Why you should stop seeing your goal as a destination

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   By Szu-chi Huang and Jennifer Aaker

We’re well into a new year and a new decade, and many (if not most) of us have probably set ourselves lofty new goals. Setting and achieving personal and professional goals can be rewarding, but it can also feel confusing and frustrating.

You see, many of us set a goal without a clear idea of what we need to do to reach it. We might even have some steps in mind, but we don’t know which ones will get us to where we want to be. Even for those of us who do succeed in reaching our goals, we typically find it difficult to pinpoint the actions that got us there. This lack of clarity means that people don’t always continue the behaviors that contributed to their success. 

Two behavioral scientists at the Stanford Graduate School of Business recently conducted studies of over 1,600 people who set various types of goals to determine why some people not only achieve their goals but can also successfully sustain their learned behaviors, while others stop their efforts and regress. Regardless of the activities involved—from dieting to exercising to attending online courses—we found that those who viewed reaching their goal as a journey, rather than a destination, continued the “good” behaviors that aided their success after reaching their goal.

Knowing that the “destination” metaphor we so often use for goal setting is one of the things that hold us back, how can looking at goals as a continuing journey help us better achieve success and maintain it over time?

Reflect before you launch forward

When we set a goal, we often focus so much on the “new” that we forget to draw on the power of past successes. That’s why it’s crucial to reflect on what you achieved last year before you embark on your new year’s goal. That goes for success in all aspects of your life—whether that’s your career, family life, personal growth, or health.

As you reflect on your past goals and successes, avoid viewing them as destinations. Instead, see them as a journey of many steps. Seeing success as complete or finite can often lead to its benefits to slip faster than they came. That’s why it’s so easy to put on those 20 pounds again or lower your output at the office after your boss awards you a raise.

On the other hand, our research showed that if you review your completed goals through the lens of a journey rather than a destination, you’re more likely to continue those behaviors that helped you achieve these goals. Ask yourself: Which actions had a positive impact on my success over the past year—and what did I learn from them? How to make skills that lead to the little victory more routinized? How about those little challenges I overcame along the way—why did they happen, what did I learn from them, and how to drill out those out moving forward? Identifying those actions that lead to the wins and losses, positive steps in a continuous journey makes it easier to follow through, sustain the positive behaviors and continue improving.

Record your progress along the way

Periodic reflection on your past success only encourages you to maintain that motivation going forward. It also forces you to be mindful of the journey you’ve been on, which equips you to tackle new challenges. Of course, you can apply what you’ve learned from achieving one goal to the next, but your new goals may be very different. Whatever your new goals are, you need to view the new challenge as a journey (rather than a destination) right from the start.

One way to do this is to keep a diary or log. Take notes daily or weekly to track your progress as you go along, but don’t limit yourself to the empirical data. If your goal is to lose weight, recording that you lost 1.5 pounds last week is important, but you also want to note what you did differently, what you learned, and how you felt. Remember, advancing toward a goal requires consistency, not taking one giant leap. Don’t forget to take note of anything that pushes you forward in a positive direction, no matter how small it seems.

Keeping a journal of everything that contributes to your current progress helps you see that progress is a continuous journey, not a single destination. But it also helps when it’s time to reflect on your accomplishment. When you have a track record of your progress, you can recall all the smaller achievements and challenges that went into achieving the larger goal. This encourages you to continue that journey toward even greater and longer-term success.

Why the journey is a better metaphor for success

We hear and read a lot about the importance of “the journey” these days, yet we don’t really live that philosophy. Our research shows that seeing goals as a journey rather than a destination increases our chances for initial and continued success, but shifting that metaphor isn’t something that comes naturally.

After all, we’re a destination-focused society. We see countless images of the ideal body type, the perfect “look,” and the possessions that achieving a successful career can bring. We’re taught to have a laser-like focus on the end result and the destination. In the end, this is why so many people fail to continue the goal-aligned behaviors they learned along the way, even if they managed to reach the goal.

But what you learn along the way to success is more important than the achievement itself. The real key to sustaining success is acknowledging and embracing those smaller steps, milestones, victories, and habits we develop on the journey. After all, a destination is just one step in a journey that never ends, and who wants to stop there?

Source: FastCompany

VP Media and Entertainment BPS Sales

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The Senior BPS Sales Executive is responsible for achieving profitable sales growth by managing/closing multiple sales campaigns using deep sales process and offering or product expertise within a complex market or emerging market/white space.

