The only thing I would add to Jessica’s great post is:

Share your intention

By sharing your intention I don’t mean sharing the outcome that you want for you, rather the intention you have for the other person in receiving the feedback.  What’s in it for them?  Do you want them to have stronger relationships with peers?  Do you want them to be seen as a credible and reliable resource?  What is the outcome you want them to receive as a result of your feedback?  Now share your intention at the very beginning of your feedback and notice how the other person responds to your message.

I would love leadership concepts to really stick for you and if you want that too, check out more of Jessica Hagy’s blog.

Frank took a crazy idea and put it out into the world.  Today he provides a place for people to anonymously and publicly share their secrets and creates a safe place for them.  It gives us all an opportunity to witness the vulnerability of others and not feel alone ourselves with our own secrets.

The secrets are fun, touching, life changing, shocking and everything else imaginable.  The impact created has been inspiration for others to do so many amazing things.  Many Frank will never know.

What ideas are you sitting on?  What impact is the world missing while you wait?

Top talent leave an organization when they’re badly managed and the organization is confusing and uninspiring. ~ Erika Anderson

Great!  Now we know what to focus on in one nice tidy package.   Everything you do to increase retention should be focused on addressing this one key point.  Here are some strategies to get you moving on increasing your talent retention.

Culture

It all begins with culture.  What are your company values?  Does everyone, and I mean everyone, understand the definition of you’re your company values and how they translate to their roles and the company objectives?  Words aren’t enough, they have to be understood at a deep level.  Aside from making money, what vision is your company fulfilling?  How are you inspiring others to follow that passion and vision?  This work starts with your senior leadership and once your company values and vision are deeply understood, are your senior leaders walking the talk? What about your mid-level managers and your team leads?  Accountability needs to be built into ensuring your culture is consistent at all levels of the organization and especially when the stakes are high.

Selection

Now that we know what your company culture is, look at how you’re selecting the right people into the organization; these are your future leaders after all.  A recruitment strategy that not only selects the right people but one that also ensures they are placed in the roles that take advantage of their key strengths.  When you make a poor hiring decision, make a quick decision to correct the problem to ensure you have only the best-aligned people on your teams.

Communication & Conflict

Developing the key skills of communication and conflict management for all of your employees will ensure that everyone plays a role in clear and consistent communication and effective conflict management.  Employee engagement surveys inside companies often yield communication as the number one issue that organizations need to work on, so work on developing the capacity with everyone in your organization.  Maintain two-way communication by regularly surveying your employees to keep a pulse on what’s happening in the organization and do something about the issues you uncover.  Ensure your communications reflect your culture and embody your organization values.

Leadership Development

Create a succession development program for your organization that ties into your company culture and start developing leaders prior to promotion.  Before promoting leaders, get to know their career aspirations and find out if they even want to move into leadership.  Once in leadership, continue to develop leaders and start measuring their leadership to build accountability in this key area.  You may not be able to measure leadership with hard numbers and yet it can still be measured and leaders can still be held accountable for maintaining great leadership.  Create mechanisms for upward appraisals since you don’t know what you don’t know and if employees don’t have a way to tell you they have a terrible manager, they’ll just leave.  Handle any poor performing leaders as you would any other poor performer – tackle the issue head on.

Taking a strategic approach and addressing these key areas will ensure you are well on your way to becoming the organization that top talent craves to work for.

Their inspiring workshop will help you improve your confidence to accelerate your career or business, show you how to command respect from your first impression, get you showing up authentically with style, comfort and credibility, and develop clarity in solid career acceleration strategies for 2012.  For more information on the workshop check visit http://www.theshatteredceiling.com/Events.html

The afternoon Summit features the Top 100 winning inspirational women as panelist in Breakout Sessions to get direct access to learn and network with these great women.  Wow!  The evening Gala celebrates the award winners in Western Canada and a keynote by Moira Forbes on the “Power of Connected Leadership”

I’ll be there and hope to see you there too … get more info and check out the great Top 100 Award winners at http://www.top100women.ca/?w=top100.calgary

So… I got thinking about celebration and how often I see clients and other wonderful people in my life reaching great accomplishments big and small and then moving right on to the next thing without acknowledging their achievement.

1. Celebration doesn’t have to be big… it has to be acknowledgement
2. Take in learnings that got you there and you’ll have the energy wisdom and confidence to take with you into the next challenge.
3. Live in the moment rather than for tomorrow.  Ignoring celebration moments robs you of the precious moment you’re living in today.
4. Acknowledging your successes builds your self awareness and self confidence.
5. Its just plain fun when you get the hang of it – live a little!

So HAZZAH!  You made it through January… I’m off to Mexico to go celebrate :)

One day while enjoying the great outdoors, Sam witnessed an eagle as it swooped down suddenly and then immediately rose into the sky with an unsuspecting prey in its talons.  Suddenly, the eagle fell from the sky, thrashing about as it sped toward the ground.  Curious about what he had seen, Sam hiked to the spot where the eagle had landed.  Coming upon the scene, he discovered the eagle dead, with its chest ripped open.  Locked in his talons was a weasel that decided to fight back. Using its sharp claws the weasel attacked its captor.  Both fell to their death. 

In commenting about the scene, Sam said “Stupid eagle.  Why didn’t it just let go of the weasel?”  In response to Sam’s account, my friend said to him, “Sam, you are the eagle.”  Sam had been struggling for many months with bitterness over a family break-up.  The story served as a riveting reminder of the foolishness of holding on to disappointment, conflict and anger.  For many, holiday celebrations are convoluted by conflict, poisoned by past hurts, and ruined by unresolved regret.

Today I am wishing you a very Merry Christmas full of laughter, joy, letting go, moving on and living in the moment.

