Categories
- 7 Habits
- Books and Audios
- Client Facilitation
- Customer Loyalty
- Executive Mama
- FranklinCovey News
- From the Desk of Stephen R. Covey
- Great Work, Great Career
- Leadership
- Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times
- The 4 Disciplines of Execution
- The 7 Habits
- The Leader In Me
- The Speed of Trust
- Transformational Change
Link to us
FranklinCovey Blog | November, 2009
Building Trust
I was in a meeting earlier this week with 20 people from around the world and the strangest feeling came over me. I trusted everyone in the room—their intent, their integrity, and their ability to deliver.
Maybe this happens to you all the time. Maybe if I were quicker to extend trust it would happen more often to me. But as it currently stands, sometimes I feel like I don’t know enough about a person—their character and competence—to trust. Sometimes a person has behaved in ways that have broken trust. Regardless, it is rare for me to trust an entire room full of people. And it felt great! You’ll laugh, but I felt tears spring to my eyes when I thought about it. It didn’t mean I agreed with them on everything or that the meeting was easy, but things were easier to achieve because I assumed good intent.
I had worked with everyone in that room for at least three years and with some for over a decade. I trusted them because they had kept commitments, they had talked to me straight, and they all delivered results. Does this happen to you often? Or never? What else builds trust for Executive Mamas?
Author: Jennifer Colosimo, Vice President of Sales and Delivery Effectiveness at FranklinCovey
Great Work Great Career – Complimentary Webcast
When we say that a person has had a great career, what do we mean? That he or she made a lot of money? Moved spectacularly up the corporate ladder? Became famous or renowned in their profession?
And what about you? Are you looking forward to a great career? Would you describe your current career as “great”?
How do you create a great career for yourself? Can you have a great career and still have a great life at the same time, keeping the things you love – family, friends, work, and play – all in balance?
The answer is, “It depends.” It depends on how you want to contribute and how you define balance.
Based on content featured in the soon to be released book Great Work, Great Career, by Dr. Stephen R. Covey and Jennifer Colosimo, in this webcast Jennifer will share critical, insightful principles and practices to help you discover your great career by discovering what your contribution will be and how you will make it.
Specifically in this free webcast you will learn:
- How to begin identify your strengths, as summed up by your talents, passion, and conscience.
- Tips on how to craft a Contribution Statement.
- How to use your resourcefulness and initiative to get the job you want and overcome obstacles to making your contribution.
- How to create a network of supporters, both co-workers and clients—who can help you achieve your career goals.
When: Friday, November 20, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. CT/11:00 a.m. MT/10:00 a.m. PT
Cost: Complimentary
Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/198135273
Source Code: GCCB
Please join us, we would love to have you attend.
Doing More with Less
Does this sound familiar…
“I work at a Fortune 500 company. Each year we have layoffs so more work is given to each of us; no pay increase. This additional work adds 5-10 hours per week. Last year I averaged 60-70 per week and am working more this year.”
“I have worked in Manufacturing for nearly 30 years. Our plant had 4000 employees when I started. Today we have 187 people left, 72 of them are on the executive team. We are expected to come to work an hour early, work through lunch and stay two hours late everyday.”
“I work as a Web Producer for a publishing company. Over the past 6mo. they’ve laid off 50% of our staff. . . . So, now we’re stuck with a limited staff, each one doing 2-3 times as much work, most of which we’re not qualified or experienced in.”
These actual postings from www.cnn.money illustrate one of the key hazards of these unpredictable times: Trying to do more with less. Of course, the concept is a virtuous one—everyone wants to get more return from fewer resources. That’s what productivity is all about.
But real people are paying a real price for unintelligent application of this principle.
The problem is too many companies lay people off and then expect the survivors to pick up the slack, doing two or three jobs at once. The obvious downside is spikes in stress, burnout, quality problems, and disengagement. You can’t expect overwhelmed people to do quality work or to get engaged in what they’re doing.
Everyone wants to do more with less. But the real question is “more of what”? More of the same? Or more of the kind of work that your customers really value?
In our recent book we focus hard on this question. The turmoil we live in is displacing workers in unprecedented ways, and companies are paying a heavy price for mindlessly shedding numbers without re-thinking the business model. Service levels drop, quality plummets, and revenues slide.
On an airliner, serving peanuts to everyone might be in the flight attendant’s job description. But in turbulent air, you really don’t care if the flight attendant does that job. It’s not as important as caring for the safety and well-being of the passengers. Maybe you can do without serving peanuts for a while.
Isn’t it time to stop asking people to do the impossible by trying to work two or three jobs at once? Isn’t it time to push the re-set button and ask what work really adds value and forget the rest?
We’d like to hear from you. Are you trying to do “more with less”? Are you like the people we’ve quoted above? Or are you doing more of what really matters and less of what doesn’t?