4 Questions Great Interviewers Ask

By Jeff Haden via ceo.com

Most job candidates feel interview questions can be decoded and hacked, letting them respond to those questions with “perfect” answers.

Guess what: They’re right, especially if you insist on asking opinion-based job interview questions. Every candidate comes prepared to answer general questions about teamwork, initiative, interpersonal skills, leadership, etc.

Interviewing is an imprecise process, but you can improve your ability to evaluate candidates by asking interview questions that elicit facts instead of opinions. Why?

I can never rely on what you claim you will do, but I can learn a lot from what you have already done. Where employee behavior and attitude are concerned, the past is a reasonably reliable indication of the future.

So how do you get to the facts?

Ask. Ask an initial question. Then follow up. Dig deeper to fully understand the situation described, determine exactly what the candidate did (and did not do), and find out how things turned out.

Follow-up questions don’t have to be complicated. “Really?” “Wow… so what did he do?” ”What did she say?” “What happened next?” “How did that work out?”

All you have to do is keep the conversation going. At its best, an interview is really just a conversation.

Here are my four of my colleagues’ favorite behavioral interview questions:

1. ”Tell me about the toughest decision you made in the last six months.”

Goal: Evaluate the candidate’s ability to reason, problem solving skills, judgment, and possibly even willingness to take intelligent risks.

Red flag: No answer. Everyone makes tough decisions regardless of their position. My daughter works part-time as a server at a local restaurant and makes difficult decisions every night, like the best way to deal with a regular customer whose behavior constitutes borderline harassment.

Positive sign: Made a difficult analytical or reasoning-based decision. For example, wading through reams of data to determine the best solution to a problem.

Outstanding sign: Made a difficult interpersonal decision, or better yet a difficult data-driven decision that included interpersonal considerations and ramifications. Making decisions based on data is essential, but almost every decision has an impact on people as well.

The best candidates naturally weigh all sides of an issue, not just the business or human side exclusively.

2. “Tell me about a time you thought a decision was wrong, but you still had to follow directions.”

Goal: Evaluate the candidate’s ability to follow… and possibly to lead.

Red flag: Found a way to circumvent guidelines “… because I know I was right,” or followed the rules but allowed their performance to suffer. (Believe it or not, if you ask enough questions, some people will tell you they were angry or felt stifled and didn’t work hard as a result, especially when they think you empathize with their “plight.”)

Positive sign: Did what needed to be done, especially in a time-critical situation, then found an appropriate time and place to raise issues and work to improve the status quo.

Outstanding sign: Not only did what needed to be done, but stayed motivated and helped motivate others as well. In a peer setting, an employee who is able to say, “Hey, I’m not sure this makes sense either, but for now let’s just do our best and get it done…” is priceless. In a supervisory setting, good leaders are able to debate and argue behind closed doors and then fully support a decision in public even if they privately disagree with that decision.

3. “Tell me about the last time a customer or coworker got mad at you.”

Goal: Evaluate the candidate’s interpersonal skills and ability to deal with conflict. Make sure you find out why the customer or coworker was mad, what the interviewee did in response, and how the situation turned out both in the short- and long-term.

Red flag: The interviewee pushes all the blame — and responsibility for rectifying the situation — on the other person.

Positive sign: The interviewee focuses on how they addressed and fixed the problem, not on who was to blame.

Outstanding sign: The interviewee admits they caused the other person to be upset, took responsibility, and worked to make a bad situation better. Great employees are willing to admit when they are wrong, take responsibility for fixing their mistakes and learn from experience.

Remember, every mistake is just training in disguise… as long as the same mistake isn’t repeated over and over again.

4. “Tell me about the last time your workday ended before you were able to get everything done.”

Goal: Evaluate commitment, ability to prioritize, and ability to communicate effectively.

Red flag: “I just do what I can and get the heck out of there. I keep telling my boss I can only do so much but he won’t listen…. “

Positive sign: Stayed a few minutes late to finish a critical task, or prioritized before the end of the workday to ensure critical tasks were completed. You shouldn’t expect heroic efforts every day, but some level of dedication is certainly nice.

Outstanding sign: Stayed late and/or prioritized… but most importantly communicated early on that deadlines were in jeopardy.

Good employees take care of things; great employees take care of things and make sure others are aware of potential problems ahead of time just in case other proactive decisions make sense.

Keep in mind there are a number of good and great answers to this question. “I stayed until midnight to get it done” can sometimes be a great answer, but doing so night after night indicates there are other organizational or productivity issues the employee should raise. (I may sometimes be glad you stayed late, but I will always be glad when help me spot chronic problems or bottlenecks.) Evaluate a candidate’s answers to this question based on your company’s culture and organizational needs.

There are plenty of other behavioral questions you can use. Just know that when you stick to fact-based questions you quickly get past a candidate’s prepared answers; few candidates can bluff their way through more than one or two follow-up questions. Plus, you’ll easily identify potential disconnects between a candidate’s resume and their actual experience, qualifications and accomplishments.

