Answer The Criteria (WT703) 

Answer The Criteria (WT703) 

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by Shirley Dalton | 15 Dec, 2023 | Blog, Business, Mindset

WT 703 Address the criterior

A while ago I was talking with a client about recruitment. We’ll call him Dave. 

Dave had a need to fill a customer service/administration role in his business. 

I suggested looking for a mum. 

In the past, I’d had great success employing mums who dropped the kids at school, came to work, did an amazing job and then finished in time to pick up the kids. 

The mums benefitted by being able look after their kids and still have some social interaction with adults, make a difference and get paid. 

They were honest, reliable, had a great work ethic and were skilled and experienced. 

As I shared my experience, Dave asked if I would help him recruit for the position. 

Initially, I was a little shocked at his request, however I agreed. 

We advertised. 

The selection criteria included a typing speed of 40 words per minute, 95% accuracy. 

Only one of the applicants addressed the criteria in their application.  

We know that interview is the least reliable form of recruitment so we included a few activities to test typing speed and accuracy, spelling, grammar and mathematical skills. 

We held off some of the interviews because one lady was away at the time we planned to conduct the interviews and her resume indicated that she was a good match for the role so we waited a few weeks. 

I confirmed the night before the interview. 

The next morning, (the day of the interview) she sent an SMS saying that she was no longer available for the position. 

I have to say, this has been an interesting journey. 

The world has changed. 

Forty odd years ago when I applied for my first full-time job, I would have done anything the potential employer asked me.  

I would have made sure that I addressed all the selection criteria. 

I would have made myself available to attend the interview at their convenience, and would have considered myself very lucky, if I made it to an interview. 

For me, not addressing the selection criteria tells me you can’t follow instructions. I might be wrong but remember, you only get one chance to make a good first impression. 

Answer the criteria. 

So what’s this got to do with you? 

If you’ve got good staff, hang on to them. 

If you’re applying for a position, if you answer the criteria, you’ll go to the top of the list.  

Recruitment and staff management have changed over the last few years, especially since Covid. More and more people are assessing what they want to do for work and how they want to live their lives. 

As employers, we need to accept the changes and adapt so that our businesses can thrive with less people and better systems, including much more automation. 

I’m curious to hear your experience? What’s happening in your industry? 

Have you got certain criteria that you need applicants to meet or can you adjust to accommodate the changes? 

P. S. Invite your friends to get the Weekly Thoughts delivered directly to their inbox. Go to https://shirleydalton.com/weekly-thoughts. 

P.P.S.  BRAND NEW 10 Week online Leadership Fundamentals experience starts Tuesday 15th January 2024. Sessions are LIVE and led by myself. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t find 90 minutes a week to improve yourself and your leadership skills.  You don’t have to be in a formal leadership position at work. These skills are life skills.  If you’re interested, reply and let me know and we’ll organise a time to chat. Be part of another great team and get the results you want. 

The Awe of Expertise (WT701)

The Awe of Expertise (WT701)

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by Shirley Dalton | 1 Dec, 2023 | Blog, Business

WT 701 In awe of expertise

When I first started my business, I was blown away by the knowledge and expertise that people have in their respective industries.

Seventeen years later, I’m still in awe of your expertise.

I was coaching with a client and he was sharing the challenges he was experiencing with designing and fitting out a new retail shop.

He had engaged a builder and an engineer and was thankful for their expertise and advice.

The builder advised that new supports were required to hold up the roof. He encouraged the retailer, by explaining that it was “now or never” because he thought the retailer would be very unlikely to add the supports once the shop had been fitted out.

Of course this added additional time and expense to the project, however it could have been a lot worse had the builder not shared his expertise.

Another example comes from a landscape gardener. The home owner wanted to bring the garden back to life. The gardener surveyed the surrounds and asked whether the home had been painted a particular colour in years gone by.

“Yes, it was. How do you know that?” asked the home owner.

“See this part of the garden, where the soil has been compacted down, we can see the old paint, which would have been covered by the soil”, answered the gardener.

