Choosing a Major...

Introduction to Choosing A College Major

It all begins when you're growing up and people ask you “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

As you enter college the inquiries shift to:

“What is your college major?”
“What do you plan to do with your college major when you graduate?”
“Just what are your career plans?”

You feel the pressure. You envy the friends that seem so career focussed. If you are an older individual who has been out of high school for some time, you may feel the added pressure of time constraints, as well as work and family responsibilities. You wonder why choice of a college major and comtemplations about career direction have been such a struggle for you. Are you alone in your struggles? The answer is a resounding ‘NO’. It is quite normal to be uncertain about the choice of an academic major and /or career direction at this time. College is a time of exploration and self-discovery. It is a time for opening new doors rather than prematurely closing them.

Remember also that declaration of a college major does not indicate that a step by step career plan of action is in place. Many students select a college major without first gathering information about their interests and options. Furthermore, a majority of college students change their major at least once during college and many change their majors several times. What about that friend of yours with the clear post graduation career vision? Well, according to the US Department of Labor the average college graduate changes jobs once every three years and changes career fields two or three times in their life time.

Feeling even more confused about the choice of a major and/or career direction? No need to be. There is a process that you can learn which will serve as a guide to you as you explore your options. Where do you begin with this process? Well, you can start by reviewing this entire majors section of the CDC homepage and then by scheduling an appointment with one of our career counselors as a follow up.

Try to keep the big picture in mind as you read on by remembering the following quote:

“ The fact that most individuals hold from five to fifteen different jobs or positions throughout the course of their career life further emphasizes that a career is not a point–in-time event but rather a lifelong process.”
Schlossberg, 1984

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Should I Choose a Liberal Arts Degree or a More "Occupation Specific" Degree?

Some people believe that for every occupation there is a specific corresponding academic degree that goes with it. While there are occupations that require specific academic majors for certification (i.e.- nursing and engineering), most do not. In addition, studies have shown that most graduates are working in career fields that are not directly related to their undergraduate program of study.

What might help here is to consider college majors as if they were falling along a continuum. At one end of the spectrum there are degree programs that are highly specialized in nature and which are providing specific knowledge skills pertinent to a given occupation (i.e.- nursing). At the opposite end of the spectrum there are the "purer" liberal arts degrees (i.e. Liberal Studies, English) which provide broad based and highly transferable skills. In the middle of the continuum lie degree options which are somewhat focussed in terms of specific knowledge acquired and yet are still quite transferable (i.e. business administration).

Taking the time during Freshman and Sophomore years to explore career options will help you in determining what educational plan is best suited to your needs. If you have some possible career fields of interest in mind, take the time to research corresponding entrance qualifications, including educational requirements, necessary skills, and hands on experiences. Consider the “majors continuum” and determine whether a more specialized body of knowledge and/or major is required for your interest area(s). If in doubt, schedule an appointment for career counseling here at the Career Development Center.

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The Value of a Liberal Arts Foundation

At the heart of a Rivier College education lies the liberal arts. Rivier offers a strong liberal arts core curriculum for all majors as well as a number of specific liberal arts degree program choices. A liberal arts foundation offers students a broad background in communication, critical thinking, and problem solving skills, as well as the ability to learn. These are highly transferable skills that employers value.

Some consider a liberal arts education as lacking value in today’s job market. This is not accurate. In the book, The Liberal Arts Advantage, author Gregory Giangrande reflects that stereotypical attitudes which devalue a liberal studies education may partially stem from the industrial and technological revolutions in our country's brief history. These events have prompted corporations to seek employees who possess more specialized skills. However, in response to increasing trends in global market competition, Giangrande states that, "corporations have become less hierarchical, and require employees who are generalists rather than specialists, who can cultivate the complex international relationships that will help them to compete internationally…who is better equipped than liberal arts majors - whose scope is the big picture, and whose sweep of study has trained them to understand and think critically about people, culture, and society, to step in and fill the void?"

Along with the marketplace changes noted above, an additional reality is that jobs do change over time. How work is performed in a given occupation today can differ greatly as compared to how it will be performed five years from now. A given occupation can even become obsolete due to all the technological changes that are taking place. As such, a liberal arts education offers broad-based skills that will not become obsolete with time. These skills provide the flexibility needed for dealing proactively with changing job functions.

