An experience with an irresponsible but desperate job seeker by kayode olufemi-ayoola

An experience with an irresponsible but desperate job seeker by kayode olufemi-ayoola

He was referred to me by a respectable clergy in the society. His story, when he told it was pathetic. He has lost his job as a result of harsh recessions hitting the financial sector. His house rent was due in a few weeks, his kids were at home for not paying school fees. He was desperate – he needed a job yesterday. Would I be able to help?

The first thing I did was to ask him for his resume, which to my dismay showed the profile of someone who has settled for less over the years… and had gotten even less than he settled for. He has spent the last 10 years working harder on the job than on “himself” with very few promotions to show for his efforts. Wasted years coupled with the fact that he wasn’t getting any younger did not make for a cheerful prognosis.

He informed me he wanted a better job than the one he lost – anxious to improve his circumstances, but he had been unwilling to become the kind of person who could make the cut for his dream job offer. Sadly I had no choice but to inform him that he would only be able to attract the kind of job offer he’d just lost. I explained philosophically that a dream job offer is not something you pursue (through applying for every Tuesday/Thursday tabloid), but rather, it is what you attract by the person you become – the person who meets his dream job advert criteria; the person who has become the kind of person who can perform the job on offer profitably for the incumbent organization.

He reluctantly agreed to a short term transition plan perfectly captured by the phrase – “who I will be is a continuation of who I have been”. So we developed a well-articulated job description of the person “he had been” and targeted jobs similar to the one he was fired from, and sure enough, within a few weeks, he landed an offer from an organization  similar to the previous company he had worked for. I then explained to him that the time was now right to commence work on “the person he wanted to become” relative to the job of his dreams.

But! Sadly he disappeared for almost 2 years. I ran into him one early morning very close to my office; he was driving by in a “tokunbo” car he had just bought; his only comment to me, when he saw me, was that I should please help his wife like I helped him.

Toby’s dilemma, as explained in the words of Sidney Harris is that, “he hated change and yet loved it at the same time”, catch-22 eh? What he really wants is for things to remain the same and yet get better! He is not interested in becoming more than he already is – he just wants to earn more money. He needs to realize that he cannot package himself beyond the person that he is, he needs to realize that those who do not create the future they want, as Draper Kaufman says, must endure the future they get.

Your resume – your value proposition or what I call your scarcity value, will always have one limitation – you! You can never package yourself beyond who you are!

I’d love to hear your thoughts from this: kayode.ayoola@gmail.com

MAKING PURPOSEFUL CAREER CHANGES by kayode olufemi-ayoola

MAKING PURPOSEFUL CAREER CHANGES

It all starts immediately we leave school, totally naïve and unprepared for the world of work, and fortunately for a few, get a job; after a while we discover that there is a gap between what we do and who we are! “We hit a period when the desire for change imposes itself with great urgency, as Herminia Ibarra said, “we try to swap our old, outdated roles for new ones in one fell swoop and we get stuck”

We get stuck because, again quoting Ibarra, we think that we can leap directly from a desire for change to a single decision that completes the career change process –most people make this mistake, most do not realize that career change is a process that begins with a forced transition (a transition that is self initiated).

According to William Bridges, A transition is the mental and emotional process you go through coming to terms with a new situation – in this case, the urgency of a career change. It is your emotional reaction and the attitude you use in deciding to accept, adapt or resist change.

“We are caught between the no longer and the not yet!”

Change is an event, and transition is your reaction to it. How you feel about it and adapt to it. Transitions usually start with an ending – a realization that things are not going to stay the same. Change starts with a beginning, or in this case, a quality decision to make a change.

Another way to define transition is – you’re not where you used to be and you’re not where you want to be yet!

Career change is a transitionary process that could take up to three years. In a memoir of her own career change, according to Ibarra, Harriet Rubin, a publishing Executive writes, “It takes, an average of three years, from the time a person decides to leave a company until the day s/he walks out the door.”

During this transitionary period, a large chunk of the time is spent making deep shifts in perspective and small adjustments in course.

Making deep shifts in perspective entails becoming more than we already are. Everything we’ve achieved so far is a direct result of who we are! You cannot achieve more without first becoming more – the most important part of our thinking takes place in our perceptions, in the way we see, our outlook. During my career workshops I usually tell participants that you cannot package yourself beyond what you already are!

Steven Covey says, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we are conditioned to see it. When we describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our belief systems, our values etc”

The way to have more/do more is to become more – we become and then we attract, we grow personally, increase our mental capacities, and then we advance in our careers.

Making small adjustments in course will entail, in the words of Ibarra, during something on the way to something else, so don’t get obsessed about making the right decision. Make a plan to tide you over for the next three years until you figure out your longer term plan – you are more likely to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Begin by trying out new activities/experiment moving into a new job without leaving your current job/ try out new roles or projects on a small scale. Create new useful networks in the field/company of your choice; pick up new relevant skills, find new role models, join some new peers groups to guide and benchmark your progress.

