Jeff Snyder's Coaching Blog
Are you an aspiring leader? Have you ever wondered where you could get coaching and training to understand how to present the best version of yourself? Do you have a game plan that will get you from where you are to where you want to go? Are you ready to be in charge and to lead? I can help you to discover and to develop what's in you that would translate into you becoming a leader that others want to follow.
Jeff Snyder Coaching, Millennial Leadership Coaching, 719.686.8810
When you're ready to figure out the difference between what you "Can" do and what you "Should" do with your life, give me a call. I help my clients to find Clarity. Clarity leads to personal Confidence. Clarity also makes Direction clear.
Jeff Snyder Coaching, 719.686.8810
Having a clean, clear, logical resume that can be scanned by a human being in a matter seconds is absolutely a requirement in in the world today where attention spans are short.
But is a great resume alone a strategy? Not so much. It’s only part of a well-thought-out job search strategy.
Recently, I saw something on one of my client’s on-line applications that you should know about. Next to the place on their application where a candidate could upload a resume, the on-line form asked for a candidate’s LinkedIn URL.
This was a new request that I hadn’t seen before. I knew that companies were looking candidates up on LinkedIn but I’d never seen a company directly ask for a candidate’s LinkedIn URL.
Employers are looking at job candidates on LinkedIn. When your LinkedIn profile is reviewed by anybody, you’re making a first impression in a matter of seconds. I don’t know exactly how many seconds it takes to form a LinkedIn first impression but I can tell you from my own experience in searching for talent on LinkedIn that most of my LinkedIn visits aren’t long visits.
If you decided to build a header similar to this one for your own LinkedIn profile, be aware of the pop-ups LinkedIn occasionally places over your headers pace and avoid putting an image or text in these areas.
If your resume or your LinkedIn profile grab someone’s attention and you’re invited to a telephone interview or a face-to-face interview, be sure that the message you’ll share when you interview aligns with your resume’s message and your LinkedIn Profile’s message.
For over 26 years working as a recruiter, it is common that the verbal message a job candidate shares with me tells one story and the story I read on their resume is another story.
Today, LinkedIn plays a part in a person’s messaging. More often than not, I see a gap between a job seeker’s resume and their LinkedIn messaging and I hear another disconnect when they pick up the phone to call me.
This alignment I’m referring can and should be addressed.
Jeff Snyder’s, JeffSnyderCoaching.com Coaching Blog, 719.686.8810
The Strengths Coaching I’ll refer to here is what happens after a person takes a Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. The report that comes from taking a Clifton StrengthsFinder shows a person’s totally unique human makeup or wiring as I like to call it, based on how their 34 traits line up.
The results of this assessment don’t throw a person into a box or category that someone else created. This assessment brilliantly shows a person how entirely unique they are. As a Strengths Coach, I get to show my clients what to do with their uniqueness. I’m passionate about this work.
“Millennials love not being put into a box by the way”
The traits at or near the top of someone’s Clifton StrengthsFinder report are generally thought to be someone’s Strengths. This is true if a person is aware of their dominant traits and if they’re actively working to leverage their dominate traits to create the best possible version of themselves.
I spoke in front of an audience of approximately 75 people. I asked the audience to raise their hand of they had ever taken a Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment. My best guess is that as many as 60 out of 75 hands went up.
I then asked those who had raised their hand to keep their hand up if they had done anything with their StrengthsFinder assessment results. Again, my best guess suggests that approximately 10 hands remained raised and as many as 50 hands went down.
This was an eye opening experience for me. At that moment, I began to understand why so many people I encounter think they know their strengths. In reality, these people might know the words that sit on an assessment report but if they’ve never gone beyond the word descriptions on the assessment report, they likely don’t know their unique personal strengths and more importantly, how those strengths operate.
What matters to me is that each and every Strengths Coaching client I’m privileged to work with is able to move forward with enhanced Clarity, Direction, Confidence and a Strategic Plan to know how to get to their next destination.
