Change

When I lived in China, it was rural. But over the five years that I lived there, great changes happened. The country went from very rural to the feel of a large city. The average home went from having no ice or refrigeration to almost every home having both. The country went from 25-50 motorcycles for every car on the street to 5-10 motorcycles for every car on the street. This entry is about change, being ready for the inevitable—Change! Those that can change will be ready for the future! Those who cannot change will be left behind.

You must embrace change…you must do things to be a valuable asset to your boss, your job and the company you work for.

Consider These Questions
Honestly ask yourself the following questions:
• Who likes change?
• Do you like change?
• How do you feel about change?

Most people don’t like change but it needs to happen for us to be successful and for us to remain competitive. This entry will require commitment from you, especially in the area of change. What you learn might go against many things you have been taught. But it is all-important for your growth. These things aren’t hard, but they are difficult! What does difficult mean? It means that it takes guts to accomplish.

Many people feel that changing is not effective because they are “just one person.” In a recent, hotly-contested local election, one candidate won by just 53 votes. In another one candidate won by just 3 votes. That is a very slim margin and it goes to show that all of us can make a difference. We can and must make a difference! Each of us has the capacity to make change happen. Just like 53 and 3 people changed these elections, you have the power and ability to change your future.

• We must always be ready for change! We must facilitate change. You can.

To make a difference, there are basics we must cover first.

For those who are leaders now, to facilitate change in your workplace, you need to make your employees experts in all of the products or services you sell. You need to establish reward systems that foster excellence and you must prepare for excellence.

Some of you are the leaders of the future. You might not be today, but you are a leader in training. We need good leaders. The only way to get there is to learn about change and how to promote it within yourself and in those around you. You need to learn strategies that engage and inspire yourself, your coworkers, and your customers.

For those future leaders, you need to become the expert on all of the products and services you sell. You may even have to create reward systems to reward yourself, if you need motivation.

“Your greatest opportunity as an employee is in making things…something…anything happen.”
—DCF

Hiring is Marketing - Look for Those Who Can Make an Impact

Impact
The person with each of these skills will make an impact on your business. They will help you and your customers. They will find solutions to the problems you didn’t even know you had. They will be able to see things through and make things happen. And they will be able to lead others to do the same for you.

If this type of person become one of your managers they will be able to teach and inspire other to greatness and some of them will stay longer at their jobs than they normally would helping you lower costs.

If you are hiring young people, they may have some of these skills but they may not be fully development yet. You will need to mentor them to focus their passions and skills to work the way you need them to, for now and into their future. You can do it. They need you to be a mentor every bit as much as you need them as an employee and leader.

The person who possesses these seven skills knows how to make change happen. By the way we educate people in our public school system though, they most likely don’t know that they have these skills. You see our public school system is designed to produce workers that will follow the status quo and do what they are told to do. And our system of public school does this very well. This is their goal and its outcome is different from the model found here, which is fine, you need people who don’t fit the mold. Those who fit the mold will not have these skills. Compare the skills of those employees you’ve already have to those mentioned here. They will be different and you need to find different if you want to succeed.

I think that you should also be aware that you may see in people with these skills signs of rebellion form the pressure to fit into the social structure of our public system which teaches contrary to the skills revealed in this report. That’s OK. These peoples natural leadership ability has been squelched or even negated by the public school system. Be aware and don’t be afraid. Most people reject great ideas because they are not normal. Know this, these are the skills you need in employees if you want to grow your business. These and only these are the skills needed to make thing happen. Without these skills you may get someone who will come to work because they need the money but you won’t get someone who will go out of their way or as Tom Gagax said, “run through walls for you.”

I’m sure that you can imagine what you can accomplish if you have had employees that “run through walls for you,” especially if you have or have had warm bodies working for you in the past.

After you’ve gone through this process and hired a person, whether the person works for 6 months or 16 years, do whatever you can do to keep in touch with such an achiever. This person has the skills to lead and make thing happen. A person like this is worth rehiring at some future point, if you can!

Do what you can to encourage and support such an employee, in the end, you will agree that they were a God-send. And remember, “Your Employees Are Your #1 Asset!” Until you start finding employees of quality, and treat them as if they are, your business will never reach the potential it could.