Responsibilities: Grow the Business:  Drives sales opportunities to closure – increasingly selling a mix of defined solutions/extensions and new offerings or products into white space; wide range of service group offerings and deal structures

Develop Key Relationships:  Develops strong relationships with key client buyers: the Divisional head/C-Suite level; client decision making spanning multiple layers of organization.

Services offered: Our client offers strategic Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) solutions that are tailored to help our customers across industries to run, change, and grow their businesses, while enhancing the end-user experience across channels.

Experience:

  • 10- 15 years’ experience in BPS business development in Media and Entertainment
  • Proven ability to develop new BPS business and meet quotas ($2-$5 million)
  • Excellent communication skills and high level of maturity
  • Superior relationship management and networking skills for both internal and external customer/s
  • Excellent client handling skills, with ability to present and articulate various points of view
  • Ability to forge relationships across and throughout the internal organization

Personal Characteristics:

  • The ideal candidate is able to operate successfully in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment.  Energy, drive and an entrepreneurial spirit are necessary characteristics for success.
  • Strong and capable leader, able to win the confidence and trust of his/her team, shape the culture, and exert influence both internally and externally
  • Ability to establish immediate credibility among his/her peers, a professional who is respected for his/her leadership, intelligence and expertise
  • Superb negotiator and communicator

Location:

West coast

If this could be of interest , please let me know

Larry Janis

Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030 I C-516-445-2377

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New Study: There Are 2 Types of Leaders and You Can Spot Them by How They Stand

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By Jessica Stillman

Take a moment and picture a leader. Imagine not just their face or character, but visualize their whole body from their hair down to their feet. Did you picture someone standing wide and tall, looking down sternly from on high? Or did you picture someone equally confident but friendlier, smiling up at their followers?

Whichever way your imagination went, new science says you’re probably right. Research by a team of Canadian psychologists recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that all leaders can actually be divided into two types. If you want to know which type someone is, just look at their body language.

What type of leader are you? Check your body language.

The research was built on a simple observation: There are two ways to get ahead. You can dominate people by making them fear you or you can win their loyalty with your intelligence and kindness. Anyone who has ever gotten through high school or voted in a presidential election has probably made a similar observation, but does this common sense model of leadership hold up under scientific scrutiny?

Several previous studies suggested so, but to confirm this and dig into how these types of leaders present themselves, the researchers behind the latest study designed a series of five experiments. They generated computer avatars of leaders, asked actors to perform the role of leaders, observed real-life groups sort themselves into hierarchies during a task, and asked volunteers to evaluate real-life politicians.

No matter how they ran the experiments, the same pattern emerged. Those asked to rate leaders responded to two distinct body language patterns. Both were associated with power and leadership, but people viewed the two types of leaders very differently.

The first type of leader tended to adopt a stereotypical “power pose“: Think of Donald Trump and staring down from a campaign poster with a serious expression and his body spread wide. Observers saw this type as dominant. Essentially, they intimidate people into following them.

Instead of looking down with a scowl, the other type of leader looked up with a smile. Like dominant types, they stood with their chest out, but they took up less space. These folks were also seen as leaders, but they were viewed as caring and competent rather than as dominating. They gained followers through prestige, which they developed by demonstrating their expertise and helping people.

In the words of the authors, all this “provides strong converging evidence that dominance and prestige are associated with distinct nonverbal signals which naturally emerge in ecologically valid group settings and real-world rank contests, and result in rank conferral from others.”

Or in everyday language, the researchers’ initial hypothesis played out. When we say “leader,” we actually have two distinct types of people in mind. One rises through dominating others. This type of leader physically takes up a lot of space, tends to tilt their head downward, and often wears a fierce facial expression. The other type relies on prestige, not fear. You can spot them by the upward tilt of their heads, their far greater likelihood of smiling, and their less expansive posture.

Prestige or dominance

As the British Psychological Society Research Digest write-up of the new research notes, this difference may help explain why the popular idea of “power posing” seems to offer inconsistent results. Maybe it works sometimes and not others because the traditional “superman” (or woman) stance mimics dominant leaders and this approach works only in some situations and only for some people.

Which is fascinating if you happen to have been following the fierce (if sometimes nerdy) debate on the subject. But this research is useful even if you haven’t. It can help you assess both your own leadership style and the style of those you work with. All you have to do to start getting a sense of whether someone relies on dominance or prestige to get ahead is to look at their body language.

Source: Inc

Should I stay or should I go?