And best of all you’ll have a much better chance of identifying potentially great employees, because awesome candidates tend to stand out during fact-based interviews.

Are You Making This Mistake at the End of Your Meetings?

By Fred Kofman

"Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? 
Five, because deciding is different than doing.”

Decisions are worthless … unless you turn them into commitments.

In a business conversation, your counterpart's decision states his intention, but a commitment holds him accountable. Although a commitment does not guarantee delivery, it’s far more reliable than a decision. More importantly, when managed properly, it allows you to handle breakdowns with effectiveness, trust and integrity.

Have you been in meetings where lots of decisions are made but nothing gets done andnobody is held accountable? Unless you finish the meeting with commitments about “who will do what by when,” you’ve just built 90% of a bridge.

Broken commitments damage tasks, relationships, and culture. They bring about inefficiencies, mistrust, and corruption. Coordination suffers, collaboration suffers, and cohesion suffers. You can avoid this suffering – if you finish every conversation with clear commitments.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Commitment conversations begin with a request: “Can you bring the financials to the meeting?” “Please ship the order to my new address.” Things can go off track at this early point, especially if you ask without really asking.

I once coached a production manager who was put on a performance-improvement plan for failing to meet a crucial deadline. Weeks before the date, my client figured he had to add a shift to finish the job on time. He needed approval from his boss for the overtime, but he didn’t want to ask. He had heard the plant manager complain that corporate was breathing down his neck about costs.

He decided to use a soft approach. During a staff meeting he mentioned that his project could really use a second shift. The plant manager acknowledged it was a tough deadline; he said he would see what he could do. The production manager believed he had gotten the much-needed help. He waited for his boss to call him after the meeting to implement the second shift, but to no avail. Disappointed, he assumed that a delay was better than a cost overrun. He finished the job late. Imagine his outrage when he got chewed out!

Like many of us, the production manager tried to ask without asking. His indirect approach avoided a confrontation, but it also prevented a frank discussion of the tradeoff between additional labor costs and the delay. As I described in my previous posts onschizorganization and discussing the un-discussable, it is impossible to preserve sanity at work without open communication.

The typical way to avoid making a clear request is to make a muddled one. Do you recognize any of these examples?

• It would be great if…
• Someone should…
• Do we all agree to…?
• Can you try to…?
• The boss wants...

To make a clear request you must utter it in the first person, using direct language and addressing it to a specific person. You must specify observable conditions of satisfaction, including time. It helps if you explain your purpose for asking, and, if and when you arrive at an oral contract, always ask the other sign it.

Although there are many ways to ask, the most effective ones follow a common pattern:

1. In order to get A (a want or need),
2. I ask that you deliver B by C.
3. Can you commit to that?

It may sound odd to ask like this; you can adjust your language to suit your culture. For example, the production manager might have addressed the plant manager as follows: “I am running behind schedule. I don’t see how to catch up without some extra help. In order to finish the job I need some overtime. Can you authorize a second shift for the next three weeks?”

Time to Commit

A well-formed request demands a clear response. There are only three possible answers:

1. Yes, I commit.
2. No, I decline.
3. I can’t commit yet because,
   a. I need clarification.
   b. I need to check; I promise to respond by X.
   c. I want to propose an alternative.
   d. I can make it only if I get Y by Z.

Anything else is a weasel promise. Here are some interesting ways by which people often say, “No, I don’t commit.”

• Yes, I’ll try.
• OK, let me see what I can do.
• Seems doable.
• Let me check into it.
• Someone will take care of it.

When you declare, “I commit,” you assume the responsibility to honor your wordunconditionally. You take on an obligation to deliver on your promise; or if you can’t, to do your best to take care of the requestor.

When you declare, “I decline,” you might still try to do what you were asked, but you don’t commit. You do not give the requestor the right to hold you accountable. It is much better to have a clear “no” than to get bogged down in a wishy-washy “I’ll do my best.”

There are many good reasons to decline. You may not have the resources; you may not have the skills; you may have a conflict with a previous commitment; you may anticipate problems; or you may just not want to do it.

When you are not ready to say “yes” or “no” right away, you may:

• Ask for clarification if the request is unclear to you. For example, if I ask you to help me with a project, you might ask, “What kind of help do you need?” or, “When do you need my help?”

• Promise to respond by a certain time if you need to check your resources, obtain commitments from others, or assess whether you can deliver to specifications. For example, if I ask you to prepare a report, you might answer, “Let me check if I have the information available. I’ll get back to you in an hour.”

• Counteroffer with alternative proposal to satisfy the need behind the request. For example, if I ask you to meet today, you might respond: “I am not available today. Could we meet tomorrow? Or if it’s urgent, we could speak by phone.”

