Stress Free Performance Appraisals

Are you looking for a great resource to “turn your most painful management duty into a powerful motivational tool”?

Stress Free Performance Appraisals by HR Professionals Sharon Armstrong and Madelyn Appelbaum, is an invaluable resource to any manager or professional charged with undertaking the critical activity of performance appraisals.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the performance appraisal process, different approaches, and is chock full of useful checklists, self-assessments and tips to take your performance appraisal from ordinary to extraordinary.

Very clearly written for the everyday manager, this book is destined to become a well used resource in your management library.

You can order your own copy at Amazon today. Visit Sharon online at Sharon Armstrong and Associates .

Have a wonderful weekend,

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, CPCC, CHRP, CPT

Potentials Realized

Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960

Email: jennifer{at}potentialsrealized{dot}com

Small Business Owners vs. Entrepreneurs

Over the next few weeks I’ll be immersed back into the world on small business development, as I am leading a program with two groups of fantatstic women small business owners.

One of the topics we are discussing right now is what is the difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur. Are all small business owners, entrepreneurs? Can you be both?

Last summer there was a flurry of blog posts on this topic. You may want to check out:
Khurram Masood’s blog post on “Small Business owners” vs. Entrepreneurs : http://myowntrip.blogspot.com/2006/07/small-business-owner-vs-entrepreneur.html
Nick Williams

Small Business Owner Vs Inspired Entrepreneur: 10 Crucial Differences: http://www.sabusinesshub.com/section/content.php?SectionId=8&SubsectionId=12&ContentId=1293

Cornell makes an interesting distinction between small business ownership and entrepreneurship:
Here's a simple 3-step description of entrepreneurship:
* Thinking new ideas
* Doing new things
* Creating value in the marketplace
These three steps separate entrepreneurs from other business owners. Creativity, innovation, and unique value are the key ingredients of entrepreneurial businesses.

I too subscribe to the more academic distinction between small business ownership and entrepreneurism. While you can be a small business owner and entrepreneur, not every small business owner is an entrepreneur. Some of the characteristics which set an entrepreneur apart are:
* Higher levels of risk taking behavior. An entrepreneur has a much higher “risk threshold” and is willing to take more risks than the average small business owner
* Greater scale – Entrpreneurs are typically driven by going big (or going home). While many small business owners are content to stay small, entrepreneurs are driven to grow a business (and in many instances move on by seling the business – this process of growing businesses and moving on has led to the term “serial entrepreneur”)
* Innovation is key: Innovation is a key ingredient for entrepreneurs, part of their life blood
* Gifts to see opportunities – Entrepreneurs often have a gift to see opportunities where others don’t, or where others would fail to tred. What opportunities are you seeing in your business today? Will you take the risk to seize them?

What are your thoughts? What other differences do you see between entpreneurs and small business owners? Are you one? Both?

I would welcome your thoughts. Please feel free to comment below.
With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, CPCC, CHRP, CPT
Potentials Realized
Email: info[at]potentialsrealized[dot]com
The 90 Day Biz Success Group Coaching program starts on July 10th (Tuesdays 7-8 pm ET twice a month for three months). Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Space is limited to 8, so register early!

Work Life Balance and Ethics

Ethics – What’s work-life balance got to do with it?

Deloitte and Touche’s 2007 Ethics and Workplace survey results found a very strong relationship between ethics and work-life balance. 91% of respondents to their annual survey stated that they believe “workers are more likely to behave ethically at work when they have a work-life balance”.

Why is this so?
Chairman of the Board, Sharon Allen, of Deloitte and Touce states,
“When you think about it, if someone invests all of their time and energy into their jobs, it may have the unintended consequence of making them dependent on their jobs for everything – including their sense of personal worth. This makes it eve harder to make a good choice when faced with an ethical dilemma if they believe it will impact their professional success."

The Deloitte and Touche 2007 Ethics and Workplace survey also found that the behavior of management, or at least direct supervisors, set the tone for ethical behavior (77%). At present approximately 30% of full time workers are not satisfied with their current work-life balance. Approximately one-third of full time workers, and nearly one-fifth of part time workers indicated that high stress levels cause conflict between work responsibilities and personal priorities.

So what can we do?

The study found that the top factors which would facilitate an ethical workplace were:
* The behavior of management (42%)
* The behavior of direct supervisors (46%)
Along with positive reinforcement for ethical behavior.

The study also found that compensation, flexible work schedules and benefits were the top three factors which influenced overall job satisfaction.

Download your own executive summary of the 2007 Deloitte and Touche Ethics and Workplace study here.

If work-life balance is a priority for you, I would also invite you to visit my sister blog dedicated to work-life balance – Your Balanced Life! Blog. You will find a treasure chest of work-life balance tips and exercises to support you in work-life balance.

