Working to Be a Leader

Miss me?  My last post was on December 10, 2009, around the time when I began working on another level playing field special report.  Almost finalized, it will be availabe  at the Leadership Training Room website in early February.

The report contains almost 11,000 words that I’ve crafted into a letter and six essays about the impact of the Great Recession on lives, my own included.  Great Recession (two words, 15 characters with the space) is  better to use in a 20-page report than writing out the worst economy since the Great Depression (six words and 40 characters with spaces). 

The level playing field special reports I write are based on workplace behavior and the impact of external factors on an individual’s performance.  My reports are positioned to inform, educate, and enlighten readers on topics that resonant with them and can help further their careers.  The youngest of nine children, my older siblings loved to tell me, “Children are to be seen and not heard.”  Well, I’m being heard now on an international stage like this blog and enjoying writing to be heard by you and others.

What I’ve also been doing since I last posted a blog entry is volunteering the area of human resources for organizations.  The work has included collaborating with other volunteers in the process to fill a position:  developing an accurate position description, reviewing and evaluating resumes, identifying the first and second tier candidates to be called in for interviews, and interviewing a series of professionals to filter out the one we feel has the credentials and the ‘good fit’ demeanor to be hired.

Although I’ve hired people previously, the hiring process during the Great Recession has been different.  It’s different because I’m sensing desperation by how words are strung together.  Very determined to get a job since being laid off or fearing being laid off, the tone of a candidate’s writing often gives off a feel of, “It’s all about me and you should hire me because I am so great and I really need this job!”

How do I know that?  Well, in one very long cover letter, the writer composed 12 sentences and they all focused on her.  “I am…”   “I have…”  “I worked…” “I look forward…” was what I read and thought, “What about how her skills, knowledge, and experiences apply to and can benefit our organization?”

Hers was not the only cover written that way.  Many came in with a form cover letter with obviously only the inner address and salutation changed—which is not good form from my perspective.  What I wanted to read in their sentences was that the prospective candidate had done their research:  been to our website, searched periodicals online that could provide them more background, and then could translate this information into words that created a relationship between our needs and their backgrounds.

Resumes, also, left a lot to be desired.   Proof and proof again.  Use the “Grammar Check” in Word.  Punctuate consistently in descriptions and bullets.  Be accurate with the tense:  all past or all present tense.  Etc., etc., etc.

Finally, if you want to be heard and be seriously considered to be hired for a position, use the appropriate wording to describe what you do.  We, charged with hiring an employee, need to trust that an individual expressing an interest in being a candidate and possibly ‘the one’  hired, has documented authentically what she has done and is capable of doing from the first day on the job.

Whether you are in the process of developing a cover letter or resume—or an 11,000 word paper—write so that you are heard.   Now, it’s time for me to go resume finalizing my next level playing field special report.

On Sunday, November 1, over 42,000 registered runners in the New York City Marathon sped, ran, walked, or limped through the streets of the five boroughs. As the premium runners raced their way through Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan, the majority of runners ran at a slower pace.

Runners nearing the finish line

As in years past, I like to watch the runners as they near the finish line, specifically those who take four or more hours to finish the 26.2 mile course—a course the leaders had run in just over two hours.

This year, I found a place behind a barricade just past the 26 mile sign in Central Park.  That vantage point gave me the opportunity to slap hands with runners zooming with enthusiasm that they were close to reaching  their goal or dragging with focused determination that they would reach the finish line even if they had to crawl.

Many of those going past had their names on their t-shirts, a way to tell the total crowd of over a million cheerleaders along the route that they wanted a shout out of, “Hi, Amy (or Frances or Tim or…). Keep going. You’re doing great.”

One man was more direct with not just his want for a shout out but a need to be encouraged. On this man’s shirt was a directive, “Yell, Hi, Art!”

Of course, I, as did others around me, did yell, “Hi, Art!”

My working to be a leader lesson from Art:  identify what you need from others then make it clear how they can fill that need for you.

No matter where you are in your career, it is important to be proactive, to fill a gap, to meet unmet needs.  Here’s an example of what I mean.

At the end of the spring semester, a former student called me up and shared with me her frustration over not being able to find a job in her major of human resources—or even an unpaid internship.  She started to cry and, after reassuring her she would find something, we talked about specific ways she could move forward.

That and other phone calls from students past and present inspired me to propose teaching a class during the summer to help alumni and students in their job searches.  The Chair of the Management Department at Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College considered the idea a good one and got the needed approvals.

The class went very, very well.  Everyone was engaged, open, and willing to trust each other.  They participated in mock interviews, role playing the interviewer or potential client.  They networked with each other and honed their elevator speeches.  Resumes were reviewed as were rules of etiquette in the job search process.