BIG HUGS and Merry HO HO HO!

Several years ago I found myself in a job I hated and didn’t want anymore.  I felt really stuck and each time my pager would go off at 3am, I found myself digging deeper into the dread of having to deal with resolving yet another IT network problem.  I had no passion for my work and it was eating away at my soul.  So I got thinking about… “If not this, then WHAT?”.  The thought of doing something different was almost too big and hard to bear, so I put off looking the problem in the face for a long time.

Each time I dreaded my job, I took baby steps and started looking around and talking to people about what my options might be.  The more I looked around, the more I learned and the easier it became to look around.  I went down the road of exploring a health care career and hit lots of brick walls along the way.  Today, I see that was life telling me it wasn’t the right path for me.  Thanks!  Discouraged, I thought that I would be stuck in IT for the rest of my life and yet kept looking around.

Continuing to look and talk, I discovered what I loved about my old career and what was missing that I needed to have in my future career.  This led me to Human Resources and helped me make the brave decision to quit my full time great paying career to go back to school full time.  Going back to school was super scary and was very hard at times.  The hardest part for me wasn’t quitting my job, nor was it the homework, the long hours, the studying, missing a trip to Brazil with my husband and other sacrifices we made along the way.  Those things were all hard and yet the hardest part was the fear of failing and letting go of that part of my ego to make room for my opportunities!

Taking those long hard looks allowed me to make the right choices back then and set me up to make ongoing choices to help refine my career direction and what I want in my life.  I was able to look past the fear and do it anyways.  Looking back, I now know making the change and taking the hard but short road has made all the difference.  I’m glad I looked again, and again, AND again until I had the courage to move forward.

You see, there is nothing I get greater joy out of than supporting the growth and development of someone else, especially when it comes to their confidence.  I can’t take the credit for the changes my client has undergone, I just pushed him where he wanted to go and when he wasn’t sure he could make it.  I wouldn’t let him cheat himself out of what he wanted.  He was super brave and went for it and I cheered him along the way by showing him the progress.  I’m so proud of him and can envision the strength he brings to his work and personal relationships.  I know that he’s going to get the success in life he desires because he’s doing the hard work on his own today and having difficult conversations with humility and confidence.  Wow.

Here are some of the great lessons my client shared with me:

• Plan your direction in life and you’ll reach it
• Have difficult conversations, they’re worth the work
• Stand up for yourself, you’re important
• Saying “no” without guilt creates stronger relationships
• Good things come to those who actively pursue, NOT those who wait
• Sharing joy is both vulnerable and humble
• You have a huge impact by sharing someone’s positive impact with them

In the end, my dear client joked about the length of his letter and told me how important the length was to convey his thoughts about our time together.  I am so very thankful and will be saving his thoughtful note for a long time.

In writing this post, I’m remembering a time when I sent a letter to a colleague thanking her for all the positive things she brought to my life.  She later told me that it made her cry because she was touched and didn’t realize that she had that kind of impact.  I think I’m going to choose someone today to write another letter about the positive impacts they’ve had on me.

Who do you want to tell about the impact they’ve had on you?

Yesterday, I had lunch with my new mentor and was delighted with our first meeting.  I was so surprised as how seriously he took our new relationship.  He had gone through information on mentoring he already had, taken a trip to the book store to review books on mentoring and made a bunch of notes for our first meeting.  I have to say, it was humbling to feel so important with someone who really doesn’t know me that well yet and is volunteering to mentor me.

It was a hard thing to ask for, a mentor.  It all came from meeting with my mentor a few times before starting with an information meeting just over a year and a half ago.  Right away he struck me as a no nonsense, knowledgeable, honest and very kind person.  Having met me that one time, he put his neck out and made a few great introductions for me.  Later, I had the opportunity to connect with him again at some professional events and a couple of months ago met him for coffee to reconnect.  It was in that meeting that I realized that this was just the person I needed in connect with regularly to learn more, challenge my perspectives, support me, and share some of his great knowledge.  So, I swallowed my pride and asked.  I was surprised and so happy when he said yes.

For me, asking him to mentor me didn’t come out as “would you consider being my mentor”.  Instead it sounded more like, “I really need conversations and support like this and I’m wondering if you’d be up for doing this regularly”.  I swear I’m such a girl and could feel the emotions welling up in me as the words left my mouth.  It’s very hard for me to ask for help since I often see myself as the one who helps others.  I asked because I know that I’m really like everyone else and need growth, support, and help too.

So in our meeting yesterday he asked me “Why choose me as your mentor?”.    Being an independent consultant and coach can be a lonely world.  I don’t have a boss, I don’t have coworkers the same as employees internally in an organization would.  I have great colleagues and it’s different.  I know it’s important to keep up with my professional development and at this point I feel a mentor is just what I need.  Why this mentor?  Well the same reasons I was drawn to him in our first meeting.  He is no nonsense, knowledgeable, honest, very kind, challenging, and super personable.  I have a great deal of respect for him and yet I don’t want to impress him, just be myself and learn from him and be accountable to us both.  Very important qualities for me.  When I asked him why he agreed to mentor me, I was surprised that he acknowledged that it took a lot of gumption to ask and that there were skills that I had that he would like to learn more about too.

Our first meeting, we spent a lot of time getting to know one another better and I learned some fun things about what my mentor does away from work and what makes him unique.  He also asked about my family and about my career up until today.  We talked about how we want to structure our relationship, how often we want to meet and what I want to get out of mentoring.  I have loads to think about and set an agenda for our next meeting that we’ve already booked for next month.

Do you have a mentor?  How might a mentor help you?

Is it hard to ask for help?  How would you ask a mentor to mentor you?

If you were to ask someone today to mentor you, who would you ask?

What’s stopping you?