The 2 A.M. Email: A Public Display Of Ambition

The 2 A.M. Email: A Public Display Of Ambition

(Article Written by Randi Zuckerberg (Zuckerberg Media) for Linkedin. Original article can be found here.)

In today’s working world, there is a lot of pressure to always be “on.” If a colleague is consistently sending emails late into the night, we may feel pressured to do so as well. Whenever I wake up and see an email sent to me at 2 a.m., I feel guilty – what am I doing sleeping when somebody else is up working? Am I not being productive or available enough?

Sending emails late into the night sends a flashing message to coworkers, “I’m ambitious!,” but email doesn't have to be a competition of who can respond faster or who can function on less sleep. Maybe that colleague emailing you at 11 p.m. isn't doing it to one-up you or be seen as Employee of the Month. Some of us send emails at odd hours because that’s when email best fits into our lives. As a mom, I’m most productive and able to catch up on my messages late at night when my 2-year-old son is sleeping and the house is finally quiet. I’m often in meetings all day, and want to spend quality time with my family when I get home - so it’s hard to find a solid chunk of time to give my full attention to my inbox. Around 11 p.m. is my time to plug in again – but this doesn’t mean I expect my colleagues to respond right away or even read my emails before they go to bed. We all have our own routines, including specific times when we are able to focus best. For some, this time may be early in the morning. For others, it’s during the work day in between meetings, on weekends or during a daily commute.

Many managers send emails late at night and seem to be connected around the clock. While some do expect their colleagues to read and respond 24/7 (talk about stressful!), many do not. The problem is, most managers don’t communicate these expectations to their colleagues. It's becoming increasingly popular for stressed employees to request "overtime" pay for the extra hours they spend on their devices. Whenever a new employee begins working with me, I go out of my way to let them know that I work best late at night – but just because they receive late night emails from me, does not mean I expect them to immediately respond. It’s important to clearly let your colleagues (especially direct reports) know when you expect them to be available. They should not have to break into a cold sweat every time their phone buzzes with a new email late at night, or sleep with one eye open and their phone beside their pillow. Tell your colleagues if it’s an urgent matter requiring immediate response, you will call them (and only do this if it’s an emergency!).
In an ideal world, I wish businesses would shut off inter-office email delivery after 9 p.m., so people could send as many late-night emails as they want, without being delivered until the following morning. That way people would never know the difference between someone that efficiently got all their work done by early evening, or someone who stayed up all night working on a project.

Radioactive conversations: how to avoid them by Joel Peterson

Radioactive conversations: how to avoid them

(Original Article Authored by Joel Peterson, Chairman, JetBlue Airways. Stanford Business Professor and posted on Linkedin.com page here.)

If there’s a ticking bomb in your personal or professional life, you already know it’s better to defuse it than to let it explode. If you don't face it head on, you risk fallout that can last months, years—or even a lifetime.

Is it a conversation with your partner about where you should live, or with your child about how she’s doing in school, or who his friends are? Perhaps at work you’ve locked horns with your boss over your own vision and priorities – and you sense it's beginning to affect your career trajectory. In any of these cases, the odds are that you don’t want to deal with it; and they don’t either.

But the longer you put it off, the fewer ticks are left before the bomb goes off. When it does, a lot heat gets released, and things get said that can’t be unsaid. Bad goes to worse. And sometimes, worse goes to radioactive.

Why hazard that kind of damage when some thoughtful preparation, and cool-headed discussion, can disarm many confrontations before they happen? Here are a few strategies that can turn tension into progress:

1. Atmospherics matter. Pick a good moment, and a good place. Make things as easy as possible on the other party. Try to catch them in an even mood. People don’t respond well when they’re hungry or exhausted, or in a location where they feel vulnerable. And have the talk in private, without eavesdroppers or referees.

2. Don’t bury the lede. Resist the temptation to start the conversation by asking how the other person is feeling. Vague overtures may seem like a good way to “test of the waters,” but may only make you seem hesitant or ill at ease. If it’s a colleague, launch the conversation with a straightforward, “I’ve been wanting to talk with you for a while about something that’s getting in the way of our working well together. I want to discuss how we might fix what’s causing it.”

3. Listen (first), listen (well), listen (generously). After opening the conversation with a clear statement of your intentions, offer to let the other party share his or her perspective before you do. It’s a gesture of goodwill and respect – and getting off to a good, unselfish start means a better chance of a good, unselfish outcome.

