Category: Leadership

Remember the time when we were kids and used to dream about becoming a pilot, doctor, actor, and other things without really knowing what it takes to pursue these professions? Well, if there’s one thing life has taught us that is to dream big but also seek tools and information to achieve those goals. It’s okay not immediately know your career progression but it is crucial to explore your options and plan your future.

How to make a career plan?

MIT lists steps to an effective career plan which encapsulates both long-term and short-term goals:

1. Identify Your Options. Develop a refined list of career options by examining your interests, skills, and values through self-assessment. Narrow your career options by reviewing career information, researching companies, and talking to professionals in the field. You can further narrow your list when you take part in experiences such as shadowing, volunteering, and internships.
2. Prioritize. It’s not enough to list options. You must prioritize. What are your top skills? What interests you the most? What’s most important to you? Whether it’s intellectually challenging work, family-friendly benefits, the right location, or a big paycheck, it helps to know what matters to you — and what’s a deal-breaker. We provide skills and values assessments–set up an appointment with a Career Advisor to take advantage of this service.
3. Make Comparisons. Compare your most promising career options against your list of prioritized skills, interests, and values.
4. Consider Other Factors. You should consider factors beyond personal preferences. What is the current demand for this field? If the demand is low or entry is difficult, are you comfortable with risk? What qualifications are required to enter the field? Will it require additional education or training? How will selecting this option to affect you and others in your life? Gather advice from friends, colleagues, and family members. Consider potential outcomes and barriers for each of your final options.
5. Make a Choice. Choose the career paths that are best for you. How many paths you choose depends upon your situation and comfort level. If you’re early in your planning, then identifying multiple options may be best. You may want several paths to increase the number of potential opportunities. Conversely, narrowing to one or two options may better focus your job search or graduate school applications.
6. Set “SMART” Goals. Now that you’ve identified your career options, develop an action plan to implement this decision. Identify specific, time-bound goals and steps to accomplish your plan. Set short-term goals (to be achieved in one year or less) and long-term goals (to be achieved in one to five years).
7. Create Your Action Plan. It’s important to be realistic about expectations and timelines. Write down specific action steps to take to achieve your goals and help yourself stay organized. Check them off as you complete them, but feel free to amend your action plan as needed. Your goals and priorities may change, and that’s perfectly okay.

What is the It’s Your Career course all about?

Your career is not something happening in the distance—it’s not about creating a ten-year plan and then progressing up the ladder until a certain job title is reached. Your career is happening right now, and employees are taking a shorter-term view of career development. Instead of waiting to be satisfied by professional development milestones set for the future, they want to be satisfied today and tomorrow with the work they do. And they need to be prepared for the fact that their career will likely be disrupted by the change they can’t avoid or by the life choices they make. Our approach to career development centers around an approach that supports career exploration today, encourages planning for tomorrow and anticipates the unexpected—what’s now. what’s next. what if.

Outcomes:

• Reflect on their identity—who they are, what’s important to them, what they are good at, and what they like to do
• Explore their reputation—how others perceive them and the impact of their reputation on the work they are attracting
• Develop actions for minimizing the disconnect between identity and reputation
• Establish goals and create actions plans
• Think about the concept of community—how supporting others can be mutually beneficial in career and in life
• Prepare for career disruptions—unintentional or intentional—with coping strategies and concrete steps that reinforce a focus on skills and experience

Conclusion:

Conversations regarding career growth and plans can often be intimidating. Don’t let the fear of the unknown hamper your professional growth. Build your own career trajectory, make your own growth map, and track your own success to know your strengths and weaknesses.

The It’s Your Career course can help you evaluate your goals, seek ways to achieve them, prepare for contingencies, create action plans for your career ahead, and much more. If you need a helping hand to help clear the haze and to push you to make decisions in the right direction, this course is perfect for you.

To enroll, contact P2L today!

Most people associate bad experiences with career conversations. Ever thought why is that the case? Could it be that they’re scared to bring it up with their manager? Perhaps they don’t know who is the right person to have these conversations with? Or that they’re demotivated to even try?