Many of my Strengths Coaching clients learn so much about themselves through the Strengths Coaching experience that they stick with me to work on improving their Emotional Intelligence. In addition to being a Strengths Coach, I am also a Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach. The work I do around Emotional Intelligence Coaching is the most deeply impacting work I’ve been privileged to do with other people in my entire career.
The combination of Strengths Coaching and Emotional Intelligence Coaching is what moves my clients from “Good to Great” and I’m fortunate enough to go along for the ride.
If you figure it out or if someone tells you that something in your behavior is getting in the way of your progress and you decide that it’s time to address that behavior, there are a few things you should know about behavioral change.
The behavior that is getting in the way of your progress likely didn’t start yesterday. Therefore, fixing a negative behavior isn’t going to happen as soon as tomorrow. Most human behaviors are deeply ingrained because we’ve been practicing our bad behaviors for a long time.
The idea of changing human behavior is possible and frequently very fruitful but it is also one of the most difficult endeavors a person can take on. The behavior that is deeply ingrained and practiced will take time to unravel and to improve.
Anyone who is serious about changing behaviors that might be holding back their progress can change their behavior. There is no magic wand or pixie dust available to facilitate human behavioral change. A properly trained emotional intelligence coach can assist his / her client in making positive change and the benefits of doing so can be priceless.
What does changing human behavior look like? Here are just a few examples.
Impulse Control
The smartest person in the room frequently has the impulse to let others know how smart they are. Learning how to control this impulse and adding a scoop of humility can do wonders for this person’s personal and professional progress. Impulse Control is an Emotional Intelligence skill that can be improved upon.
Listening
It has been said that most people listen in order to determine how best to formulate what they’re going to say next. In other words, they aren’t really listening to actually hear and understand what someone else has to say. They're listening to build their speaking strategy.
A different listening approach would be to listen with the intention of understanding the person who is speaking. This change in approach can radically change the results of a conversation.
Winning Too Much
Many people who in leadership roles are highly competitive people who need to win all the time. The down-side of being wired like this is the tendency for such a person to step in and give his / her team the answers to a problem. By simply (not so simple for this person) stepping back and allowing one’s team to formulate an answer to a problem, a highly competitive, win at all costs type of leader can dramatically boost his / her team’s willingness to contribute to problem solving in the future.
People who consider how their behavior impacts the audience around them and people who strive to achieve balance in their behavior are the people who will achieve the most desirable results in all facets of life. This is simple to say and very difficult to achieve.
As difficult as it is to achieve behavioral change, the results of changing negative behavior can be priceless.
The other day I shared an article from the Harvard Business Review. The article title was “The Dark Side of High Employee Engagement”.
Since I shared the Harvard Business Review article, it should be mentioned that Gallup’s continuous research on employee engagement in the United States shows that employee engagement hovers around +-31%.
That means that +-69% of people who go to work every day in the United States are not engaged in the work they’re doing.
While the Harvard Business Review article brought up some interesting points, I don’t think there is a significant risk in most companies of seeing employee engagement becoming too high any time soon.
What Can Higher Employee Engagement Produce?
· Increased Employee Job Satisfaction
· Employee Retention
· Greater Profits
· Lower Stress
· Happier Customers
· Fewer Safety Incidents
· Higher Quality Output
· And More
For the time being, I’ll continue to focus on helping my clients to determine how they can produce their best performance by aligning their unique natural strengths with the work they choose to do. There are plenty of people who are still trying to figure out what they were built to do well.
This was the subject of an email that recently landed in my Inbox. This kind of email subject drives me crazy. Here's why.
Knowing yourself inside and out and knowing something about the company you're about to interview with is your responsibility when you go to an interview. Being prepared to ask strong questions is your responsibility when you go to an interview.
If you don't know your unique personal strengths, consider strengths coaching. Knowing your unique personal strengths will go a long way towards bringing clarity to your interview process.
If interviewing is uncomfortable to you, don't risk leaving a job offer on the table. If you need interview coaching, invest in yourself and get interview coaching.
A really impressive person called the other day. I wanted to learn about him and he wanted to learn about my company and my services.
As the call began, I asked the person on the other end of the phone what he was great at. In other words, I wanted to know right away what he was better at than anyone else in his building.
