Want to Be Taken Seriously?

One topic that I think of often is the quality of writing in today’s students. At the College of Business at Lynn University this is a point of emphasis in our curriculum…but when I saw Dave Kerpen’s post… and besides sending it to my faculty, I knew that I had to include here in the Entrepreneur on Campus. So, from Dave Kerpen and his outstanding post, Want to Be Taken Seriously? Become a Better Writer :


The number of poorly written emails, resumes and blog posts I come across each month is both staggering and saddening. Grammar is off. There are tons of misspellings. Language is much wordier or more complex than necessary. Some things I read literally make no sense at all to me.

Writing is a lost art, and many professionals don’t realize how essential a job skill it is. Even if you’re not a writer by trade, every time you click "Publish" on a blog, "Post" on a LinkedIn update, or "Send" on an email, you are putting your writing out into the world.

Your writing is a reflection of your thinking. Clear, succinct, convincing writing will differentiate you as a great thinker and a valuable asset to your team.

If you want to be thought of as a smart thinker, you must become a better writer. If you want to be taken seriously by your manager, colleagues, potential employers, clients and prospects, you must become a better writer.

It's not just you who must become a better writer- it’s all of us. I'll be the first to admit, I too have had to learn to become a better writer. So here are five ways that I've become a better writer over the last several years:

1) Practice, practice, practice. The old joke comes to mind: A tourist in New York asked a woman on the street, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” and she replied, “Practice, practice, practice.” The truth is, the best way to get better at anything is to do it repeatedly. Write a personal blog or begin that novel you’ve always wanted to write. Offer to write some content for your company’s marketing team. Write a short, interesting LinkedIn update each day. The more you write, the better you’ll become at writing. That's why I write here on LinkedIn every Monday and Thursday, no matter what.

2) Say it out loud. I read all of my articles and books out loud before I publish them, and many of my emails out loud as well. It’s great to hear my writing the way others will “hear” it as they read. Especially since tone in emails is difficult to convey, it’s valuable to say what you’re writing aloud, and then consider a quick edit, before you put it out there.

3) Make it more concise. Less is often more, so during my editing process, I’ll often ask, “How can I say the same thing in fewer words?” People don’t have time to read a long email, or memo, or article, so out of respect for your intended audience, practice making your writing short and sweet. I’d even argue that tweeting has helped me a lot with this, as it obviously limits you to 140 characters. If you’re not on Twitter yet, this is another reason to get tweeting.

4) Work on your headlines. A mentor once told me that 50% of your writing is the headline. So, spend equal time and energy working on your headline as you do the piece itself. Whether it’s the headline of a blog post or an inter-office memo, or a subject line for an email to a sales prospect, your headlines will either grab your reader’s attention, and get them interested in what you have to say, or not. Lists and questions work very well as headlines and subject lines. Practice them.

5) Read. Besides practicing writing, the number one way to improve your writing skills is to read great work. I read at least one book per month, at least 20 articles per week, and countless tweets, Facebook posts and emails per day. I know we all have limited time, but truly the best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader.

These are my methods for becoming a better writer. Now, I’d love to hear from you! Do you agree or disagree with me that all business professionals can work to become better writers? How important is good writing to you? And how have you become a better writer over your career? Let me know in the comments below!

Tip for College Freshman…and No, It Isn’t Follow Your Passion

Here’s my blog that appeared last week in the Huffington Post:


Telling a college freshman to "follow your passion, do what you love and a rewarding career will follow," is usually as futile as encouraging them to begin saving for a retirement account. It may be good advice, but it's premature. Most of them have yet to discover just what it is they are passionate about, since up to this point their "passion" has simply been to graduate from high school and be admitted to their top pick college or university.

Yes, there are those lucky few who enter college knowing exactly where they want to go in life and are driven to get there. They certainly don't need to be told to follow their passion... they are already doing just that. In fact, it's dragging them relentlessly forward.

Other students had a consuming hobby or interest in high school but find that their passion is not going to translate directly into a lucrative career. Realistically, only a minute number will get a chance to enter the world of professional sports, or become A-list movie stars, or win multi-million dollar recording contracts. In the wider world of the college campus they find that their talent is not as great as their passion, and their goals must change.

Telling most students to 'follow their passion' won't work because they don't know themselves well enough to know what that passion is. My tip for students? Learn about yourself to discover your passions -- and that will be your path to success.