Then, listen like it’s your job. Have the discipline to repeat what you’ve heard (“What I hear you saying is…”). Your work isn’t done until the other person feels that you’ve understood her perspective. Beware: You may feel the explosion coming on before you get to this point. That’s normal, and in fact it’s likely why the conflict exists in the first place. But stay cool, and don’t interrupt except for clarification, or to gently ask your counterpart not to wander too far into ancient history. Good listening alone can go a long way toward solving a conflict.

4. Your turn: Be clear. Be calm. When it comes time to give critical feedback, express it in the form of concern. If you want to talk to your teenager about his behavior, try something like, “You know how much I care about you. My own experience with how the world works makes me feel that I owe you some guardrails. I’m going to ask you to trust me on this.” Granted, teens aren’t likely to jump into your corner, even with this approach. But it sets the tone for your longer-term goal -- to nourish a trust relationship where you still have some influence over an increasingly free agent.
The same goes for charged conversations with a supervisor or employee. If you’re giving negative feedback, do it in a spirit of growth and forward movement, discuss a fair plan for addressing the issue, and set up a time to reconnect and check in.

5. Don’t be the on to pull the pin. If things get heated, you may hear things like “I’ll see you in court,” “You’re such a jerk,” or “That’s it! I’m outta here!” But don’t let it be you who goes there.

The jujitsu of high-stress conversations means you want to move toward the other party if the rhetoric turns hostile. The louder, more aggressive, more threatening he becomes, the lower your volume must be, and the more you must absorb. This doesn't mean capitulating or accepting abuse; it means being the bigger person. Instead of answering a legal threat with, “I hope you’ve got a good lawyer, then,” try something like, “I’m sad you feel that way. I’d hate for that to be where we end up. Let’s explore a less destructive course of action.”

Stressful conversations are worth having sooner than later. Conducted with care, they can release pressure before it builds to the breaking point, and even make relationships stronger. Don’t put off what’s difficult now in favor of what will be impossible down the road.
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Joel's recent posts:

To-do #1: Kill your to-do list

The 10 most common firing mistakes

Be the Michelangelo of Goal-Setting

Follow Joel at @JoelCPeterson

Four Insane Office Pranks for April Fools by Aaron Hurst

Four Insane Office Pranks for April Fools by Aaron Hurst, CEO of Taproot Foundation and Slater Institute

 

 

One of the great joys of being a CEO is being able to punk your team on the first day of April. What tricks do you have up your sleeve for April Fools Day at your office? Here are some of the winners from my playbook.

1) Dress Code

April 1st is a great day to email the team to let them know that with success comes the necessity to dress the part. It needs to sound like an email from HR and include a date and time (later that month) for a company-wide webinar on the new policy. Ideally include some photos of dress that is acceptable and unacceptable now. Alternatives: you are working to recruit more Millennials and need the staff to dress more "Millennial-friendly".

2) Unexpected Merger

What better day to announce an unlikely merger or acquisition than on April 1st? The key here is to make sure the email reads and includes the details and tone of a real email announcing a merger. It also needs to be a viable merger or acquisition idea that the team would find shocking but believable. The best is one in which the partner is an organization adjacent to your category and not directly in it.

3) Site Hacked

Your website is your storefront. It is critical that it represents your organization well. When your site is down or busted it often sends the organization into a tailspin. You would't want it to appear a mess for the outside world, but your tech team can display an alternate home page that is only seen by your team on April 1st. Make it look like a competitor hacked your system and turned your home page into an ad for their services. Or just puts some not so subtle bugs on the page that would quickly catch the attention of every member of the team when they get to work in the morning.

4) CEO in Prison

While I was traveling in China, my assistant sent an email to the team and board stating that I had been detained in China by the government for suspected spying. In the email they introduced an interim-CEO with a link to a (was my muppet alter ego). This one had great potential but blew up on me. Several board members from Fortune 100 companies didn't click on the video, thought it was real and engaged their corporate counsel to rescue me from China. They weren't very happy when it turned out it was a prank. Sorry, again.

Ever been victim to a good office prank or orchestrated one of your own? We want to hear about it!

Posted by: Aaron Hurst (Originally written for Linkedin.com) 

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The 3 Biggest Resume Mistakes

The 3 Biggest Resume Mistakes



In a typical week I spend on average 10% of my time screening resumes, interviewing or reviewing interview notes and offers for candidates we want to join the team. Talent management is a core pillar of our company strategy and one of my most important responsibilities. I have reviewed thousands of resumes over my career and built a system to categorize them into yes, no and the dreaded maybe buckets. The resumes that go into either the yes or the no piles are usually very easy to identify. But I often think about the maybes. These resumes get saved as a backup but in reality, never get a chance to be in the field of play.


