Category Archives: Employability Skills

Options For The What Really Matters For Young Professionals! Online Course

The What Really Matters For Young Professionals! Online Course is a 16 lesson program that takes the content of the book to the next level. Each lesson is designed to take between 10 to 30 minutes to complete and is delivered directly to your email inbox.
Links to materials that can be then downloaded and used over and over again, as well as presentations and short videos are included in the lessons.

I recommend that you create a special email folder for the course so that you can refer to the lessons again and again.

While the content for the course is exactly the same, three different course durations are on offer. You simply choose the duration that best fits your situation. You can even purchase the course for a family member or friend – I bet that you have never thought that personal and professional development could be offered as a gift! Who knows, with Xmas around the corner this might be the perfect and unique gift that you could give someone. More information regarding the course is available here.

The three course options are:

  1. 16 lessons in 16 days – click here to order
  2. 16 lessons in 48 days (just under seven days with each course delivered every third day) – click here to order
  3. 16 lessons in 16 weeks – click here to order

In summary you get:

  • An online course delivered directly to your email inbox
  • A free ebook version of What Really Matters For Young professionals!
  • Choice over the timeframes for the course
  • Information in various forms of media to take your understanding of the book’s contents to the next level
  • Access to a range of exclusive downloadable forms, presentations and videos that are only available through the course
  • Ability to revisit the course materials as many times as you wish

All of this for just AUS$99.

Please feel free to email me at Gary@orgsthatmatter.com if you require more information.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Leadership Insights Series – Cecilia Chan The LiTMUS Group

In the second of our Leadership Insights Series webinar recordings, Gary Ryan interviews Cecilia Chan, a young professional experienced in providing consulting services related to business process management, process design and analysis, process simulation and enterprise architecture.

In this 30 minute webinar you will learn about Cecilia’s strategies to progress her career throughout her first five years of employment. You will also learn about the benefits that volunteering provided Cecilia in enabling her to initially break into the workforce, as well as the benefits that can be gained from being a pro-active networker.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Understanding employability skills

In this webinar recording Gary Ryan explains the research that underpins employability skills, what each employability skill actually means, and how to capture your own stories for each of the skills.
Duration 45 minutes.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Service excellence guides resource allocation

Organisations that are clear about meeting and exceeding the expectations of their customers are also clear about where resources should be allocated. Maybe your organisation has discovered that it has a serious Service Delivery Gap. Where would you allocate resources if you discovered such a gap?

Clearly there is more than one answer to this question and the actions that may be taken and the resulting allocation of resources will be guided by the organisations overall business strategy and the level of importance of closing the Service Delivery Gap in the short term. In this example there may not be a long term future for the organisation if it does not address the short term Service Delivery Gap. In this context, a service focus enables short term decisions to be made in the context of achieving the organisation’s long term desired future.

Quote from a research participant
We’re a small operation. Just three of us operate the store. We know everyone who works on the larger site; it’s like we are one community. Rather than spend our money on marketing pamphlets etc we hired a student to work in the store with us. We targeted one who was well connected within the community. It’s amazing how much business she has brought in. It’s the smartest money we have ever spent and all our jobs are just that little bit more secure!

What are your experiences regarding organisational resource allocations?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

How ‘Leadership moments’ can develop your capacity to lead

Recently in the article How ‘aware’ are you? I explained that awareness is a characteristic of Servant Leadership. Another benefit of being ‘aware’ is that it opens up the opportunities for you to develop your capacity to lead.

It is my view that too many people see leadership as only being in the realm of formal roles. In that context, many people don’t see themselves as leaders nor their own capacity to lead because they have never held a ‘formal’ leadership role. Of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and people who have this view of the world and themselves rarely become formal leaders.

I would also argue that these people also miss opportunities to ‘lead’ when ‘leadership moments’ arise. Proimarily because they just don’t see them.

What are, ‘Leadership moments’?