Most employees feel that their performance review or appraisal meetings are the only times they should have career conversations but that’s not true. Waiting around for a year is like missing out on some major opportunities. Wondering what are some tips to have effective career conversations? We’ve got you.

Tips for Holding a Great Career Conversation

As per Antoinette Oglethorpe, here are some good characteristics of positive career conversations:

1) Not necessarily with “the boss”

When it comes to who has the most effective career conversations, the consistent view is that it’s not necessarily the boss.  The fundamental priority is the person is objective, has the best interests of the individual at heart, and has no underlying agenda.  And for all those reasons, this makes your career conversations can be difficult for the immediate line manager.  Eventually, career conversations need to occur between employees and their managers, but that might be the place to finish rather than start the conversation.

2) Often take place informally

Good career conversations often take place outside any formal management or HR process. Or they may take place in what we might call  ‘semi-formal’ settings (such as mentoring discussions, regular progress meetings, follow-up meetings after an appraisal).  Although good conversations can take place in formal HR processes such as appraisal, they’re not all that frequent.

3) Sometimes are unplanned

Most meetings where good conversations take place are planned but they can also be spontaneous and unplanned. Valuable conversations with friends and work colleagues, for example, often happen spontaneously.

4)  Don’t have to take a long time

Good conversations usually take time, say three-quarters of an hour to an hour.  But sometimes a short first conversation is useful as a prelude to setting up a longer meeting.  Sometimes a single conversation on its own can be pivotal, but often several conversations are needed to make progress

5)  Provide different levels of support at different times

Employees often need career support at defining points like starting a new role, considering a job move (internally or externally), or when they come to the end of a development or training program.  At other times a lighter touch is needed.

6)  Focus on who they are, what they want, and why

A good career conversation can cut through the noise to help employees focus on where they’re at and reduce unnecessary stress.  Discussing how they feel about their current job and career can clarify matters and unload some negative emotions which can get in the way of positive thought and action.

7)  Help individuals reflect on the experience

Career conversations can help people reflect on what’s important to them in their career – What skills do they like to use?  What activities do they enjoy most?  What are their values concerning work?  What work environment do they prefer?  What people do they enjoy working with?

8)  Enable clarity of direction

In an effective career conversation, people will reflect on what their own ambitions really are.  In other words, what does success look like for them?  Helping them connect their personal values and career wishes ignites their passion and triggers the desire to develop.

9) Develop self-awareness by holding up a mirror

Good career conversations build confidence.  They hold up a mirror so individuals reflect on their skills and performance, think about the feedback they’ve received, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how people in the organization see them.  Done well, with a positive focus, that helps them believe in their own ability.

10)  Enable a change of perspective

An effective career conversation challenges individuals to think differently.  They help individuals challenge the status quo and move out of their comfort zone to consider what opportunities are available to them – in their current role and elsewhere in the organization?

11)  Aid decision making

Quality career conversations help individuals identify and evaluate different alternatives and opportunities, look at the pros and cons, and decide.  Or if not a final decision,  at least greater clarity about where they want to go and the development or experience needed to get there.

12)  Build networks and organizational understanding

People often need support in navigating the processes and politics of the organization.  Career conversations can help them develop an understanding of how things are done ‘round here, including both processes and tactics.  They can help them decide how to raise their profile and be more visible to key people.  And they can help them work out how to crack the system for moving jobs if that’s what they want to do.

13)  End with action

Good conversations usually lead to action.  There is a clear focus on the “So what?”  What career development strategies can they use to make progress?  What actions can they take? And there’ll also be an agreement on how they’re going to check in and review progress.

What is the Career Conversations course all about?

Supporting career development is great in theory but can be difficult in practice. Some managers may even dread these conversations. Career Conversations facilitate honest dialogue about what employees want out of their careers, what is expected of managers in the career development process, and how managers can best prepare to talk about their team members’ careers.

