From Anita Zinsmeister, president, Dale Carnegie Training of Central and Southern New Jersey
10 Tips To Help You
Become A Better Leader
Word count for this issue: 793
Approximate time to read:3.2 minutes@ 250 words per minute
When a business hits some turbulence, an executive’s instinct is sometimes to focus on greater efficiency and productivity by tightening control. But the truth is that giving up authority and giving employees independence can improve innovation and success, even during crises. With that in mind, we have put together a number of tips to help you or someone you know become a better leader in the coming months.
10 Tips To Help You Maximize Your Leadership Skills:
1. Build Better Relationships– Great leaders know the value of relationships. They know who people are, what is important to them, and what motivates them. Knowing this will help you understand their goals and how you can support them. When you help people, they will care about you and your goals in return.
2. Get To Know People On A Personal Level– If you take the time to get to know people you like, they will no doubt come to like you, too. Furthermore, it is always nice to ask people about their families and interests. You will also find that, if people like you, they will be more open to helping you and taking the extra time to get things done.
3. Develop A Mentoring Program– Great leaders know that mentoring someone will not only help develop that person’s career, but also help leaders refine their skills.
4. Be Upbeat And Stay Positive – In the business world, it is easy to criticize what everyone does and to be negative, especially in this economy. As a leader, you need to find ways to stay positive and find ways to do things better, faster and more effectively. It is important to remember that people are not perfect, and while you do need to address poor performance, great leaders know the value of acknowledging when people are doing things correctly. Doing so builds a positive work environment that helps make people feel appreciated.
5. Know Your Strengths– We each have strengths and weaknesses. That being said, you will find that it is better to spend time working on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. By doing this, you will find that you can rise to the expert level sooner than you would be by working on your weaknesses. Bottom line: Know what you are good at and keep at it.
6. Surround Yourself With People Who Complement You– As I mentioned above, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Great leaders know what their weaknesses are and find people who support their shortcomings. Not because they need to cover their weaknesses, but because they know the benefit of having a strong team — and when the team wins, everyone wins.
7. Look At Your Career, Not So Much At The Company– Great leaders know that they are the ones who will create their own career paths; therefore, they will work on making it happen. And once they become an expert in their selected careers, they will find that they can go almost anywhere they want to go.
8. Respect Your People– If you do not like to be around people, let alone lead people, then do not take a leadership position. Conversely, if you do want to be in a leadership position, start building relationships with people by respecting what they do. Additionally, it is important that a great leader never misses an opportunity to learn more about the people behind them. Great leaders never skip an employee’s birthday gathering or a holiday party because they are too busy — they know that work will always be there.
9. Balance Your Work And Personal Life– Great leaders are often times driven people, but they know the key to success is to balance work and family. Life is too short for you to live at your job. One day, when work is winding down, you will think to yourselfI wished I had done things differently. Unfortunately, it will be too late to do so. Great leaders set career boundaries and know when to spend more time with family and friends. Doing this will make stronger leaders.
10. Evolve Into Someone You Aspire To Become– Great leaders know that they are individuals and that, as an individual, they are not required to be like everyone else. They also know that they can take the path less traveled, as the risk is sometimes greater than the reward. To be a great leader, one must become a person of great interest who has great skills.
Executive Summary: When it comes time to lead people, great leaders know the power of information, information they gather from listening to people they respect. They also know what to say, how to say it and when to say it so that during tough times things get done.
Keep holiday cards professional… • Holiday greeting cards should be more tailored and formal than cards for family and friends. Keep messages brief and secular unless you are certain of the recipient’s religious faith. • Sign each card personally – even if your name is preprinted on the card. • An email greeting is a poor substitute for a real greeting card. • Mailing holiday greeting cards first class will ensure they are delivered to a forwarding address or returned if the address cannot be located. • Include your return address in the upper left-hand corner or on the back flap of the envelope. • Use an office address when mailing holiday greeting cards to business associates. • Take the extra step to verify how recipients’ names are spelled.
Number ONE is building relationships. No matter the market size, there are more opportunities to get your story on TV than ever before. The days of only two daily newscasts are long gone. Most television stations have early morning, mid-day and early afternoon casts in addition to the traditional 6 and 11 p.m. or 10 p.m. shows. They are hungry for excellent features. You can get YOUR story on the air.
