen approach could be considered a new customer service win–win because it offers both sides the best chance for our best possible future — me as a happy customer and “all y’all” as enlightened customer service leaders.

If you need some help with leadership training for your managers, corporate storytelling for your culture, or would like to learn how lessons from the hospitality industry apply to your customer relationships, give me a call — it’s what I do.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/leadagership/

“Leadagership”

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

Leadagers™ and the Noble Craft

Great leadership can quicken the transformation from losers to winners, no matter how you keep score. Great leadership shines a light that can invigorate or rejuvenate. Great leadership can wipe away today’s pain or panic by focusing efforts toward a better tomorrow. Great leaders get more sugar (money, power, respect, better jobs) because they bring forth the best chance to achieve success from plans, hopes, and dreams.

• If you are a leader, your actions or ideas are out in front; and for the purpose of my discussion, they must also add value to the organization.
• Leaders reveal themselves by doing what they should do, pushing beyond the artificial limitation of “what can I possibly do?”
• Leadership can be top-down, bottom-up, or sideways, and no matter the scope or style, great leadership exists on small, medium, and large scales.
• Leadership is not a job title. It is not universally listed on the human resource department’s “people-power” vacancies. Rarely, if ever, is one hired as an assistant leader or general leader,

Business management gurus of the world have long stated that most business managers have leadership built into their job description. Natural-born leaders will need to be skilled at actually managing business operations if they hope to be successful in a managerial role. Business realities dictate that if you are named to head a department or group, you are expected to lead its direction, manage the resources, and be accountable for results, good or bad (people, performance, profits, culture, legacy, etc.).

The job likely includes driving sales, controlling costs, meeting or exceeding standards, doling out rewards and punishments, communicating up, down and across, and serving and protecting the organization, among other things. As such, you need to be part shaman-ambassador-fill-in- worker-camp counselor-traffic cop, or better yet, all leader-manager. I prefer the term leadager™.

As a leadager™, you will be practicing the fine art (or is it a science?) of managementship, the highly sought, seldom natural, combination of great management and leadership (best viewed with an old world sensibility toward craftsmanship or apprenticeship). By comparison, if the “real” job of acting can be considered a “noble craft” then by all rights we must include the job of “running” a real business within the same realm.

So there you have it. I advocate verbally compounding leader and manager — leadager™ — to illustrate the point that if you are managing people, it is the proper terminology to use. Even though most old school folks will never make a job title out of any part of the word leadership, the fact remains that in business — management and leadership are logistically inseparable.

Posted in Becoming a Leadager | Comments Off

July 14^th 2010

From Chase’s FOHBOH.com Blog

We’ve been going steady for a long time, but now I’m writing to tell you that we are through. I’m older now than when we first met, and frankly, I’m tired of the way you treat me. Do you even remember when we first met? I was 10 and on a family vacation to California. I’d beg my parents for lunch money so that I could dash around the corner and enjoy your novel offerings. You were different for me:  fast, fresh and fun. In High School you were the hot spot in my neighborhood. We all met there after school and Friday/Saturday late nights as well. In college, you were the ready answer to munchies and more. As I traveled across the USA, it always seemed as if you traveled with me. Everywhere I went you were already there, we had a thing going on – fast, fresh and fun.

You might say that it has all been about value between us, what with you being “everywhere”, open all hours, and  giving me a whole bag of food for my money. However, the basis for all great relationships is communication and trust. It seems that we no longer share the same values. How can I trust you when you don’t listen? What happen to fast, fresh and fun? Most of the time you are grumpy, tired and slow, giving me either too much of something I didn’t want (napkins) or not enough of the things I do (what I ordered) – doesn’t that cost you real dough? Is without onion, extra sauce or hold the tomato, really so hard to accomplish?

By the by, if you are not going to invest in a new tech screen display at the drive thru, then at least bring the speaker box reception closer to walkie–talkie land and solve the “listening to a lunar mission” issues. If that sounds too daunting, try the (old school) repeat the orders back methodology.

Oh, I’ve talked to your people about this and have yet to come face to face with the embodiment of “happy to be here, store proud, let’s do the right thing” representative.

I have found somebody new. They smile and warmly greet me. They pay attention to my interests and make suggestions about items to sample in a non-robotic fashion. If they make a mistake, they own up to it and make up for it. And, get this, they thank me and ask me to return.

