5 Things You Might Do Well At Work But Terribly At Home

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life."” 
- Unknown

A few months ago I met with a friend who wanted me to help her with her finances. She felt she never had any money and she didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t asking me for money but she wanted me to go over her budget and see what things she needs to change.

After she asked me to help her, I paused for a bit and asked her a question.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “don’t you manage a multi-million budget at work?”

“Yeah, I know,” she responded, “I guess I never thought about my own budget.”

Many times we acquire great skills at work – skills we probably didn’t have before. We might have learned a bit more about finance, accounting, time management, organization, leadership, management, and teamwork or communication skills. The interesting thing is that time after time I meet someone or someone I know comes to me because they’re struggling with something personally that they might be doing well at work. Below are a few of these things many people do well at work but, for some reason, don’t do a good job at home.

Manage a Budget

As discussed in the introduction above, there are many people who manage a lot of money at work, but for some reason can’t or don’t manage their personal finances. Money management is a great skill to have and many of us have it. Use that skill to take control of your spending, your budget and your credit. Just like you spend an ample amount of time at work looking over numbers and making decisions, you should do the same at home. Make the time and effort because I can guarantee you that your money is more important to you.

Organize Yourself

I had a friend a few years ago who introduced me to his co-worker. His co-worker bragged about how organized my friend was. I was shocked. I didn’t say anything, but I knew my friend for at least 5 years and our circle of friends knew that he was awfully unorganized. My friend was messy, he never knew where he left papers and he was always late paying bills – and he was my roommate. Organization is another great skill to have. Transfer that skill to your personal life and, just like you do at work, you will become more productive.

Follow Up

As a program manager a few years ago, my goal was to acquire and retain new business for the company. Anyone that has ever worked on sales knows that following up is key to getting the sale. I did a great job at work, but a terrible job following up with friends and family. At work, I used to respond to our stakeholders in less than 24 hours. At home, I would receive a call, a voice message, a text message and you would be lucky if you heard from me. The people outside of work are very important to you, probably more important than the people you’re trying to sell to. Apply the same rules at home as you do at work. Be responsive at home, be accessible and just make sure you return phone calls.

Manage Your Time

Productivity is important at work. Many of us use an Outlook calendar to schedule our time at work and we try to stick to it as much as we can. We include meetings, tasks, projects and more meetings in our calendar. However, many of us don’t do the same with our personal life. We don’t schedule our life! Plan a date with your significant other, schedule the time when you’ll pay your bills, don’t forget your little cousin’s birthday party, and schedule some time to grow. You will accomplish more in life if you apply the same time management strategies you use at work.

Exercise Your Patience

I had a niece that used to work at a fast food chain. Anyone that has ever worked in fast food knows that you have to be very patient with the customers. My niece was always very polite, patient and professional when speaking to customers. At home though, my niece was the opposite. She hated waiting, she hated how her younger sister would nag and she couldn’t stand being at home. Patience is a great virtue. At work we become very patient with clients, co-workers and our boss. It shouldn’t be any different at home. Why does it all of a sudden change? Take the same measures and effort you apply at work to your home and you will be happier. There is no difference.

Are you a different person at work as you are at home? I always believed you should always exercise the great qualities you were given as a human being, no matter where you are. In fact, I think these qualities are much more needed at home than at work. 

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way.  

The Most Important Element Managers Forget When Training Employees

“Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.” 

– Peter Drucker

Recently, I’ve been working with a group in the LA area that wanted to reassess the way they train their employees, particularly their management team. I asked what types of training do they give their employees and the response was “we train them on what they are supposed to do.” I asked to see any materials that they use, any slides, modules or outline but none was present. I also asked the organization if they believe their trainings were effective and they responded with mixed results. I finally asked why they felt they needed additional training from me. The company just thought more training meant more sales.