With over 200M resumes on LinkedIn, it will be harder and harder for a maybe to become a yes which is the first step in landing a new job. Great candidates with fantastic backgrounds can get condemned to the maybe pile because the resume didn’t represent them well and didn’t make an impression in the 30 seconds an average hiring manager spends on filtering a resume.


I find there are three big mistakes that usually cause an otherwise great resume to be filtered out in a screening process:


1) Focusing on the wrong thing: I often see candidates explain their responsibilities and list them in great detail, but forget to highlight their results. The unique things they did that their predecessors had not. What were their specific accomplishments and what sets them apart? The more quantitative, the easier for a screener or hiring manager to understand and select them for the next discussion. Numbers and metrics speak louder than words. Vague generalities are the kryptonite of a resume.

2) Writing a thesis when a synopsis is needed: Mark Twain once said, “if only I had more time, I would write thee a shorter letter”. When writing a resume, it is important to heed these words and take the time to really write succinctly and precisely. The longer and more dense a resume, the harder it is for a recruiter to get to the heart of your achievements and contributions. Precise, clear, factual, numbers driven resumes will always get more traction.

3) Leaving unanswered red flags: Candidates will often wait for the interview process to explain any red flags or gaps that may be on their resume, but by that time it may be too late. In most cases, they won’t make it that far if the issues are not explained on the resume, cover letter or LinkedIn profile itself. Candidates should put on the hiring manager’s hat and look at their own resumes with this filter and then proactively address any of these issues in a clear and unambiguous way. A couple of examples of what I mean:

• Let’s say someone has moved around a lot in their career. A screener may see this as inability finish things they start or an indication that they aren’t a committed candidate. It behooves you to explain the reasons for the movement where possible. Was it a corporate change, like an acquisition, that caused the moves? Or is it an indication that you were looking for more of a challenge?
• Let’s say someone is applying for an engineering role but doesn’t have an engineering degree. This should be addressed in the objectives and the resume should reflect any and all skills that do relate to the job you are looking for. Do you have any relevant certifications? Are you self-taught? Can you link to any code you have written?

It is worth the extra effort to make your online profile rock solid. That’s the only way to convert the page views into clicks on your resume.


Oh and one other thing, in this day and age, there is no excuse for typos and grammar mistakes in a resume. Those types of errors demonstrate a lack of detail orientation and commitment, and may result in your resume going into the no bucket.


I’d love to hear if you agree with these, and which other resume mistakes you’d add to the list.

Posted by:

Rajat Taneja

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Four Requirements for a Job That Makes A Great Work Day, Everyday

If your company doesn't provide these 4 key elements every day, then it is time for a career move. Most indivudals tend to forget that vertical movement to another company is not "hard" or "unobtainable", it just requires the assitance of an executive recruitment consultant. Are you provided these four essential elements at your job, everyday? ~ William Thompson, J.D.

Article authored by Naomi Simson, Founder, RedBalloon and published via Linkedin.com on March 10th, 2013. All rights belong to the associated parties. This site claims no authorship.

Four things we need to have a 'good' day at work

Iregularly conducts surveys asking more than 3000 Australian and New Zealand employees what they desire to see in their workplace. Do you agree with what people are telling us about four simple things to ensure you have a 'good' day at work. One thing we do know is that for people to be highly productive - that is do his or her best work - they need to be in flow. And often 'management' or perceived bureaucracy get in the way.

What get's in the way of you doing 'your best work?'

Desire number one - More praise

One in five employees do not receive any praise or say, at best, it happens once per year. We want our managers to praise us more often, and more specifically. Although some bosses argue that employees only work for the money, it is far more than that. Do you feel more motivated when your efforts are noticed?

Desire number two - Better managers

52% of employees say they would leave a role because of their direct manager, and two thirds are convinced their managers don’t know what motivates them to be more productive. Everyone wants to work with a motivating, supportive manager. Have you ever left a job because of your manager?

Desire number three – More time with friends and family

Laptops, iPhones, Blackberries – it is too easy to work nowadays. The boundaries blur and employers need to recognise this. Business owners have a responsibility to shore people against burn out, and more time with friends and family plays a vital role in this. Have you ever worked somewhere that was all work and no play?

Desire number four – Greater trust

At RedBalloon, we call it ‘treating people like grown ups.’ Trust should be a given, not something that is earned. You trust that you have been given a role to do your best, and your boss trusts he has chosen the best person for the role. This ought to happen right from the start because it’s empowering starting from a place of trust. What’s been your experience of trust at work?

What does it take for you to have a great day at work?