Yes, a liberal arts education offers many benefits that extend beyond the added benefits of personal and cultural growth and awareness. At Rivier, “all” majors offer these benefits through our strong liberal arts core curriculum.

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Skills are Key/The Employers Perspective

Employers focus on abilities and skills as they seek out prospective employees because they want workers who can perform certain job functions and produce desired results. In our work with students and alumni here at Rivier, we have found there to be a great deal of confusion around the topic of skills. While your interests may point you in a direction towards choosing preferable industries and occupations, your skills dictate what you will actually be doing day in and day out on the job. Whatever the academic major, it is important to consider this topic of skills in preparation for the eventual post graduation transition. This is especially true of liberal arts majors. Consider the following two quotes:

“I’ve encountered too many liberal arts majors who wait until their senior year to begin thinking about career preparation, only to find they still need to develop a few skills essential for being competitive in the job market.”

Gregory Giangrande
The Liberal Arts Advantage

"If you’re a student majoring in political science but thinking about going into advertising, you can join some of these (advertising) organizations and acquire leadership roles over a period of years. You are really building your portfolio to make your case to an employer. You can say, “ I wanted to get this broad-based education, but I have some skills that you might be interested in that relate to this particular position."

Marcia Harris, Director of University
Career Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

So what “exactly” is meant by all this talk of building ones skills? Read on to get the scoop. Understanding skills is key to an effective future job search campaign!

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Types of Skills that Increase Your Employability

Human performance is made up of three different broadly categorized skills we call Functional, Specific Knowledge and Personal Trait.

Functional Skills are labeled as verbs and so they are reflective of actions. In addition, functional skills are competencies that relate to things, information (data and ideas) and people. Repairing things, analyzing data, and motivating people are all examples of functional skills. When you use functional skills alone, like those noted above, there is a vagueness about your skills and others might ask, “Repairing what?” or “Analyzing what data?” or “Whom do you motivate?” The remaining two types of skills answer these questions.

Specific Knowledge Skills are labeled as nouns, which help make functional skill information more specific by answering the questions “on what” or “with who” is the activity being performed. Examples of these skills might include: “Repairing an automobile engine” or “Analyzing computer hardware sales data” or “Motivating a group of professional athletes”. These competencies are not easily transferable, yet they enable an individual to perform a specific job function, therefore these skills are of tremendous interest to employers. Specific knowledge based skills are normally acquired through an advanced training program or on the job experience.

Personal Trait Skills are labeled as adverbs, which help make functional skills more specific by answering the question “How?” These skills reflect competencies that enable an individual to accept and adjust to one’s surroundings. The examples previously given can now be fine tuned, "Repairing an automobile engine precisely", or"Motivating a group of professional athletes enthusiastically", or “Analyzing computer hardware sales data intuitively”. Effective performance occurs when all three types of skills work smoothly together.

So, liberal arts skills (such as communication, critical thinking, and problem solving skills) are transferable. Purer liberal arts majors gain a solid grounding in these wonderful skills, but may have a much more difficult time with the post graduation transition to the world of work. Why is that? It is because they do not tend to take the time to consider industries and occupations of interest and to gain related Specific Knowledge Skills prior to graduation from college. In other words, they don’t always engage in the process of career planning. For “occupation specific" majors, Specific Knowledge Skills are built in to the major. Yet, even with these majors, specialty interest areas and market place trends need to be considered. Careful career planning and specialized skill development (including hands on related skills training) are key to confidently navigating that post-graduation transition.

So, the question to ask is not “What can I do with a major in ________?”

Instead, the questions from a career planning perspective would be .....
*What are the work settings and job functions that interest me?
*What can I do to explore and prepare for these options?
*What related course work and hands on experiences would be beneficial?

We sum up this section with one final quote, "Landing an entry–level job is not about gimmicks, games, and guerilla tactics. It’s about preparation, a positive attitude, initiative, and maturity. It‘s about understanding who you are, what you want and need, and what employers want and need".

Gregory Giangrande
The Liberal Arts Advantage

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Strategies for the College Major Selection Process

There is a step by step process that you can follow in selecting a college major. This process helps to ensure that you get the most out of your college education and it also greatly facilitates the post graduation transition. This process places you in the driver’s seat providing you with a clearer vision of where you want to head and your plan for getting there.