Outcomes

• Understand what employees want out of careers and from their managers
• Apply insights and tools for understanding the needs of individual team members, providing useful perspective, and creating connections to opportunities and people
• Plan a career conversation with at least one team member
• Be prepared to handle common career coaching challenges
• Create a team strategy for talking about career development

Conclusion

If your manager hasn’t set up a 1:1 with you to have a career conversation, don’t hesitate to schedule a meeting on your own. It may feel intimidating, but it’s good for your own career progression. This course can come in handy if you’re looking for ways to have an effective and positive career conversation.

To enroll, contact P2L today!

What is executive coaching?

According to the center for executive coaching, it is an efficient, high-impact process that helps high-performing people in leadership roles improve results in ways that are sustained over time.

Unlike traditional consulting assignments, it is efficient because it does not require invasive processes, large outside teams, and lengthy reports and analyses to get results.

It is a high-impact process because Executive Coaches typically work with clients in short meetings (i.e., 30 minutes per session). During this time, the coach and client can generate important insights, gain clarity, focus, and make decisions to improve performance.

Executive Coaching works with high-performing people in leadership roles. It is not therapy, meant to “fix” a person. As an Executive Coach, your clients are already highly functioning, successful people. Like any of us, they need support from time to time to perform better.

How can an executive coach make you successful?

As per Forbes, executive coaching can help in the following ways:

1. See yourself more clearly– When you engage with a good coach, he or she will generally gather input about how others see you at the beginning of the engagement and share it with you. (The best coaches will also pattern the feedback into key themes, to further clarify others’ perceptions of your key strengths and growth areas.)  Throughout the coaching engagement, your coach will also share his or her perceptions of you, based on observation of you and your interactions with others.

2. See others more clearly– A good and insightful coach will often have more neutral and accurate perceptions of those around you than you will and will share those perceptions with you (especially if he or she is doing other work in your organization). And—because skilled coaches work to make their coaching clients independent—he or they will also help you apply the same mental skills you learned for seeing yourself more clearly so that you can become more accurate in your assessment of others.

3. Leverage your existing strengths– Having an effective and supportive coach can also help you see and leverage strengths that you already have but that you may be underestimating. A good coach can help you recognize that tendency in yourself and work against it, both by helping you see and question the limiting assumptions you make about people who aren’t like you, and by offering you tools to support you in understanding and creating strong and vital working relationships with a wider variety of people.

4. Build more productive relationships– Leaders can dramatically limit their effectiveness by only being willing or able to build strong relationships with certain kinds of people. And all too often, that means people like themselves—in background, race, gender, beliefs, or work style.

5. Achieve what you want– A good coach can help you get clearer about your goals and dreams, and about what you’re capable of doing to achieve them. He or she can also be a powerfully useful support system on your journey: someone who knows you very well and wants the best for you—but is a neutral third party.

What is the Executive Coaching course all about?

P2L’s executive coaching process is designed to deliver measurable results for the organization and is customized for each individual. Our coaches all have wide business experience and are well-versed in P2L’s seven-step executive coaching process. Our coaches will work with each leader to clarify individual leadership themes, leverage personal convictions, and create a new standard for constructive dialogue and leadership integrity. Through diagnostic tools and candid interviews with the leader and appropriate stakeholders, we will assess the individual’s leadership capabilities and help prioritize the most significant areas for focused development.

Outcomes:

• Increased effectiveness and retention of key leaders
• Improved business results
• Increased employee engagement
• Retention of leaders’ direct reports and colleagues
• Increased senior team effectiveness, cross-functional collaboration, and credibility

Other Details:

• 3-month, 6-month, and assessment with the follow-on coaching

Conclusion:

Executives of any company are the core of the firm. They are the ones who take high-level decisions and needless to say run the company. For an organization to thrive and achieve great success, it is important to have proficient people in top-level management. Investing in skilled executives is the key to make your business succeed. This is where executive coaching plays an important role. Given its dynamic nature, you can incorporate executive coaching practices into almost any industry and propel visionary executives, managers, and budding leaders in an organization.

