SheMentor

This time of year, many of you are busy preparing children to go “back to school” – that time-honored tradition of buying brand-new spiral notebooks, crisp blue-lined loose-leaf paper, and #2 pencils.  I used to absolutely LOVE this time of year, when everything you needed to use on a daily basis was brand-new, and your education slate was wiped clean, the promise of a brand-new years’ possibilities fresh on your mind.  So even though I’m a grown-up now and haven’t been in school for close to 18 years, this time of year still makes me wistful and nostalgic for the smell of paste and the texture of a nice pink rubber eraser!

I still believe you can keep the magic alive of this fresh, crisp time of new beginnings – even if you are a grown-up.  Here are some things you should consider looking into, to help you keep the spirit of a new fall season alive, even as an adult:

1.      Make sure you go ahead and invest in some fancy back to school “school supplies” to spruce up your office.  Old, plain manila folders are a thing of the past.  Invest in some bright colorful file folders and redo your filing cabinet with panache.  Or, pick up some trendy journals and notebooks to add a little spice to your daily work tools.     

2.      When I was a girl, all my school clothes were bought on layaway, to be “rescued” just days before the first day of school.  Having that many new outfits at one time was a heady feeling!  Go out and freshen up your wardrobe – now is the time that all the summer clothing is on sale, and if you live in a relatively warm climate, you’ll be wearing summer-weight clothes through November at least.

3.     Have any new “students” (ok, co-workers) joined your company lately?  Build up your karma points and ask them to lunch – do YOU remember what it felt like to be the new kid?

4.     Take some time to clear out the clutter that has no doubt been accumulating in your office.  Do you have personal items you’ve lugged up to the office but have grown tired of looking at them?  Take ‘em home.  How about unfiled papers, recycle bin paper to be dumped, restocking small items (paper clips, sticky note pads). Taking the time to de-clutter your office can leave you with a real sense of renewal and ready for a fresh start on all your important projects.

5.     Take a look at your morning rituals and adjust if necessary.  Have you gotten a little slack over the summer months?  Re-evaluate your wake time.  Pack your lunch the night before.  Start (or resume) choosing your work outfit the night before.  Little changes in your morning rituals can make you feel more accomplished.

6.     Re-evaluate your work/life “boundaries”.  Are you working so many hours that you don’t even have time to focus on all the extra-curricular activities that fall brings to your life?  Take a look at where you can shave off time from current projects, and re-evaluate that you are working on the right things at the right time.   And, if all else fails, take 2-3 vacation days to use on some Friday’s and get caught up with mundane home activities so that you can really be focused on important stuff during your off-time (like football season!).

Ok, so none of those items are “rocket science” but might just be enough to nudge you into that old feeling of renewal and “fresh starts” that fall used to bring to us as children.  Allowing yourself to participate in the excitement that the “back to school” season brings provides you with a terrific mid-year “gut check” on your work goals and priorities – and might just jar you out of that work rut you’ve been in all summer!

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Having a good mentor is critical for women executives trying to gain advancement in their careers.  It is important because it’s a need that is currently not being filled for women in the business community.  There is a tendency for mentors to choose mentees who are like THEM --and because there is still a much larger number of men in leadership positions, this means they will more likely mentor other men.  Research shows that fewer than 25% of professional women experience real mentoring in their careers.   Sometimes, you can’t wait to learn important business lessons as they come – you need an expert with specific information, life experience, and advice that will help you move forward. You quite literally need someone who’s “been there, done that” at the leadership level to which you aspire. 