• Commit conditionally if your commitment depends on factors outside of your control. For example, if I ask you deliver a rush order, you can commit to do it only if I authorize overtime.

Clear commitments don’t mean that everything will work out. Life is unpredictable, so even the most impeccable commitments can break down. In my next post, I will explain how you can preserve effectiveness, trust, and integrity even when you can’t fulfill your promise.

Do or do not ... there is no try.” -- Yoda

By Fred Kofman, PhD. in Economics, is Professor of Leadership and Coaching at the Conscious Business Center of the University Francisco Marroquín anda faculty member of Lean In. He is the author of Conscious Business, How to Build Value Through Values (also available as an audio program).

Are You Working on Your Business, or FOR Your Business?

by Gina Abudi

Too often, CEOs’ time is spent on everything but what it should be spent on — working on the business. Our tendency — especially for smaller to medium-sized businesses — is to do the workof the business in addition to trying to work on the business.

Certainly, there are good reasons for doing this in those very early years as you are trying to get the business off the ground and you have limited staff; but I’ve seen this occur even when the CEO has other executives on board to manage key areas of the business. Let’s assume for this article that the issue is not that you can’t tear yourself away from overseeing every part of the business, but rather, the issue is that you need to slice out more time in your day to actually work on the business.

Let’s look at some things you can do to be sure you are better able to manage your own time by delegating more effectively to others; and then let’s look at what you should be doing as the CEO.

Hire the right people. The people you hire to join your team — at any level of responsibility — must be “go getters.” While certainly training your employees is necessary, they should be individuals who are motivated to take on responsibilities and get things done without constant handholding or oversight.

Develop your employees — from senior leaders to individual contributors. Provide your employees with training and professional development opportunities. This may be anything from workshops to attending conference to participating in, or leading, strategic projects to help the business meet its goals.

Clear roles and responsibilities. Ensure that all employees have very clear roles and responsibilities. Too often, we do not provide clear roles and responsibilities to our employees. Without this information there is no clarity around expectations. Roles and responsibilities should include decision-making authority levels (for example, the ability to make a decision to refund an unhappy customer up to $x dollars.)

Autonomy to do their jobs. It’s hard to let go of aspects of the business — there is a feeling of wanting to be involved in everything simply because it is your business. But you need to learn how to let go. Provide employees autonomy to do their jobs. Set an end goal — they can get to the end goal as they see fit. Feel free to put parameters around how they get there if that makes you more comfortable; but there is no need (and certainly you can’t spend the time!) to tell an employee every step they need to take to get from point A to point C.

Now let’s discuss how you should be spending your time as the CEO.

Setting strategy for the organization and communicating vision. Your strategy shouldn’t be set once and then tucked away. You’ll need to revise your strategy on a regular basis to keep up with changes in the industry, with your competitors and to meet customer needs. Have key employees take the lead in updating components of your organizational strategy, with you being responsible for setting strategy and communicating your vision to them.

Being the spokesman for the organization. You are the face of the organization! On a regular basis you should be meeting with partners, vendors, customers and others to communicate your vision for the organization, understand the impression they have with your organization, and determine how to better serve their needs. This helps you in developing an appropriate strategy for the business.

Serving on boards. Serve on boards — whether for private companies or non-profits. Share your knowledge, be seen and establish strong relationships with other business owners.

Keeping up to date with the industry. Regardless of your industry, there are always changes to keep up with. Keep up to date with what is happening in your industry and others through conferences and industry events. By understanding what is happening in your industry you are better positioned to be prepared for when changes occur without being in reactionary mode.

Finding partners for the business. You should be looking at ways to grow your business and continue to find ways to serve your customers. On a regular basis, be on the look for partners, vendors and others who can help you in this endeavor. You’ll meet potential partners in a variety of places, including Chamber meetings, networking at Vistage CEO meetings and through conferences and industry events.

Keeping tabs on the global economy and its effect on your business and strategy. In today’s world just knowing what is going on nationally is not sufficient. Every business — no matter how small — is impacted by the global economy. On a regular basis know what is going on in the world around you, and consider how it may impact your strategy and business plans. Certainly through Vistage, Chambers of Commerce and industry groups you’ll be able to share information with others and plan for managing your business in a global environment.

The bottom line: You must be focused on your business — its strategy, vision, growth potential, partnerships, and products and services offered to meet the customers’ needs. You can only do this effectively if you are working on the business and not in the business. You set strategy and provide the vision; tactical operations are the responsibility of your employees.

Gina Abudi is president of Abudi Consulting Group, LLC; providing strategy around projects, process, people and technology to businesses of all sizes. Gina can be reached via her website, www.AbudiConsulting.com.

