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How to Find the Right Job-Fit: The Key Lies Inside of Us!

How to Find the Right Job-Fit: The Key Lies Inside of Us!

How to Find the Right Job-Fit: The Key Lies Inside of Us!

Understand your Motivation and Style

How to find your future job? You don’t need a career quiz to find the right answer! Keep it simple, start with yourself! Look into your past or present and try to find and formulate your style, motivations, needs and goals first. What were those college projects or extracurricular activities that really excited you and when you had the feeling that you achieved something or made an impact onto others? In those particular situations how were you able to contribute to a successful outcome: was it through your focus and discipline, or was it through your intellectual or analytical input? How were you able to promote and convince others to join you in your endeavour? Were those people that you were already close to from before or were those people that you hadn’t known (well) before? Those questions might give you already a good clue on how you get things done: are you dominantly a doer who is able to work independently? Are you a thinker who likes to understand the processes first before starting the task? Are you someone who can easily convince others to join and work together on projects and tasks or do you feel more comfortable if you are paired up with a person that you can relate to? If you are still clueless or you want to be sure, Gallup’s StrengthsFinder 2.0 Online Assessment (a professional career quiz) will help you to establish a reliable description of your dominantly used talents that ultimately define your working style and motivation.

Be able to articulate your Values

From here you will also be able to articulate your needs: what work environment can trigger your being at your best? I am not talking about a good salary, benefits and other incentives but more about what you as an individual need from a self-actualized point of view such as the values that you have grown up with and that have helped you to operate within certain moral limits in a productive way.

Knowing and being able to point out your non-negotiable core values will provide you a tool that you can use to align with people around you. Think especially of your relationships with old friends and/or partner. Once you are clear about your principles and values such as honesty, trust, finance, loyalty, family, health etc., you will be able to align it with the organisation that you are looking to spend most of your time with. However, if you cannot find an intersection within those, which is very unlikely, a long term work engagement is probably the next step.

Find Your Meaning

Last but not the least, going through this exercise will bring you closer to a recap of your personal goals. These are much deeper than material goals like owning your own villa, buying a sports car and having your first million on your bank account. Being able to discover and embrace these goals will enable you to define true happiness and meaning in life. Once you come to an understanding that your style, needs and motivation are very much steered by your innate behaviour and your perception of the world, you will then realise that you have a very unique edge on how to contribute to the whole. If you have doubts, just ask your friends about your typical features. They will for sure point out the things that they find very special about you! If you understand your purpose and how valuable you are to the society you live and work in, then you will be able to see how you can be part of something bigger than just thinking of your own immediate needs and wants.

Once you are clear about all of those components style, motivation, needs and goal or in other words your Strengths, Core Values and Meaning, you know how to find your future job and that’s the time when you can pick the list of companies that you are interested in. You can then do your online research, inquire from friends who work there and maybe during the job interview ask the manager about their Corporate Vision, Purpose and Core Values and her working style in order for you to match your “personal shopping list”.

 

by Alexander Wollboldt 09/02/2018

Alex Wollboldt is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), – Consultant (CMC) and Gallup Strengths Coach and has a decade of corporate professional history as Finance Head and Director in manufacturing and service industries in different locations such as Germany, Japan and the Philippines. He is a founding partner at Wissen Solomon, a business consultancy that provides businesses through consulting and coaching expertise in the area of digitization, marketing, finance, operations and organizational development. Alex also acts as co-director for OSG Global Consultancy taking care of various areas involving private equity investments, financial advisory, M&A mostly in the Philippines and other South East Asian countries.

Alexander Wollboldt

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What Distinguishes a High Potential Manager? Statistics Speak!

What Distinguishes a High Potential Manager? Statistics Speak!

What Distinguishes a High Potential Manager? Statistics Speak!

by Alexander Wollboldt 02/02/2018

As a business coach and consultant, organizational leaders ask me often about how to deal with managers, especially those who are fairly young and inexperienced. My regular reply to this is a counter question: “What makes your organization select a particular person for the position of manager in the first place?” We can read a lot about the role of a high performance manager including his or her roles and styles. There are tons of books and articles with pointers out there. But reality shows that most of the managers today get promoted into their roles because of their performance in a previous role as a specialist. Not because someone identified them as suitable managers based on their managerial talents.

 

So what makes you a good manager?  

 

The main tasks of a manager

Typically a manager’s main job evolve around the questions on how to select the right people for a specific task and how to help them perform in it. Supposedly, this would be the right answer of most of us including your career guidance counselor, when being asked about the manager’s function. So if all managers would fulfill their job as pointed out above then there would be a good basis of high performing individuals in all organizations around the globe, right?