Fascinating! Simply fascinating.

And here’s a curly example. Talking to an employee in the marine industry, she shared that when scheduling boats to be serviced, they had to be aware of the relationships between the boat owners and not schedule services for boats where the owners did not like each other. Yes, that’s a thing.

This week, I want you to think about all the intellectual property you have. Become aware of how much you know and how your expertise is so helpful to those of us who don’t have it.

This is the reason for business. Businesses provide the solutions for things we know nothing or very little about.

According to Benjamin J. Harvey of Authentic Education, businesses exist to eliminate thoughts and feelings for their customers. For example, “The garden is overgrown. It’s full of weeds. It will take me months to get it back in order. I don’t have the time. I don’t know what to plant. I’m embarrassed that it looks like this.” 

You get the idea.  By providing the solution to fix the garden, the gardener eliminated all the negative thoughts and feelings for the home owner.

How about you?  What thoughts and feelings are you eliminating?

For me, as a leadership coach, my interest, passion and expertise is in helping leaders and managers to eliminate feelings of stress and overwhelm and lack of confidence when it comes to leading and managing their teams.

I am constantly amazed at what people know. How about you?

Think of any service you need and think about the level of expertise the supplier has, from your accountant to your cleaner to your grocery shop or pharmacist.

This is one of the things I love about working with such diverse businesses and people. I get to learn a little about what they know and do and I’m so impressed with the level of expertise people have in their chosen field or industry.

What do you know that people outside your industry don’t know?

Be proud of that.

Be grateful for what you know.

The world needs you.

P. S. Invite your friends to get the Weekly Thoughts delivered directly to their inbox. Go to https://shirleydalton.com/weekly-thoughts.

To AI or Not to AI (WT679)

To AI or Not to AI (WT679)

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by Shirley Dalton | 30 Jun, 2023 | Blog, Business, Systems and Processes

WT 679 To AI or not to AI

You’ve probably heard all the hype and excitement lately about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ChatGPT4 in particular, so I thought I’d trial ChatGPT4 to write my Weekly Thought.

Here’s what I asked:

“i write weekly thoughts. they are a dose of inspiration, education and support. Please write me a 200 word article on the difference between having ai write my thought and me actually writing the thought.”

I can’t help myself. Even though I know it is a machine, I still use my manners. Mum would kill me if I was impolite at any time.

The article that came back was too long, so I asked for it to be reduced to 100 words.

Here’s the response:

Title: The Essence of Thought: AI Assistance versus Human Expression

In the realm of thought creation, a juxtaposition arises between AI-generated and human-written musings. While AI can produce coherent content, the distinction lies in the authenticity and emotional depth present in human expression. Human thoughts are infused with personal experiences, unique perspectives, and genuine vulnerability, fostering connections on a deeper level. The act of personal creation taps into imagination, intuition, and introspection, allowing for exploration, inspiration, and cognitive growth. Collaborative synergy further enhances human-written thoughts, as diverse perspectives and feedback foster evolution and innovation. Embrace the symbiotic relationship between AI and human creativity, combining their strengths to shape a world where thoughts thrive with a harmonious blend of technology and the human spirit.

Wowza!

That’s certainly not something I would write.

Firstly, there are too many polysyllabic words (words with more than two syllables). When writing in Plain English, we want to use less syllables, e.g. instead of “receive” use “get”.

Sentences should be limited to no more than 14 words, which is why my Weekly Thoughts often have one sentence to a line.

When communicating, you need to write for your reader and the Weekly Thoughts are not meant for publishing in an academic journal.

They are simply my thoughts that I share in the hope they inspire you or educate you and certainly encourage you to think about the topic.

Whilst I am a fan of ChatGPT4 for creating checklists and giving me content, I won’t be using it to write my Weekly Thoughts. Afterall, writing the thoughts is like journaling and it’s a form of therapy for me.