For now, here is a tactic – plus advice from the National Association of Broadcasters, which may be helpful – we have often used to build those relationships and – in fact – even received “side bars” on our approach. Here goes from The Public Relations Practitioner’s Playbook page 281 (Media Relations):
In-service For Reporters
A rarely used, but accepted and encouraged method among strategic communicators is the “in-service” for media members covering a long-term story or special event. A New Jersey school district that had lost nearly a dozen bond and budget referenda over several years determined that neither the public nor the media understood the issues.
The public relations professional and school administrators invited media to a series of workshops spread out over several weeks. The workshops, over lunch (reporters do have to eat), lasted 45 minutes to an hour. Media outlets were encouraged to send any reporter who might cover the next referendum. A number of handouts – electronic and printed – were distributed and visuals were used freely.
Attendance was excellent. The message was communicated to the reporters who in turn took it to the public in terms the audiences could understand. Those in-services – cutting edge at the time – were considered successful because the district went on a “winning streak” at the polls. (A number of media outlets were so impressed, they decided to run [side bar] stories on what they considered a unique approach.)
Getting On The Air (page 320)
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) suggests that if your appeal is to be effective, you should have the answer to some key questions before contacting local stations: (Some refer to it as the MAC Triad – message, audience, channel.)
What is your message? [message] Are you sure of the basic idea you want to communicate?
Who should receive your message? [audience] Is it of general interest to a large segment of the audience? Can it be tailored to reach a specific audience?
How can you best put your message across? [channel] Does it have enough general interest for a special program? Would a PSA serve just as well?
Your answers to these questions should help you determine in advance whether your pitch will work.
(From USA Today and The Detroit Free Press on Sunday, Nov. 27.
Greg Gardner, Detroit Free Press
DETROIT — The wave of easy credit and longer auto loans has left a record percentage of consumers trading in vehicles that are worth less than what they owe on their loans.
In auto finance parlance, these folks are underwater, or upside down. They already are affecting the market as automakers boost incentives and subprime lenders monitor their delinquency rates more closely.
So far this year, a record 32%, or nearly one-third, of all vehicles offered for trade-ins at U.S. dealerships are in this category, according to research by Edmunds.com. When these people go to buy a new vehicle they must add the difference between their loan balance and the vehicle’s value to the price of the one they want to buy.
For perspective, the lowest the underwater percentage has been was 13.9% in 2009, the depths of the Great Recession when credit was tight. The previous high was 29.2% in 2006, about when the housing market was near its frothiest point.
“There’s been a lot of water building behind this dam for some time because of higher transaction prices, lower down payments and long-term loans,” said Greg McBride, chief analyst with Bankrate.com, a consumer finance information service.
The average new car loan is for 68 months, according to Experian Automotive, which tracks the auto finance market. But subprime borrowers, generally those with FICO credit scores in the low 600s or lower, are borrowing over an average of 72 months, or six years.
While those loans reduce monthly payments, they also mean that the buyer’s equity, or the portion of the loan principal paid off,grows more slowly than the vehicle depreciates.
“It’s problematic for the consumer because there’s no foolproof way to eliminate his financial exposure,” McBride said. “If the car gets stolen, is totaled or you get new car envy while you’re upside down then it’s a big problem.”
This is happening as the average selling price of a new vehicle is near a historic high of about $34,000. Some of that increase is driven by consumers’ preference for larger, fully equipped pickups, SUVs and crossovers.
The result is consumers borrow more to get the vehicle they want. The average new auto loan was $29,880 in the second quarter of this year, according to Experian Automotive. That’s 4.8% higher than a year earlier.
Moreover, leasing, which has reached record levels of more than 30% of all vehicle sales, has grown more popular for several years.
Already, especially in segments such as subcompact, compact and midsize cars, used car values are falling as a wave of 3-year-old models are returned by lessees. This increased supply is pushing down the price dealers are willing to pay for them at auctions.
Just last week, Ford Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks told analysts that the company’s finance arm, Ford Credit, cut its forecast for 2017 pretax profits because of declining auction values for used cars.
Credit agencies, such as Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, so far, have expressed mild concern about the trend. Their focus is on the $38-billion market for securities backed by auto loans. These are bundles of auto loans, similar to the tranches of mortgages that collapsed in the 2008 crash of the housing bubble.