Social Media for Business - How to Use It; Why You Can't Ignore It

This month, Vistage San Antonio will host Dave Nelsen.  Dave is president of Dialog Consulting in Pittsburgh. His expertise is in helping senior executives develop strategies to enhance the conversations with their most important internal and external customers using proven social marketing and internet communication tools. He is an experienced podcaster, blogger, tweeter, Facebook, and LinkedIn networker.

In this entertaining and cutting edge presentation, Dave Nelsen provides a clear roadmap for the rapidly evolving world of social media and social networking. Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and related services are changing the way the world communicates for personal and business. Nelsen explains the services, describes how and why to use them, and shares concrete examples of organizations creating new best practices for bi-directionally engaging customers.

Key issues covered include:

An overview of the important social media and social networking tools
The implications of transforming your communications "monologue" into "dialog"
Gaining visibility into what your customers and prospects are saying and thinking
The transformation of the web from "push" to "pull"

Members will leave an understanding of the transformative capabilities of social media and with tangible ideas to:
Improve sales using Linkedin and TweetDeck
Increase marketing effectiveness through Blogging and Facebook
Strengthen competitive advantage using Google and Twitter
Achieve better product design with interactive Podcasting and Ning
Realize higher customer satisfaction via GetSatisfaction
Improve internal communication using Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

4 Surprisingly Effective Things to Say

By Marla Tabaka via @inc

As the boss, you have to know it all and always be in the right. Wrong. Try these simple, yet powerful words to build trust and lead with integrity.

We all make mistakes, say the wrong things, and misjudge a situation from time to time. But not everyone will admit their errors, especially in a competitive environment.

Perhaps legendary leadership author and pastor John C. Maxwell said it best: "A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them."

I learned that very important lesson early in my career at NBC-TV.  As the assistant to the vice president of sales I reported to an amazing mentor who relied heavily on my judgment and diligence.  But on one occasion I had a terrible lapse in common sense and fell short of her expectations. I really screwed up.

Naturally, my boss was livid. She immediately called me on the carpet for my error in judgment. My defenses reared up; my fight or flight instinct screamed, "Fight to survive!" Thankfully, in a moment of sanity I took a more sensible approach. Here's what I said.

 I was wrong. I'm sorry. I know that I still have a lot to learn. Please let me fix it.

Apparently, this reply from a young, ambitious employee was far from expected. I will never forget the series of internal responses reflected in my boss's eyes:  surprise, confusion, acceptance, and something that may have been admiration. Whew! In that moment I knew I'd done exactly the right thing.

This experience taught me something I've carried with me through the years: a little honesty and humility go a long way in life.  It enriches relationships, prevents unnecessary confrontation, saves time, and builds trust. What could have destroyed my career instead earned the trust of a powerful and successful woman and opened the door to growth, learning, and many promotions over the years.

The next time your defenses are up you may find instant relief in one or more of these surprisingly effective, yet simple statements. Give it a try, the only thing you have to lose is a little ego!

I'm sorry.

A short and sweet apology lowers the levels of resistance and anger in the room. Diffuse the situation with these simple words. The conversation will become less stressful and a solution to your problem or challenge is more likely to surface.

I was wrong.

Admitting your mistake is cleansing. No need to defend yourself, no need to create a litany of excuses. How freeing! Admit it and correct it. It's that simple!

I need help.

Go ahead. Accept that you don't know it all. A great entrepreneur surrounds herself with people who know more than she does. Reach out to your army of supporters and save yourself a lot of frustration and time.

I don't know.

Do you think you have to have all the answers? Well, you're wrong. Even "experts" don't know it all.  Any true expert will tell you is that no one is expected to have all the answers. Let's face it, if we knew everything life would be boring! This is an opportunity learn and grow; something every entrepreneur loves to do!

Marla Tabaka is a small-business adviser who helps entrepreneurs around the globe grow their businesses well into the millions. She speaks widely on combining strategic and creative thinking for optimum success and happiness. @MarlaTabaka

7 Common Excuses That Prevent an Employee From Being Great

by John Hall

It’s usually easier to come up with an excuse than it is to actually get something done. I’ve learned that many employees have the potential to be great, but they let excuses get in the way of their true potential. As a leader, it’s important to address these excuses and challenge your employees to be better. Here are some excuses that send my “BS meter” off the charts.

You didn’t give me enough direction

This is a common excuse for people that are used to checking the answer in the back of the book. The best employees take initiative and require the least amount of direction. The best leaders don’t hold employees’ hands, and the best employees tend to execute well and ask for direction only when it’s necessary.

It’s another team member’s fault

In school, you didn’t fail to turn in a project just because you had a lazy group member. You picked up the slack. Do what you can to encourage that person to get the work done, and if that’s not possible (there are some really lazy people out there), do it yourself. Bottom line: The best employees simply get the job done.

It’s not possible

Very rarely do I come across something that isn’t possible. It just takes some critical or outside-the-box thinking. Great employees don’t give this excuse because they don’t give up when they hit a barrier. Sometimes the difference between “impossible” and “possible” is just an email, phone call, or Google search away.