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The topic of counter offers is an interesting one. I am sure you have seen articles and thoughts about the subject and they are usually one person’s perspective on the topic. For a somewhat different approach, we’ve reached out to people in our network to gain their thoughts and perspective on the topic.

 

 

We asked: You have just received an offer to join a new firm. You are giving notice to leave your current position and your employer makes a “counter offer” to keep you from leaving. You start to think about whether or not to take that “counter offer.”

 

I’m going to share my opinion from the employer’s side. My experience is that at best this is a short term affair when a counteroffer is made and accepted. Whenever I have made counteroffers, if accepted at all, the person may only be around another 6 months until they move on. Typically, the reasons for looking and leaving run much deeper than just money and if that is all that it was a much better way to handle it is to bring it to the company’s attention that you are, based on market research, underpaid.

Monty P. Hamilton,  CEO Rural Sourcing

If you make the decision to pursue an opportunity outside of your organization, you have made the decision to leave your organization.   If you are offered a job by a new company that you have prepared for, interviewed for and expressed interest in sincerely, you should take it and move on.    The key is to address the issues with your current company before you make the decision to pursue an opportunity outside.   If you feel you have earned a promotion or a raise, make your case to your employer and ask for what you want.   If you are not happy with your boss or colleagues, make an effort to improve the relationship.  If you want a new opportunity with your company, raise your hand and go for it.   If you do not get the answers you desire, then look for a new opportunity outside of the company.   If you get what you want after you tell your company that you are leaving, your company has communicated its true interest in supporting your career previously and you should move forward.  But beware, every company has its relative strengths and weaknesses – there will always be things you like and don’t like – they are just different.   If you expect to be happy elsewhere, by just changing your circumstances, you will be deeply disappointed.

Jonathan Donahue, Vice President Client Partner & Sales Executive, US Healthcare Insurance & Payments

Over a 30 year consulting career I have had three situations where changes in executive leadership direction have forced me into an external job search.  My takeaway is to pay closer attention to changes in executive leadership, and to take action looking for opportunities (internally and externally) more quickly than you would normally due to loyalty, job satisfaction, hope for better times, and inertia.

The first situation started when my manager’s manager accepted a role outside the company and brought my manager along.  New leadership flew in and changed the focus of our business (away from what I was doing).  I had inside knowledge 3 months in advance but said and did nothing (it was a confidential, F500 CEO move).

The second situation was when my manager and CEO (who hired me) left the company.  The 2nd line leadership team (four of us, plus functional leads) had a great 6 month run and exceeded all financial targets while the search for a new CEO progressed.  This period was the highlight of my career performance.  However, a new CEO was hired, business structures were changed, the leadership culture changed, and within 3 months I was asked to make room for my replacement.  I had maintained hope that things would ‘return to normal.’

The third situation started almost 18 months before when I was asked to participate in a possible spin-out of my business to another part of the corporation.  My manager’s manager rejected the change and we stayed in place.  A year before all hiring in our business was frozen, but the sales target was greatly increased which made the overall plan impossible.  Management reiterated an unwillingness to invest even a single resource in the business.  Four months before, an unrelated executive departure was filled, and the scope was increased to add a few businesses (including mine).  Even then I kept hoping that a healthy, profitable and synergistic consulting business would be safe.

Net-Net:  Pay closer attention to changes in management direction and act on signs earlier than you might normally.  I have waited too long to look internally and externally for opportunities, and to voice my concerns to my manager.  I suggest a more balanced approach.

Jeffrey Cohen, President, US Advanced Computing Infrastructure, Inc

More often than not, compensation is only one reason people decide to change employers, and often not the #1 reason.  So if everything else about the current situation is ideal, then the counter-offer may be worth considering.  If on the other hand the new opportunity is also a position upgrade, a dream opportunity with a desired employer, relocation to a favorite location, or other factors, then the counter offer is a non-event.

My advice when changing jobs is:  Be sure you are running TO something, not running FROM something.

Tom Mead, Senior Consultant at The Pedowitz Group

“Counter offers are a sensitive and polarizing topic, and there are consequences to them, even if they are received. While I was in a large CPG company’s Marketing department, a co-worker got a higher salary offer from another company, took that to her supervisor and management made a better offer to keep her so she stayed.  However, within the next year, the company went through some layoffs and she was let go:  Perhaps it was due to her now relatively-high compensation and/or because they knew she was disloyal or not happy (or she wouldn’t have been looking for a new job to begin with).