Decision Making Steps:

I. Identify the Decisions to Be Made:

This is done by stating the challenge or problem you’re faced with. You may consider your challenge to be choice of a college major, but looking at a broader perspective will help you clarify your options. Consider and try to answer the following questions and then identify the decision(s) to be made at this time.

• What are my dreams for my life (including my career) upon graduation?
• What would a future ideal work scenario consist of for me?
• Why am I attending college? (There can be more than one answer to this question).
• To prepare for a specific occupation or for general career advancement ?
• To find myself ?
• For the social opportunities?
• To gain a solid foundation for future graduate study ?
• Due to expectations/ pressures from family and /or significant others in my life ?
• Because my friends are ?
• Other ____________________________ ?
• Where do I want to head in my life /career and what classes and experiences can I pursue to help me explore and move in that proposed direction?
• What do I want my life’s work to be known for? What contributions can I offer through my work? What elements would need to exist for my work to be satisfying and meaningful?
• What conditions affect my decision situation?
• Internal Conditions (attitudes, feelings, beliefs, biases, etc.).
• External Conditions (finances, time, obligations, disabilities, opportunities, etc.).
• Which of these conditions are reality based and which are based on assumptions?

II. Gather Information About Yourself:

Self-assessment consists of examining your strengths, interests, values, enjoyable skills, and key personality traits. Engaging in the self-assessment process offers you direction in terms of determining future career plans and ultimately in selecting a college major to support your plans. Your interests, values and key personality traits help you determine work settings and industries of greatest interest to you. The skills you enjoy using most can help you determine preferred day to day work activities within a given work setting. Some questions you may want to consider when beginning the self-assessment process are:

Interests
? What activities absorb my attention?
? What situations energize me?
? What words would I use to describe myself?
? How would others describe me?
? What do I dream of doing, but never seem to get to?
? What subject areas am I most passionate about?

Skills
? What activities am I best at?
? What are my strengths and weaknesses?
? What skills do I want to use in a job?
? What skills do I need to develop?

Values
? What personal rewards do I seek in a career?
? In what ways must I be challenged on the job?
? What activities bring me greatest satisfaction?
? In what type of work environment would I be happy?

Personal Traits
? What personal qualities will help me be successful at work?
? Am I able to get along with supervisors? Co-workers? The public?
? Does my personal style enhance my work with people, data or things?

At the CDC, we offer you a variety of self assessment activity options including interest inventories and card sort exercises to name a few. For information on self-assessment, or to get started with some online self-assessment activities, click on Self-Assessment. If you have an interest in going through the self-assessment process, contact us at 603-897-8246 and schedule an appointment with one of our career counselors.

III. Brainstorming Options of Interest:

Upon completion of the self-assessment process, you will have the tools to help you brainstorm potential industries and occupations of interest based on your personality profile. At this point, your focus shifts from internal to external information gathering so that you can learn more about options in line with your self-assessment results. Your goal is not to prematurely select only one occupation to pursue, but rather to look for patterns in your work interests. Given your unique personality characteristics, you will notice a pattern in terms of the “cluster” of work and educational options that interest you most. For example, you might find that you’re drawn towards social service, physical science or administrative work options.

With a CDC career counselor to guide you, you will learn about what kind of information to gather and how to obtain it. For more information on a variety of occupations and the world of work, click on Career Exploration. To explore career planning options for each of the undergraduate majors offered at Rivier, refer to the pull down menu after you click on Major Options. Once again, schedule an appointment with a career counselor for more thorough assistance.

To help you in making a choice regarding an academic major, you will want to learn about educational and experiential entrance requirements for occupation(s) of interest. Through this exploration process, you will determine whether a specific major is required for each of your top interest options or whether there is greater flexibility in the choice of a major.

IV. Evaluate an option:

At this point in the process you would make a list of the different major options that are of interest to you. Next, consider the following questions in relation to your options:

• Do I enjoy or do I think I will enjoy the subject matter in this discipline?
• Do I think I can perform well in this discipline?
• If I have interest in more than one major can I take classes in more than one discipline and leave my options open?
• How do I relate to other students and faculty in this discipline?
• How does this major relate to my self-assessment results?
• How does this major relate to occupations and industries of interest?
• Is an internship required or offered in this program? If not, what hands on experiences can I pursue to give me the Specific Knowledge Skills needed for post graduation employment? (These could include service learning, volunteer experiences and/or part-time employment or a self-obtained internship).
• Will this major serve as a stepping stone to graduate study that interests me?
• What do I “think” about each major option? How do I “feel” about each major option?
• Are there any other pros or cons related to each option?