It’s a common mistake

Some employees think mistakes like typos, grammatical and logistical errors, and email errors are okay because they’re so common. The best employees aren’t “common,” so don’t make “common” mistakes. It pays to double-check your work and make sure it rarely needs correcting. It will put you a step above the rest in a world full of people who are bad at spelling, forming complete sentences, and responding to emails coherently.

I need your resources

Often, employees rely on their leaders’ resources and network to complete tasks. A standout employee builds off her leader’s connections and establishes her own network. One of the most refreshing feelings for a leader is to see an employee form additional relationships that can help the company. It’s really a feather in the cap to know the employee you trained is successfully branching out and building valuable connections autonomously.

The client is unreasonable

There is no shortage of difficult people out there, so get used to dealing with them. An unreasonable client or partner shouldn’t mean you can’t accomplish your goals. Valuable employees find ways to deal with unreasonable people simply by forming a better relationship or providing value for the client to ease the unreasonableness. That said, sometimes people who are difficult to work with just need a swift kick in the pants (metaphorically speaking) to bring them back to earth.

I need more training

When an employee isn’t trained properly, it can result in disaster. All leaders should make an effort to effectively train their employees and have programs that ensure this. Unfortunately, training isn’t 100 percent perfect and some employees won’t be trained properly. Employees also have an obligation to learn on their own and actively try to make themselves better. If an employee isn’t properly trained, the standout employees will fill in the gaps themselves and reap the rewards associated with being awesome.

Once you hear these common excuses, it’s important to identify them and address them.  Challenging and supporting an employee is one of the best ways to decrease room for these excuses and allow your employees to become great assets for your company. So, even if you don’t have a good “BS meter,” you’ll be able to tell when your employees could be growing instead of consistently falling back when things get tough.

John Hall is the CEO of Digital Talent Agents, an agency that specializes in helping companies, entrepreneurs and business leaders build their brands by getting quality content published from them in reputable online publications that reach their target markets. Connect with him on Twitter or Google+.

Why Your Best Ideas Come In The Shower

@CEO.com

Being creative isn’t the same as being smart. The process our brains go through to generate new insights is quite different from when we’re solving analytical problems. You’re not just “born with it” either—the fascinating science behind creativity suggests very specific conditions can enliven your imagination.

In particular, research shows creativity spurs from three things:

• A lot of dopamine—Activities like taking a warm shower, listening to music, cooking and exercising releases dopamine in the brain.
• Relaxation—The dopamine triggers calmness and relaxation.
• Distraction—The relaxation disrupts the commotion in your head. As your subconscious is allowed to meander, it touches on new ideas and plants them into your conscious mind—the “light bulb” moment.

This creative cycle can be cultivated in the workplace. In the video below, columnist Sue Shellenbarger of The Wall Street Journal suggests lifting your spirits up and out of the cubicle by daydreaming or watching a funny video. The down time will pay off—especially during off-peak hours—because when you stop pushing your brain so hard, it has more freedom to explore new possibilities.

Consider these tips from Tor Myhren, President and Chief Creative Officer of the advertising firm that conceived the E*TRADE talking babies campaign. As someone who encourages creativity for a living, Myhren claims the trick to imaginative thinking is to prime your brain with a massive stimulus followed by solitary confinement.

“[Take] in as much information as possible throughout the day—reading magazines, watching films, etc.,” he says. “So you have all that information in your brain, sort of an information or inspiration overload, and then take that, spend some time by yourself, and really let it all come together.”

In a world so inundated with schedules and assignments, Myhren’s biggest advice for managers is to “give your people some time and nurture the creative environment around them.” Myhren does this by enforcing a no-meeting zone every Thursday from nine to noon. Everyone in the agency (including clients) abide by the rule, giving employees down time to brainstorm and recharge.

“You to have to let your mind wander a bit, like we did when we were children,” Myhren said. “We didn’t have all these other things on our mind, we didn’t have email to look at, we didn’t have social media to bring up every two seconds, and we just had time to think.”

Myhren’s workers are also rewarded for creative effort, whether or not their ideas take off or hit the wall.

“We actually have something called the “Heroic Failure” award,” Myhren says. “Whereas, I think a lot of places punish risk-taking, we actually reward it . . . So I think people feel much more comfortable in taking some chances and thinking differently.”

Handwritten Notes Are a Rare Commodity. They're Also More Important Than Ever.

by John Coleman via @harvardbiz

When I was a college student interning in Washington, D.C., a senior manager, Bridgett, made a habit of treating each intern to lunch over the summer. When my turn rolled around, it was no surprise that Bridgett proved an adept conversationalist and an excellent host.

