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Making Sure You Have Good Employment References
Most people don't give much thought about references until after a potential employer asks for them. After all, searching for a job is very time consuming and doesn't give you much of a chance to think about anything except getting interviews. But...
Team Building Skills: Up close with a work environment
What can an employee do to contribute to the success of
employers, co-workers and the workplace?
What can the employer do to help the employee become a better
worker?
The importance of team
building skills is critical in the...
The Flexible Leadership Workshop
The Leadership Challenge Leaders in today’s society are faced with an increasingly complex challenge: To deliver business results in the face of rapidly changing conditions, while building team members’ capacity to address the future. While...
The Testing Industry
EDUCATION - TESTING INDUSTRY - LEARNING STYLES: - What is aptitude? Why must people work within a social framework that values following 'norms' of intellect and has questions on tests rather than judgments of soulful and ethical actual behavior?...
You Mean I Need to Promote Myself to Get a Promotion? 5 Promotion Secrets to Get the Job You Want!
Time and time again I hear the following from students in my career advancement workshops:“My work speaks for itself…I shouldn’t have to tell anyone about my skills.”“Why did they hire from the outside, I am already doing...
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Don't Settle
Chuck was the best of the twenty-four candidates. Still, he didn't have exactly what I was looking for and my instincts warned me of his unusual personality. Yet the skills required for the job were specialized and he had most of them, and I'd been interviewing for five months, and my boss wanted the position filled before the budget process started. No, he might not be perfect, but he would be ok.
So I hired Chuck. As a new manager, it was a decision I came to regret. Chuck turned out to be a marginal performer, never grew into the job, and drew frequent complaints from his teammates. It might have taken me five months to hire Chuck, but it took me eighteen to fire him. Still, I'm grateful for the experience. Chuck taught me a lesson I applied in my next twenty years in management: don't settle.
When you settle, you choose mediocrity. Don't settle for the best of the worst. Keep looking. Don't settle for something that's barely okay. Push to make it better. Don't settle for average work from others when exceptional is needed. And don't settle for delivering good when you're capable of better. Expect more from yourself. Then expect more from others.
Whenever I've settled, the work or decision comes back like a boomerang, reminding me to keep my standards high. As W. Somerset Maugham says, "It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." I know that's been my
experience.
There's a story I like about Phidias, a Greek sculptor working on the Acropolis. As he was finishing a statue of Athena, which would stand a hundred feet high next to a marble wall, an onlooker asked, "Why are you chiseling strands of hair on the back of her head where no one will see them or even know they're there? "I'll know," replied Phidias.
I wish I would have found a cabinet maker with that same attitude when we were building our home. When we moved in, we discovered tops of cabinets uncapped and unstained. It's true no one would see them. But, it was not the quality of work we expected, paid for or wanted. The cabinet maker had settled for mediocre. But we didn't. We had him do them over.
People who are winning at working know when good is not good enough. They operate like Phidais, not our cabinet maker. They understand that quality work is not an accident. It's a deliberate focus that starts with high personal standards. People who are winning at working don't settle for mediocre. Not in others. And not in themselves.
(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Sign up to receive Nan's free eColumn, Winning at Working, at http://www.winningatworking.com. Nan Russell has spent over twenty years in management, most recently with QVC as a Vice President. Currently working on her first book, Nan is a writer, columnist, small business owner, and instructor.
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| Team Building - A Complete Guide & Online Resources |
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| The Basics of Team Building |
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| Twelve Tips for Team Building: How to Build Successful Work Teams |
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| Conflict Resolution in Team Work - Teambuilding Adventures |
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| Team building - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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| Team Building: Developing a Productive Team, CC352 |
| This publication looks at the steps necessary to build a productive team. |
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| Team Building Activities that encourage people to work together as ... |
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