A good first step is to start with the basics. For example, this fall, all of our incoming freshman in the College of Business will be taking a talent assessment. They'll create a personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that will be a huge help in their self-awareness, and will be an invaluable tool in career planning. The fact is, not every student is right for every career. What they learn about themselves in this assessment can also give them another clue into finding a passionate direction for a career.

The goal is to try to expand their thinking and take them outside the box to find career options. Sometimes it's not about what they like, but why they like it. They may discover that the field they enter is less important than the type of job they do: a passion for "teamwork," or "a desire to work alone" can find fulfillment in many fields.

We also encourage our freshman to immediately take a course in a major they are considering. Many schools don't allow it until junior year, but we want them to know right away if it sparks an interest or not. Too often students will choose a college major not because of their interests, but because their best friend did, or because that's what their mother wants, or because they think they will make a lot of money. By letting them "test drive" a major early, they find out quickly if they have a genuine interest in it or not.

College is all about discovery. New facts, new knowledge, new skills. But to truly help our students find the path to success, we must go beyond academics, we need to also give them the tools and opportunities to discover the passion inside themselves.

Here’s the link to the piece in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-kruczek/college-freshmen_b_2481987.html  

How Curious Are You?

I’ve been spending time with our students who just completed a Career Preparation class in the January Term, and talking with them about interviewing particularly for that first internship or job. So naturally, I’m looking in the press for things related to that topic that I can pass along to them as well as to our more experienced alumni. On that topic, take a look at yesterday’s New York Times, The Corner Office by Adam Bryant and his interview with Kon Leong, the co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an email and file archiving company located in San Jose, California. From the article:


Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me for a job, what would you ask me?

A. I would want to know your goals for the job. Is it money? Learning? Fulfillment? What is it? I would try to figure out if our environment suits your goals. I would not try to sell you to get you to take the job. I also will ask, “How curious are you?”

Q. I imagine that most people simply say, “Very.”

A. But then I’d ask, “Outside the headlines, what were some of the most interesting things you’ve noted in the last couple of weeks, and tell me why, and what did you do about it?” That would reflect what you think is interesting, and that tells me a fair bit. If you can cite many disparate topics, that’s a step in the right direction. The point is, we’re trying to find the right fit. In a fast-changing environment, you need to learn more and more and more. There’s so much to learn, and you can’t be taught all the permutations and combinations of the answers, so you have to learn on your own. And to learn on your own, you need curiosity.

Q. What other questions?

A. I’ll ask: How willingly do you accept stuff, and how willing are you to question things? How creative are you in finding your own answers? For example, everyone knows in school that you cannot divide by zero. Why? I try to find if they’ve actually questioned things like that at any time. The point is, we’re usually handicapped by our own borders, and we will not think beyond them. I think there’s one rule of thumb in creativity: when you’re brainstorming, you have to suspend disbelief. That’s a key ingredient. There’s time enough to challenge it and poke holes, but not at the time of generation.

I’ll also change the subject to one where they have some expertise. So I’ll ask what their passions are, and then I’ll ask questions. If it’s ornithology, I’ll start talking about the evolution of birds and ask questions like, “How do you think reptiles got feathers?”

Q. What else do you look for when hiring?

A. Brains and drive. Those are the basics. Without them, it’s probably going to be a long shot. After we work through that, then it’s curiosity and attitude.

Q. How do you get at the question of attitude?

A. Are you willing to learn from your mistakes? Do you do that automatically? Are you willing to set the bar higher? Are you able to deal with failure? Can you bounce back from it?

Q. What’s your take on the standard interview question about strengths and weaknesses?

A. I never really ask about weaknesses, because it’s meaningless. I ask more about strengths, but I ask it from a different angle. I’m more interested in the answers from a more personal perspective as opposed to a professional environment. I’ll typically ask: How would you describe yourself in three words outside the work environment? And then: What do you consider your natural strength? What do you do that comes without any effort, that your peers struggle with and can’t even match? What is natural for you? Other skills emanate from that natural core. Someone once answered that question by saying, “People tend to just come and talk to me.” That really intrigued me.

For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/business/kon-leong-of-zl-technologies-on-encouraging-creativity.html

Red Flags and the Hiring Process

One of the great things about being at a University is that you get to consider issues and then discuss them with business leaders, faculty and students. One of the topics that I’ve been considering lately is the hiring process. Companies know that it is important to emphasize the hiring process; they understand the costs involved with hiring the wrong person, but often times, other than the screening of the resumes, it’s an entirely unorganized process. Often times, when you evaluate the hiring process, you find out that everyone in the organization gets to ask whatever questions they want to ask of the prospective hire, and there is little effort to make sure that they’re hiring the right person, versus the person we simply like the best. On that topic, below is an excerpt from Sunday’s New York Times the Corner Office column by Adam Bryant, in an interview with Dinesh C. Paliwal, the Chairman, president and chief executive of Harman International Industries. From the interview:


Q. What qualities are you looking for when you hire?

A. I want to know how hungry they are. Are you hungry to get to the next level? Every day you come in the office or wherever you’re traveling, you make progress. And the next day it starts from ground zero. That’s the No. 1 thing I’m looking for. Next, I’m looking for whether they will bring the best out of the teams — and not just the peer groups, but people below them and above them.