Several weeks after I'd returned to college, however, I was surprised to find an envelope from Bridgett in my mailbox. It contained a handwritten note and a copy of Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners, a book she'd recommended over lunch. I barely knew Bridgett, but her note said that I'd helped her organization and that she appreciated it and wished me luck. It was a gesture that stayed with me and forever led me to view Bridgett as a thoughtful person.

Personal handwritten notes grow rarer by the day. According to the U.S. Postal Service's annual survey, the average home only received a personal letter once every seven weeks in 2010, down from once every two weeks in 1987. And The Wall Street Journal recently lamented the "lost art of the handwritten note." Some might claim that in a wired world — where emails, tweets, and text messages are more accessible than handwritten notes — this is the natural evolution of communication. Who has time for stamps, stationery, and "manual" spell-check, after all? But I think it's premature to write off the importance of handwritten notes. They remain impactful and unique in several ways.

For one, handwritten notes mean more because they cost more. Emails, tweets, texts, or Facebook messages are essentially costless. They're easy to write and free to send, and you and I produce hundreds of them every day. A recent study indicated the average corporate email account sent orreceived more than 100 emails per day (PDF), and Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 nowsend or receive nearly 100 texts per day.

These electronic communications are rarely notable. But handwritten notes are unusual. They take minutes (or hours) to draft, each word carefully chosen with no "undo" or "autocorrect" to fall back on. Drafting one involves selecting stationery, paying for stamps, and visiting a mailbox. They indicate investment, and that very costliness indicates value. If, as the U.S. Postal Service notes, we only receive a handwritten letter once every two months, each of those letters likely means more to us than the "cheaper" communication we receive each day.

That conveyance of value is amplified by the fact that personal messages are often notes of gratitude, civility, and appreciation that reach beyond the conventional thank-you. Robert Cialdini, in his classic work Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, profiled legendary car salesman Joe Girard. Perhaps the most successful salesman of his generation, Joe would send a handwritten message to all his clients once a month with simple messages printed inside like, "I like you." Joe believed these little notes were one of the reasons his clients stayed so loyal to him. Because handwritten notes are so painstakingly slow — to draft, to send, to assure delivery — they're often a poor way to ask for things. Instead, they're more frequently used to remind others that you value your relationship.

While saying "thank you" is important, the beauty of a well-crafted handwritten note is that it can show deeper investment and appreciation than a simple thank-you can. It can follow up on a conversation, remind someone they're not forgotten, raise new issues, or even include a gift, like Bridgett's, that carries its own meaning. And in a world where so much communication is merely utilitarian, these simple acts of investment, remembrance, gratitude, and appreciation can show the people who matter to your life and business that they are important to you.

As an added bonus, studies show that those who express gratitude also benefit by experiencing better health and sleep, less anxiety, and more life satisfaction. They benefit giver and receiver alike.

Finally, handwritten notes have permanence. How many of us have our old high school yearbooks in a closet somewhere? How many keep shoe boxes with old letters or short notes from former colleagues or friends? The last time I moved, I came across several boxes of correspondence I'd had over the years. Taking the time to read through some of them, I found the memories of my old friends and colleagues, and my gratitude for them was reinvigorated. Email is "permanent" in its own way; our electronic messages are easy to keep and search in huge volumes. But they aren't tangible and enduring in the same way those old notes are. We don't print emails and display them on our desks, refrigerators, and mantles they way we do with letters and notes from friends. The physical notes are more memorable.

It may seem nostalgic, but I still believe there's room for the handwritten note in personal and professional communication. They cost something, mean something, and have permanence in a way emails and text messages don't. They let the people in our lives know we appreciate them enough to do something as archaic as pausing for 15 minutes to put pen to paper in an attempt to connect and sustain a relationship with them. I still remember that note from Bridgett — and many others I've received over the years — and perhaps in writing personal notes to our friends and colleagues, we can reach out to others in a way that creates a lasting, positive connection.

How leaders spend their time tells staff what they value

By S. Chris Edmonds

When I ask senior leaders how they spend their time in their work environment, they report three things more frequently than any other activities.

• Meetings with direct reports.
• Evaluating and analyzing performance data.
• Addressing performance problems.

Certainly, these are important behaviors for senior leaders. But are these the most beneficial activities senior leaders can engage in? I don’t think so — and will explain in a few paragraphs why.

Why do senior leaders engage in these activities? My experience and research tells me that leader behaviors are driven by three factors: role models from their past, their social style or personality type, and the organization’s culture.

So senior leaders do meetings, analysis of data and address performance problems because they’ve seen those behaviors role modeled by others, the behaviors fit their social style, and the organizational culture reinforces those activities.

Another issue arises as we look at senior leaders’ activities. Their integrity is compromised when their activities — how they spend their time — are inconsistent with what they say is important in their workplace.

For example, senior leaders may say that “people are our most important asset,” yet choose not to delegate authority to team members to act independently in the moment. Senior leaders may say that they have an open-door policy yet spend so much time in meetings and problem-solving discussions that their door is closed or they’re not in their office when a staffer drops by.