V. Decide on an option:

In some instances, the choice of major will become clear especially when you have a career interest requiring a specific college degree. In other instances you might decide to go the non-declared route while you continue to explore available alternatives. You might realize that a double major or a specific major/minor combination would be the answer. If you find yourself continuing to struggle even after considering the questions in step IV, ask yourself, "What is keeping me from pursuing my top option right now?" Seek support from faculty, academic advisors and from our CDC staff. Finally, it’s time to choose and take responsibility for a choice.

VI. Design a Course of Action to Implement the Decision:

• What goals and objectives do I want to create for the direction I have chosen?
• What courses will I take?
• What topics will I research?
• What Functional, Specific Knowledge, and Personal Trait Skills do I need to develop?
• What experiential activities will I pursue?

VII. Implement the Decision:

• How will I carry out my career plans?
• What specific steps will I take and when will I take them?
• Who or what resources can I call upon to support me in my efforts?
• How will I hold myself accountable and how will I reward myself for following through on my plans?

VIII. Evaluate the Decision on the Basis of the Outcome:

• How well is my decision working?
• What can I do to make it better?
• What new decisions am I now in a position to make?
• What fits and what doesn’t fit at this point?
• Review prior self-assessment activities for clues if something doesn’t seem to be working for you.

CONCLUSIONS:

The main point to remember here is that you don’t have to jump from one choice of academic major to another without rhyme or reason. There is a process available to guide you and there are Rivier College staff and faculty available to support you in selecting a college major along the way. Above all, it’s important for you to be informed about your options, to reality test those options and to take the time to prepare for your top options. The following quote sums it all up. It reflects the message that employers love to hear from Liberal Arts majors, as well as all other disciplines; that is, that you have done your homework, you are informed, and you are prepared to enter their industry and organization.

“I’m a recent liberal arts graduate, and I am prepared for a career in this field. I‘m intelligent, mature, eager and have a positive attitude. I’ve researched this industry and your company, and I know what to expect in an entry level position".

Gregory Giangrande
The Liberal Arts Advantage

Good luck and feel free to stop by or give us a call. We welcome the opportunity to support you through the career planning process!!!

The Difference Between Management And Leadership

Leadership and management are two notions that are often used interchangeably. However, these words actually describe two different concepts. In this section, we shall discuss these differences and explain why both terms are thought to be similar.

Leadership is a facet of management Differences In Perspectives Subordinate As A Leader Loyalty The Leader Is Followed. The Manager Rules Management Knows How It Works Conclusion References

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Leadership is a facet of management

Leadership is just one of the many assets a successful manager must possess. Care must be taken in distinguishing between the two concepts. The main aim of a manager is to maximise the output of the organisation through administrative implementation. To achieve this, managers must undertake the following functions:

• organisation
• planning
• staffing
• directing
• controlling

Leadership is just one important component of the directing function. A manager cannot just be a leader, he also needs formal authority to be effective. "For any quality initiative to take hold, senior management must be involved and act as a role model. This involvement cannot be delegated." [1]

In some circumstances, leadership is not required. For example, self motivated groups may not require a single leader and may find leaders dominating. The fact that a leader is not always required proves that leadership is just an asset and is not essential.

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Differences In Perspectives

Managers think incrementally, whilst leaders think radically. "Managers do things right, while leaders do the right thing." [2]. This means that managers do things by the book and follow company policy, while leaders follow their own intuition, which may in turn be of more benefit to the company. A leader is more emotional than a manager . "Men are governed by their emotions rather than their intelligence" [3]. This quotation illustrates why teams choose to follow leaders.

"Leaders stand out by being different. They question assumption and are suspicious of tradition. They seek out the truth and make decisions based on fact, not prejudice. They have a preference for innovation." [4]

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Subordinate As A Leader

Often with small groups, it is not the manager who emerges as the leader. In many cases it is a subordinate member with specific talents who leads the group in a certain direction. "Leaders must let vision, strategies, goals, and values be the guide-post for action and behaviour rather than attempting to control others." [5]

When a natural leader emerges in a group containing a manager, conflict may arise if they have different views. When a manager sees the group looking towards someone else for leadership he may feel his authority is being questioned.