And I’m looking for people with courage. The higher up you go, courage becomes the No. 1 thing. If I don’t have courage to listen to my instincts and my colleagues’ critiques, I’m not going to make the right choices because generally the right choices are a little tough to execute.

Q. So what questions do you ask?

A. Everybody in their life has gone through the good, bad, the ugly. How did you manage the worst part? What did you learn? Then I’ll say: “If I were sitting with your boss over a beer, and I were to say, ‘I’m interviewing John for this great job and he’s fantastic. He seems to be great at this and this, but. ....’ ” Then I will ask, “What would that but be?” Some people don’t want to answer that, but some of them actually go on to tell me five “buts.” I’m looking for honesty. I’m looking for self-confidence and people who are secure in their own skin. Another thing I generally ask is, “What would your subordinates say about you?”

Once I have decided that I want to hire somebody, there’s a final step, where I’ll invite the person and their spouse to join my wife and me for dinner. It’s a social dinner. It is an interview but it’s a not interview. And I learn things that I couldn’t learn any other way. Let’s say I’m interviewing a man. I’ll watch how he interacts with his wife. I’ll ask some of the same questions in front of his wife that I asked him before. Is he afraid to say again what he said to me? It’s amazing what you learn.

Here’s another question I’ll ask: “Tell me about a time when you had to give an assignment to your team and it didn’t go well. What was the process? What did you learn from that?” They might say they didn’t give a clear explanation of the challenge, the problem, the difficult situation. Or maybe they didn’t have the right team in place, and didn’t get enough support. But I’m listening to whether they see the big picture. If they start talking about two or three fall guys, that’s a red flag.

Here’s a link to the rest of the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/business/harmans-chief-on-how-to-reduce-office-politics.html?_r=0

Getting and Giving Feedback in the Office

Each Sunday morning, I get my coffee and turn to the “Corner Office” column in the New York Times. Today’s was an interview with Karen May, VP for People Development at Google and written by Adam Bryant. It deals with a favorite topic of mine …getting and giving feedback in the workplace.


From the column:

Q. Many C.E.O.’s I’ve interviewed talk about how hard it is for people to give direct feedback. Have you seen that, too?

 A. Absolutely. I would say it happens for a couple of reasons. It’s simply harder to give difficult feedback than positive feedback or no feedback. It’s harder because it can be an uncomfortable conversation. It creates tension. You might be disappointing somebody or potentially leading them to feel worse about themselves.

If you’ve identified something that isn’t going well, then you’re likely to be asked, “How do I fix it?” If you don’t know the answer, you might not want to start the conversation. I think that’s the primary reason managers don’t give feedback. They’re willing to give the feedback, but then they won’t know how to help fix it, so why start the conversation?

As a coach, I was often in the position of giving people feedback they hadn’t heard before, after I interviewed a bunch of people they work with. It was always difficult for me, too. Just at a human level, it’s difficult to tell somebody that something that isn’t working about them. But I came to find that people are incredibly grateful. If I’m not doing well and I don’t know it or I don’t know why or I can’t put my finger on what’s not working and no one will tell me, I won’t be able to fix it.

And if you give me the information, the moment that the information is being transferred is painful, but then I have the opportunity to change it. I’ve come to realize that one of the most valuable things I could do for somebody is tell them exactly what nobody else had told them before.

Q. How often does that have a positive outcome?

A. People can do something with the feedback probably 70 percent of the time. And for the other 30 percent, they are either not willing to take it in, it doesn’t fit their self-image, they’re too resistant, in denial, or they don’t have the wherewithal to change it. And the reality is that most change happens in small increments. So if you’re watching to see if someone’s changing, you have to watch for the incremental change. It’s not a straight line.

We have people sit in chairs and they’re knee to knee. Then we start the speed-back and say, “You have three minutes to answer the question, ‘How have you experienced me during this learning program?’ ” Then the bell rings and the person giving feedback hears how the other perceived them. Many people say it’s some of the best feedback they’d ever received. We’ve experimented with different questions, like, “What advice would you give me based on the experience that you’ve had with me here?”