And just in case you’re wondering what GPT means, it’s “Generative Pre-trained Transformer” and it’s used to generate human-like text, complete sentences, or even whole articles based on a given prompt or context. GPT models excel at tasks such as text completion, language translation, question-answering, summarization, and generating conversational responses. They leverage the knowledge and patterns learned during pre-training to generate creative and contextually relevant outputs. (Source ChatGPT4)

There you have it, to AI or not to AI. For me, it’s a blend of both, just like ChatGPT4 said:

Embrace the symbiotic relationship between AI and human creativity, combining their strengths to shape a world where thoughts thrive with a harmonious blend of technology and the human spirit.

P.S. Today is the last day to save with the Early Bird Discount for the next Leading Yourself and Leading Others Experience in August. Find out more here https://shirleydalton.com/leading-yourself-leading-others-may2020/.

P.P. S. Invite your friends to get the Weekly Thoughts delivered directly to their inbox. Go to https://shirleydalton.com/weekly-thoughts.

Get Yourself Organised (WT670)

Get Yourself Organised (WT670)

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by Shirley Dalton | 28 Apr, 2023 | Blog, Business, Mindset

WT 670

Get yourself organised or get someone to organise you.

That may sound harsh, however it’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be practical and encouraging.

The past few days Ross was preparing to get ready to go away for a few days on his motorbike. He was heading for a rally with some friends interstate.

He decided he wanted to leave by 3:30pm.

We were getting down to the wire.

“Have you seen my gloves?” he yelled.

“What sort of gloves?  Aren’t your riding gloves next to your boots?” I answered.

“No! Not those gloves. I want the waterproof gloves.”

I had no idea what gloves he was referring to, however I did get that they were important so I dropped what I was doing to look for the gloves, and his tiny flashlight. That was missing too.

“Have you checked the storage box with our other motorbike gear?” I asked, walking towards it.

“No, what’s that?” he asked.

I found the container. Opened it. No joy.

We searched through other shelves and boxes in the garage.

Underneath his workbench was one of the motorbike paniers.

“What’s in that panier?” I asked.

“I don’t know”, he replied as he pulled it out from under the workbench.

“Hello!”, said Ross, surprised.

Here were the gloves and other bits and pieces that he needed for his trip.

The panier was also supposed to be on the bike that he was taking.

Panic over, problem solved, I shook my head, smiled and walked away.

Being organised is both a skill and a talent.

Some of us have it. Some of us don’t.

You can learn it.

Even better though, if you’re not organised, hook up with someone who is. They love to help and it’s easy for them.

Even though I consider myself to be somewhat of an organised person, I still call for help when I need accountability or someone to help organise me to get going and do tasks that need to be done.

How about you?

Are you organised or do you need help from someone who is?

In the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), the organised person is referred to as The Integrator. The Integrator helps bring the Chief Vision Officer’s vision to life.  We need to have a dynamic duo, no matter what you call it.

We all have our strengths.

How about you play to yours.

P.S. Invite your friends to get the Weekly Thoughts delivered directly to their inbox. Go to https://shirleydalton.com/weekly-thoughts.

2022 What A Year (WT653)

2022 What A Year (WT653)

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by Shirley Dalton | 30 Dec, 2022 | Blog, Business, Mindset

WT 653 What a year

If you’re feeling like me, and I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are feeling the same, 2022 was a big big year.

Many of us were feeling totally exhausted coming up to the Christmas break.

I’ve had a few days off now and feeling less exhausted, although still sleeping in and looking for a nanna nap in the middle of the day.

How about you?

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is to listen to my body. In days gone past I would have pushed and pushed and pushed and kept going until my body would say “Enough!” and send me to bed for rest with a wicked cold or flu or a bad back; just enough to be annoying and stop me working.

As recently as a week or two ago, Ross challenged me with his comment, “You’re a workaholic!”.

“Ouch.”

Like I mentioned though, I am learning to listen to my body and to not push push push (as much).

Mentor, David Bayer talks about the paradox of overwhelm and one way to let go of that feeling is to recognise that everything that needs to get done in a day, gets done. That which doesn’t need to get done, doesn’t get done.

I’ve adopted this mantra and it helps.

