Tag: Employer-Employee Relationship

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Personalities are Key to Successful Networking

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Almost everyone has, at one time, worked with someone with whom their personality clashed, whether they did not get along or just didn’t work effectively together. While this is a perfectly natural phenomenon of both nature and nurturing, it is best to put personal differences aside when forming a professional relationship with a coworker.

This was the focus of Networking Like a Pro , a publication by Dr. Ivan Misner and Brian Hilliard. In it, they explore how personalities come into play in the workplace, and how each person’s behaviors influence their interpersonal relationships. While most people display the traits of many personality types, the book makes the assertion that all people fall into four predominant personality types, especially where business is involved. Business networking is strongly influenced by how well your behavioral type meshes with another’s.

So, does this mean that you just won’t be able to network with some people, and with others it will be effortless? Not so.

Misner and Hilliard offer advice on how to best interact with these behavioral types by understanding what really makes them tick. These types are as follows: Go-Getters, Nurturers, Examiners, and Promoters.

Go-Getters
When dealing with a Go-Getter, you have to think–and move–fast. The Go-Getter is determined to get the results they are looking for ASAP, and if the rules need to be bent in order to get them, so be it.

To communicate with a Go-Getter, you need to make the value that you offer them clearly relevant and essential to their goals. More specifically, you need to make them see how you can help speed up their operations without sacrificing the results they strive for. The Go-Getter will also want to hear that they have options to choose from, but would rather hear a pitch than they would a heavily-planned-out script. With a Go-Getter, stick to the highlights, and deliver on your promises.

Nurturers
Where a Go-Getter has more of a “now, if not sooner” attitude, a Nurturer sees the value in taking their time where business matters are concerned, operating with patience. Nurturers are also natural team players, surrounding themselves with supportive allies and willing to offer assistance wherever it is needed. They can be overly tolerant, however, willing to endure a less-than-ideal situation than ready to take a risk to change it.

Honesty is the best policy when working with a Nurturer. To work with them, you will first need to build their trust. You can help this process along by gently guiding them toward a mutually beneficial solution. To accomplish this, you also need to maintain contact with the Nurturer, regularly providing evidence as to how a business relationship with you can provide simplicity and support.

Examiners
A born skeptic, an Examiner will thoroughly examine and evaluate everything that they may work with–including the people. They will unsurprisingly be predisposed to perfectionism, and at the very least, are very thorough. The Examiner is a strong conversationalist, as they use their stores of knowledge and information to their advantage. Efficiency is also a virtue to the Examiner, and so they will move on once their objective has been met, whether that is to the next assignment or to the next event.

As you build a connection with an Examiner, you need to be concise and clear about your position and why it is worth their time to be involved. Lean on facts and evidence to make your point, and only use small talk and stories if they add to the evidence that you are a dependable provider. You need to be sure that you put your best foot forward when interacting with an Examiner, as they will be forming a very strong opinion of you from the get-go.

Promoters
A Promoter is a salesman, usually an extrovert, and a thought leader. They have the drive to spread any good idea they find, more often identifying them instinctively than through research-based evidence. Promoters often attend industry events to network and socialize. They are usually juggling many different projects, and are rarely confrontational.

Communicating with a Promoter requires you to match their speed and align your needs with their priorities. One such priority is their professional image, so you need to make sure that your offer increases their visibility in the industry. As you deal with a Promoter, make sure that you document the finer details of your agreements in writing, and you fulfil your end of the bargain promptly and professionally. Furthermore, you should always give a Promoter plenty of help whenever it is required to prove that you are the best choice for their needs.

These strategies should enable you to network more directly, with the end result being more business relationships that provide mutual benefit. Which of these personality types do you think you most embody? Tell us in the comments!

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Business

Looking for Outside-the-Box Ideas? Give Your Intrapreneurs a Voice

b2ap3_thumbnail_intrapreneur_400.jpg Entrepreneurs are the heroes of today, making great strides in the business world by introducing new ideas to their industries. However, the intrapreneur is a bit more of an enigma; they create commendable ideas within their own organization. In fact, your organization probably has its own intrapreneurs. How do you take advantage of their skills to your business’s benefit?

Simply put, the intrapreneur is an employee that can see past the short-term and look at what must be done in the long-term. They understand that their ingenuity can help your organization achieve its goals, and they go out of their way to make sure that their ideas are used for the benefit of the entire organization.

Tim Beerman, CTO of Ensono, describes to CIO what exactly makes a good intrapreneur, and why organizations should look to individuals like them for helpful insight: “These are the employees who want to get their hands dirty and are often the first people to volunteer for a job. Intrapreneurs are not content with the status quo. They often see how things could be part of a bigger picture and come up with ideas to realize this new vision.” Who in your office fits this profile?

Here are a few more characteristics that business owners should look for when identifying their own intrapreneurs.