What I did was fill the need for a way students could actively work on their job search.  The experience was a win-win-win:  I won because my idea for a class was supported; the students won because they learned practical career skills; and the Management Department won because they met their students’ needs.

On Saturday, October 17, the Management Dept. will once again offer “Supercharge Your Job Search.”  During one day, we will cover the topics you need to start your job search and take the next step in getting a job or positioning yourself to change careers.

Baruch alumni and students can register and pay for the class by calling Linda Moore at 646-312-3625.

Here’s a couple of comments from two who attended:

—Sharing and doing exercises pushed me to realize the important of networking and maintaining relationships.

 —After a role-playing exercise, I got instant feedback from the class members and instructor on my interviewing skills.

Remember to think about ways that you can be proactive to move forward in your career search.

Today is September 1, 2009, the start of a new semester teaching at Zicklin School of Business.  Even when I wasn’t teaching, I always felt that September was a new start, a new beginning, a time to put into action what I might not have gotten done during the summer—or even the spring.

My last blog “Congratulations Future Leaders” was posted on May 27 and was still visible a couple of weeks ago.  I know because I was a co-presenter of a program on “Social Media:  What’s the Return on Investment?” and used my blog to explain what a blog was to those in the audience who didn’t know.

It also pointed out how not to use a blog.  That is, to be successful, you must write blog entries two or three times a week.  What happened to my last blog entry I don’t know.  Maybe I can find it.  Maybe not.  It was a piece directed to the seniors at Zicklin, part of Baruch College, and included my good wishes to them for a good career as the leaders we need in the future to guide us.

It’s now been three months without writing a blog and my readers need an explanation.  I’m calling my time away my summer vacation.  Although I drafted blog entries, nothing seemed to come together in a final form.  Very unlike me, a prolific writer.  My lack of coherence was due to shifts in my personal life which kept me from the focus and the momentum that I had built up with my blog.

Today is the first day of class.  It is the first day of my renewed commitment to writing a blog and working to be the best leader that I can be.

Dear Student, er Graduate:

Today you will be one of 3,000 students receiving a degree during the Baruch College Commencement Ceremonies at Madison Square Garden.  Baruch, the nation’s most diverse campus, is part of the City University of New York (CUNY), a group of 23 colleges and institutions serving 480,000 students in New York City.

As one of your teacher’s in the undergraduate Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business within Baruch, I congratulate you on your achievement and wish you the best as you begin a new phase in your life.

In your journey of working during the day, going to school for three or more hours of classes on two to four nights a week, then returning home to hug a child, kiss a spouse, embrace your parents, pet your dog, you’ve prepared yourself for the new leg of life’s journey as a college graduate.

Your hunger for knowledge, curiosity about how to reach your potential, willingness to push yourselves out of your comfort zones made my job as your instructor that much easier and a challenge.  A challenge that made me a smarter, wiser, and more informed person.

You are a future leader, someone who will have followers seeking answers, making requests, needing your time, being curious about their futures.

You are stepping into a world that needs your energy, your enthusiasm, your commitment to others that I saw you demonstrate in class.

We need you, I need you, the world needs you to value your degree, to make the most of the entry level jobs and administrative work you will do as you climb the career lattice, moving sideways and upward on your merits and demonstrated capacity for growth.

Future leader, I offer you two pieces of advice. 

#1:  Know yourself, what is meaningful for you, how you want to be known in the world.

#2:  Keep smiling through the tough times, the good times, the down times, and the up times because a smile is contagious and invites others to come into your world.

Thanks for letting me be part of your world.

Now, future leaders, go out and continue working to be the best possible leader you can be—we need you!

Best regards,

Prof. Henderson

In honor of Mother’s Day, I feel moved to pass along one bit of advice that I got from my mother. This advice is relevant to girls/women and boys/men on a career search — or the ambitious employed who want to stay employed or get a promotion.

Although Mom died in 1968, I can, at times, still hear her voice reciting one of her many pieces of advice.

“Don’t be like all the other girls,” she’d say if I wanted a pair of white boots just like all the other girls were wearing in TEEN magazine.

“Don’t be like all the other girls,” she’d say then proceed to tell me about the twin girls who used to live down the street and who had their own way of dressing and being in the world.

“Don’t be like all the other girls,” she’d say on any occasion to encourage me to be who I was and not someone else.

Mom was right.  When I left for college, all I wanted to be was normal and like all the other girls.  A bit of a challenge to figure out what normal was since I wound up at the University of California at Berekley during the height of the Free Speech and Vietnam War protests.

As I’ve gotten older, however, and worked my way into leadership roles and developed a business providing leadership coaching to executives, I embrace the essence of her message.   Her message: to be fully present and let others know the unique qualities you possess and the great skills you bring to the table.

