Corporate Culture Archives

Hiring for the Future Using Emotional Intelligence

by Carolyn Stern | Nov 23, 2020 | Corporate Culture, Hiring and Recruiting, Interview Questions

One of the key driving factors behind every organization’s success is the people. People are the minds behind the operations to ensure business needs are met. Human capital is vital to each organization; in fact, they can either make or break the company. As one of the most important assets, it is crucial that companies hire and retain top talent.

Hiring for the Future Using Emotional Intelligence

Current trends in human resources show that the workplace is shifting to a digital approach, with working remotely on the rise. This changing work environment affects both current and future employees. For instance, most interviews now take place virtually. Furthermore, newly hired employees will have to adapt to remote working situations and complete their training and onboarding processes online as well. As they have not worked in the office before, they may feel intimidated and unaware of the company’s culture and workplace norms.

Another trend on the rise in the human resources industry is the hunt for soft skills. Organizations are now not only looking for applicants who possess technical skills, but also soft skills such as creativity and emotional intelligence. According to The Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum, emotional intelligence is one of the top 10 skills required for the workforce in the future. Emotional intelligence is a guiding principle to improved decision making, stress management and relationship building. And is now recognized as an emerging yet crucial skill for candidates to have.

As the unemployment rate falls, jobseekers are keen to find a new role. Along with the trends of a changing workforce, employers must adapt while finding a way to scout the best candidates. To aid you in your mission, we have compiled a guide on how to hire for the future!

How to Gauge Emotional Intelligence in Interviews

As mentioned above, emotional intelligence is now one of the top skills to look out for. Traditional structured interview questions are not going to find recruits with high levels of emotional intelligence, instead, ask a series of open-ended, non-leading, behavioral questions like this:

1. How do you motivate your team members?

This question can showcase a candidate’s ability to work in a team and approach to interpersonal relationships. While it is important that the candidate is able to stay self-motivated, they will also be working with others. Does the candidate value teamwork? How will their work behaviour affect team morale? This question can also be insightful if the candidate is applying to a position where they will need to lead a team, either in the present or future. Upon reviewing their answers, think of how the candidates’ skills and behaviours will also impact your team’s relationships.

2. Tell me about a time when something went wrong. How did you handle it?

This question can display a candidate’s emotional resilience. When the going gets tough, how do they manage? Do they simply give up or are they resilient? Their answer can also give insight about their problem solving skills and attitudes towards conflict. Think about how their situation could apply in your company and how their response would uphold. Take note if they mention anything they would have done differently. This is significant as you want candidates who are able to reflect upon their mistakes and learn from them.

As these questions are more personal, the candidate may need to take extra time to think about their answers. The interviewer should strive to make the interview process comfortable and build a safe space to allow more personal answers. Lastly, it is crucial to turn on cameras for virtual interviews. Leaving cameras on not only allows the interviewer to view the candidate’s expressions and reactions, but mirrors the in-person interview experience we were previously familiar with.

Hire for Culture-Fit, not Skills and Experience

Imagine that you have just conducted two interviews for an administrative assistant role and need to make a decision by the end of the day. Candidate A possesses over five years of experience in a similar role and is highly proficient in the project management tools and Microsoft Suite. The only problem with Candidate A? They showed a lack of interest in working for your company, citing the salary as the main source of their motivation. Teamwork was also not seen as relevant to them either. As for Candidate B, they have less than a year of experience and stated they are unfamiliar with the project management tools, but would be willing to learn. In addition, they expressed their interest in the company through explaining how the company core values aligned well with their own. Their motivation was the potential to grow with the company and to learn from team members. Now that you know their backgrounds, who do you hire?

While it may seem like the logical answer to pick Candidate A based on their experience, Candidate A exhibits low interest in the company and culture. In contrast, Candidate B may lack a few skills but shows a keen interest in learning and growing with the company. As Candidate B is well aligned with the company’s core values and culture, they would be the better choice.

A company’s culture is an integral part of your business. It can affect nearly every aspect of a company – from recruitment to employee satisfaction – it’s the core need of a happy workforce. Without a clearly defined corporate culture, employees can struggle to find value in their work and this can greatly affect your bottom line. To help find candidates who possess similar values and culture, make sure your job descriptions contain a short blurb that defines your core beliefs.

An Investment for the Future

If your newly hired employee does not share the same values as the company’s, they are likely a short-term solution. Remember, you can always train for skills, but you cannot train for attitude and personality!

