Pissed Off For Greatness

I’ve never been a huge Baltimore Ravens fan (partially because they’ve beat up my TN Titans too many times), but I did enjoy watching Linebacker Ray Lewis play. Lewis, a future Hall of Famer and amateur “preacher”, was known just as much for his hard hitting, sideline to sideline play as he was for his “motivational” speeches.

I air-quote motivational and preacher there because while he was great a firing people up, people admit that they didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. It was as if he was speaking in some kind of deep biblical, mythological, gridiron code. Whatever it was, it fired his teammates up to the tune of 2 championships in twelve years…and several victories in between.

In 2012, ol Ray Ray was brought in to speak to the Stanford Basketball team before a game. The greatest line in the sermon…I mean, speech was “I’m pissed off for greatness!” Never lacking in the passion and pissivity department, that line shook something in my spirit. In a sport that requires one to be violent, one must indeed be pissed off to execute. To deliver bone-crushing blows and to put your body at risk the way the players do, one must dig deep, channel something from within and play angrily.

When we go to work, we’re pissed at people all of the time, but we don’t use that to our advantages. We actually let it work to our competitor’s advantage. While I’m not condoning tackling people by the copier (not all the time) or stiff arming someone to get the best seat in a meeting, I am saying that we need to take the stuff that we do not like in our offices and use them to fuel some change. Channel the anger that we feel toward policy, “the man”, or lazy teammates and shake some stuff up!

Are you tired of that lady that meets you at your desk every morning before you can even put your bag down…messing up your morning flow and throwing off your focus for the first half of the day? Take that pissivity and use it to let people know what your boundaries are…because a happier, focused you equals a happier, focused team.

Your employees not performing, thus making you look bad? Don’t just chalk it up. Channel that anger and let it motivate you to do something drastic and different. It’s ok to show emotion as a manager. It’s ok to be tastefully and necessarily forceful. Just be specific, respectful and don’t over do it.

Can’t stand that fact that people aren’t following up with you and giving you feedback? Use that feeling of neglect as the inspiration to get out of the fetal position from under your desk, walk straight into the office of the person in the To: field of your email and initiate a conversation about your opinions and ideas.

Get pissed off for greatness! Get hype and make the play everyone else is afraid to! Because like a former employee of mine once told me, it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on…and by not standing up and putting a foot down we sometimes end up with a foot on the back of our necks. So get out there and tackle somebody (figuratively)! Score a touchdown (in the boardroom)! Knock the ball loose (when someone tries to screw you over)! And like Ray said in that speech,

“…you got to go out and show them that I’m a different creature now than I was five minutes ago…because if you ain’t pissed off for greatness, that mean you ok with being mediocre.” 

Huh? Anyway, get fired up and go make a difference while everyone else is just making noise…and get your celebration dance ready!

Recruit Different

Experience can sometimes kill our workplaces. Not because people can’t be taught new ways of doing things, but because old habits die hard. Sometimes they don’t die at all.

When hiring for our companies, we tend to gravitate towards those that have been there and done it, in hopes that they can hit the ground running and cut our training/acclimation time half. This can work to our benefit, but also to our detriment when we have to “unteach” many of the negative behaviors they may be bringing with them from their previous employer.

I am not aware of a training program that can teach people how not to be an ass. Nor have I seen an effective curriculum that can help employees be compassionate, have common sense or fairness. Unfortunately, these are traits that our prospectives must already possess or are willing and able to get better at.

This raises the question, are we better off finding developmental talent or should we continue to recruit candidates that have been around the block? I say that this depends on a few things:

• Do we need employees that will be primarily used for transactional work or do they need a certain level of expertise and hands-on experience?
• Can the skill set that we need be taught…and do we have the resources to help them get there?
• Does the experienced person’s knowledge and know-how outweigh our need for fit?

Having worked in several customer service environments, I remember looking through resumes and the hiring managers would get excited to see someone that had worked in very similar environments as ours. Unfortunately for us, while the functions they performed were similar to the ones we would have them do, our service philosophies were starkly different.