All circumstances are different, but one should weigh why you want to leave in the first place and be aware of the potential ramifications of asking for a counter offer.”

Steve Udell, Chief Marketing & Branding Officer / Marketing Consultant

 

We hope you find these perspectives interesting. If you would like to share your thoughts on this for future blogs, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Larry Janis, Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030

Email: janis@issg.net

ISSG I Twitter I LinkedIn

 

Pay Inequity Is Still A Thing—And It Matters

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By Maria Colacurcio

In recent years, gender pay equity has become a topical discussion amongst the global workforce. Hollywood actresses and Olympic athletes have shared their stories of unequal pay for equal work; and there has been a slew of class-action suits and corporate scandals revealing discriminatory pay practices. As a result, investors, customers, employees and the law are all calling for progress on wage equality.

Is progress being made? It’s hard to say, but it is probably nowhere near enough as is needed. Some attribute this to the “pipeline” issue. That is, men and women freely choosing entirely divergent professional paths. The theory goes that men choose careers such as investment banking and software engineering and women choose professions such as nursing and teaching whose pay rates have been set (lower) by the natural market forces of supply and demand (or perhaps because of the long history of putting less value on women’s work). But if you look at computer programmers, women used to dominate the industry, then men flowed in. The pay automatically increased and the profession was viewed as more desirable. By contrast, as women flow into historically male professions, pay actually drops.

Some companies have made attempts to address the pay equity issue, but they’re often employing outdated approaches or third-party consultants. Reliable, scalable and accessible solutions have been limited. As a result, many companies have shied away from the issue of pay equity altogether, viewing it as simply too burdensome to tackle. Such lethargy produces pay practices which only perpetuate the gender pay gap. Unfortunately, women (and other underrepresented groups) can be faced with an uphill and solitary battle on the journey to equality.

Any effort to eradicate pay disparity in the workplace must be vigorously supported by the CEO, the leadership team and the board. If a board of directors or CEO is not genuinely dedicated to such an effort, then that effort will not happen, or will eventually fail. As a CEO, why should this be top-of-mind for you and your team?

Well, at a very fundamental level, it’s the right thing to do. When companies commit to equal pay for equal work, they send a powerful message to their current employees, future hires and their customers that they stand for something that is important to all, not just women. Additionally, having a fair and transparent pay process increases satisfaction and decreases turnover. A Gartner study revealed that there is a $16 billion cost for turnover in the tech industry alone.

If your organization does not yet have a robust and ongoing strategy for achieving pay equity, here is a step-by-step guide to help you check for pay disparities and commit to resolving them:

Step 1: You can’t stick your finger in the air as a gauge of pay equity. It takes asking the right questions and conducting detailed analyses. Make sure you have enough resources and technology in place to allow you to examine your data quickly and identify unfavorable trends.

Step 2: Shift the mindset from “protect and defend” compensation data to “find and fix” any gaps. This requires you to have the courage to share the results of your analysis in Step 1, but also the discipline to resolve any anomalies.

Step 3: Companies regularly ensure they are at market, so why not make pay equity a part of ongoing compensation benchmarking? Committing to regular and frequent pay analysis is the best way for companies to ensure they stay on top of this issue.

The CEO should be the catalyst for the organization’s journey to pay equity, but other key stakeholders such as the broader leadership team, the HR function, and middle managers are also key to success. There are many ways to fully involve these groups:

• Make it personal: Research has shown that the pay gap in groups of male managers who have daughters is smaller than amongst managers without daughters. This means that when an issue is personal, behavior changes no matter the gender.

• Make it a leadership issue: If you have a gender pay gap, it is a failure of leadership. Leaders have a role and responsibility to address this. As CEO, you must communicate with HR and managers, articulate the philosophy and strategy to achieve equal pay, and make sure to constantly share metrics and progress with managers and HR, so they can share with employees and external audiences. Commit to a quantitative approach to decide how pay is determined, setting salary ranges for each role, and then make these ranges available to your employees and recruits.

• Make it inclusive: It is not solely an issue to be discussed at a women’s leadership meeting. Make it a key agenda item for your next board meeting and your executive team meetings.

A good first step to kick-start this journey is to run a pay equity analysis leveraging a trusted solution with a vetted methodology. By utilizing a data-science powered software solution, you can determine where there are unexplained pay gaps and where you may need to employ remediation tactics to preserve your company’s culture and maintain legal compliance.

Source: Chief Executive