Organizational Psychology for Managers was officially released on Monday. By Wednesday, it was sold out at Amazon.com.
Wow! I never expected that. To everyone who ordered a copy, Thank You!
The good news is that if you order it now, you can still get it more quickly than you can get an iPhone 5s.
Live Webinar Thurs: Establishing or Updating Your Company’s Employee Review Process | REG Here: http://dld.bz/bMs7f #PromoCode “Balzac50”
I am leading an ExecSense webinar on “Establishing or Updating Your Company’s Employee Review Process” on Thursday September 20th.
The access link is:
Use discount code “Balzac50”
Attention: My ExecSense Webinar will be Airing this Thursday, May 3rd at 4:30PM EDT on Positioning Yourself for a Board Member Seat as a Communications Executive
I examine how corporations are increasingly seeking board members with a communications background, and what strategies communications executives can follow to position themselves to be chosen as board members by these companies (or their own company).
The webinar is projected to provide tremendous value – if you cannot attend live, you can download the recorded files the day afterward to view at your convenience.
Click Here to Learn More http://dld.bz/bywM5
I was recently quoted in the NY Times on the subject of preparing for annual performance reviews.
The fact is, performance reviews are extremely stressful. Some business professors argue that we should drop them completely. Far too often, rather than providing benefit to the organization and useful feedback and a promotion to the employee, they only promote the Peter Principle.
Performance reviews can benefit both the employee and the organization, but they have to be done correctly. That means starting by establishing and agreeing upon goals. Of course, even that is tricky, as goals require actual thought to do well. The key point here is to identify desired outcomes and then focus on the behaviors and learning opportunities that will lead to those outcomes. Taking the time to focus on and identify productive and effective behaviors produces the most effective goals. It also means the performance review is now focused on providing the employee useful feedback and opportunities to build their strengths instead of arguing over failures and getting wrapped up trying to remediate weaknesses.
On that point, it helps considerably to recognize that people have both strengths and weaknesses. Yes, I know, this is a great shock to some people, particularly many managers. Tailoring goals to fit people’s strengths produces far more motivated, enthusiastic, and productive employees than goals that are focused around “fixing” their weaknesses. Don’t get me wrong: weaknesses that are based in a lack of knowledge are eminently fixable; but those that are based in a lack of fundamental talent or ability are simply frustrating to everyone when you try to fix them. If you give people some room to experiment and, gasp, fail, you and they will quickly figure out which is which and how to best focus their time and energy. Build people’s strengths enough and their weaknesses matter less and less.
The other key point on performance reviews is to provide specific feedback: it doesn’t help to tell someone they are “too aggressive” or “too passive.” That is your perception. Tell them exactly what they did that you saw as aggressive or passive. Good or bad, the details matter if you want someone to repeat a positive behavior or end a negative one.
Performance reviews can be a waste of time and energy or a powerful tool to improve performance in your organization. Like all power tools, you need to use them correctly.
I just found out that my book, The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development, is listed on Amazon as a bestseller in organizational behavior and is currently in the top 1% of books sold at Amazon.
For a business book to be selling this well a year after publication is extremely unusual. I have to admit to being a bit stunned.
Please pass this along… who knows, maybe the NY Times bestseller list is next 🙂
Here’s the blurb from my appearance on the Full Potential Show. For the actual show, click here.
Can sports be used for more than just fun and pleasure? You bet! The same disciplines or character development, leadership and team based skills applies to almost every other domain in life.
Steve Balzac is a man of many talents. He is a consultant, speaker, and author of 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development. He is a popular speaker on such topics as leadership, team building, interviewing skills, and sports performance. In this interview, he shares the lessons he has learned from the sports he excels in – Jiu Jitsu and fencing – and how they tie-in with the honing of leadership and organizational development potential.
THE TIE IN
a) Use the other person’s force against him (as in Jiu Jitsu)
b) Meet and go with the force of the other person in order to take him to where you want him to go
c) In a difficult situation, attract the other person to where you want to take him
d) Don’t be afraid to try different techniques, even if you have to look like an idiot sometimes
e) Explore and practice the fundamentals well (as in fencing)
f) Build yourself to a point where you can stay focused for long periods of time
g) When you’re up there, you should not care whether you win or lose. If you focus on the outcome, you doubt yourself and hesitate
h) After preparing your team, give them permission to go off and achieve what they need to
i) Look at mistakes as the cornerstone of innovation and as a part of the process of evolution
j) Determine if mistakes repeatedly committed is due to a flaw in the system
k) Don’t do all your research ahead of time – it’s impossible to know everything ahead of time
l) Develop a culture where it’s acceptable of everybody to commit mistakes, including you
m) Consult with your followers to show them you’re interested in listening to their ideas
FINAL POINTERS ON LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
1) Tell your own story – what you’re trying to do and why you care about it
2) While you should have an outcome, dwelling on it during show time can actually hinder performance
3) Walk your way backwards through the steps from the outcome – this will make the first step very easy
4) Don’t be afraid to ask someone to show you the way (no team makes it to the Olympics without a coach). This will shorten your learning curve.
FINAL THOUGHTS
• “Experiment” is synonymous with mistakes and breakthroughs.
When I spoke at ERE Expo, Todd Raphael, editor of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, interviewed me on why companies make hiring mistakes. The interview is now up on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUFbWww7Pic.
Very cool… my book, “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” was just put on the recommended list at the CEO Refresher, which also named me one of their Insight/Thought Leaders.
I’ll be interviewed tomorrow at 1pm ET on KKZZ Radio. I’ll be speaking on organizational culture and innovation: the two-edged sword.
The call-in number for the studio is (805) 639-0008.
The interview streams over the Internet at BrainstorminOnline.com.
Feel free to call in and ask questions, talk up my book, etc 🙂
Recently, I was running a leadership and negotiation exercise, which involved participants attempting to determine who they could and could not trust. The exercise required that participants work with one another and included various techniques for verifying the truth or falsehood of someone’s claims.
The dynamic between two of the participants, we’ll call them Fred and Barney, became extremely interesting: Fred needed Barney’s help, but Fred was convinced that Barney was lying to him and looking for a way to double-cross him on a business deal. Barney, meanwhile, was going to great lengths to prove that he was telling the truth and dealing in good faith. The more evidence Fred found that demonstrated Barney was telling the truth, the more Fred was sure he was lying. Not only was Fred not convinced, he even came up to me and complained that he thought that Barney was violating the rules of the exercise because he was clearly lying. When the exercise was over and I debriefed the participants, Fred was stunned when he found out that Barney was telling the truth all along.
Part of the value of this particular exercise is that behavior in the exercise tends to correlate well with behavior in the office. Unlike the exercise, however, in real life we don’t have any magical means of verifying the truth. Of course, as we can see, even that doesn’t necessarily matter. Once an opinion is formed, sometimes nothing will change it. That may be fine in some obscure situations, but in business it can get you in trouble.
Read the rest at Corp! Magazine