Here’s the link to entire story: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/business/karen-may-of-google-on-conquering-fears-of-giving-feedback.html?ref=business&_r=0

Ethics and B-School Education

A few weeks ago, I was talking with our Marketing team here at Lynn University, and I told them about the way that we were now teaching ethics in the College of Business. As a result, they developed an information piece and placed it on our website on Thursday. The timing of the piece (which I’ve placed below) couldn’t be more relevant. In just this weekend alone, we’ve seen stories published about ethical lapses at organizations as varied as Lockheed, the BBC, and the US Government. Lance Armstrong’s issues were raised in another story, while the sports page discussed an athlete leaving a school because of alleged abuse from the coaching staff. Clearly since these five stories were topics of the news in just the last two days, then whatever we’re currently doing to instill ethics into our leaders isn’t working.

So take a look at the article below, and learn about the new model that we’re using to integrate ethics into business education. (Here is the link to the Lynn University news page: http://www.lynn.edu/about-lynn/news-and-events/news/business-dean-says-ethics-are-guiding-values-for-decision-making)


Published November 8, 2012

Business dean says ethics are guiding values for decision-making

“It seems the traditional separate ethics class method isn’t producing the optimum result,” said Kruczek. “We’re trying to change that.”

Unlike many business schools across the nation, Lynn University’s College of Business and Management does not offer stand-alone courses on business ethics, business communications and/or sustainable enterprises.

“We believe ethics – and other key business values – are such important topics that they should be embedded into all of our business courses,” said Thomas Kruczek, dean of Lynn’s College of Business. “The discussion of ethics, both personal and business, warrants far more in-depth attention than a one-semester class that meets twice a week.”

Lynn’s College of Business is working to change the outdated model of having only one or two courses specifically dedicated to guiding business principles. The university’s core curriculum, the Dialogues of Learning, also works to buck the trend by embedding life lessons throughout all Lynn classes.

“As educators, our hope is that we are helping to make the world a better place by training our students to enter the world as productive, contributing and ethical business leaders,” said Kruczek. “Our ethics and guiding values are at the root of every decision we make.”

ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING

Ethical decision-making is the foundation for building a successful business. However, in the wake of the financial crisis, unethical business agendas seem to garner the most attention.

“Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom are key examples of the poor choices we hear about,” said Kruczek. “That’s one of the reasons we emphasize ethics so strongly here at Lynn. We are seeing questionable decisions in too many businesses, so it seems the traditional separate ethics class method isn’t producing the optimum result. We’re trying to change that.”

Leadership...The Carrot or the Stick? I Vote for Salami!

Part of leadership is being able to motivate people to do what you want them to do. It’s not (always) about ‘barking’ out orders…but it can be useful to treat your staff like, well... dogs. Just the other night I put my leadership/management skills to work to get my wife’s dog off the bed after he climbed up during a thunderstorm. Believe me, that was harder than it sounds. This is no labradoodle, her beloved boy is a 160 pound man-stopper, and I’m not a dog guy. I walked into the bedroom after a late football game, my wife was fast asleep, and her canine shadow was snuggled next to her with his head on my pillow! Sigh, thunder makes him nervous.

Now here’s the leadership lesson: I had a couple of choices, I could go for strong-arm dictatorial tactics or work towards collaboration. Trying to force the situation could result in opposition. The dog had his own agenda that didn’t coincide with mine. If I pushed hard he could growl (scary) and a confrontation would wake my sleeping wife (scarier.) Since I was dealing with a 160 lb immovable object with teeth, I was leaning towards negotiation and persuasion. I needed to consider both our needs, but my management goal was clear…I wanted that damn dog off the bed. The options were the classic carrot or the stick. Instead of the carrot, I went with a slice of salami. It worked, and both big boy and I were happy. For that particular situation that style worked. It wasn’t weakness... it was a win-win. In my current field (higher education) this style is a go-to choice. But leadership works different ways in different businesses, and sometimes a tougher style can be more effective. If the dog had been chomping on my cat, for instance, my management style would have been more hands-on!

Good leadership involves influencing those you lead, not about constantly dominating them. You’re not the hall monitor at school, it’s in your best interest to consider your employee’s concerns and desires (which unfortunately are not as simple as a slice of salami!) so that you can inspire and motivate them to help you succeed. When you have a choice in a situation, aim for the win, not just for you but for the other person. You can still be the “alpha” by making that choice.