I would like to close this with the powerful words of John Gardner who said, “Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success/failure is of less account.”

Making purposeful career changes by kayode olufemi-ayoola

MAKING PURPOSEFUL CAREER CHANGES

It all starts immediately we leave school, totally naïve and unprepared for the world of work, and fortunately for a few, get a job; after a while we discover that there is a gap between what we do and who we are! “We hit a period when the desire for change imposes itself with great urgency, as Herminia Ibarra said, “we try to swap our old, outdated roles for new ones in one fell swoop and we get stuck”

We get stuck because, again quoting Ibarra, we think that we can leap directly from a desire for change to a single decision that completes the career change process –most people make this mistake, most do not realize that career change is a process that begins with a forced transition (a transition that is self initiated).

According to William Bridges, A transition is the mental and emotional process you go through coming to terms with a new situation – in this case, the urgency of a career change. It is your emotional reaction and the attitude you use in deciding to accept, adapt or resist change.

“We are caught between the no longer and the not yet!”

Change is an event, and transition is your reaction to it. How you feel about it and adapt to it. Transitions usually start with an ending – a realization that things are not going to stay the same. Change starts with a beginning, or in this case, a quality decision to make a change.

Another way to define transition is – you’re not where you used to be and you’re not where you want to be yet!

Career change is a transitionary process that could take up to three years. In a memoir of her own career change, according to Ibarra, Harriet Rubin, a publishing Executive writes, “It takes, an average of three years, from the time a person decides to leave a company until the day s/he walks out the door.”

During this transitionary period, a large chunk of the time is spent making deep shifts in perspective and small adjustments in course.

Making deep shifts in perspective entails becoming more than we already are. Everything we’ve achieved so far is a direct result of who we are! You cannot achieve more without first becoming more – the most important part of our thinking takes place in our perceptions, in the way we see, our outlook. During my career workshops I usually tell participants that you cannot package yourself beyond what you already are!

Steven Covey says, “We see the world not as it is, but as we are, or as we are conditioned to see it. When we describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our belief systems, our values etc”

The way to have more/do more is to become more – we become and then we attract, we grow personally, increase our mental capacities, and then we advance in our careers.

Making small adjustments in course will entail, in the words of Ibarra, during something on the way to something else, so don’t get obsessed about making the right decision. Make a plan to tide you over for the next three years until you figure out your longer term plan – you are more likely to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Begin by trying out new activities/experiment moving into a new job without leaving your current job/ try out new roles or projects on a small scale. Create new useful networks in the field/company of your choice; pick up new relevant skills, find new role models, join some new peers groups to guide and benchmark your progress.

I would like to close this with the powerful words of John Gardner who said, “Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success/failure is of less account.”

Service excellence – First Impressions By Kayode Olufemi-Ayoola

Service excellence – First Impressions

By Kayode Olufemi-Ayoola

Published: Daily Independent Newspapers in 2004

Circulated to staff of Equity Bank Plc.

" The deepest principle in human nature, is the craving to be appreciated"- William James.

Service excellence is in the eye of the beholder - your customer. With him, you will never have a second chance to make a good first impression. This first impression could be a bright smile or look, your facial expression or appearance, your body language, the tone of your voice, or it could even be negative facts like : a lack of courtesy or attention, unprofessional behaviour or an attitude of indifference to his needs or demands.

Unfortunately, the Suppliers' market, is so crowded with home-grown and global competitors, that it is getting harder and harder to attract and retain customer attention long enough to develop emotional engagement. In other words, more and more service companies are competing for the same customers, thereby creating an overcrowded market place of suppliers .

As someone observed, "we have now entered an age of customer scarcity!". Therefore, we no longer have an effective sellers' market, but a buyers' market, where the customer holds sway, through the power of his choice.

I once read somewhere that," customers tend to stay with organisations that enable them to experience positive, meaningful and personally important feelings". Several surveys conducted, also reveal that , "most people shift from one service provider to another because of dissatisfaction with service, not price or product offering".The onus therefore lies on the service provider to manage the emotions in customer service exchanges, as the battle for the emotions of each customer is also the battle for repeat and future survival of the business.

To be a successful service representative, you must make a personal connection with your customers, letting them know that you are there to meet their needs. You must earn their loyalty, one customer at a time - seeking to increase your profit per customer, thereby experiencing repeat business. One service business discovered that, " a 2% increase in repeat business , had the same impact on profit as a 10% cost reduction".

Results from several surveys show that while most people will tell ten other people about great service they have received, the same set of people will tell up to twenty other persons should they experience poor service... This is definitely the power of advertisement in reverse!

Depending on the industry, it costs between two to twenty times more, to gain a new customer, than it does to satisfy and retain an existing one. In fact one survey result categorically states that, " 95% of customers whose problems are fixed quickly, continue to do business with the company involved".