These might seem like little things to you, but it is the big and the little things together that define an experience or a relationship. So, we are over, done, kaput. I know you won’t miss me, don’t worry, I already got that message loud and clear. Have a nice life -

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

July 28^th 2010

 From Chase’s FOHBOH.com Blog: 

There is no way you can be considered for, let alone achieve, a top hospitality dream job without walkin’ and talkin’ dollars and cents. You may be a front of the house/heart of the house expert, but to grow or perhaps, at times to survive, you may need to travel beyond your personal network to obtain money. It doesn’t matter if it is the bank, the boss, or the street; they won’t speak the language of your passion, expertise, or dreams. They will, however, require you to display your business and financial acumen (on paper, as spoken in percentages of minimized risk and maximized rewards).

In business, cash is queen (or king, if you prefer). Gotta make it, gotta use it, gotta get more, and gotta keep what you got. It took me a long time to realize that there is an imperial collective of people who use “money know-how” (financial fitness acumen) as their entrée into the top jobs. And you are nothing to them unless you “know da know.” (Come on, now; “liquidity” is a word you use everyday, no?)

Most people who have more money than you will talk money better than you. Here is the short version of almost any money conversation: “Why should I/we give you money instead of doing other things with it?” Buy into this premise; you will have to compete numerically to justify/prove your viewpoint. Potential investors will analyze and compare your projected results to, not just your history or industry averages, but other—and perhaps more fruitful—ways of investing their money (also known as projected return on investment or ROI). This is why you must track all that comes in and all that goes out, not just to pay the bills and buy some fish, but to compete at every level. Percentages and comparatives do not require high-level trigonometry, just attention to detail, total commitment, and an understanding of why they matter.

When you begin to hear the following questions, you’ll know that your knowledge of the royal language is being tested:

• What are the sales per square foot of your store?
• What are today’s sales per labor hour or productivity?
• What is your annual staff turnover ratio running?
• What is the current net profit margin on these sales?
• What are your actual sales “running” when compared to budget?
• What is your year to year “comp” sales percentage?

Do not become a person who shows him- or herself to have little interest in the royal language (“…I dunno”). If you do, it will only be a matter of time before you are labeled as one of the lost souls who don’t “get it.” If you want to get ahead of the curve, you can prepare yourself by delving into the industry “numbers story.” Start with specifics such as the “ideal” food, beverage, labor costs, gross, net, and so forth. After that, break down the store’s monthly profit and loss statement (P&L) and get to know it backward and forward. You might then grab the chart of accounts for your store (the snail-trail of all the money out) and read and reread it until following along becomes second nature.

The truth is, your ultimate success in the hospitality business will at some point come down to whether or not you are fluent in the royal language… of any business.

Posted in Becoming a Leadager | Comments Off

August 5, 2010

Bourdain’s Medium Raw Essay Contest

Read my Medium Raw challenge essay: Cooking Well Means Everything and Nothing

Cooking Food Well Means Everything and Nothing

Cooking food well is but another of life’s equal but opposite gravitational pulls. As with so much in life, cooking well means everything and nothing.  

Cooking well holds no allegiance to borders or boundaries and is a language unto itself. A well cooked meal can be deftly managed or thuggishly muscled, either path resulting in an original offering of scrumptiousness. If you can cook well, folks from Nebraska to Norway might be singing your praises, and it doesn’t matter if you are a one-trick-meat-sauce-pony or the thickly accented expert relegated to huckstering pans. From the beginning there has been one unflagging goal, whether by happy accident or professional process, when one cooks well the sum of the ingredients, recipe, technique and effort should always be greater than the gathering of fire, metal, ounces and pounds.

If others consider you skeevy, creepy or mean, it all goes out the window when you can cook well, because cooking well scores high on lists made by list-makers. Through this skill-set alone, you can almost mollify the adolescent plague of self esteem bloodletting, lay a sweaty hand on the tiller and find yourself a place in the world. Doors of opportunity will open if you show-off for family and friends or even better, a wide circle of acquaintances and strangers. If talent, skill and will converge, with minimal derailments wrought by temptation, you might ascend to the designation of mastercraftperson or even be anointed as an artisan. If you are lucky or wise you might parlay your experiences into fame, fortune and a lasting legacy.

Cooking well is a means to quench a hunger and thirst that extends far beyond food and drink, feeding the human desire for exploration, socialization, and celebration. Cooking well can be an honest day/night of work, a neighborly gesture, a familial obligation, a prelude to romance, or merely servicing a jonzin’ hoard of foodies.

However, cooking well means nothing to someone on the brink of starvation – cat food, fast food, and leather shoelaces might all look pretty tasty. Cooking well means nothing to the praying parents of an ill child or to the partner of a service person who has just fallen for freedom in some far away land.

