Whole-Person Leadership

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How many times have you noticed that someone acts differently in "real life" than they do at work. What is it that let's us feel free to be who we are at home and with friends, but we feel we have to put up a front, or play the game, or just act differently when we are at work?

I was trying to seek answers, and read a recent article on "whole person leadership" by Jack Keogh, and he pointed out that it's about "finding mutual balance among family, community, work and our private selves.1 While I agree with that point, I also feel that there are sometimes people who feel balance in those areas, and yet still act differently at work than they do at home.

An experiment recently struck me while I was in my Leadership Coaching course at George Mason University (run by Philosophy IB). What if you were to think of everything as a stimulus-response scenario. Then you look at stimuli and your response to them in your home life, and then again in your work life.

For example:

• If you're faced with a stressful situation in both, do you react similarly?
• If someone challenges you in both locations, how do you handle it?
• Are you highly task oriented at work and more creative and playful with your kids at home?
• When you think about teaching your children something, is that different than how you try to interact with colleagues at work?

Maybe next time you seem to be struggling with a situation or decision at work, take a moment to step back and put on your filter of how you act at home. Maybe there's an answer there that you aren't thinking of.

Granted, all of this requires a high level of self-awareness in the first place, and that's an entirely separate topic. Maybe one for a future post...


Endnotes:
1. http://www.drivingstraight.com/Articles/Whole%20person%20leadership.pdf

Evaluating a New Offer

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Let's say you know you're potentially receiving an offer for employment. Most people wait until they receive the offer to start thinking about what to expect. Or at best, they think through their base salary plus an annual performance bonus.

In reality, there are a number of factors that could or should be included in an offer letter. Particularly as you move up in the ranks, there are more factors that are negotiable. Having an understanding of your current position on all these factors will help you better understand what you're looking for in your next position.

• Monetary Compensation:
• Base Salary - Also, note if it's paid bi-weekly or monthly.
• Annual Performance Bonus Potential
• Signing Bonus - Understand if there's a payback period - in other words will you have to pay it back if you leave within a specified period of time.
• Retention Bonus - If your signing bonus doesn't have a payback period, you may be able to negotiate a retention bonus (e.g., if I stay for 1 year, I get an additional bonus).
• Job Information:
• Job Title
• Grade Level - This isn't relevant for everyone, but is particularly relevant in federal government, or in some very large organizations.
• Supervisor
• Supervisory/Management responsibilities
• Budgetary responsibilities
• Office Location
• Non-Working Days:
• Holidays
• Leave Days
• Sick Days - This is only relevant if sick days are separate from leave
• Comp Time - This is time that you accrue based on extra worked hours outside normal working hours. Usually this category is no longer relevant as you move into managerial positions.
• Alternative Work Schedule Options
• Timeline:
• Start date
• Date that benefits kick in - Sometimes it's on day 1, and sometimes it's not until 30 days later.
• Contract length - If this is relevant, you'll need to include it in the offer letter. This could be relevant if you're in a temporary position that could turn permanent as well.
• Equipment:
• Desktop vs. Laptop
• Cell Phone - Do they provide one? Do they pay for the plan? Are there limits on the data and phone usage?
• Car - Rare, but some firms do have cars for executives.
• Additional Details:
• Performance Review Cycle
• Performance Review Criteria
• Training Opportunities / Expectations
• Travel/Commuting Reimbursement
• Tuition Assistance Program

And here's one that you'll need to think about the first time you enter into the ranks of around a Vice President position. You'll need to inquire about a guarantee of a severance package. If you haven't been a VP before, you may not even know to ask to have this in your offer letter.

I usually recommend creating a spreadsheet with all of these factors in rows. The next column should have information about your current position, and then subsequent columns can be used to evaluate one or more offers. That way you'll have a true picture of the components of an offer.

Here's a scenario to think about. Let's say you currently make $100,000, with a 10% performance bonus option. The new offer is for $110,000 plus a 5% performance bonus. Sounds better, right?

Now think about this. What if your current job has 9 holidays and 5 weeks vacation, and the new offer only has 7 holidays with 3 weeks vacation. In order to truly know if you're getting a better deal with the new offer, you need to monetize the days off that you're no longer getting.

If you monetize the days you work, assuming you take all your days off available, you can calculate your true earnings including: Base, Performance Bonus Potential, First Year Signing Bonus, and Monetized Value of Days Off. The total shows you're ahead by about $5k.

However, keep in mind this shows you a bottom line including your signing bonus that you'll only get that first year. Even if you took out that $5000, you would still be ahead, though by very little. Additionally, you'll want to add in how much you currently pay for various benefits, and how much the new offer would have you pay. If the new medical plan options are much more expensive, keep that in mind as you make your decision.

After all this analysis, don't forget to think about the intangibles! Work environment, type of work, clients you'd get to work with, etc. Sometimes that'll help you make the decision better than all the analysis in the world.

How to Approach a Virtual Interview

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Congrats!! You've secured an interview. But then you find out you'll need to do it virtually, because of the recent cutbacks in paying for candidate travel to the headquarters for interviews.

How can you set up yourself to make a strong impression despite your remote interview? Below are 6 areas to think about before you start a virtual interview.

1. Avoid background noise. Generally cell phones are not your best option here. If you can use a land line, you're much more likely to have less background noise that would distract the interviewer. Additionally, you'll want to find a closed room that will prevent any passers-by from adding to background noise.

2. Present yourself as though you're in an in-person interview.

• Sit up straight, shoulders back. I find many people tend to slouch more during virtual interviews.
• Don't fidget. This goes for in-person interviews too, and people often don't realize when they fidget. Again, don't distract the interviewer, and tapping a pen or rocking in a chair will do just that, and they will forget to listen to what you're saying.
• Wear a suit just as you would in the in-person interview. This means from your hair, down to your shoes. If you wear the right outfit, you're more likely to carry yourself and speak with the same conviction and credibility as though you were in person.

3. Think about your surroundings. Pick a neutral background that won't distract the interviewer. Imagine if you were watching a screen and you saw people walking by in the background. Your goal is for the interviewer to have 100% focus on you.

4. Prep your notes. As with any interview, you need to prepare your stories and thoughts so that you're ready for the interviewers questions. The plus to a virtual interview is that you can have your resume and notes laid out in front of you. Use that to your advantage!! However, remember the "don't fidget" comment in #2. If you flip through pages, and shuffle them around, that will distract the interviewer.

5. Have questions ready. Asking strong questions of your interviewer demonstrates the thought you put into the interview, and this goes for in-person or virtual interviews. Some of my favorite questions include:

• If you had 30-90 days to stop your day job and either fix something or create something new, what would that be?
• What is the one thing that may be a limiting factor in my candidacy for this position? (i.e., a position requires financial experience and you do not have it.)
• In a past relationship with a subordinate that you believed to be effective, what was that reporting relationship like? (this should illuminate the way the individual manages others without asking "what is your management style" because who in their right mind would tell you they were a micromanager outright?)

6. Take your time to respond. When you are not in person, it is much harder to get a good cadence for conversation with someone. Be careful not to interject "OK" or "yes" while they're speaking, or jump to answer too quickly. Wait for them to finish speaking or ask their questions before speaking. After they finish, pause for a second or two and then answer the question. This may take practice, and you could always ask a friend to do a mock interview with you over a virtual platform such as Skype.

When in doubt, think about the situation as though you were the interviewer. What would distract you? What would you want to see?