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Loyalty

Groups are often more loyal to a leader than a manager. This loyalty is created by the leader taking responsibility in areas such as:

• Taking the blame when things go wrong.
• Celebrating group achievements, even minor ones.
• Giving credit where it is due.

"The leader must take a point of highlighting the successes within a team, using charts or graphs, with little presentations and fun ideas" [6]

"Leaders are observant and sensitive people. They know their team and develop mutual confidence within it." [7]

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The Leader Is Followed. The Manager Rules

A leader is someone who people naturally follow through their own choice, whereas a manager must be obeyed. A manager may only have obtained his position of authority through time and loyalty given to the company, not as a result of his leadership qualities. A leader may have no organisational skills, but his vision unites people behind him.

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Management Knows How It Works

Management usually consists of people who are experienced in their field, and who have worked their way up the company. A manager knows how each layer of the system works and may also possess a good technical knowledge. A leader can be a new arrival to a company who has bold, fresh, new ideas but might not have experience or wisdom.

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Conclusion

Managing and leading are two different ways of organising people. The manager uses a formal, rational method whilst the leader uses passion and stirs emotions. William Wallace is one excellent example of a brilliant leader but could never be thought of as the manager of the Scots!

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References

[1] Daniel. F. Predpall, ‘Developing Quality Improvement Processes In Consulting Engineering Firms’, Journal of Management in Engineering, pp 30-31, May-June 1994

[2] Richard Pascale, ‘ Managing on the Edge’, Penguin Book, pp 65, 1990

[3] John Fenton, ‘ 101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 113, 1990

[4] John Fenton, ‘ 101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 113, 1990

[5] Daniel. F. Predpall, ‘Developing Quality Improvement Processes In Consulting Engineering Firms’, Journal of Management in Engineering, pp 30-31, May-June 1994

[6] John Fenton, ‘ 101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 114, 1990

[7] John Fenton, ‘101 Ways to Boost Your Business Performance’, Mandarin Business, pp 113, 1990

Why does engineering/math/science education in the US suck?

If you studied math, science, or engineering at a four-year college in the US, much of what you learned is useless, forgotten, or obsolete. All that money, all that time, all that wasted talent. If all we lost were a few years, no big deal. But the really scary part is that we never learned what matters most to true experts in math, science, and engineering. We never really learned how to DO math, science, and engineering.

Toward the end of his life, legendary mathematician Jacques Hadamard asked 100 of the top scientists of his time how they did whatever it was that they did (math, physics, etc.) Hadamard's survey found a massive disconnect between how we teach math and science and how mathematicians and scientists actually work. The majority of his contemporaries apparently claimed that using the logical, left-brain symbols associated with their work was NOT how they did their work. These were simply the tools they used to communicate it. What they used to do the works was much... fuzzier. Intuition. Visualization. Sensation (Einstein talked of a kinesthetic element). Anthropomorphizing. Metaphors.

We are in sooooo much trouble.

What experts use to do their work are the things we don't teach. We focus almost exclusively on how to talk about the work. Obviously this doesn't mean nobody learns to do it... we have plenty of expert engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, who become great either in spite of faulty teaching or because they lucked out and had excellent, clueful instructors and mentors. But we also hear more and more teachers, experts, and employers railing against the sorry state of our advanced technical educations today. The problem is, many of these same teachers, experts, and employers have a tough time articulating what's wrong, let alone how to fix it.

And what do we do to try and improve things? We just do MORE of what's wrong. We redouble our efforts. We drill and test students even harder in facts and rote memorization. We work and test them even harder on using the tools for communication (e.g. code) rather than the tools for thought (e.g. intuition, visualization, etc.)

Our educational institutions--at every level--need drastic changes or we're all screwed. The generation of students we're turning out today need skills nobody really cared about 50, 40, even 20 years ago. Where we used to prepare students for a "job for life", now we must prepare students to be jobless. We must prepare them to think fast, learn faster, and unlearn even faster ("yes, that drug was the appropriate way to treat the XYZ disease, but that was so last week. THIS week we now realize it'll kill you.")

The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.