All these, show that the key to service excellence lies in being able to tap into a consumer's latent motives and invoke an emotional response, thereby getting the customer hooked... (To be continued).

Service Excellence – First Impressions Cont’d.

“Unless companies redefine how they are going to engage customers and employees in-order to somehow override price, their traditional competitive advantages are gone”

                                                            Gabriel Gonzalez – Molina.

Whether you call it permission marketing or customer relationship marketing – your objective /goal as a business is to achieve customer loyalty, to enjoy repeat business and more importantly, to increase business from present customers

The only challenge is that customer loyalty/engagement is earned one customer at a time. The key to repeat business lies in knowing what’s going on inside your customer’s minds; this is the only way to   emotionally connect with your customers.

Daniel Goleman’s marvelous book on emotional intelligence tells us that, “the human mind can be thought of in 2 parts: one that thinks and one that feels. In most situations, both parts operate in harmony to help people navigate through life; however, when passions surge, the emotional side holds the rational side captive, dominating the overall decision - making process. This happens because emotions are hard-wired directly to the body through a fast –track neural network, whereas rational thinking is indirectly connected with the body’s functioning.”

In many situations, emotions move a person to act well before the rational mind has had a chance to catch up.

An article I recently read on the power of emotions, equally confirmed this observation, as it noted that, “emotions actually stimulate the mind 3,000 times faster than regular thought”, small wonder that people have been found to act/react before thinking out the consequences!

 All what this means, is that your ability as a service representative to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotions in thought, understand and reason with emotion and regulate emotion in yourself and others, is your key to repeat business – herein lies your challenge!

 The more open you are to your emotions, the more skilled you will be in reading the feelings/ non-verbal signals of your customers. For example, the facial appearance, the telling tone of your customer’s voice or shift in posture – these emotions are rarely put into words; they are usually transmitted through non-verbal channels.

Research shows that 90% of an emotional message is non-verbal. Communication experts tell us that as much as 55% of the messages customers send may be communicated non-verbally through body language. Another 38% of the message is communicated through tone of voice. That leaves only 7% communicated through the spoken word. The customer’s tone and body language convey up to 93% of his feelings and thoughts. As a service representative, it is never what you say, but how you say it that really counts. For example, if a customer calls/comes with a complaint, do not say – “It’s not my fault”, instead of dodging the issue or blaming someone else, apologize for the customer’s inconvenience and immediately begin to take action to solve the problem”

According to a service survey, 95% of the customers whose problems are fixed quickly continue to do business with the company. You as a service personnel must remember to always treat customers respectfully and courteously at all times because, you will only have one chance to make a good first impression, use it wisely!

Finding Your Career

THE BRAND YOU REVOLUTION SERIES

FINDING YOUR CAREER

ARTICLE

If you were invited to give a Career talk to young people on the careers they could follow, you would most likely suggest several logical approaches. You would talk about finding what they are good at/ their passions, you would also probably ask what they wanted to get out of their work and their values. You would try to help uncover career growth fields of the years ahead; even going as far as carrying out informational interviews on people who are already doing the kind of things they are considering as possible careers.

You would do all these things despite the fact that you most likely did not do them yourself, you would do this inspite of the fact that, of all the people you know who are currently experiencing fulfillment in their jobs, very few of them chose their careers by that method; even most of the current career counselor’s in the worlds prestigious University career centres , did not themselves do what they advised others to do.

Our Situation in Nigeria

No University in Nigeria has a functional career development center (in fact most graduates in Nigeria today were never given any form of career education throughout their school years), most only started thinking seriously about their careers just before a major transition – entering /leaving the University to the world of work – so the wakeup call for most Nigerians, usually comes, in most cases, 3-6 months into a job that was never prepared for.

A Pennsylvania State University study conducted in the 1990’s found the following:

·        80% of their freshmen were undecided about their career choices even though they had declared a major leading up to that goal.

·        As many as 50% of their students change their majors at least once.

·        And that 64% of their seniors said they had serious doubts that they had picked the right majors.

A recent Gallup survey conducted by asking 1.7 million employees in 101 companies from 63 countries, several questions, one of which was, “At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best everyday?  Findings revealed that only 20% surveyed felt that their strengths are at play everyday. In order words, 80% of today’s workforce feels miscast in their roles and most organizations actually operate at 20% capacity.

Globally, institutions of higher learning measure their impact through the success of their alumni – their placement in other top schools, the jobs and starting salaries that they receive and the businesses that they eventually establish.

The workplace of today demands graduates who can integrate, adapt, work in teams, technically astute and bring out the best in others. Yet these are not the skills that most graduates are asked to master as part of their curriculum training.

It is time for you to leave the domain of psychological manipulation

Welcome to the BRAND YOU Revolution!