Depending on where you work, there might be a negative or positive feeling when you hear the word “training” or “company training.” For some companies the word “training” is non-existent. Many times, we are asked to train other people either because we’ve done a good job at work or we might be seen as an expert within our company. Training is not easy though (Read Still Re-Training Your Employees? Is It A People Problem Or A TrainingProblem?). There are different learning styles the trainees have and different methods of teaching from the facilitator. There is one element though that most companies or managers forget to consider when training their employees.

What are your objectives?

Most trainers are not trained to train. If you are put in a position to train and have no training experience (or even if you do) you should focus on this one key area: the objectives of your training. Brainstorming the objectives will force you to think about what you’re trying to get out of your own training. These are some questions you should be asking yourself:

What should the trainee(s) be able to do, say, make, create, develop, use or see after the trainee(s) is done with my training?

Have you ever wondered why most trainings begin with the objectives and the objectives typically begin with “by the end of this training you will…?” Put some thought into the things you want to accomplish after the trainee(s) walk out of your training at the end.

Is your training content aligned to your objectives?

Telling someone what to do is not a training. Showing someone what to do is not a training either. Everything you do in a training must be correlated with your objectives. Your goal as a trainer is to meet those objectives and have the trainee(s) accomplish those objectives as well

How many objectives do you have?

If you develop a training program for your staff and have 15 objectives for your training, do you think the training will be a long training or a short training? Most likely it will be a long training and with long trainings people forget most of the content. Stick to 5 objectives but heavily focus on mastering those objectives. If you need to cover more objectives then you should consider splitting the training module so that it is not one long training.

If you want to put your brain to work and implement some of these ideas, think about training a group of people to make a sandwich. If your goal is to make every single trainee make the exact sandwich every single time, what objectives would you develop? How can you make your content correlate with your objectives? Will your objectives include the understanding of ingredients, speed, and quality control? Focus on your objectives and you will have more consistent results with your staff. 

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way. 

Still Re-Training Your Employees? Is It A People Problem Or A Training Problem?

“Nothing will work unless you do” – John Wooden

So you trained this person at least six times on how to complete this report and it’s still not the way you want it? I didn’t say this out loud as I was really trying to listen to the issues one of the manager was having with her team. Apparently, she feels that she spends most of her time re-training people on things they should already know. I’ve heard these comments from managers before though. There is re-training on how to make proper phone calls, servicing customers, updating systems or using technology.

Throughout my career I had the opportunity to develop training programs, develop staff members and work on professional development with different groups. Currently, as part of the Leadership Build group, I have the blessing to lead corporate trainings for different companies in multiple industries and I hear the same comments from different managers from different organizations working in different industries. After hearing out the managers I typically ask this question: do you think this is a people problem or a training problem? Can you guess what the typical response is?

Most managers believe they did all they could to train a person or a group of people properly. They claim that they already “told” their team multiple times how to do it. Some might even claim that they specifically “showed” the group how to do something. However, many times, the problem isn’t the group being trained. How do I know this? I was one of those managers. Before giving any consultation, I always dig deeper to find out the root cause of this particular issue.

How Effective Is The Trainer?

Most managers are not trainers. Most managers are also not teachers. Most managers have never been taught how to train or how to teach. This doesn’t mean that there might be some managers that successfully train their team or lead their team, but it is very difficult to find a manager that can manage multiple tasks, lead a group of people, train them, coach them, meet all targets, be empathetic, meet all deadlines and think outside the box to improve a process. We are asking for a lot in managers.

Most of the companies I have worked with do not have a process to effectively evaluate the trainer. Most managers or trainers are left to figure out how to train their employees. Therefore, most managers might put a few powerpoint slides together, or decide to just stand in front of a room and talk. Talking is not training. An effective trainer facilitates the entire process, checking for understanding and has specific goals to achieve during the training. Did the trainer communicate well? Did the trainer show, taught, explained or discussed the content of the training? Was the trainer prepared? Did the trainer give specific examples? Many times, we don’t ask these questions to really understand how effective our trainers might be.

How Effective Is The Training Program?