  • Intrapreneurs are capable of motivating those around them, especially with challenging their perspectives with new thoughts and ideas.
  • Intrapreneurs stick to their loyalties and are always willing to go above and beyond to create positive change for your organization.
  • Intrapreneurs have plenty of skill to be successful outside of your business, but they insist on staying employed by your organization.
  • Intrapreneurs are always challenging the way that your business functions, inviting disruption not to mess with operations, but to improve them.
  • Intrapreneurs can identify where your workplace needs to improve and provide ways to resolve these problems. Moreover, they are willing to take risks to resolve issues.

It’s clear that any intrapreneur will be easy to spot. They are naught but your most loyal, motivated, and thoughtful employees. The real question from a business owner’s point of view is what to do with them. They’ll challenge you to the best of your ability, whether they mean to or not. Will you step up and embrace this challenge, or will you feel threatened by their contributions?

The best way to take advantage of intrapreneurs is to encourage them to step up and communicate their ideas. In particular, you need to make sure that there are various ways that they can communicate their ideas to management. If they don’t, you’ll simply crush the spirit and nobody will be benefitting from their good ideas anymore–certainly not your business. These employees will just put in the minimal effort, get paid, and go home at the end of the day, rather than use their intuition to help your business improve. In a worst-case scenario, they may even leave and find another company that’s more willing to hear them out.

IT professionals can make it much easier for your intrapreneurs to express themselves. Beerman explains: “An intrapreneur might see inefficiencies within his or her company’s workflow, but may not necessarily have the experience to fully develop a solution. The IT department can then act as a partner to find the right recommendation. When intrapreneurs and IT teams are communicating regularly, there are more windows of opportunity for collaboration. Innovation and collaboration will eventually become business as usual, once initial bridges are crossed.”

This type of collaboration doesn’t have to be difficult, but can, as expected, require a major change in your company’s culture. If you want quality communications solutions that can help your organization benefit from each and every great mind behind your operations, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Business

Tip of the Week: 4 Ways to Attract and Retain Top Talent

b2ap3_thumbnail_attract_talent_400.jpg The endgame for most businesses is to improve what they do and increase their profitability. While this might mean selling more products, getting more customers or clients, or a myriad of other metrics, the driving force behind your business’s operations–your employees–are crucial toward this goal.

Top talent can be difficult to come by. There are several factors that come into play, especially in a competitive industry. However, employees that go above and beyond are easily worth the struggle that it takes to find them. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to do everything you can in order to make your business attractive to them. Here are four ways that you can make your business a magnet that attracts talented workers.

Offer Benefits
One of the most effective ways to attract new employees is by offering benefits and sign-on bonuses. However, this can lead to you getting more applications than you have time to go through, with many of them possibly not being qualified for the position at all. On the other hand, this makes a particularly impressive employee stand out from the rabble.

In fact, these benefits don’t necessarily have to involve finances. Instead, something as simple as flexible work hours, career advancement, and education may be motivation enough.

Challenge Them
Hard workers appreciate challenges as they provide a valuable outlet for users to test themselves. When you’re looking for new employees, consider implementing some sort of challenge or homework assignment that you can use to gauge whether the prospective employees actually know what they’re doing. This effectively helps you cut down on unqualified applicants, while also allowing you to engage your prospects from the get-go.

Idealize the Workplace
You can hire as much talent as you want, but if you don’t provide your high-demand talent with a great work environment, they may pack their bags and look for a place that does. Be sure that you emphasize to your new onboards what the strengths of your company are, and allow the prospective employees to get a feel for your workplace. Plus, if your current employees have plenty of good to share about the company with the prospect, they’ll be more likely to seal the deal themselves.

Provide the Latest Technology
It’s a known fact that the latest technology can significantly improve the way that you do business, but did you know that it’s also great for attracting new workers? A study of millennial workers found that 42 percent of them will seriously consider leaving a job if the technology used by the company doesn’t meet their high standards. It’s important to keep in mind that they will make up the majority of the workforce as early as 2020.

One of the ways that you see millennials using their technology in the office is through the use of smartphones, which can also put your business at risk. Be sure that you implement a solid BYOD policy and ensure that they adhere to it. COMPANYNAME can provide you with the assistance needed to do so.

Basically, these four tips are meant to help you attract the best talent possible. Plus, if you manage to get some good employees, that means that they aren’t working for your competition, which is always a plus.

Bonus Tip: Outsource the Technology Upkeep and Maintenance
One of the biggest issues that SMBs might have is finding qualified technicians to take care of their office technology solutions. While this is a challenge, it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Outsourcing services like IT is often preferable to hiring new employees and adding new salaries to your budget. Instead, all you have to do is make room for an IT budget, which can save you plenty of capital in the long run, and then be used to onboard talented staff. In fact, we highly recommend outsourcing as much as possible. To get started, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.