In my studies of high performing, values-aligned organizations, a constant is that every senior leader sees his or her role as a “chief culture officer.” They allocate time and energy to proactively manage their most important asset — their corporate culture. Their plans, decisions, and actions are easily seen as being aligned to their stated responsibilities to ensure a safe, inspiring workplace for all.

These leaders take the time to define clear purpose, values, strategy and goals for their organization in today’s world, and they help communicate how staff members contribute to those vital elements.

These leaders invest time in observing by wandering around, connecting one-on-one with frontline team leaders and frontline employees and asking how things are going. “What can we do to make your job easier?” is a common question these leaders ask. As they learn about issues that get in the way, they address those gaps with help from those in-the-know” (frontline team members).

They observe team meetings at all levels of the organization to learn what’s working and what’s not. They praise progress as well as accomplishment — they know that too often effort is ignored.

They spend less time in meetings with direct reports and more time observing their direct reports on the job, helping them praise progress, celebrate traction and value citizenship in their functional groups.

They spend more time helping all leaders and managers learn to effectively address performance issues and misaligned values in their workplace.

On average, these inspiring senior leaders spend 60-70% of their time championing their desired organizational culture, and it pays off beautifully. Our culture clients report gains of 40% in employee engagement, 40% in customer service, and 30% in profits in 18 to 24 months of aligned effort.

What are your activities saying to your team members about what you value? How often do your senior leaders observe by wandering around and connect with you on how things are going? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

You Shouldn't Be Bored at a Board Meeting

BY TED WANG

Most entrepreneurs view board meetings as somewhere between a total waste of time and mildly annoying.  Outside board members are often similarly frustrated that they are unable to get the information and analysis they desire from these meetings. This shouldn’t be the case. Board meetings should be valuable for both management and outside board members. How can you make that happen?

Last year, I spent more than 600 hours in board meetings and have developed theories on how to make them more productive. For simplicity, I’ve created a series of “do’s” and “don’ts” for both management and board members.

Management dos

Tell a story with the board deck. A well-designed board deck should communicate how the company is doing and the core issues facing the company. The most common mistake I see are decks that are simply data dumps, a bunch of information without any analysis or coherence. For most companies the deck should be 12 to 15 slides. For complete financial statements or other more granular information, that can be put in an appendix that is distributed to the board members and discussed if requested.

• Send out the deck well in advance of the board meeting. You want your board members to read it beforehand, but it’s not reasonable to expect that if you provide it the evening before a meeting.
• Note variations from your plan and reasons why. It’s not uncommon to miss goals. The most important issue to explore is why you missed.  With lower than expected sales, there are a numerous causes: Is your sales team not that good? Are you not investing enough in marketing? Is your product not solving a painful enough problem for customers?  Is your product poorly designed or engineered?
• Keep the meeting on schedule. This can be difficult and you can’t be too rigid, but most board members have calendared an end time to your meeting. If a section runs over, you will have less time to cover other sections. Don’t be afraid say, “This is a good discussion, but we need to keep the meeting on time. We can follow up on this later.”  This can be particularly useful if the discussion has devolved.
• Keep a list of follow-up items for yourself (and the board members). Distribute the list afterwards so everyone is clear on next steps, then report on the status of those items at the next meeting.

Management don’ts

• Hide bad news. A board meeting is not a pep rally. If news is bad it will likely get worse. Far better to start discussing “issues” before they become problems or, worse, crises.
• Put information on slides you don’t want to discuss. If you put it on a slide, you should expect that board members might have questions about it.
•  Have every VP present at every meeting. You want to give your team members airtime with the board, but it is better to rotate them because there is typically not enough board level information to justify a report from each VP.
• Put the key points about the meeting in the first slide.  It starts a conversation on the most important issues without any context. Once that conversation starts, it’s difficult to stop it and creates a disjointed conversation that makes the remaining material seem irrelevant.
• Argue every point. There’s nothing wrong with healthy debate. It is a sign of a high functioning board. Ultimately, though, the CEO is charged with running the company. S/he will have to decide what course to chart. Better to listen to the feedback than fight over every point.

Outside board member dos

• Read the deck beforehand. It will permit you formulate questions beforehand to help sharpen the conversation.
• Challenge assumptions. The best board meeting questions introduce a new point of view. If sales are slower than projected has management considered whether they are investing adequately in marketing? A different perspective can be extremely valuable to entrepreneurs who are busy fighting in the trenches every day.
• Share industry benchmarks or best practices from other companies. It his very helpful to compare a problem the company is facing to a problem that has been encountered before. Surfacing past successes and failures is particularly useful.
• Keep your powder dry. Undoubtedly you have a lot of good suggestions to help the company, but management will not execute on all of them. The best board members pick two or three important points and focus their comments on those items.