Employees need to be treated as a long-term investment for your company, especially since human capital is the driving force behind turning visions into reality. As the workforce changes, be a step ahead by guaranteeing a smooth hiring process through leveraging emotional intelligence and selecting applicants who will contribute to your corporate culture.

If you are interested in fostering a strong corporate culture, check out our workshop, Cultivating a Positive Corporate Culture. We also offer a Virtual Retreat, which provides a unique opportunity to build culture and bond teams on a deeper level through understanding how emotions impact workplace behaviours and relationships. You can also visit our previous blog post, Emotional Intelligence Interview Questions, for more examples of interview questions that can gauge a candidate’s emotional intelligence.

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How to Mentor in the Workplace

by Carolyn Stern | Aug 1, 2018 | Coaching, Mentorship

Learning how to mentor in the workplace is an important skill to learn. A mentorship relationship is indeed a two-way street. The mentor has to be willing to help, advise, and coach the mentee, and the mentee has to be willing to put in the effort in order to get the most out of the relationship. Of course, it is the, for the most part, the mentee’s responsibility to get the ball rolling in the right direction. After all, mentees are the ones who require the mentor’s help to propel and accelerate their professional development.

So what do mentees need to know about being a mentee? The following points will highlight what it means to be in the mentee’s shoes and what etiquette they need to mentor in the workplace.

How to Mentor in the Workplace

LET GO OF YOUR EGO

As a mentee, you are the one asking for guidance and assistance. Proper mentor-mentee relationship etiquette is to let your mentor take the lead. Consider this relationship as being dance partners – one person leads, and the other follows. Remember, your mentor’s experiences count for a lot; they are credible and they hold an incredible amount of information power. Trust in your mentor’s abilities to guide you in the right direction. They have walked miles in your shoes, so let them show you the way.

ACTIVE LISTENING GOES A LONG WAY

How do you let your mentor take the lead? Through active listening. But what is the difference between listening and active listening, and why is active listening important? It’s crucial to go further than just hearing what your mentor is saying. Practicing active listening in your mentor-mentee relationship shows that you are absorbing what your mentor is saying, paying attention to their advice, and comprehending their messages clearly.

If your mentor is a successful professional, chances are they are extremely busy outside their mentorship relationship with you. Active listening not only shows your enthusiasm for the opportunity to work alongside your mentor, but it also shows that you are able to take direction well, even amidst all the busyness.

BE PREPARED

Your time with your mentor is precious and valuable. Not everyone is fortunate enough to find someone with who they are so eager to work alongside and actually be given the opportunity to do so. Showing preparedness by clarifying from the very beginning of the relationship what you are expecting from there, what your goals are, and what you are willing to do in order to achieve those goals shows not only your respect for your mentor, it also shows the respect you have for yourself. Coming prepared with goals and expectations for your mentorship relationship will help in building an effective and efficient connection.

DON’T GET DEFENSIVE

Your mentor has years of first-hand experience, that’s why you want to learn from them, right? As a mentee, it is crucial that you ask for feedback constantly. Although criticism is difficult to take in sometimes, it is an integral part of our personal and professional development. What is important to note about feedback, is how to interpret them as constructive criticism. As a mentee, you should be able to separate your personal insecurities from what your mentor is trying to communicate with you. Often, we are unable to take criticism constructively because we project our personal insecurities to the situation instead of directing the comments strictly to the event.

Mentors will oftentimes have a different point of view from you. Try not to get defensive because they are there to show you alternative ways to criticize situations and tackle situations. Appreciate their honesty with you. If you have concerns with their suggestions, discuss them openly to arrive at a consensus.

RESPECT YOUR MENTOR’S TIME

Working with mentors can test your ability to multitask. Recurrently, your mentor may give you a variety of work to be completed; this is because they want to give you as much work experience in the field as possible, and they also have less time to dedicate to their own work after taking you under their wing. Respect your mentor’s time and complete work promptly. This also extends to your communication efforts. Returning their phone calls and emails promptly allows them to schedule extra help or reorganize their personal schedules in the event that you are unable to complete assigned tasks or if you are otherwise unavailable to do so.

TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

This section goes hand-in-hand with respecting your mentor’s time. If you are in business, your mentor is likely a successful business person. If you are a teacher, your mentor is likely a successful professor. If you are in culinary arts, your mentor is likely an extremely busy executive chef. Whatever your field is, it is important to take your mentorship relationship seriously. Again, it is not often that mentees are able to choose their own mentors and be given the opportunity to work alongside them. So, take it seriously!

Consider looking at your opportunity from the perspective of a person who did not get the same chance as you. Perhaps it is because they could not commit the time. Or, maybe it is because your mentor, out of all the individuals who had approached them, chose you to be their mentee. Be gracious that you are able to learn from your mentor because there are others who may be willing to work harder than you but were not given the break to.

SHOW GRATITUDE

Mentors have a great impact on their mentees’ lives. They are the ones who develop their critical thinking skills so that their mentees are able to take on challenges in their professional careers in ways that direct them to success. When you write our graduation notes to be printed in your high school yearbook, many of us thank our teachers, family, and friends for helping us get through the five years of secondary school. Why not do the same for your mentors? Mentors do a lot for you – they may invite you to sit in meetings or go to conferences and networking events that will connect you even more so with individuals in your field. Those are opportunities that not very many people get. It is important that you show your gratitude to your mentor because without them, you would probably have to take the long route to your destination.

Respect Your Mentor’s Confidence

Your mentor’s experiences are priceless. They have likely worked with numerous organizations, with each one giving them more knowledge. With every endeavor your mentor has gone through, they gain more confidence. Respect their sureness and be open to their suggestions. If you do find yourself questioning the legitimacy of their actions, talk to them directly. Everyone comes with their personal beliefs and values, and mentors are there to open your eyes to different solutions, not to challenge your principles.

Let Your Mentor Invite You In

First and foremost, your mentor is there to be your professional role model. They are there to show you the ins and outs of your career so that you may accelerate yourself to your professional growth and development. However, because some mentorship relationships require both parties to work closely together for long periods of time, it is inevitable that professional relationships become more personal. If this is the case, let your mentor invite you into their lives. Remember, as a mentee you are there to learn from their professional experiences first.

Keep The Doors Open

When you stay in relationships that no longer have a purpose, it is doing the other party and yourself a disservice. Eventually, your mentorship relationship will run its course, and you, as a mentee, will need to leave the relationship.

It is important not to burn bridges when you leave any mentorship relationship. Keeping the doors open between yourself and your mentor allows an opportunity to work collaboratively again in the future.

Learn more about creating positive two-way communication within a mentor and mentee relationship with our online courses!

To learn more about the power of emotional intelligence and the benefits of coaching and mentoring in the workplace, sign up for our biweekly newsletter here, where you will receive our latest updates, an inventory of resources, and much more!

If you need help leading your organization to success, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

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How To Identify Your Strengths

by Carolyn Stern | Jul 15, 2018 | Personal Development, Self-awareness

Everyone has a natural aptitude for something.

What are your strengths?

Working with numbers
Detail-oriented
Drawing pictures
Teaching children
Growing plants
Problem-solving
Caring for those less fortunate than you
Music
Athletics
Empathy
Writing
Working with your hands.

Identifying your greatest strengths and building your life based on them is essential for your overall happiness and success. Without knowing how to discover your strengths and maximize them, you may waste a lot of time doing the wrong things.

Can you imagine spending years of hard work only to realize at the end that you have poured your time and energy (not to mention money) into the wrong things?

Many people are not even aware of their strengths. So, the question is: How do you discover your natural talents?

Here are three easy steps to help you determine your natural aptitude

Step 1: Tasks that are easy

Write down a list of those things that you do that seem easy for you.
These are the things that you can do that seem almost effortless.
Often, the tasks that are easy for us are those where we have a special aptitude.

Step 2: “Where did the time go?” tasks

Make a list of those things you do where time just seems to fly by.
When you are doing these activities, you may look up and realize that several hours have passed without you even realizing it.
This is a good clue to activities where you have natural talent.

Step 3: Tasks that make you happy

Finally, write all the activities that make you happy.
These are things that make you smile.
These are the tasks you would do just for yourself, with no promise of gain, just because they’re fun, interesting and fulfilling.

After writing out all three lists, find the common activities.

These are likely to be the areas of your natural aptitude and talent. These are the areas of greatest potential for you.

Imagine if you could spend most of your time developing and playing at something that makes you happy, where time flies and where it’s easy for you. Wow!