Cooking well is unnecessary when one is anticipating a bite fresh from nature’s bounty – - a tomato from the vine, a peach from the tree and honey from the comb. And then there are the moments that transcend the preparation, moments that render all thoughts of cooking results irrelevant – The last time Grandma made stale bread French toast for you, Dad’s burnt BBQ chicken when Dads not around anymore, and Mom’s greasy meatloaf that you’d trade almost anything for, just to have one more chance to sit down and eat it with her.

Cooking well has skilled players, fans, vested interests and paying customers. It is a conduit to many things real and fanciful. Like all contact sports, it means everything and nothing.

Posted in Becoming a Leadager | Comments Off

From Chase’s Hotel F and B Staffing Doctor Column

B.C. ASKS …
“I’m a banquet captain at a large convention property in the Southwest. On a recent slow day, we had a fire drill for the entire staff of several hundred people. I watched as everyone went through the motions, laughed, and took their time in evacuating the building. The person leading the drill, who is a senior manager, was laughing and joking as well, and it bothered me. What if we had a full house of guests—perhaps a banquet in progress—and a real disaster happened? I’m certain our staff wouldn’t know what to do, and there would be panic. I brought this up to the emergency team leader, and he said I’m “worrying too much.” Since this senior manager doesn’t seem to care, should I go to human resources, with the goal of having this person removed as the emergency team leader? Obviously, he could make my job more difficult or perhaps even have me fired if he finds out.

THE STAFFING DOCTOR ANSWERS …
Did the hijinks start right off the bat, or did the merriment begin after the alarm was confirmed to be a drill? You might argue that anytime you’re at work it is serious business, but the hospitality industry is made better by sparkling personalities, and quelling them on a perceived bonus break will always be an uphill climb. You might have to travel far and wide to find a hospitality crew lined up at attention in a parking lot.

The right thing to do, of course, is to have any fire drill training treated with proper awareness and respect. Any fire can go from bad to worse in the space of a few heartbeats. An uncontrolled fire is a wickedly bad problem, and all precautions and measures (including fire drills) should be undertaken with professionalism to prepare for an emergency of this nature.

But let’s be honest—people become complacent with rote routines. The mundane becomes boring, and these days, chasing attention spans is taxing, like sprinting after a dine-and-dasher. If this is the status quo at your hotel, then this is certainly a case where crowd-sourced wisdom will lead everyone astray. Personally, I am a follower of the “how you practice is how you play” school of hard knocks. In most business settings, the leaders with the most followers (boss or not) are those who model the desired behaviors prior to attempting to teach the desired behaviors, thereby avoiding potential mixed messages.

If, as you say, bringing to light legitimate concerns could result in retaliation, then there is a raft of other potential problems at this property. All enlightened operators have an open door policy where there is some mechanism in place for feedback to reach the folks that do care and can change things.

B.C., you must weigh out your personal values and survey the culture that surrounds you. It is for you to decide if direct action is worth the risk. You could also choose to turn this problem into an opportunity by navigating the situation rather than meeting it head-on. Most of the folks you work for are looking for problem solvers, not just problem identifiers. Rather than dump this problem on somebody else, why not think through how you can contribute your talents, commitment, and passion toward the results you seek? Could you execute ways to enliven or engage your compadres and get everyone’s competitive juices flowing? A safety contest perhaps (fire drills included), where rewards, worked out in trade with the hotel, are doled out to the top performing teams?

The only limit is your imagination when it comes to problem solving. This will give you something constructive to work on and might take care of your issue. Who knows—you may even get a little career boost by showing that problem solving resides in your wheelhouse.

Chase LeBlanc is the founder and CEO of Leadagers, LLC, and is a hospitality management performance coach with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. He is also the author of High Impact Hospitality: Upgrade Your Purpose, Performance and Profits!

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

December 28^th 2010

From Chase’s Hotel F and B Blog

Personal Points of Differentiation

Differentiation is the answer to the common business strategy question – How can we as a company, stand out in a crowded marketplace? There is a classic list that companies draw from – bigger, better, faster, decor’, innovation, location, value, etc. Interestingly enough, this question can also be applied to individuals, not just businesses. Heading into a New Year always offers an opportunity for pause and reflection. Perhaps, the following will allow you to further your personal points of difference.

Start deeper than the mirror –
When you reflect upon the entirety of your budding (or mature) career (as we all are supposed to do on birthdays and at the start of a New Year) temporarily remove monetary expectations from your review process.  By making compensation part of the background, it may be possible to bring to the front those things that bring you the most fulfillment, joy, and promise.  