Outside board member don’ts

• Rely on your own experience with the company’s product as a focus group of one.  Suggestions about the product based on your own use case are likely not helpful.  There are more statistically significant ways of acquiring user feedback.
• Repeat yourself. I often hear board members say, “I hate to repeat myself.” There’s no need for self-loathing. If you’ve made your point, everyone around the table has probably heard it. Perhaps a single reiteration is in order if you feel quite strongly, but beyond that, you are being a bore.
• Ask obvious questions. It just wastes time and tries people’s patience. For example, if the CEO says, “We’re trying to recruit this candidate but he really wants a high salary” a board member shouldn’t chime in with ”Did you try and sell him on the value of our options?” Assume that management has considered the most apparent tactics.
• Ask questions because you’re curious. There are busy people in the room who may not share your thirst for this particular bit of knowledge. If there’s something you would like to learn more about, write your question down and ask the CEO later.

Remember: Never lose sight that everyone attending a board meeting has the same objective – to help make the company successful.

A good way to structure the meeting is to divide it into three parts: progress reporting, strategic discussion and administrative items.

1. Progress Reporting – The objective of the “reporting” section is for management to tell the board how the company is performing. This is the meat of the meeting and is typically divided into three presentations: (a) key performance metrics, (b) functional areas of the company (e.g. marketing, engineering, and product), and (c) company finances.

It is critical for the company to have a plan of record against which performance can be measured. Many entrepreneurs are hesitant to create a board plan for fear that there will be repercussions if plan is missed. Having no plan means that the board will make their own decisions about how the company is performing and this is far worse. For early stage companies, more it is common to miss plan by wide margins and that’s to be expected, but for later stage companies more rigor on both the planning and execution side is expected.

For the functional areas, it’s a best practice to have one or two VPs report per board meeting so that there can be a deep dive into these areas. The CEO can then lead a brief review of the other areas. In these deeper dives: VPs should avoid a laundry list of accomplishments and focus on key issues:

• What are the key objectives for the year (and how are they doing against such objectives)?
• What are they doing differently than their competitors, prior companies or industry norms?

The board meeting is not a super-operating committee review in which tactical decisions are examined. It is a strategic session in which priorities and resource allocation against those priorities is assessed. Presentations should be geared to facilitate such a discussion.

For the financial reporting, as long as the company is burning the cash, the most important financial metric is: When does the company run out of money? It should always be reported. I suggest using awaterfall for cash burn as well as other key metrics. It is also important to establish consistency in both format and data presented. When metrics are changed again and again it makes it very difficult for the outside board members to understand how the company is doing.

Another best practice is a dashboard, which is a single slide that displays trends for a few key metrics. A good dashboard enables the board members to look at progress against these metrics over time and quickly get a sense of the company’s performance.

What is the point of all this reporting? First, it gives the board members a chance to help in a variety of ways:

• offering suggested approaches for problem solving,
• recognizing certain recurring patterns from prior experience,
• challenging key assumptions and
• making introductions to potential customers, partners or new hires

In order to do any of these things effectively board members need to be presented with a clear picture of what’s going on with the company.

Secondly, management is typically heads down fighting one fire after another in the hectic pace of startup life. Having a routine check up from people looking at the business from a higher level can help management identify issues that might be lost in the daily grind. Third, it allows a common understanding of the business that sets the stage for the next part of the meeting, the strategic discussion.

2. Strategic Discussion – Startup companies are continually facing critical strategic issues:

• Is now the time to start ramping up the sales force in order to gain market share?
• Will a partnership with a more established player solidify the company’s market position or will it consume company resources without delivering any real benefit?
• When is the right time to start the fundraising process?

The strategic discussion section of the board meeting provides an opportunity to discuss these important issues with the board. The goal of these conversations is not to arrive at a vote in which the board approves some key decision, but rather to seek input on the issues facing the business so that management can understand and benefit from the board’s collective experiences. Best practice in this area is to discuss one or two of these issues at each meeting as it is difficult to cover more.

3. Administrative Items – Administrative items are the things that the Board actually needs to vote on. I prefer beginning with the administrative section to get it out of the way quickly before people are tired and cranky. For early stage companies the items are typically limited to the approval of options and minutes.

For stock options, it’s important to have all of the relevant information for the board members to make the grants (e.g. fully diluted capitalization, number of shares left in the pool). I have a template slide for options here. When an unusually large option grant or one with a peculiar vesting schedule is coming up for approval, it shouldn’t be presented to the board for the first time in the meeting. It is far better to surface these items well in advance of the meeting to avoid a long debate during the meeting itself. This is a good model for any issue that is coming up for approval: provide adequate information for the board to make the decision and raise issues ahead of time to avoid surprises.

A properly structured board meeting enables management to get the most value from the board and gives the board members the ability to understand and provide assistance to the business. If you follow this structure and the dos and don’ts, you can ensure that nobody is bored at your board meeting.