But they are also different. History shows borrowers are more likely to stay current on their car loans than on their house payments if the economy weakens. Lenders can repossess automobiles more quickly than it takes for mortgage holders to foreclose on a house.
Fitch reported that 60-days-plus delinquencies on subprime auto loans rose to 5.05% in September, the second highest level since 2001, and 13.2% higher than a year earlier.
“When you look at recessionary levels where unemployment was near 10% in 2009 and late 2008, we touched 5.04%,” said Hylton Heard, senior director at Fitch Ratings. “Today you’re pretty much at that peak.”
Fortunately, unemployment is down to 4.9% nationally. Prime borrowers have a 60-day delinquency rate of only 0.44%. Those factors tend to offset the higher risk in the subprime market.
New vehicle sales are expected to continue slightly below their record year-ago levels in November, according to J.D. Power and LMC Automotive.
Yet even their forecast flags some warning signs.
Incentive spending — discounts or extras to lure buyers to close a deal — in early November rose to $3,886 per vehicle, up 15% from $3,374 from November 2015 and the second-highest level ever behind the record $3,939 set in September.
“People’s monthly payments are being kept very low by low interest rates that most manufacturers are willing to subsidize,” said Ivan Drury, senior analyst at Edmunds.com. “But if we see those rates go up a bit, some of these people won’t be able to afford their cars.”
[To comment: larry@larrylitwin.com] — If you like this, check out Litwin’s books on www.larrylitwin.com. The entire Book Bundle of the three most current books with free shipping are $99.95.
Tools of Leadership — some of Larry’s thought
All leaders are teachers…but not all teachers are leaders!
Managers – Do things right.
Leaders – Do the right things.
Leaders
Convene
Communicate
Persuade (maybe even convince)
Leaders Defined
Title
Charisma (Connectivity)
Competence/Expertise
Communicator
Courage
Tenacity
Perseverance
Mental Toughness
Vision
Responsibility
In the end, Leadership is defined by:
Results
Leadership Framework
Control
Preparation
Follow-up
Proactive
Consistency
Organization
Repetition
Campaign
Planning/”Premeditated”
Strategy/Timing
Measurable results
James Baker (Former secretary of state)
Leadership = “Knowing what to do and doing it.”
President Carter
“Leaders whose messages are not changing (or reinforcing) behavior are not true leaders. In fact, they are ‘MISleaders.’”
Leaders
Choose to lead by stepping out of the darkness and taking others with you.
Make decisions they have to make even when they might have dangerous consequences
Leadership
Requires Courage, Tenacity, Perseverance and Mental Toughness
Must Make Difficult Decisions
Must be Inspirational and Create Hope, Optimism and Enthusiasm for the Future
Never, never, never give up
Know Your Destination…and All Roads Will Lead To It…
Failure Is Not An Option
Know Your Destination…
Hit the ground running…and…be sure you are going in the right direction!!!
But remember – It’s the journey, not the destination.
It Always Takes A Great Team…Because…Failure Is Not An Option
CareerBuilder’s Deanna Hartley offers these suggestions to help mature job seeker’s communicate their value. I add, younger job seekers should follow many of the same suggestions:
Know the current lingo and latest trends.
Provide examples of the value you would add to the team.
Prove that you can be a leader (see next week’s blog on leadership)
Find out how age is perceived in your industry.
Outline your unique value proposition.
Deanna Hartley is a writer for the Advice & resources section on CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job-search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.
CareerBuilder’s Mary Lorenz identifies some signs that suggest you should quit your job. I summary:
You are not advancing
You dread going into work
You’ve lost all ability to care
Your boss doesn’t support you
Your goals do not align with your employer’s
Mary is a writer for the “Advice & Resources” section on CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job-search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.
Christina Fleming, Sr. Director of Marketing & Enrollment, Blackboard Inc.
Institutions must reimagine their curriculum and the student experience to bring college skills closer to career skills. Discover three ways we’ve seen institutions close that gap.
Recently, our team attended the NACAC annual conference— a great event for admissions leaders and their industry partners. We were fortunate enough to attend a thought-provoking session led by Jeff Selingo, long-time higher ed researcher and reporter, who recently surveyed dozens of executives for his new book, There is Life After College. Much of what we heard from Selingo resonated with my experiences both working with higher ed leaders and as an employee of a 3,000-person company.