If you’re looking for a course that helps you become a good executive and a great leader, this executive coaching course is exactly for you.

To enroll, contact P2L today!

What is Distinctive Leadership?

IGI Global defines distinctive leadership as leadership with a blend of alignment with the business strategy, intellectual maturity, and emotional maturity is known as distinctive leadership.

What is the Distinctive Leadership course all about?

Distinctive Leadership is a senior-level experience designed to unleash the strategic advantage of leadership. This highly experiential journey includes assessments, executive coaching, a powerful in-person experience, and ongoing peer cohort coaching to create a sustainable shift in your leaders. This progressive approach supports both personal leadership, team development, and organizational improvement. Through this experience, individuals learn to create, understand, and take accountability for their development as high-performance leaders, collaborators, and strategic thinkers.

What is the length of the course?

The course is two days long.

What is the course journey like?

The Distinctive Leadership journey explores leadership across four levels – self, individuals, teams, and enterprise. This perspective gives leaders a line of SITE into what it takes to be a high-performing leader. Leader of:

• Self–begins the journey by shifting mindsets, removing self-limiting beliefs, and helping leaders understand their personal brand.
• Individuals–is about inclusion, the importance of trust in relationships, and the role of emotional intelligence.
• Teams–emphasizes the critical skills needed to create an environment that encourages agility, high performing teams and a culture of candor, collaboration, and accountability.”
• Enterprise–introduces key competencies that will enable individuals to ‘lead big’! Leading big is about: demonstrating courage, being a multiplier, developing cultural advantage, thinking differently, communicating with clarity and purpose, being agile and resilient, and focusing on what really matters.

Outcomes:

• Creation of competitive advantage through leadership
• Innovation and continuous improvement, balanced with the risk
• Reinforcement of a high-performance culture
• Strengthened trust to drive personal, team, and organizational performance
• Stimulation of a candid and open environment for collaboration
• Alignment of teams around a common vision
• Empowerment of leaders at all levels, along with a sense of ownership and accountability
• Enhancement of professional presence, impact, and influence

What is the course experience like?

Pre-work: Distinctive Leadership includes two pre-work assessments: The High-Performance Leadership Assessment and the High-Performance Team Assessment.

Pre-Session Coaching Call: A pre-session coaching call provides insight into each leader’s background, personal beliefs about leadership, and personal leadership goals.

Experiential Session(s): The experiential sessions bring leaders together to shift their mindsets and develop strategies to enhance their leadership. Participants initiate the process of creating accountability partners with the colleagues who will support them on their journey.

Cohort Coaching: A series of facilitated coaching calls in small carefully selected peer groups help leaders further explore the four mindsets embedded in the program (SITE – Self, Individuals, Teams, Enterprise). The cohort coaching experience is a powerful way to make the learning sustainable and create a supportive network at work.

Capstone Event: A virtual capstone event brings the larger group back together to review and synthesize the learnings from their journey. Leaders will be challenged to continue their peer collaboration and to cascade the learning to the broader organization.

Conclusion:

If you’re someone who is looking for personal development along with organizational growth, this distinctive leadership course will advance your skill set.

To enroll, contact P2L today!

Companies invest a good amount of time and money in their hiring process. This is so because a bad hire can be a liability while a good one can be a long-term asset to the company. Hiring can be a challenging and tiring job. Organizations need to make sure they look for candidates who have the potential and requirements of the job role and a vision that aligns with that of the company’s vision.

While companies don’t purposely mean to hire the wrong candidate, sudden vacancies and other pressing demands from the higher management can often result in rushed hiring decisions. This situation can be very testing for both the new employee and the firm.

Some best practices can help ensure that management efforts in hiring the right candidate are successful:

1. Post an accurate job description

Job descriptions are the most important part of any hiring process. Candidates apply to the job description more than the title of the position. Ensure to post an accurate job description that highlights the candidate’s role and responsibilities, educational qualifications, and core competencies.