I get done what needs to be done and allow myself to say “tomorrow” for the things that don’t need to be done that day.

Perhaps you too could adopt this mantra if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed.

Back to how I started this week’s thought with the feelings of exhaustion. If you look back at the past 3 years, starting January 2020, January 2021, January 2022 up to now, we’ve been dealing with what management consultants call “V.U.C.A.” (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity).

According to  Nate Bennett and G. James Lemoine in Harvard Business Review, the characteristics of Volatility include the challenge being unexpected or unstable and of unknown duration (think Covid). Uncertainty – despite a lack of other information, an event’s basic cause and effect are known (e.g Covid). Complexity describes a situation that has many variables and interconnected parts. (Again Covid). Ambiguity – no precedents exist. You face “unknown unknowns” (you guessed it. Covid.)

The past 3 years have provided plenty of V.U.C.A. However, according to Bennett and Lemoine, V.U.C.A. can be misleading, so they suggest that strategy and planning can help to prepare for a V.U.C.A. world.

What will 2023 bring for you? Will you end up exhausted again because you don’t listen to your body, you continue to live in overwhelm and you fail to plan and develop a strategy for predicting and coping with V.U.C.A. or will change your responses throughout the year, anticipate V.U.C.A. and end 2023 feeling full of energy and vitality?

Wishing you a fabulous 2023. May it bring you all that you desire.

P.S. EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT for our February 2023 Leading Yourself and Leading Others Experience ends tomorrow.  Save yourself up to $1500. If you’re thinking about enrolling, do it before the 31st December, 2022. Click the link for more information https://shirleydalton.com/leading-yourself-leading-others-may2020/

Best You Become a Millionaire (WT651)

Best You Become a Millionaire (WT651)

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by Shirley Dalton | 16 Dec, 2022 | Blog, Business, Leadership, Mindset

WT 651 Best become a Millionaire

Jim Rohn was one of the pioneers in personal development.

He touched on mindset long before neuroscientists were able to support what he was teaching.

You know how at times, someone says something, which is almost like a throw away line and it resonates with you? It resonates so deeply that you remember it for years to come. It changes you. It changes the way you think.

Well, this saying from Jim Rohn resonated with me all those years ago.

He was telling the story about how many people win the lottery etc. and within a few years they are back to where they were financially. Many end up broke.

Jim’s line was, “If someone hands you a million dollars, best you become a millionaire”.

He wasn’t referring to the fact that you now had a million dollars and could call yourself a millionaire. He was reinforcing that you need to become a millionaire. You need to start thinking, feeling and acting like a millionaire.

Why am I telling you this?

This week I was doing some strategic work with clients. They were looking at their marketing budget. I remember Kip McGrath teaching the franchisees that your marketing budget should be in line with the revenue you want to generate, not the revenue you currently have.

For example, if your marketing budget is 10% of sales and your current revenue is $100,000, then your marketing budget is $10,000.    Ten thousand dollars won’t get you a million dollars in revenue. If you want a million dollars in revenue, you should be investing $100,000 in marketing.

“But how can you do that Shirley, when your revenue is $100,000? You can’t spend it all on marketing.”

“No, but you can get an investor to give you the $100,000 so you can generate revenue of a $1Million.”

Best you become a millionaire.

How would a millionaire think, feel and act?

It reverses the old thinking of when I HAVE something, I’ll be able to DO and FEEL something else.

No! You have to BE in order to HAVE and DO

Best you become a millionaire.

Whatever it is you want, now is the time to start thinking, acting and feeling like the person you wish to become.

Ask yourself, “How would a person who has (fill in the blank for what you want) think, feel and act?”

Model that.

Remember, if someone hands you a million dollars, best you become a millionaire.

P.S. EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT for our February 2023 Leading Yourself and Leading Others Experience ends on 31st December, 2022.  Save yourself up to $1500. If you’re thinking about enrolling, do it before the 31st December. Click the link for more information https://shirleydalton.com/leading-yourself-leading-others-may2020/

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