I will be holding a free one-hour call next Monday, June 26th from 8:30 – 9:30 pm (EST) on Balance for the Summer Months. If you would like to join the call please email me at info(at) potentialsrealized (dot)com with Balance for Summer in the subject line. Participants are responsible for their own long distance charges.

I would also invite you to consider joining me for the 90 Day Your Balanced Life! Group Coaching Program which starts on July 17th (Tuesday 7-8pm ET). We will meet twice a month as a group, and once a month you will have an individual coaching session with me. You will also receive bi-weekly work-life balance tips into your email box throughout the 3 months of the program. The cost for the program is $119 US/month or $297 US for the program. Space is limited to 8, so register early (online registration available here)

Have a balanced week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, CPCC, CHRP, CPT
Potentials Realized
Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960
Email: jennifer(at)potentialsrealized(dot)com

Presentation Basics

Are you looking for some great resources to amp up your next presentation? Did you know that speaking in front of a large audience is one of business professionals greatest fears?

Here are some great sites to get pointers from, to boost the impact of your next presentation.

1. Presentation Zen: Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen site is chock full of amazing insights, recommendations and tools for making your presentations sizzle. He walks his talk and shares personal insights in such a juicy way. Check out Presentation Zen for some amazing resources including a post on three strategic questions you should answer at the start of any presentation: Who are You? What do you do? and Why does it matter? These are an extension of a story from Brand Gap regarding a consultant who started every meeting with a client using these three questions.

Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter? - So simple, yet so powerful.

Read his post on: Why does it matter and What's your contribution here.

Having just completed a day and a half speaking presentation earlier this week, which involved coordintating a number of speakers, I think that these are two questions which can make or break a presentation - which I've seen firsthand repeated a number of times over the past few weeks.

2. Powerful Presentation Techniques from Paul Gibler, the Web Chef, CONNECTINGDOTS. Paul has over 200 blog posts at his PPT site...dig around there's some great stuff!

3. The PowerPoint and OfficeArt Team Blog from Microsoft -- this is not an extensive blog, but there are some neat pointers on how to leverage your powerpoint!

4. Fortify Your Oasis also has some fantastic postings on Presentation tips. Click on over to Rowan Manahan's blog. He's also got a lot of great stuff related to career management and working life.

Enjoy!

Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized

Talent Management: What Is It?

What is talent management?

The Buzz phrase talent management has been bandied around many recent conferences and meetings I have either been speaking at, or attending. So what exactly is talent management and why is it so important?

Talent management encompasses a range of HR, managerial and training functions including:
Recruitment and Selection
Assessments
Learning and Development
Leadership Development
Succession Planning
Performance management
Compensation
Human Resource Planning

So why is talent management so important? As I’ve reported in earlier blog posts , the war on talent continues, with skill shortages being forecast within the next five to ten years, as baby boomers start to retire. The cost for sloppy talent management can be high. For example, poor recruitment and selection leading to a poor fit for a new candidate can cost the organization up to a year and a half salary, taking into account the recruitment and selection process, onboarding costs such as training and development, lost productivity etc.

So who is in charge of your talent management programs? Is it HR? Is it the training department? ASTD and Brandon Hall Research recently conducted a poll to looking at who is in charge of the talent management processes and what are the trends. 60% of respondents indicated that training and HR operations are coming together in their organizations and 90% believe that the trends will continue. What does it look like in your organization?

I would welcome hearing your thoughts on talent management, the skills gap and structurally who deals with your talent management programs. Please feel free to comment below.

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Brittton, MES, CPT, CPCC, CHRP
Potentials Realized
Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960
Email: jennifer[at]potentialsrealized[dot]com

What's on your learning radar screen?

I've been a little silent blogging this week as I was attending the 2007 ASTD Conference in Atlanta. It was a powerful week spent with about 9300 learning and development specialists. While I was there I was privledged to facilitate three Learning Labs for conference attendees, which were attended by professionals from across North America, Poland, Malaysia, Japan, the UK. Thanks to all who participated -- I'd love to hear how you are moving ahead with your action steps!

I had wonderful engaging discussions with so many other delegates over the last five days. It was really encouraging to see that many of the issues I've been blogging about, and do work around, are really the up and coming trends and hot points for organizations today:

* Intergenerational Management and Leadership Issues
* Global Leadership
* Virtual Teams
* Values in Organizations
* Corporate Social Responsibility
*Leveraging the Human Captial within your organization

If this is your first visit to the blog, I'd invite you to poke around and click through the different categories. I'm sure that you will find something useful.

What's on your organization's learning radar screen right now? What issues would you like me to be discussing? Please feel free to post your comments below, or contact me directly at jennifer(at) potentialsrealized(dot) com.

Stay tuned for some very exciting upcoming posts, where I will continue to drill into some of these really exciting topics!

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized
Toll Free: 1-866-217-1960