2. Screen candidates thoroughly

From asking relevant interview questions and conducting reference checks to check the candidate’s criminal background, a company must carefully screen all candidates before rolling out the offer letters. Companies should also make good use of data analysis techniques to see if a certain candidate has the skills and experience to be successful in the current role.

3. Ask creative questions during the interview

Most candidates have well-rehearsed answers for typical job interview questions like, “Why should we hire you?”, “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?”, etc. Hiring managers must put some thought into the hiring process. They can come up with creative questions that can both come as a surprise to the candidate and test their thinking skills.

4. Help existing employees upskill

Not all bad hires are new employees. They are oftentimes an existing employee is promoted hurriedly or if their manager has overlooked their abilities. Organizations need to invest in their employees to achieve organizational success. They must conduct courses, urge employees to participate in different activities, and more to make sure a promotion is well deserved.

5. Find competent people for management roles

Management is the backbone of any company. Those in leadership roles making important decisions must have the experience and competence to decipher what’s good and bad for their organization. Focusing on filling these managerial positions with a proficient individual is vital to the company’s success.

6. Give assessments and personality tests

Going beyond the traditional interview process is important. An in-person interview or virtual video chat is not enough to determine if a candidate is the right fit. Assessing to test technical skills and conducting personality tests to understand the candidate’s traits can help the organization make better hiring decisions.

7. Observe the questions they ask

While it is extremely important to ask the candidate all the questions that will help the organization know the candidate better, it is equally important to pay close attention to what he/she asks the hiring team during the job interview. This can help infer what exactly is the candidate seeking from the opportunity. This will also help determine the candidate’s interest areas and whether his goals align with that of the company.

8. Prioritize company culture fit

Not everyone adjusts in every environment. Companies must understand their workplace culture to know what they’re looking for in a candidate. Gauging their values and interpersonal skills can help in determining if they would be a good fit for the organization and vice versa.

9. Assess their strengths and weaknesses

Most candidates have an ongoing list of their strengths but asking them about their weaknesses can help the hiring manager evaluate their professional expectations for themselves and whether your understanding of them matches with their own. This process will also help identify their work ethic and personal goals.

10. Clearly lay down your expectations

There nothing more relieving than having a hiring manager clearly lay down their expectations from the candidate. Try to be brutally honest to the potential employee so that they know what they’re getting into. This will help them decide whether they want to come onboard and reassure the company that they have hired a well-informed candidate.

11. Don’t rush into making a hiring decision

Never take decisions in haste. They will be a waste of your and the candidate’s time. No matter how eager the hiring manager is to fill up a role, they must thoroughly screen and examine all prospective candidates and then make a hiring decision. This will help both the organization and the candidate be on the same page.

What is Hiring Talent: Right Person, Right Job course all about?

Given today’s business realities, it is more important than ever for organizations to utilize their resources wisely.  In any organization, selecting the right person for the right job is a challenge. When the challenge is met, turnover is low, morale and productivity are high, and great customer service is provided. This course is designed to provide information and skills to assess, build, and conduct high-quality selection interviews to decide on the right person for the right job.

Outcomes:

• Recognize the importance of selecting the right candidate
• Calculate the cost of turnover
• Explain the organization’s hiring process
• Apply a four-step interviewing process
• Identify job competencies and value behaviors for an open position
• Create behavior-based interview questions
• Conduct an effective selection interview
• Decide on the best candidate

Conclusion:

One bad decision can cost a company in numerous ways. So, just imagine if it’s a bad hiring decision? Hiring the wrong candidate can be frustrating and ultimately very costly for the company. Don’t you want to spend time hiring the right talent rather than rushing into filling a position with a bad hire? Every organization needs to attract employees who respect its business values and share the same goals and vision.

If you’re looking to understand elements that help in making sure the right candidate is hired for a role, this course will be the ultimate guide for you.

To enroll, contact P2L today!