In a faced-paced world, we often forget the importance of contemplation.  Contemplation and reflection are symbiotic.  The act of mulling alone can add logic to a particular decision or thought process, and provide great clarity.  As an act of self assessment, begin thinking about what you value beyond work, and where you would most likely be able to make this type of contribution.  Is there a job title for this? Where does the best chance exist to make this job a reality, or which company offers the best opportunity to start in that direction?

Recruiting professionals are charged with matching skills and experience.  However, we find it to be of equal importance to determine the match between the individual’s values and those of the company.  When that happens, individual performance becomes aligned and connected, and both parties benefit more deeply from the cohesion.  

Make ready –
If has not yet become apparent, those who prepare for action in advance tend to fare better than those who do not. Life is full of fire drills, some real, some metaphorical. The possibility that you will be caught in a fire is small, but if you’ve ever witnessed how an out-of-control fire behaves, or how humans behave in such a fire, you’ll be grateful that you knew what to do. Exercise, proper diet, positive mental health, engagement and enjoyment are just as important to individuals as scenario planning and strategy execution are to businesses. If you seek a raise, a promotion or a new job, make yourself ready by practicing what you will need at the next level, including preparing someone to take your place.

Storytelling -
From our earliest days, humans have shared stories around the fire. It is an accepted and powerful means for creating a connection. As you narrow down what matters to you, it becomes easier to separate those things from the daily slush. Most everyone can prattle on about what they don’t like, but can you speak clearly about how you have made a difference or how you are better today than yesterday? Every person has unique talents.  What are your unique selling points (USP)? Discovering your skill set or talents and weaving your experiences into your story and being able to hold someone’s attention though the telling – is a differentiator.

Make a list of attributes, or characteristics that you believe are your strengths.  Think about your career, and recall situations where you leveraged those strengths to make an impact. Clarify the impact by aligning it with competencies like the ability to solve problems, build teams, effectively communicate, and drive results. Now, craft your story. In fact, craft five or six stories.  

By preparing personalized stories with professional significance, you will be able to take pride in past accomplishments while emphasizing your ability to take on new challenges.  You will become more confident and you will make a greater impression.  Not everyone can do this.  If you can, you will set yourself apart.  

Pluck isn’t just for feathers -
People can have pluck. (Go on, look up the noun not the verb.) Sure, it’s an old fashion word for irresistible qualities. Difficult times require leaders with nerve, courage and resolve. In other words, pluck. Imagine listening to a couple of folks talking and one says “I hope we find our way…” and the other states “We’re going to make our own way – come hackers or high-water!” Which one is expressing leadership qualities? I’m not saying that every one filled with confidence knows all the right things to do, but it is pretty clear that when times are tough people gravitate towards anyone who can help them out of the mess. You can be that person, if you show some pluck.

One or two degrees –
We’ve heard the phrase that everyone is praying to someone when they’re in a foxhole and the bombing starts. People are getting “shelled” by life everywhere around you, and you have the power to provide some cover. Next time you’re down in the dumps, swing by a children’s hospital, foster-care housing, homeless shelter, even a funeral. You don’t have to get out of the car, just watch who goes in and out. I think you will realize that there are only one or two degrees of separation between you and them. Many lives are changed by moments, some horribly bad and some unbelievably good. What would it take for you to trade your TV/lounge/ veg’n/ kickin’-back/chillin’-time in order to make a great moment for someone else? (Remember, not a day, week or month, but a moment…) The people who create this goodwill are involved in a personal brand extension – one that reaches into the unseen – perhaps far enough to reach back when it’s your turn in the foxhole.

The present –
Most people spend gobs of time dwelling in the past or dreaming of ideals.  The foundation of your future starts with the work you’re doing now, as well as your ability to take corrective action when appropriate.  Make the most of your “now” time and refresh your thinking.  Clear your mental and physical work space. Purge unnecessary clutter/rust. Celebrate and rejuvenate.  Then, establish your game plan for next year, including introducing yourself to 3 new people each week, jumping  in the digital river and joining networking groups, or commenting on blogs can all help to refine your focus.  Don’t try to have all the answers.  Ask questions and listen to the responses.  You may find a new perspective.  

Some people view the holiday season as a time of year to receive gifts.  Others take great joy in the act of giving. One of the best gifts for anyone is the chance to maximize/reprioritize your time, recalibrate, appreciate and cherish every moment… and you can give that to yourself. 

This article was co-written with DAVID ROSE
David Rose is the Vice President of Recruiting with YELLOW DOG Recruiting, a national recruitment company specializing in the placement of leaders in the restaurant, on-site foodservice and hospitality industries.
 

Posted in Becoming a Leadager | Comments Off