To me, a leadership moment is any time that a set of circumstances arise that are quietly asking, or sometimes screaming for someone to take action. Just today at my eldest son’s Under 10s football match a barbeque had been prepared by two of the parents at the conclusion of the game. Quickly a line formed as the children, their parents and family members queued for some food. One of the ‘cooks’ was called away due to an urgent issue. Suddenly there was only one person trying to cook and serve food. The ‘Leadership moment’, while only ‘visible’ to some appeared. What do you think that ‘Leadership moment’ was? Not everyone noticed. Would have you? Even if you did notice the opportunity, what would have done?

Stepping out of the queue and helping to cook the barbeque, or at least asking if this action would be helpful, was what this moment was asking to be done.

‘Leadership moments’ call for someone to take action. Strangely, this can also mean that you consciously choose not to take action (see How doing nothing can be an example of leadership).

Other examples of ‘Leadership moments’ include:
You may be at work with a colleague who has a presentation and they are expressing their concerns about the presentation to you. They express that they don’t think they are ‘up to it’ and you would do a far better job than them. Either you can be ‘caught’ in their negative self-talk or you can remind them of the good job that they have done in the past and support them through their presentation, and then remind them at the end that they had not only survived but done a great job. In this example it might be easier to do the presentation for them, but would that really help them in their development?

You might be in the foyer of your office building and you see someone who looks lost. What do you do?

You are out with your friends and you can see that one of them is drinking too much and is getting a bit rowdy. What do you do?

I am not suggesting that you should take action on every ‘Leadership moment’ that presents itself to you. That might in fact be selfish (others need to be able to take opportunities to develop too). I am saying that if you consciously raise your awareness of the ‘Leadership moments’ that are around you, and then you consciously decide to take action or consciously decide not to take action, both can be examples of developing your leadership.

After all, participants in the leadership programs that I facilitate often nominate helping, guiding, taking action. foresight etc. as characteristics of leadership.

What are your examples of ‘Leadership moments’? How have they helped you to develop?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

OTM Service Strategy TM

Over many years we have experimented and developed our own model for service excellence. Our model includes six re-enforcing elements. Like any re-enforcing model, when performed correctly the model creates a virtuous cycle (things get better and better).

On the flip side, if any of the elements are missing or not performed correctly, the model generates a vicious cycle, that is things get worse and worse.

The six elements of our model include Understanding Expectations, Service Standards, Develop & Recruit, Listen, Measure & Respond and Recognise, Reward & Celebrate. Each element includes a series of sub-elements, the contents of which provide the detail for implementing each of the six core elements.

At the highest level the model itself is a story.

In order to best serve your customers you need to understand their expectations. Once their expectations are understood the organisation can create appropriate service standards that will give the organisations the best possible chance to meet and/or exceed the expectations of its customers.

Existing staff need to be developed so that they have the capacity to meet/exceed customer expectations and the organisations recruitment processes musty give it the best possible chance to attract appropriate people to the organisation.

Everyone must listen. Management need to listen to staff, staff to management, everyone to their stakeholders, colleague to colleague, department to department and everyone to their customers.

The organisation must then be able to measure how it is performing against its service standards and be able to swiftly respond if it discovers that it is off course.

Finally, the organisation as a whole must be excellent at recognising, rewarding and celebrating great service. A culture that celebrates great service will re-enforce the importance of understanding expectations and the cycle continues.

The OTM Service Strategy is supported by a 50 point assessment tool that can be used to asses an organisation’s current practice of service excellence.

Please feel free to comment on this article or to share your approach to providing service excellence on a consistent basis.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Are you prepared to be vulnerable?

Over the past few weeks I have conducted a number of teamwork programs. One of the activities that I enjoy facilitating is asking the participants to form small groups and to identify the characteristics of the effective and ineffective teams of which they have been members.

Examples can from from any team experience and I encourage participants to broader their thinking about their definition of a ‘team’. Some examples of this definition include:

  • A workplace
  • A family
  • A university study group
  • A sporting team
  • A community group
  • Travelling with friends or family

After providing the participants with enough time to share their stories, I collect the results.