On several occasions we would have to remind employees that in our environment, Customer Service meant more than just getting clients in and out, it was about relationship, patience and problem solving. It wasn’t until we started hiring a few people from outside of our industry that we realized that we needed a certain type of person as opposed to certain past jobs and experiences. It turned out that these inexperienced yet quality individuals could learn our products, systems and processes in time as long as they had a core desire to treat our clients the very way they needed to be treated.

Instead of looking for the person that has the most book knowledge, maybe we should recruit based on the right attitude and their aptitude to learn as shown by there career progression. Truth is, most “work stuff” can really be taught to anyone off the street. Think about that for a second…

Times up.

Maybe instead of focusing on the candidate that has all of the letters behind their name, we turn our attention to those that have the demonstrated character traits that we want or need in our workplaces. Maybe we take a look at where they’re going instead of where they’ve been. Maybe we should place more value on career trajectory instead of lateral career decisions.

I may be totally off base. I may be all kinds of wrong…but isn’t it worth it to your organization and clients to try something different..especially if you keep striking out by hiring jerks that are rude to your public, mistreat their coworkers, aren’t willing to listen to or learn from management, and are stuck in their same old non-productive ways? Recruit different and see how it works out for you. If it doesn’t, it’s more likely because they aren’t invested in once on board. And if that’s the case, maybe the candidates aren’t the problem.

HR Transformers: Avoiding The Age of Extinction

Nothing says “Saturday Morning” like a good cartoon. I’d wake up early on the weekends just to see what mom was cooking and to see what adventures my favorite animated characters were about to embark on.

Watching those same shows now I think, “I had no earthly idea at the time what they were really talking about!” I can take those very episodes now and see all kinds of life and business lessons and apply them to the stuff I see at work everyday.

Here’s a sample of my latest “Transformers inspired” post at Performance I Create:

…while the concept of shape-shifting extraterrestrials may be a little far-fetched, they are really more like us than you might imagine…blending in with the rest of us as we go about our daily routines. It’s not until they morph or transform into something unique that we pay attention. It’s in this giant, unfamiliar mode that their actions become amplified, noticed and establishment altering.

Am I transactional (maintaining status quo) or transformational (trying to move beyond the status quo)?

Click HERE for the full article and please share! I promise that it’s more than meets the eye! See what I did there?

Check out my post and those of my fellow contributors for relevant, in-your-face, performance altering insight at Performance I Create!

#CUPAHR14 Wrap-Up

There’s nothing I enjoy more than being able to hang out with and grow with my peers. The icing on the cake is when all of those peers not only work in my discipline, but in the exact same industry as me, Higher Education.

This was the case this past week as I attended the College & University Professional Association, Human Resources (CUPA-HR) National Convention and Expo in San Antonio Texas. More than 900 Higher Ed HR folk descended upon the Alamo to fellowship and grow professionally.

I had the pleasure as serving as the “Social Media” team and I was afforded the opportunity to host an event on the River Walk for Young Professionals. As a first-time attendee, I felt as if I blended right in and was able to benefit from every event and session.

Check out my Day One and Day Two blogs about the conference at the CUPA-HR site!

Special thanks to the staff at CUPA-HR for trusting me with their Social Media coverage and for believing in my ability to help make other first time attendees feel welcome. I’ll definitely be seeing you all again in Orlando next year for #CUPAHR15!

Leadership Position, Follower Mindset

I see a lot of things in my line of work. Organizational issues, backbiting and fighting, several people that need to shut up and sit down, but more importantly, people in leadership positions that need to stand up…and actually lead.

Today at PerformanceICreate.com, I’m discussing how critical it is for a person in a decision-making role to command the respect of their peers and coworkers by not only talking a good game, but by having the right mindset and taking the right actions. Here is a sample:

Leadership requires seeing the field from a broader view. Being able to recognize things when those who are in the trenches don’t or can’t. As an employee, I must be able to trust the person that I’m following knows where we are going and how to get there…and at the very least knows how to find out quickly if they don’t…

Click HERE for the full article and please share!

Check out my post and those of my fellow contributors for relevant, in-your-face, performance altering insight at Performance I Create!