Today with the economy the worst since the Great Depression, women and men looking for work—or working to keep their jobs—have to stand out, to not be like all the other girls/boys, to demonstrate their unique brand of passion and how they will contribute their skills, abilities, and talents to the workplace.

Mom would like the person that I am today.  I’m not like all the other girls.  And not like all the other women I know.  I’m me.  And that’s a good thing.

Sit back and reflect on how you stand out with your own unique brand.

Then wish your mother and other nuturing women in your life a Happy Mother’s Day!

On a beautiful spring day, I gave myself the job to stay indoors and organize files that I had placed in a filing cabinet two years ago.  Along with the “Why am I keeping this?” questions I kept on asking myself, I discovered a few “I know why I kept this!” documents.

In the piles of paper within what I labeled my “Teaching and Consulting-early 1990’s” file folder, I uncovered a letter dated May 23, 1990.  When reading it, I began to cry.  I cried because I was once again reminded about why I teach.

The letter is from a student who had just completed my course in “Public Relations” in the Marketing Department of the Business & Communications Division at New York City Technical College, a two-year school that is part of the City University of New York. 

English majors put your red pen away and refrain from your comments on grammar.  Read the message that someone new to America felt at his moment of great accomplishment: graduation from an American college.  Also pay attention to the difference that one person in the role of a teacher can make in someone’s life.

My search has already begun on Facebook and LinkedIn to see if I can find the author of this letter.  Perhaps now, almost twenty years later, I can tell him that I was proud he was my student.

Dear Professor Henderson,

I’m very glad to receive a letter from school, saying that I’m going to graduate.  At this exciting moment, first of all, I would like to express my inner thanks to you.  Thank you for your teaching and helps to me.  I am in appreciation of all your advices.  This experience will never be forgotten in my life, because it’s an important experience in my life.  It’s just a milestone which will be recorded in my life history.  This unforgettable American college experience will affect me in every step I stride forward in the future.  I deeply believe that what I learned are useful and helpful to me.  I’m proud of being your student.

While in an out of the classes, we established a friendship between teacher and student.  This friendship will be extended to become our concern and help to teach other in the future.  That’s the most beautiful friendship in life.  It’s as great as the friendship of parents.  So, we are not only teacher and student, but also friends.

I came from Canton City, the largest city of southern China.  It’s a busy port and the capital city of Guandong Province.  It has over two thousand years in history.  Before I immigrated with my family in 1984, I was a senior student of the Traditional Chinese Medicine University of Canton.

America is a country which full of energy and vigor.  She possesses the modern high tech, science, advanced economic system, democracy government, and multilateral brilliant cultures from different races.  She is becoming more beautiful along with the development of the communication and understanding among people.  I wish I can always have your advice to guide my future career.

Thank you again!

So long!

Sincerely Yours,

Last year at this same time, I was on a flight from Athens, Greece, back to New York City.  With me was my niece Tomi Sue Henderson, a veterinarian who lives in a town of 146 located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

This year, during spring break at Zicklin School of Business where I teach, I had planned to visit Tomi Sue’s father, my brother, in his small town near in the southern part of Oregon.  The launch of Temping with Tycoons and the state of the economy made me decide to stay in my big city hometown of New York.

So instead of sharing a travel report from a trip this year, I’ll reflect on some memories from last year—and tie in my report with how I feel about the economy.

Here’s a picture taken at Santorini on the last day of our “Grecian Delight” tour.  Tomi Sue has her arm around me on what was a gorgeous spring day on this “volanic” island.

You’ll notice the mostly white houses of the town of Fira clustered together at the top and down the steep incline to Tomi Sue’s right.  On Santorini, Mykonos, and other Greek islands we visited, home owners are required to paint their houses at regular intervals.  Tourists who arrive by ship or air are a major source of income for Greece, meaning that maintaining an immaculate impression at each port-of-call is an absolute necessity.

Off to my left you’ll see the steep drop off of land into the Aegean.  Santorini is believed by some to be the site of the “Lost Continent of Atlantis,” a legendary island that one day just sunk into the sea.

Santorini earned this reputation because around 1450 B.C., a catastrophe happened.  The volcano on the island erupted, the center of the island collapsed into the sea, and earthquakes reverberated throughout the Aegean, toppling some advanced civilizations as far away as the island of Crete.

The edge that we’re standing on around the sunken watery center of the island is called the caldera.  A caldera is formed by the collapse of land after a volcano erupts. 

Caldera is also a good term for what I see when thinking about what happened to the economy.  There’s been an earthquake on Wall Street that is still reverberating across the land with more layoffs at companies, foreclosures of homes, and individuals who will have to settle for “survival jobs.” 

We’re on the edge looking out from the caldera to the center of the economy, hoping that it will rise up and renew itself to restore faith in our financial system as well as opportunities get off the “career bridge” and into meaningful work.