An interesting characteristic that always comes up for effective teams is trust. Similarly, a lack of trust is always raised as a characteristic of ineffective teams.

Trust. Easy to say. Hard to give.

Why? It is my view that trust involves a willingness to be vulnerable. In a team concept, to trust your team members means that you have faith that they will do what they say they will do to the best of their ability. When I ask program participants to describe what it was like to be trusted, they say things like:

“He never looked over my shoulder. Even though it was the first time I was doing this task, he asked if I needed any further help and I said that I didn’t. He told me that I could contact him at any stage if my circumstances changed. If I were him I’m not sure that I could have trusted me like he did. And that was special. I think I actually did the job better because I was trusted. I found it really motivating.”

“She was the leader, there was no question about that. But when we allocated tasks and she was clear that we understood what needed to be done, she let us ‘go for it’. Her door was always open and we knew that, and from time to time we would go to her for assistance, either physically or via email or on the phone. She was always available when we needed her. But she never, ever behaved like she didn’t trust us. It never felt like she was looking over our shoulder making sure we did it exactly how she would. And this was an important project. And we knew that, and we respected that. That’s why we created such a wonderful result. We were a real team and she trusted us!”

You can’t fake trust. It is either genuine, or it isn’t. In today’s complex world it is nearly impossible to ‘go it alone’. Leaders have to trust their team members to do their job, even if the leader could do parts of the job ‘better’ on their own.

To trust, however, requires the leader to be okay with being vulnerable. Trust can’t be broken if it isn’t given. So, by nature genuinely trusting someone means that you are prepared for the possibility that they might break your trust, which in turn makes you vulnerable.

In our world of accountability and responsibility, trust can become very hard to ‘give’. If I’m the leader, the ‘buck stops with me.’ If this project fails, then it’s my fault. It’s complex, isn’t it.

I doubt there is any golden rule with regard to trust. I am a trusting person, but I am not prepared to trust ‘just anyone’. I use all my ‘three brains’ (I’ll explain what that term means in a future blog) to determine whether I will trust someone or not.

Each time I trust someone I am conscious of the choice that I have just made. Trust is behavioural, so saying, “I trust you” means nothing, if (in a work example) all I do is look over your shoulder every step of the way. Being prepared to be vulnerable is a tension leaders have to grapple with.

Are you prepared top be vulnerable?

What are your experiences of trust both as a team member and as a leader?

How have you managed the ‘vulnerability’ tension?

The chances are that if trust is not present then high performance will be a long way away. So what is the bigger risk, the preparedness to be vulnerable or the preparedness to under-perform?

Please share your experiences, thoughts and comments.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Free ebook – What Really Matters! Volume 2, Number 2, 2010

My 6th ebook, What Really Matters! Volume 2, Number 2, 2010 has just been released.

The focus of this ebook is personal and professional development.

Lessons include:

  • Why maintaining your integrity in business is important
  • Why service excellence is important and how to provide it
  • How to motivate your team members
  • Identifying and understanding service gaps
  • How team talk aids in performance
  • and much more!

Developing the skills outlined in this book will enhance your employability.

You can access the ebook and other free resources here.

Please share any thoughts that you have regarding the topics that should be included in the next ebook in this series, due for release on October 2010.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Free Group-Work Course for University Students

Many university students have recently re-commenced their studies. In this context this short online course (that includes no homework!) is perfect timing to ensure that you make the most of this semester.

Students report that university group-work is one of their most dreaded experiences at university. Yet employers highly value university group-work because it is where students have to learn how to work with different people, just like in the ‘real world’.

This free two week introductory course will ensure that you give your university groups the best chance to achieve the success you desire. You will also learn how to ask some critical questions that will help your team to be successful. These questions are not unique to student groups – which is why they are so useful to master while you are a student!

Click here for more information.

Please share your experiences of putting the lessons from the course into practice.

This course includes access to a free ebook titled Teamwork For University Students.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com