So, where do you turn when you are in need of a mentor?  Well, the answer is, it depends on whether you seek a “Casual” or “Formal” mentor relationship.  With casual mentor relationships, you can find mentors by using your connections, contacting your own company to see if they have a mentoring program, and generally finding people who are doing what you want to one day do, and ask them to mentor you!   With formal mentor relationships, you would turn to a professional who makes coaching or mentoring their living.  And there are a lot of good benefits to having a formalized mentor in addition to your casual mentor relationships.  For example, participating in a paid, formal program removes any hesitancy that you might be interrupting or inconveniencing your mentor, and allows you the freedom to contact your mentor at any time. You can feel comfortable knowing that the mentor has been trained to make every meeting productive, and that you will receive one-on-one attention focused specifically on your goals.  A formal mentoring program also has a beginning and an end date. Oftentimes in a casual mentoring relationship, mentors and protégés are often hesitant to commit to the relationship because of a concern that the relationship will never end, or it will be difficult to end. A formal mentoring program removes any obligation to one another to continue the relationship once the program has ended, especially if the relationship has not been ideal. It allows both individuals to understand their commitment to each other and be completely focused on the goals of the program.  

By the way – I believe it’s important to have BOTH types of mentor relationships – each has something unique to offer you that the other doesn’t.

It is important to appropriately set your expectations for what you can reasonably expect to gain from your mentor.  I believe that one of the biggest mistakes people make when working with a mentor is forgetting that mentors, or coaches, are not therapists, and you shouldn’t really WANT them to be. If you go to a therapist, you’re there because of a problem you have.  When you seek a coach or mentor, nine times out of ten you simply want to improve in some area.

What are some good resources you can recommend for women looking for mentorship?  Well, you gotta love the internet, because it’s opened up SO many opportunities for men AND women to research, read, write, learn, and interact.  You’ve got to first identify the area of your life with which you would like a mentor’s help.  Then, who do you know?  Talk with your company – often times, companies will set up mentoring programs to enrich the learning opportunities for their management team.  One specifically good resource I would recommend is a web site named  iMantri.com.  Whether you want to be a mentor or a mentee, iMantri allows you evaluate your competencies, help find a suitable mentoring match, provides a framework and facilitates mentoring interactions.

How does being a mentor benefit someone that is trying to climb the corporate ladder?  Well, as an example, one of my clients grew up in a household where the mom worked in the home (what we used to call housewife), and the father was a scientist, so she was never around business culture at all.  Other than the fact that she had a pretty outgoing personality, she was pretty clueless on corporate politics at her first job as a result.  Mentors can really just steer you through some of those waters – you know, pull you aside and say “you know, you might not want to blurt out this and that next time in a meeting with Fred’s boss, because he’s sensitive to X”.  

If you are a female business executive and haven't established a mentor for yourself, there's no time like the present. Make a commitment to yourself to think through the kind of mentor you'd seek, and get the process started - it could be the difference between a good career - and a GREAT career!

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When you have an employee who is underperforming for any reason, you must quickly and honestly discuss this with that employee.  This discussion will be more easily directed if you have a solid, up-to-date “Job Description” document for this employee’s position, which has been reviewed at length with the employee and submitted to the Human Resources Department for their permanent file.  If employees haven’t been given clear direction in their jobs, it’s hard for us as managers to understand our expectations.  (But…the subject of a good “Job Description” document and how critical it can be in directing an employee’s performance will be the subject of an upcoming article.)  So, we’ll assume for the sake of this article that your employee has a valid, up-to-date “Job Description” that accurately outlines exactly what the company’s expectations are for him/her.  And let’s also say that this same employee is not meeting one or more of their duties outlined on the Job Description.  It is time for you to issue a correction to this employee – but which route to take? 

First, let me say that out of all the discipline situations you will be in as a manager, I would daresay only about 20% of them result from a very flagrant and specific action the employee has taken that very clearly violates one of their expected duties and activities.  About 80% of the time, the reason for discipline will NOT be clear-cut, unfortunately, but rather an amalgam of different things adding up to a negative performance.  A few examples of what I mean:

·         You inherited a department which has a long-time employee with a terrible attitude.  He brings everyone else on the team “down” with his complaining and negative energy.  You are certain you could improve your teams’ productivity if you could either reform or terminate this one employee. 

·         You have a passive/aggressive employee who goes through periods of perfect behavior, and then will lapse into 1-2 month periods of utter failure in one particular area (i.e., coming in late for work, too many sick days, missed assignments, etc.)