Recent studies by Gallup revealed, however, that only 13% of employees worldwide are fully engaged at work. It was further pointed out that this result is highly influenced by the employees’ managers. No need to be much into career counseling for experienced professionals or related areas in order to conclude that seemingly most managers probably don’t make enough efforts or simply don’t know how to create a task specific fit for their team members and help them to perform and reach their goals effectively. With this, the statement that employees leave their jobs not because of the organization but because of their managers gets a much deeper perspective that it is worth looking into.

The managerial talents

When Gallup discovered the relevance of the manager’s role towards having high scores in employee engagement, they looked into behavioral patterns that seem to be highly influential to find an answer to the question what makes you a good manager. They came up with the definition of five attributes of a high performance manager that they named as “managerial talents”. Whereas their research showed that less than 20% had an overall permanent successful track record of managerial talents resulting in high performance team results, another two out of ten managers at least were identified to possess basics of the skill set that could be developed into a high performance level through coaching and training.

Let’s look into what attributes or managerial talents Gallup identified:

 

#1 – Relationship Building

In order to be able to coach any individual effectively, the manager needs to be able to build relationships among his or her team and other stakeholders. Once a relationship is established based on trust, the door will be open for exploring deeper the aspirations and goals of the individual team members to be managed.

 

#2 – Motivation

Once goals and objectives are clearly communicated and committed by the team, the manager’s task is not only to remove obstacles but also to keep each single team member moving forward. Gather all the team to eat pizza or award the best employee in an organized event, might not always meet the individual preferences or needs when it comes to getting praises by the bosses. Each one of us appreciates a very much customized form of recognition, be it a one-on-one coffee meeting with the manager or a staged awarding in front of the organization. The best way to gauge if someone is considered to be a motivational manager is to ask his or her team members.

 

#3 – Assertiveness

Managers can appear to their team as “all over the place” especially in times of big unexpected changes. Managers with high assertiveness don’t get easily rattled by changes. Their deep understanding of what needs to be done to contribute to the organization is not only obvious to the team that surrounds him/ her but it shows in the whole team’s agility an ability to transform when facing new challenges.

 

#4 – Decision Making

Decisions in a corporate set up need to be relatable to the relevance, in terms of organizational goal and productivity. At the same time the executing team needs to understand how they can contribute to the governing rules of the game. If the manager does decisions that are not aligned with those organizational goals and/or at the same time does not understand how to maximize the potential of his or her outs co-workers, it will be unlikely that those decision will lead to sustainable growth, innovation and profits.

 

#5 – Accountability

Is the manager at any time able to step up and presume accountability for any of his or her projects? Can he or she say the same with the same confidence about his/her team members assigned to their respective task? What makes you a good manager who is able to build the confidence and understanding that even though there is no direct control within certain tasks his/ her co-workers perform in the interest of both the whole team and the organization?

If you as a manager were able to make a check mark behind each one of those five managerial talents and if you are able to say “yes that’s me!”, then chances are high that you understand and execute the job of a manager in a way that it contributes significantly to a high employee engagement level in your organisation, leading to high productivity, profit and growth.

Alex Wollboldt is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), – Consultant (CMC) and Gallup Strengths Coach and has a decade of corporate professional history as Finance Head and Director in manufacturing and service industries in different locations such as Germany, Japan and the Philippines. He is a founding partner at Wissen Solomon, a business consultancy that provides businesses through consulting and coaching expertise in the area of digitization, marketing, finance, operations and organizational development. Alex also acts as co-director for OSG Global Consultancy taking care of various areas involving private equity investments, financial advisory, M&A mostly in the Philippines and other South East Asian countries.

Alexander Wollboldt

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The Way Towards Happiness at Your Job

The Way Towards Happiness at Your Job

The Way Towards Happiness at Your Job

by Alexander Wollboldt 16/01/2018

“Happiness” is most likely the most common answer to the question “What is your goal in life?”. But what is real happiness? Some will say that having a filled bank account, the newest smartphone, a fast sports car or the newest designer bag will suffice your definition of being in the ultimate state of being the most happiest person. But isn’t this a little bit like a cat chasing after its own tail? Once you were able to obtain your long wished for gadget how long will it take until you start comparing it to others only to find out that there is already a better, nicer gadget out there? The way towards happiness does not seem to be found in material things.

 

Does a well paid Job make people happy?

A well paid job might not be the most singular factor to this question either. You can find some interesting contributions about the topic monetary incentives through Daniel Pink on You tube. He describes the phenomenon of highly paid IT specialists spending their spare time developing tools like the Browser Mozilla for free. Just for the purpose of seeing a bigger meaning in this serving the internet community rather than what they are getting paid for in their jobs. So what is it that we have to look for and what drives happiness?