Most people can’t answer this question but this caller knew exactly and precisely what he was great at and what he wanted to do moving forward.
It’s rare that someone answers my question quickly, decisively and with clarity. I love it when they do because I know they’ll interview well if I can put them in front of one of my clients at some point in the future.
You can possess skills and talent but if your skills and talent are not packaged with confidence when you deliver, you may be passed over.
Jeff Snyder’s, Security Recruiter Blog and Jeff Snyder Coaching Blog, 719.686.8810
The CISO stepped into a new role in a new company. It was time for him to strategically plan what kinds of first impressions he was going to make.
In this new role, he needed to develop a strategy for managing up, across and down. The first group that needed his attention was the team he inherited. He had not hired anybody on his team. Each team member was in place when he arrived.
The last CISO’s performance left many people on the team sitting on the fence. Would they stay or would they go? They were all waiting to see how their new boss would be the same or how he might be different from their last boss.
Fortunately for the CISO, his strategic plan was far more of a plan than the plan most CISOs carry with them to a new employer. His plan looked like this.
· He worked with Jeff Snyder at Jeff Snyder Coaching to become super-clear about his own Strengths and just as clear about the areas where he might need help. Through Jeff’s Strengths Coaching, the CISO knew exactly and precisely what he had potential to be great at and where he needed to delegate.
· Not knowing anything about the team he inherited, he had each person on his team take a StrengthsFinder assessment to gain an instant understanding of how each of his team members was uniquely wired.
· The CISO worked with Jeff Snyder to gain an understanding of how his unique strengths would work well with his team member’s unique strengths. Just as important, the CISO wasted no time in discovering how his unique strengths might clash with some of his team member’s unique strengths.
· Now that the CISO understood how he was wired and how each of his team members was uniquely wired, he immediately scheduled one-on-one time with each member of his team. This was the smartest move he could have possibly made because the last CISO rarely invested time to communicate. Immediately, the CISO moved the fence sitters to a point where they decided to stick around to find out what the new CISO was all about. Instead of guessing as to which team member to delegate to, he delegated with a well-thought-out plan and immediately empowered people on his team.
· Over time, the CISO worked with each team member to put each person in the right position…a position that aligned best with each team member’s natural strengths.
· The CISO retained every team member he wanted to retain. For those who were not in the right positions and an appropriate role could not be created, the CISO helped each person who needed to find a new job to do so without them having to worry about repercussions.
· The CISO did everything he possibly could to engage with each and every member of the team he inherited. He got the right people in the right seats so everyone could deliver their best performance.
The email in my Inbox read like this.
“Unfortunately, to my surprise, I have had very little luck”
What this quote refers to is the lack of interview opportunities a job seeker is receiving when he sends his resume. I reviewed the job seeker’s approach and I know precisely why he isn’t having success. When I reviewed this person’s resume, I could not figure out what he was great at, what he had accomplished, what his contributions were and how he added value to his past employers in a matter of seconds.
According to research from www.theladders.com, the amount of time resume reviewers invest into reviewing resumes before forming a first impression of the candidate connected to the resume is down to 6 seconds.
There is very little time to form a first impression when sending a resume. There is very little time to register a first impression when someone opens and reviews your LinkedIn profile. Investing time to ensure that the first impressions you’re making are your best impressions could mean the difference between getting on the interview stage or not.
When my clients interview, more often than not, they’re interviewing for 6 figure positions. If a person is sitting at $120,000 today and they have an opportunity to interview for a position at $130,000, it makes sense for that person to do everything possible to be sure they’re registering the best first impression they can register.
Jeff Snyder Coaching, Resume Coaching, LinkedIn Profile Optimization, 719.686.8810
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Command talent are part of a small group. Out of 34 traits that are measured in the StrengthsFinder assessment, Command comes in at 34 in frequency. Only 5% of people have Command in their Top 5 Traits or Strengths.
People who possess strong Command have presence. They naturally take control of a situation. They make decisions and they lead.
Command gifted people need to be in the driver’s seat. They need for things to be clear amongst other people. They are willing to speak up. They’ll share good to know, bad to hear news to give people a realistic idea of where they stand.