So, now that you know what your natural talent is, try to find or carve out a role that draws on these strengths every day. Organizing your life around your strengths will make your life more productive and fulfilled.

Not sure where your strengths and weaknesses lie in terms of your emotional intelligence? Try our free 15-question quiz to measure your level of emotional intelligence.

To learn more about emotional intelligence and how it benefits your organization, sign up for our biweekly newsletter here, where you will receive our latest updates, an inventory of resources, and much more!

If you need help leading your organization to success, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram to keep up with our latest blogs!

Invest in Your Teams with Emotional Intelligence Training

by Carolyn Stern | May 1, 2018 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership

Looking to make an investment in your employee development? Not sure what to train them in next? How about Emotional Intelligence training? But first, let’s answer a question: What skills do you want your employees to have?

Decision Making?
Stress Tolerance?
Anger Management?
Empathy?
Trust?
Assertiveness?
Presentation Skills?
Accountability?
Flexibility?
Customer Service?
Communication?
Change Tolerance?
Teamwork?

Emotional Intelligence Training

Ideally, we would like an employee to be all of those things but realistically, no one is all of those things, and no organization has the time or the budget to be able to train every single employee in every one of those skills…right? Well, if you look at the root of those skills, they all actually stem from one thing…Emotional Intelligence. Thankfully, through Emotional Intelligence and resilience training, you can actually give your employees the foundation to be great in all of those things. Right now, Emotional Intelligence is the single most important investment that your organization can make in your employees.

Emotional Intelligence is something that all of us have – no matter what our role in the organization. The difference between being a great leader, versus being a good leader, is understanding and utilizing our emotional intelligence.

In this day and age, when talent is in high demand, do you find that you are losing your top people to your competition? Worse yet, are you losing your people to disinterest and apathy? Are they just showing up and doing time to get to the weekend? By helping your people understand their intrinsic motivators, desires, successes, and interpersonal skills, you are demonstrating your investment in them, and that you are an Employer of Choice.

So what is the most effective way to do Emotional Intelligence training in the workplace? Here are two things you can do…

Have your employees take an EQ Assessment.

The fascinating thing about taking an EQ Assessment is that it tends to show people their hidden attributes and allows them to see their true potential; whilst creating a road map to get them from good to great.

Leaders are put in place to lead their team, but how can they successfully lead a team if they don’t know their own strengths and weaknesses? It is common for leaders to stick to what they are good at – however, it is their development opportunities that are most important to recognize and learn from.

Having your employees take an EQ Assessment will show them the specific areas that they need to improve in.

Invest in a customized EQ training program.

Once your employees know the skills that they need to work on, now you can provide them with the training to improve on those skills. There are two types of EQ training that you can find, Live Training, and/or Online Training. Both are highly effective programs but are communicated through different platforms.

Emotional Intelligence Live Training is a great option if you are looking for training that happens at the workplace, face to face, in person. It allows for multiple employees to be trained together on the same skill sets. If you are looking for a program that stimulates team bonding, then this is the more suitable option.

Emotional Intelligence Online Training is a great way to get more employees trained at once, at a lower cost. Employees can do this online training at home, and/or at work, at their own pace and convenience. This is more ideal for a company that is looking to do some training but doesn’t have a lot of time or resources to do so. This type of training can allow for the program to be customized to each employee and the specific areas that they are trying to improve in.

If you’re looking to invest in your staff with emotional intelligence training, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram to keep up with our latest blogs!

How to Avoid Decision Paralysis

by Carolyn Stern | Apr 1, 2018 | Corporate Culture, Decision Making

Have you ever found yourself lost for an answer when your friend simply asks you, “Where do you want to go for dinner?” There are just so many places to choose from. So, how do you make a better decision?

You could invite your friend to come over to your house, as your fridge is stocked full of fresh vegetables and all the toppings needed to make a great salad; but you also love the triple cheese, deluxe pizza from the pizza place down the street. Sometimes, you may even find yourself shrugging off the decision with no idea where or what to suggest. If this situation sounds like something you would find yourself in, don’t worry, you are not alone.

Simply defined, decision paralysis is the act of over-analyzing and overthinking situations to the point where no decision is made, and thus, no action is taken. And the fact of the matter is decision paralysis is more common than you think.

In today’s society, we are bombarded with choices upon choices, ultimately overwhelming us rather than simplifying our daily lives. Stepping into a coffee shop alone can inundate some people with countless choices to select from for a simple cup of Joe.