Similarly, most internal training programs are not evaluated. Many companies do their own training and cross their fingers afterwards, expecting employees to perform per expectations. This might work in certain instances, but many companies I have consulted with struggle as their company grows. The tiny training given at the early stage of the company’s lifespan might have worked, but as the company and industry grow or change, the training requires more structure, standardization and quality. Recycling trainings year after year might not work at this point. These were three characteristics not thought of during the early stages of the company’s training.

Therefore, it is important to ask the efficacy of the training program. Notice that I included “program” after the word training. Most sports teams and successful corporations have a training academy or training program. Training is not a one-time thing. Is there follow up after the training? Was the training adaptive? Was there a reason the training was done in-person as opposed to online? Are we seeing results immediately following the training? Was everyone trained? Are there any learning gaps that might need to filled?

In the end, if you can positively answer all my questions throughout this article regarding your training and you know your trainer and the training program is effective (since you have seen positive results in the majority of the people trained), then maybe we can look at the people problem. Just remember: a heavy focus on developing your people will pay off.

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way. 

3 Steps To Creating Your Own ‘Mini-Me’ At Work

"Mini-Me, if anything should happen to you, I don't know what I would do...I'd probably move on, get another replica but there would be a 10 minute period there where I would just be inconsolable."

- Dr. Evil 

I remember the first time I watched the Austin Powers movie. It was a hilarious, original film with extremely memorable quotes and characters. If you were to ask me to recite quotes from the movie, I would butcher the phrases, but there was one character that stood out to me above all – Mini-Me.

Mini-Me is supposed to be a smaller replica of the movie’s villain, Dr. Evil. Mini-Me acts, talks and moves like Dr. Evil. He’s supposed to be Dr. Evil’s mini-clone. Do you ever wish you could split yourself in half or that you could clone yourself at work? Perhaps you feel you don’t have as many hours in a day to complete your work. Or you might feel like you have too many projects on your lap. Wouldn’t you want a Mini-You? Here are three steps to guide you on creating your own Mini-Me.

Identify Your Mini-Me

The true reason why we would want to split ourselves in half is because we want someone to do the work exactly as we would do it. We don’t believe there is anyone else out there who could do a better job so we would need another “me” to execute. In order to build your Mini-Me, you need to first identify someone that you can take under your wing who is as good (or better) than you. Are you managing someone who is extremely talented? Is there anyone that you trust or you can depend on? Who can become your Mini-Me? In my opinion, there is one characteristic I would look in a person above any other characteristics: is the person teachable and coachable? You might have the smartest, talented, competent person in your department, but if that person is not coachable, you will struggle.

Learn How To Teach

You might have a person you identified as talented and teachable, but if you don’t know how to coach, train or teach that person properly, you will have difficulty building that person up to your standards. Most people want to create a Mini-Me, but they don’t know how to properly teach their Mini-Me. Telling someone how to do an expense report is not teaching. Telling someone to figure out how to do your job is not teaching. Although you might have those shining stars that could probably figure things out on their own, if you truly want to have things done just the way you would do them, you’ll have to roll up your sleeves. You’ll have to do a better job in training and showing the way so that your Mini-Me understands what you look at, what you see as perfection and what is the bar.

Invest Time In Your Mini-Me

Investing time in others is probably the most difficult part of any manager’s role. It’s difficult because many managers can’t seem to find the time to invest in others. However, the secret to developing a successful Mini-Me, is the prioritization of the time you spend with your Mini-Me. You want to spend more of your time teaching, training, coaching, observing, correcting, giving feedback to your Mini-Me, and less time doing tasks that won’t contribute to the development of your Mini-Me. Eventually, you want your Mini-Me to be able to do those tasks that keep you from spending time with him/her.

Perhaps your Mini-Me won’t walk like you, talk like you or act like you, but at least he/she will do the work exactly as you would. Then, if you’re successful at building your first Mini-Me, you might end up having multiple Mini-Yous.

Don't forget to share this blog so you can encourage others: family, co-workers, friends. Give them something to get motivated! You never know what they might be going through. A few words of encouragement can go a long way.