People with high Command do not shy away from confrontation. They can be direct and highly decisive. Command gifted people can inspire others to rise above their fears.
Command comes with a powerful high side to leverage if you have it. Command also comes with a powerful low side if you have it and you haven’t built a strategy to manage it properly.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Includer talent are exceptionally skilled in the act of accepting others. They have an instinctive awareness that helps them to spot those who might be left out of a group.
Includers look for ways to make the circle of inclusion larger. Includers see everyone as being the same. Therefore, everyone should be included. Includers bring a high tolerance for acceptance and diversity to a group or team. Includers generally hate cliques.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Futuristic talent are inspired by what they envision being just down the road. Futuristic people can inspire those around them when they share their visions of what could be in the future.
People who possess the Futuristic talent have the ability to see what is around the corner. They can often see what’s ahead in ways that other people cannot see.
The Futuristic talent enables those who have it to spot trends. People who have this talent can often see what’s just beyond the horizon.
Another word for Futuristic is Visionary. Companies look for vision in candidates when they hire to fill leadership roles.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Restorative talent are exceptionally capable when it comes to dealing with problems. They are instinctively gifted when it comes to determining what went wrong and what should be done to fix a problem.
Restorative people are energized by solving problems. People who are wired in this way can effectively deal with personal, professional, financial, systems problems and more. They are diagnostic experts who can deal with problems in a calm and collected manner.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Developer talent are able to spot talent in others and they have an instinctive ability to know how to develop the potential that lies in others.
When a Developer gets to assist in developing another human being, this is one of the best experiences they can possibly have. Developers possess a selfless desire to help others succeed. Developers can often see talent in other people that those people don’t see in themselves.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Adaptability talent are “right here”, “right now” kind of people. They embrace change and can implement change quickly. They are energized by chaotic situations because they have a unique ability to work their way around obstacles that chaotic situations tend to present.
Adaptability people aren’t swayed by sudden change or sudden requests for a change in direction. They prefer to go with the flow and they aren’t stopped by obstacles. Instead, they’ll figure out a way to work around what might be obstacles to other people.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
This is one of many questions I ask when I meet a new hiring manager. One hiring manager I shared this question with proceeded to tell me that he likes to interact with his team as little as possible.
I asked a few more probing questions and quickly determined that placing people with this particular hiring manager might be a problem.
Most of the candidates who would fit this hiring manager’s openings would be at the 7-12 year mark (give or take) in their career. People at this stage in their careers are Millennials.
Most (not all) Millennials prefer regular feedback from their coach. Notice I didn't say manager. Most Millennials would rather have a coach than a manager.
Millennials generally like to know where they stand and they like to know how they’re going to get to the next level.
The problem with the hiring manager’s hands-off; interact as little as possible approach is that his one size fits all approach to managing people would likely not fly with most of his Millennial-aged employees.
This issue is not unique to Millennials. I can’t really think of anyone from any generation who wants to work for a boss who is mostly absent.
This hiring manager, he could benefit from coaching that addresses how to manage a multi-generational workforce. He would benefit by learning not his own strengths but also the strengths of each individual on his team.
Beyond simply learning about his strengths and the strengths of those around him, if this manager was willing to adjust his leadership style to match each person's unique needs (based on each person's unique strengths), he would find his leadership results changing significantly.
The benefits to this manager when he learns how to adjust his managerial approach would include the ability to attract more of the right kinds of candidates as well as a higher likelihood of retaining talent.
People who are strong in the Clifton StrengthsFinder Belief talent have sound, unchanging core values that produce a well-defined purpose for their lives. People with strong Belief talents know where they stand and they know what they stand for.
Belief people are frequently purpose driven, mission driven, people driven and values driven. The consistency by which they live enables people who are gifted with the Belief talent to provide a strong foundation for their relationships.
People who are high in the Belief talent are people you can depend on. You’ll always know where they stand. They can often raise the ethical standards of those around them.
You can find out how you're uniquely wired and you can learn how to turn your unique set of talents into strengths!