 

Happiness Factors at Work

One of the questions in Gallup’s Q12 Employee Engagement survey is “Do you have a best friend at work?”. It’s giving us a clue on the driving happiness factors at work to look out for. Having a best friend at work describes a high sense of belonging to the workplace triggered by a person that we have a positive trust relationship with that goes beyond work. One could assume that the more best friends or best friend-like relationships we have at work the more we create an environment of comfort. Positive interactions support such an environment. It is linked to the question what triggers positive emotions in others. So it’s worth spending some one-on-one time with your colleagues talking about those areas that excites them and apply those insights regularly.          

 

The Authenticity of Shared Happiness

When you think about situations where you felt authentic happiness, aren’t those the moments that you spent with your friends, family members, sports team buddies and you experienced amazing beauty of nature, travel adventures or victories in sports competitions? And aren’t those the moments that you love to bring back into your memories and enjoy it even more when you can share those with the ones that were with you during those times? In fact, this seems to be the answers the to the initial question. Experiential happiness is the only authentic happiness that will last longest. So it is very much on us to establish the preconditions of happiness at work by creating positive interactions with our colleagues and try to create memorable moments together. Let’s pave the way towards happiness at work!    

 

by Alexander Wollboldt 16/01/2018

Alex Wollboldt is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), – Consultant (CMC) and Gallup Strengths Coach and has a decade of corporate professional history as Finance Head and Director in manufacturing and service industries in different locations such as Germany, Japan and the Philippines. He is a founding partner at Wissen Solomon, a business consultancy that provides businesses through consulting and coaching expertise in the area of digitization, marketing, finance, operations and organizational development. Alex also acts as co-director for OSG Global Consultancy taking care of various areas involving private equity investments, financial advisory, M&A mostly in the Philippines and other South East Asian countries.

Alexander Wollboldt

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What Indicates a Great Organizational Culture: Employee Satisfaction or Employee Engagement?

What Indicates a Great Organizational Culture: Employee Satisfaction or Employee Engagement?

What Indicates a Great Organizational Culture: Employee Satisfaction or Employee Engagement?

by Alexander Wollboldt 09/01/2018

I remember back in the 90’s when I took my first steps still as intern in the corporate world the term Employee Satisfaction was the measurement to decide if a company was good to work for or should be placed lower in the ranking of desirable work places. Nowadays, the term Employee Satisfaction, although still being used seemed to have switched to a more frequently heard term: Employee Engagement. So what indicates a great organizational culture: Employee Satisfaction or Employee Engagement? What are the most desirable employers or best firms to work for?

 

What is Employee Satisfaction?

When we try to look for a definition of Employee Satisfaction, we normally end up with descriptions such as “when people are happy at work and content with their job”. Happiness and contentment have a lot to do with the definition of one’s individual pursuit of meaning and purpose in relation to an outcome that it is aligned with.

At the same time one need to be able to celebrate it in order to create happiness. In an organizational context this simply means that the environment needed to be set up in a way that individuals, namely the employees, can fit their aspirations and personal life goals into it in such ways that they could put into effect the criteria of employee satisfaction. And the way a lot of companies measured and still are measuring those outcomes are in form of employee climate surveys with multiple qualitative and quantitative questions that are more or less relevant to decide the level of employee satisfaction.

Gallup’s research showed that although traditional idea of employee satisfaction relates to a meaningful outcome, still, it is a “broad, attitudinal outcome, like organizational loyalty or pride.” It is difficult to address these outcomes with just providing fancy incentives such as play stations, free canteen food, important sounding job titles and so on. On the other hand, engagement predicts satisfaction, as well as many other concrete business outcomes. It is easier to measure, and relatively easy to improve.

 

The Ingredients of Employee Engagement

When Gallup studied thousands of employee satisfaction surveys of different organizations, including most desirable employers in the world, they found out that there are four specific areas that are relevant not only to address the positive outcome of employee satisfaction but the additional factors necessary to improve and drive business results.

They came up with a survey that they called Q12-Employee Engagement Survey comprising 12 questions that consider the value contribution of the individual and her/his work team as well as basic and long term contribution by the organization to empower its employees. At the same time the Q12-Employee Engagement survey was structured in a way that it follows steps from question 1 all the way to question 12 that enables organizations to translate the survey outcomes to structured actionable items.

 

Building Block #1: Basic Needs

The Basic needs of an employee are the knowledge and understanding of what is expected of her/him at work. This is not limited to a mere job description but it also requires the deeper understanding of what the organization stands for, how they operate their business and how it will impact people in a greater sense. At the same time the organization through its managers will have to ask the question if it provides its employees with the necessary equipment and assets that are necessary to fulfill their tasks.