I still want to visit my brother and I also want to return to Greece.  That’s why I’m hoping that the Wall Street we lost will be rebuilt with a solid foundation for a stronger economy and more jobs.

Wednesday, April 22, is Administrative Professionals Day.  Previously National Secretary’s Day, it is a time set aside to recognize the work of those who have jobs as secretaries, administrative assistants, receptionists, and other administrative support professionals.

Cathleen Benko, Vice Chairman and Chief Talent Officer, Deloitte, LLP, was one of the speakers during the Women on Wall Street 2007 event.   One thing I remember about her contributions to the evening’s program was that she told the audience of 98% women that she had attended Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School.  Benko then went on to earn a science degree from Ramapo College and later a master of business administration from Harvard Business School.

“It’s a Foot in the Door, But to Where Else?” was the headline in Eilene Zimmerman’s “Career Couch” column in The New York Times on November 2, 2008.  I saved her column because I agreed that “Administrative assistants see the big picture at a company, and thus may earn promotions.”

Obviously, having good secretarial skills worked for Benko.  And Zimmerman’s advice to her readers is on-target.  I know that for a fact because working as a secretary was an effective “bridge” in my career.

My father preached (yes, that is the correct word) that he didn’t care about the fact that I wanted to be a teacher, I needed to learn typing and shorthand.  That way, he assured me, I could always get a job.

Now, I’ve met a few women who have told me that their fathers told them not to learn how to type and take shorthand.  Once they got a job, they fathers assured them, they would be assigned a secretary to do the work for them.

My high school typing teacher was a retired Marine and such a large presence that I forget who taught me shorthand (I later used the basics to create my own way of taking notes).

My next older sister handed me my first job as a temporary secretary when I was in college.  She was sick one day and asked me to go into the office for her.  I did.  That was it.  Yet, later in my life, working as a temporary or permanent secretary helped not just pay the bills but helped in my business education.

When I was sharing the environment with those at a university, computer company, rent-a-car company, marketing firm, investment bank, etc. I was not just answering phones or typing letters.  I was observing those around me do their jobs, trying to understand how business was being conducted, and learning as much as I could about the product being sold.

The “career” bridge worked for me.  In our current economy, being an administrative assistant might be a good investment.

A New York Minute is a very, very short period of time.  According to Wikipedia, “The term refers to the common perception that the people in New York City are hurried and impatient.”

I write about this topic to give hope and advice to those who are looking for work.  You never know what can happen in a New York, London, Detroit, or anywhere Minute—if you have patience.  (And some New Yorkers do have patience!)

One New York Minute occurred on Thursday, August 21, 2008, while I was in my office.  When I checked my e-mail, I saw that there was a message from a professor I knew who taught in the Management Department at theZicklin School of Business within Baruch College, part of the City University of New York.

His message read something like, “Respond ASAP” and below his words was a message from one of his colleagues stating the need for an Adjunct Instructor to teach an undergraduate course on “Employee Development and Training” that started the following Thursday.

Without hesitation and maybe not in this order, I replied to my colleague to say, “Thanks,” then contacted his colleague to apply for the job.

This is the subject line of an email I wrote to my business coach a few minutes later, “Name someone you know teaching at Zicklin School of Business.”  The body of my message read, “Yes, it’s me…..Just what I was missing from my career.  WOW!!  Filing out the paperwork on Tuesday, beginning next Thursday evening.”

The rest is history.  The first semester went very well and this second class is also going well.  Most evenings, I leave class saying to myself, “I love these students.”  Teaching is my passion and I have students hungry to benefit from the expertise and experiences I share with them.

“What I was missing from my career” was a platform, a place from which I could transfer the knowledge I had gained developing, teaching, and training adults on how to improve their workplace skills and leadership capabilities to those who could benefit. 

Like every “New York Minute” this one was years in the making.  While waiting for it to happen, I was patient and involved in other activities.

The professor who sent me the initial email and I met about seven years earlier when I was designing and presenting a “Train-the-Trainer” program for instructors in the Continuing and Professional Studies at Baruch.  We kept in touch, I lectured for his classes and taught a leadership module in one of his courses, he recommended me to be the moderator for a panel at Baruch’s “Women in Business” program, etc.

I told you that I was patient.  It was a ”New York Minute” in October 1989 that took me on this path.  At that time, I was temping at an investment bank with some extremely rude executives who had M.B.A.s   I turned the anger I felt into the decision that one day I wanted to train leaders on how to be more effective and respectful.

My company Leadership Training Room evolved out of that New York Minute.  And so did being an Adjunct Instructor at the Zicklin School of Business, the nation’s most diverse campus.

Be open and ready for your own New York Minute.  And keep staying engaged in what you truly care about so that you can savor that time.