Selingo wanted to know what skills would help graduates land good jobs, so he interviewed and surveyed dozens of C-suite level employers to understand what they were looking for. What he found was that regardless of industry, most executives valued the same five traits: curiosity, creativity, digital awareness, critical thinking and humility.
The problem— there is oftentimes a disconnect between the higher education experience and the modern workplace, meaning many students are not always equipped with the skills to succeed post-graduation. This assertion is underscored by the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus administered by the Council for Aid to Education, which estimates that 40% of college graduates don’t possess the complex reasoning skills required to make good decisions outside of the highly structured environment of the traditional four-year institution.
This disconnect may stem from the different environments. On one hand, you have the highly structured, scheduled environment of most academic programs, and on the other, there is the ambiguous, fluid modern workplace. Students succeed in college through strict adherence to schedules, syllabi and study guides. Employees succeed in the workplace with creativity, adaptability and self-direction.
These “soft” skills Selingo references are necessary to adapt to the constantly shifting responsibilities of most careers, executives believe, and can’t be taught from a text book or during a lecture. They must be gained through the higher education experience— a byproduct of the way students learn, rather than what they are learning.
In my 8 years of experience working with higher education institutions, I have had the opportunity to learn more about this gap first hand through our team’s direct interviews with many employers and program directors. To close the gap between what students learn in the classroom and what employers want in the workplace, I believe institutions must modernize their curriculum and the student experience. There are many ways to get there, but all roads include a hard look at programs and teaching methods. Below I’ve shared three ways we’ve seen institutions make changes that bring college skills closer to career skills.
#1. Provide students with opportunities for experiential learning
In his book, Jeff Selingo says that it’s important for institutions to help students fail – sometimes. The highly structured approach to higher ed learning leaves little opportunity for a disciplined student to experience failure. A less structured setting where students are forced to develop their own methods of critical thinking and decision making will lead to a culture of trial and error. To succeed, students must master the art of learning from failures, adjusting their methods, and trying again.
I believe one of the best ways for students to learn how to do this is by providing them with experiential learning opportunities. Making jobs and internships part of the higher ed equation helps students get comfortable with more personal responsibility, on-the-spot problem solving and contextual application of skills. It also drives home the idea that education should continue, in a self-guided capacity, throughout their entire career.
#2. Evaluate program viability and consider the job market
Program viability is one of the first things our team looks at when working with institutions to grow enrollments and build student success beyond graduation. Through employer surveys, labor statistics around future job demand, and other market indicators, we help institutions align their programs with the job market and promote them to the right audience.
The need for alignment between higher ed programs and the job market is especially apparent within the adult learner population. Those pursuing new careers or career advancement are especially affected by the skills gap, and many find post-graduation that they’re still not considered equipped for the job. Employers admit that many certification and continued education programs are great at imparting a number of hard-skills directly related to a specific field, but not as good at imparting the soft skills necessary for career advancement, like leadership, critical thinking and decision making.
By using data and research to evaluate the needs of learners when building programs, institutions can better position them on a path to success.
#3. Partner with area employers to inform program design
One of the ways we are working with institutions to close the skills gap is by helping them identify and connect with area employers to inform program design and align programs with the job market of the future. A partnership between an institution and a business can be beneficial to both parties. The institution gains valuable insight around the skills necessary to make student success post-graduation, and the employer gains access to a pool of uniquely qualified candidates.
These partnerships often grow to include other institutional benefits, like enrollment growth through tuition discounts or reimbursement, sponsored programs, research and labs, program promotion, and exclusive recruitment opportunities for students.
Many institutions have already begun making great strides and are enjoying the benefits of partnerships like these. We admire the work by Drexel University, Embry-Riddle, ASU, and many others who have embraced opportunities to connect learners to partner organizations. And there is no better way to close the higher ed/workforce skills gap than to position your students at the cutting-edge of their field with the employers they hope to work for.
Careers are changing across all industries at a break-neck pace, and this trend doesn’t show any signs of letting up. One of the best ways to ensure the success of both your students and your programs is keep your finger on the pulse of the ever-shifting job market and provide learners with the skills and experience they will need on day one.
When a business hits some turbulence, an executive’s instinct is sometimes to focus on greater efficiency and productivity by tightening control. But the truth is that giving up authority and giving employees independence can improve innovation and success, even during crises. 