Three of the many people who've been leading the charge on this are Roger Schank, Dan Pink (his "Whole New Mind" book is a must-read), and computing/learning guru Alan Kay. One of my favorite Alan Kay notions is something like this, "If you want to be a better programmer, take up the violin." He claims that the more time he spends playing music, the fresher and better his approaches to engineering become. He's an outspoken critic of engineering students focusing too early in their education, because he believes that with a more liberal arts education, you get metaphors and ways of thinking and seeing that are vital to your later engineering work.

I'll end this with two quotes:

From Jason Fried:
"Hire curious people. Even if they don't have the exact skill set you want, curious, passionate people can learn anything."

And from Jacques Hadamard:
" Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition."

If intuition is the heart of what true experts do, then shouldn't we be trying to teach that? Or at the least, stop stifling and dissing it? And yes, I do believe that we can teach and inspire all those fuzzy things including intuition and even curiosity. But we are running out of time.

[UPDATE: Martin Polley brought up the TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, and if you haven't seen it already--I urge you to check it out ASAP!

Mark Fowler was surprised that I didn't bring up the book What the Best College Teachers Do, and I can't believe I left it out of the post. I believe it is the single best book on helping someone learn. When we had our most recent author's bootcamp, it was the one book we gave to all attendees. Thanks Mark.

I highly recommend the comments to this post -- they're insightful on all sides, agreement and disagreement and all points in between. And before you tell me I'm advocating for throwing out fundamentals, memorization, facts, logic, etc... PLEASE look again at my venn diagram ; ) This is about brain balance, and addressing much more of the brain than just the narrow channels that are the parts of the brain that actually "talk." ]

Why Management?

Management is a critical function for every organization, and people trained in management play this important role in organizations of every size and type. The skills, techniques, and theories acquired by the management major leads to jobs in business, government, and the non-profit sector. People who plan to establish their own firms or to become part of a family owned firm also pursue a management major. Course work in this major helps individuals learn to:

motivate, lead, and develop others;

structure organizations capable of meeting both profit and social responsibility goals;

work well in accomplishing work individually and through others;

communicate accurately; and

develop a strategic perspective on the organization and its parts.

Skills that Management majors develop:

Interpersonal communication, negotiation, listening, managing, positive attitude, motivation, organization, leadership, ambition, team leadership, and critical thinking.

Leadership vs Management

Leadership and management are distinct concepts but the words are often used as though they have the same meaning. This confusion may arise from the fact that sometimes the same person is employed to do the job of leader and manager.

A leader’s job is to decide where the team they are leading is heading. A leader will set the ultimate aim, objective and goals for the team. They will then inspire and motivate the team to achieve the objectives set. This will involve reviewing progress and ensure that the team is on course to achieve the objectives set.

A manager’s job is to set how the team will achieve the objectives set by the leader. They will overcome any problems the team encounter and decide how to deal with complexity.

A simple way of illustrating the difference between leader and manager is to use the example of a team who are set the goal of building a path from point A to point B.

The leader’s job will be to

• Set the goal of building a path.
• Decide that the path will go from A to B.
• Inspire and motivate the team so that they want to build a path for their leader.
• Review progress as the path is built and ensure that the team are building the path from A to B.

The manager’s job will be to

• Plan the project and decide things such as budgets, pay and materials used.
• Implement plans and control building of the path.
• Organise the team and delegate tasks to them.
• Overcome any problems eg trees blocking the route where the path is to be built.

Another way of differentiating a leader from a manager is to think of someone known as a world leader for example Martin Luther King and think about what they did. You will discover that each of these leaders are great visionaries, and are able to inspire and motivate their audience. They will present their ideas and dreams to the world in a way that they feel appeals to the audience. They will give them an overview of the vision and will not set the small details of how their vision will be achieved. Instead the small details will be decided by other people. Other people will plan and manage the work needed to achieve the leader’s vision. The leader’s job is to continue motivating and ensuring that project is on course to achieve it’s objectives.

Simple gestures count the most

Bob Nelson

One of the best kept secrets in management today is the power of recognizing employees. Study after study has demonstrated that what employees most want is to be acknowledged for the job they do day in and day out. This recognition does not have to be anything fancy, in fact, the simpler and more direct, the better. One of the most motivating forms of recognition as reported by employees is very simple indeed: taking the time to personally thank an employee for something they did well. This seems very obvious yet when was the last time you did it? If you are typical, it has been some time. If this is the case, start thinking about who you will thank for his or her efforts today.