·         You hired someone for your team who has turned out to be an office bully.  When confronted about his bullying, he refers to his “aggression” and “candor” as just being his style, and that everyone else is too sensitive.  He claims that no one else has ever complained about it except you.

·         You have an employee who is really well-liked by everyone in the company, who truly gives 110% to her job, is ALWAYS punctual and on-time with assignments – but is just not catching on to the subject matter material of your industry AT ALL, and it is causing her to make mistakes in her documentation.  You’ve already had 2 different people retrain this employee, and she just doesn’t seem to be “getting it”.

In these murky situations, you must work hard to make sure you are able to set expectations for their behavior in addition to their actual job performance.   It may be that the “bully” on your team is also your highest performer – but they need to understand that their attitude and behavior with the rest of the team is just as important as the high productivity behavior, and that when one of those two things is going badly, it doesn’t matter how good the other thing is (ok, folks in sales with specific commission structures might actually disagree with me here, but you get the idea).  

You also must establish a precedent of “correction” with this employee such that it doesn’t come as a complete shock to them.  For example, don’t give them really high marks on their annual performance review, and then 2 months’ later issue them a warning on their bullying. 

Ok – so getting back to the heart of the matter, there are so many different ways of approaching employee performance correction – from “verbal warnings” to “performance improvement plans” – so, I’m going to share with you what I believe to be the most effective chain of events that should take place when disciplining an employee.

1.       Step 1 should always be a verbal conversation with the employee.  This is a casual conversation that doesn’t produce any documentation, and is – for now – just between you and the employee.  Here are the things you must accomplish in this verbal conversation:

a.       Be very direct and clear about the behavior or work performance area that is not meeting your standards.  The employee might be surprised, because they thought they were doing everything just right.   Don’t sugar-coat the issue – speak in plain terms. 

b.      Make sure to have a minimum of 3 tangible examples you can provide this employee to  back up your discussion, so that even if the employee doesn’t AGREE with you, they can’t say they don’t UNDERSTAND.  If possible, reference either in your employee handbook or in the employee’s job description where these items are addressed. 

c.       Articulate the time duration under which you expect improvement.  Whether immediate, by tomorrow, or in 90 days really depends on the level of seriousness of the infraction and your best judgment.  But whatever the case is, be clear about when this is to take place.

d.      This step is very important – make informal notes on the meeting that – for now – only you know about.  Even if you tear off a piece of paper, scribble 3-4 sentences to help you remember key points of how the meeting went, and then toss it into a “miscellaneous” file in your desk drawer, you are dramatically improving your chance for recall IF you have to take further disciplinary actions.  If it ends up being a one-time thing with an otherwise high performing employee, you can throw away that hand-written note after a few months.

2.       Step 2 should result in a formal “first written warning” to the employee.  In many companies, this is known as a “Performance Improvement Plan”, and it is really a more detailed, written version of the verbal conversation you already had.  Depending on the severity of the situation, I usually only had myself and maybe the team lead in the office when issuing the first written warning.  You will want to communicate the four points outlined above in this meeting, but you now will put them in writing.  The first written warning should be very clear about the consequences of not reaching the desired improvement.   I always required my employees to sign the written warnings, with accompanying text on the form that says the employee doesn’t necessarily agree or disagree with the contents, but that they have read it and a copy of it has been presented to them.  This should be a permanent document that gets placed in the employee’s permanent record in Human Resources.

3.       Step 3 would be a “second written warning”.  Again, depending on the severity of the infraction, you might choose to just skip this step and go directly to step 4.  In this step, you will again document all of the items mentioned in #1 above, and this time, it should be made clear that immediate improvement is required, and the consequences of not improving will be termination for cause.  This warning should be conducted in the presence of the Human Resource officer, preferably in their office.  This should be a permanent document that gets placed in the employee’s permanent record in Human Resources.

4.       Step 4 – termination.

The biggest mistake a manager can make is not addressing performance problems quickly enough.  Although never a pleasant job, make a commitment to yourself as a manager that you will not postpone that which needs to be done:  not only is that the best thing for your department, but it’s really the most fair thing you can do for the wayward employee in the long run.

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