Alternatively, many of us have an incessant need to always make the ‘right’ decision. Our perfectionist society has not made this gnawing necessity any easier to overcome, as we have become conditioned to fear making a mistake and worse yet, fail.

Regardless of the reason, there are many causes of decision paralysis. Therefore, not only is it important to focus on what causes it, but also on how to manage it, and eventually prevent ‘decision-making stagnation.’

Almost everyone will experience a form of analysis paralysis in their career and/or personal life. Therefore, here are a few productivity tips that will help you get started on the path of making a concrete decision, and make whatever conclusion you choose, the right one.

Strategies for Overcoming Decision Paralysis

1. Prioritize The Importance of The Decision

Many decisions you have to make on a daily basis are not actually that important. For example, deciding where you want to go for dinner is probably not the most pressing decision you will have had to make in your day. Ever heard the saying ‘pick your battles’? Now relate that to your decision-making process. It is important to prioritize your decisions. Can you imagine a life where all your daily decisions required you to do extensive research? You would be exhausted by your first waking hour! That is why identifying and analyzing how important any given situation is, is critical when prioritizing decisions.

Decision Matrix

One way to do this is by creating a decision matrix. Developing a decision matrix, will help you evaluate and prioritize a list of options. “The matrix is useful for looking at large masses of decision factors and assessing each factor’s relative significance.” It forces you to brainstorm the criteria needed to make a good decision and then asks you to assign a relative weight to each criterion. Once you have weighed the criterion, it asks you to assess each alternative against the criterion and then multiply each option’s ranking by its criterion weight. The last step involves adding up the points for each option, and “the option with the highest score will not necessarily be the one to choose, but the relative scores can generate meaningful discussion and lead the team toward consensus.”

2. Set Goals

Setting goals is a major step in our decision-making process. Knowing what results you want is a powerful tool, and should be used when making a decision. One of the main reasons why some are so indecisive is because they don’t know what their end goals are.

Imagine someone waking up in the morning, getting ready, heading out the door, and aimlessly walking about – they don’t know where they are going, so they just walk for hours-on-end trying to figure out where to be and what to do.

Setting goals help us to narrow our thinking so we have a clear direction of where to go and what to do when we arrive. Remember to set S.M.A.R.T goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.

When our goals are unclear, analysis paralysis may occur because we have to overthink everything we have to do, rather than concentrating on the main objectives. Setting goals help clear our minds of external clutter, and instead, focus our energy on getting stuff done.

3. Set a Deadline

Setting deadlines, much like setting goals, is critical for preventing decision and analysis paralysis. Every day we are presented with decisions that need to be made. Some of these decisions are pressing, and some can be put on the back burner.

To make life a little bit less complicated, consider setting deadlines for matters that definitely require your final ruling. Setting deadlines that are closer in present-time, and have a definitive end-date, help accomplish tasks more efficiently because they take away any ambiguity.

In turn, this helps minimize the possibility of over-analysis and maximize productivity by urging you to come to a conclusion versus overthinking your choices.

4. Decisions are Often Not Permanent

No one is perfect; we all make mistakes. More times than not, decisions aren’t clear-cut with a right or wrong answer.

Comedian Louis CK puts an end to nagging decision-making obstacles by stating, “If you’re 70% happy with a decision, just go for it.”

Are you someone who overthinks certain matters that should only require a quick decision? If so, you are in good company.

It is important to remember, though, that sometimes, making a decision and having a final verdict is simply good enough. Spending more time on deciphering between choices can be a time sucker, and as Elizabeth Gilbert said “done is better than good.”

5. Take Action

There is no doubting the importance of mentally sifting through ideas and thoughts prior to taking action. Some, however, get stuck in this process. If you think of your mind as a power tool, imagine the countless possibilities that you could tackle once you find your mind’s additional source of power and potential!

When people get stuck in rehearsing their ideas in their minds, decision paralysis, inhibiting action, often occurs because ideas sit longer and longer, becoming stagnant.

Take action. Call up a friend, tell them your ideas – the more people that know about your ideas, the more you will feel accountable for actually taking action. The more you articulate your positions, the more energy you give them, and the more alive they will become. Making the decision to take action creates momentum for even more actions to follow. If you want to learn more about how to take action, we have a customized experience for you!

If you need help leading your organization to success, book a call with us here; we’d love to listen and provide support in any way we can.

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