To be the most effective, the thank you should come as soon as possible after the achievement or desired activity has occurred. If you wait too long to thank a person, over time the gesture will lose its significance. Implicitly, the employee will figure that other things were more important to you than taking a few minutes with him or her.

You need to also be very specific about what you are praising the person for and why. Praisings that are too broad tend to seem insincere. But saying, "Thanks for staying late to finish those calculations I needed. It was critical for my meeting this morning," specifically says what and why an employee's effort was of value.

If you need a reminder, a form can be used. At Tektronix, Inc., the company instituted a simple way for managers and employees alike to focus on recognizing others for doing something right. Dubbed the "You Done Good Award," this simple certificate was printed in pads and could be given to anybody in the company from anybody else in the company. On it, individuals stated what was done, who did it and when, and then gave the certificate to the person.

The idea has caught on and is now part of life at Tektronix. Says one employee: "Even though people say nice things to you, it means something more when people take the time to write their name on a piece of paper and say it."

Another simple yet effective approach is to put notes on business cards. Hohn Plunkett, Director of Employment and Training for Cobb Electric Membership Corporation in Marietta, GA, says "People love to collect others' business cards. Simply carry a supply of your cards with you and as you "catch people doing something right," immediately write "Thanks," "Good job," "Keep it up" and what they specifically did in two to three words. Put the person's name on the card and sign it.

Although less personal, messages left on telephone voice-mail or computer e-mail can be also be effective. All these simple gestures indicate that you are not too busy to miss the fact that an employee has done something special.

As Ron Zemke, senior editor of Training magazine once observed: "Recognition is something a manager should be doing all the time -- it's a running dialogue with people." The act of delivering simple, direct praise for a job well done is so easy to do, yet so many managers do not do it. As a result they are robbing themselves and their employees of one of the most powerful forms by which to shape and reinforce desired performance -- and feel better in the process. Try it, you'll like it--and so will those with whom you work.

Making time for recognition

Bob Nelson

One of the most pervasive problems I encounter in working with managers is getting them to find time to practice employee praise and recognition. Managers are often too busy focusing on what's urgent--such as dealing with daily crises in their jobs--and as a result don't have any time left to focus on what's important--namely, the people they manage. This situation is unfortunate, as extensive research on employee motivation indicates that the most motivating incentives reported by employees are ones that are personally provided by one's manager--the most important of which is a personal thank you for a job well done. Yet in one study some 58 percent of employees report that their managers seldom, if ever, thank them for doing a good job when they do so.

The situation is made worse by the false perception on the part of many managers that they are, in fact, providing employees with plenty of praise and recognition. According to Aubrey Daniels, a leading authority on the topic of performance management, "Those managers who feel they do it (positive reinforcement) the most, in my experience, actually do it the least." That is, managers may have learned along the way that they need to be positive, but on a day-to-day basis they often are doing very little to catch their employees doing something right.

Worse yet, often the positive reinforcement they are practicing is incorrect, for example, providing individual feedback that is nonspecific or insincere, praising some employees while overlooking others that have also done good work, being overly general in their praise, or having their facts wrong about specific performance they want to acknowledge.

How can managers start praising their employees more? Like any behavioral change you have to find a way to make it habit--a natural part of your daily routine. For example, I've been successful at getting analytical, task-oriented managers to start praising employees more by getting them to think of their people part of their things to do list. I recommend that managers list the names of each person that reports to them on their weekly "to do" list and cross each person off the list once they have given him or her a praising based on that person's performance. For some managers, such a specific technique helps make the activity from being a general, intangible activity to a specific, finite action item--thus much easier to complete.

In another example, Hyler Bracey, president of The Atlanta Consulting Group, knew he wanted to praise employees more, but found his good intentions did not often translate to daily behavior. To correct this situation, he started putting five coins in his jacket pocket each morning and transferring a coin to another pocket each time during the day that he gave positive feedback to an employee. Within a few weeks the new habit took hold and praising employees became second nature to him. Says Bracey: "Praising employees truly works. There is so much more energy and enthusiasm in a workplace where praise has become ingrained in the manager."

Every manager needs to find forms of recognition they are willing to do. For some managers writing personal notes works; for other managers being visible and "managing by walking around" is the ticket. Still others might sanction a group celebration as is warranted.

The power of positive reinforcement can only occur as managers find time to put the principle into practice on a daily basis with each of their employees. Remember: "Good thoughts not delivered mean squat."