 

Building Block #2: Individuals

Does the organization recognize and let the employee use its talents and strengths in a way that it creates motivation and alignment with one’s purpose? Do the managers seem to care about the wellbeing of their team members as individuals? Once those questions are positively answered this should translate also in a continuous support in development of the individuals in those respective areas.

 

Building Block #3: Teamwork

Teamwork typically means that there is a group of imperfect individual contributors that works together depending on one another’s talents, skills and knowledge in order to achieve excellence. This demands that not only individual opinions are respected by one another but also that every member of the team realizes the importance and relevance not only towards themselves but also towards a greater impact on the outside world.

Only this awareness and attitude can lead the performance of a team to commitment towards excellence and a team spirit that sticks the people together over time. Since there is an alignment of individual purpose and meaning the group can also celebrate successes together in a much deeper and lasting sense.

 

Building Block #4: Growth

The tip of the building blocks that defines a fully engaged employee is the question on personal growth and development. It’s in summary the long term organizational recognition and action plan of an individual’s contribution to a successfully operating team that translates into incremental business results. Is an organization able to identify individual strengths and how do they invest in those areas to develop them further in terms of training and time?   

In summary it is clear that there has been a progression of the initial sentiment of organizations that employee satisfaction is relevant to a great team culture and positive business outcomes. At the same time it has also shown to be rather difficult to direct the knowledge of such rather “broad and attitudinal outcome”-directed measurements of satisfaction surveys into relevant actionable items.

The definition of Gallup-coined term “Employee Engagement” however seems to give us much more relevant information not only about how an employer makes efforts to satisfy her/his employees but also on how well an individual is able to contribute and grow with the same organization over time.      

Alex Wollboldt is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), – Consultant (CMC) and Gallup Strengths Coach and has a decade of corporate professional history as Finance Head and Director in manufacturing and service industries in different locations such as Germany, Japan and the Philippines. He is a founding partner at Wissen Solomon, a business consultancy that provides businesses through consulting and coaching expertise in the area of digitization, marketing, finance, operations and organizational development. Alex also acts as co-director for OSG Global Consultancy taking care of various areas involving private equity investments, financial advisory, M&A mostly in the Philippines and other South East Asian countries.

Alexander Wollboldt

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Do You Often Feel Demotivated at Work?

Do You Often Feel Demotivated at Work?

Do You Often Feel Demotivated at Work?

by Alexander Wollboldt 22/09/2017

Have you ever tried to redesign your job according to the ingredients that keep you highly motivated, and energised during work: your strengths, passion, positive relationships and purpose?

 

Start with listing down the main tasks that keep you occupied during the day, weeks and months. What of those regular recurring tasks do you spend most of your time with, and what of those tasks need less of your attention? If you find most of your time doing things that you are not really productive at, and in addition you don’t feel excited and passionate about,  then you are also not able to use your talents and skills in a way that translate into strengths! If you still do nothing about it – no wonder you struggle to find how to get motivated at work again.

 

How do you know your strengths? Try to identify areas at work or private life where you feel a yearning and a flow –  things that come out naturally and do not require much efforts from your end. Dig into your past when you were still in high school or college. What were the things and activities that you could spend hours without bothering the time? Usually those are good clues and descriptions of you applying your strengths!

 

Do you get the necessary support and recognition from your boss, colleagues and clients? If employees don’t know how their efforts and expertise contribute to the organisational success, it will in most cases over time translate into some level of discouragement. However, in order to get positive feedback from others we need to also create positive impacts onto them e.g. in form of help and support that lead to successful completion of an overall task. This raises the questions if you have enough opportunities to create positive relationships to others at work place.

 

Last but not least, do you find meaning and purpose in the job that you are doing? Do you have the feeling that your work helps in improving the situations of many others? Sometimes, simply widening our view of what we are doing towards the overall outcome and contributing to a bigger group of people can drastically change the level of excitement and energy that we bring into our jobs.    

 

Once you have clarity about those items discussed above, start connecting and grouping them so they give you a clear picture of how to focus and prioritise tasks in your job and how to get motivated at work again.

 

by Alexander Wollboldt 22/09/2017

Alex Wollboldt is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), – Consultant (CMC) and Gallup Strengths Coach and has a decade of corporate professional history as Finance Head and Director in manufacturing and service industries in different locations such as Germany, Japan and the Philippines. He is a founding partner at Wissen Solomon, a business consultancy that provides businesses through consulting and coaching expertise in the area of digitization, marketing, finance, operations and organizational development. Alex also acts as co-director for OSG Global Consultancy taking care of various areas involving private equity investments, financial advisory, M&A mostly in the Philippines and other South East Asian countries.

Alexander Wollboldt

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