Hiring is Marketing - Commitment

Commitment
If you’ve been successful in determining whether your candidate has the skills that make a person of action by this point you’ve been though a lot already. And as you’ve noticed, you’ve learned a lot about these people already. Next you’ll want to determine what commitments they’ve made and kept in their life.

Commitment is an essential skill if you are looking for someone who can make an impact on your business and on your customers. Lets explore what commitment is for a moment so I can impress upon you how important this skill is.

Commitment is having a sound set of beliefs and faithfully adhering to them with ones actions or behaviors. Inquire about the commitments your interviewee has had in their life. For example, if you want to know about their feeling on self-improvement, ask questions that show how they have improved themselves or their actions. You can start by finding out what their commitment is to self-improvement. Ask questions such as the following:

1. How do you improve your skills?
2. What are some of the most important commitments you have made in your life?
3. How do these commitments effect your daily decisions?
4. What do you do in the community?
5. What are some of your passions? How do you pursue them?

As you can imagine, the answers you get to these types of questions will show a lot about the persons commitments or lack their of. Never the less, such answers will give you confidence in this person or not.

My point here is for you to develop questions to ask your interviewees that will reveal commitments made in their life so you can see the strength of their character.

Hiring is Marketing - Initiative

Initiative
If you’ve ever hired an employee without initiative, you know that most of the money you paid that employee was wasted. You spent all too much time telling those employees what to do when they are doing nothing. “Why can’t they just do their job and be productive?” you say to yourself over and over again.

All too many employers underestimate the power initiative has in an average days work until they’ve gone through this scenario.

There are many reasons why employees don’t step up and do the work that is needed. The biggest, however, is that they have not been taught how to take the initiative and therefore can’t. If you want your employees to take initiative you’ll either have to teach it or hire those with it.

One way to overcome it in your current employees is to create a detailed job description, which lays out in clear details what is expected of them on an ongoing basis. I clearly remember my second job in high school. My boss told me that the most important thing to do was to never let the customers wait to pay. So I hovered by the cash register.

He never told me his second most important job function…. So, after two weeks, he wanted to fire me because I was just standing by the cash register. Even though I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was wrong. I didn’t know that I was supposed to use my initiative.

After we had a talk, another employee told me “Don’t just stand there, look busy. Sweep, dust, arrange, clean and/or organize.” Oh, then I got the big picture. I learned his system. It would have been much easier if he had it documented.

As you talk to potential employees, listen for instances where the interviewee showed his/her initiative. Ask questions that will bring this out.

Some examples are:
1. Tell me of a time when you used your initiative and worked independently to either create a plan or make something positive happen?
2. Discuss a situation where you have shown your ability to conceptualize an idea[s] and reorganize information into new patterns.
3. In your last job, what kind of things did you do when you were slow? What kind of things were you supposed to do?
4. When you see that something isn’t getting done, that is supposed to, what do you do?
5. Share with me a time where you went out of your way to complete a project because it needed to be done.

I’d suggest you also create/give a scenario and ask what they would do in that situation. The scenario that I like to build off is: "If you see the problem you have to see it fixed!" In fact, this should be the first line on all job descriptions! Leaving no question as to what the employee’s responsibilities are.

Initiative is the first skill to look for in a successful employee. All of the other skills that you might find important hinge on the initiative of a person.

Making Your Customers More Valuable

Add a Suggestion Box
Encourage your customers to use it. Inform them that they are valued customers, and their satisfaction is important to you. Invite them to tell you how you can serve them better.

Consider rewarding them for taking the time to share their experiences with you.

What Should You Ask In An Initial Interview?

Hiring – Key elements to discover
1. Initiative
2. Ingenuity
3. Allegiance
4. Integrity
5. Commitment
6. Passion
7. Impact 

Anyone with these skills will be able to make an impact on your business for the better. Those without will simply come to work more or less on time.

When you interview someone these are the initial and key points to learn — these are the skills that leaders have. And these are the key skills that our public school system methodically eliminates from our natural beings in an effort to socialize us to be obedient workers.

Ask question to discover answers to these points. They should be the basis of whether or not you should hire someone.Furthermore you should put content like this on your website to be the first screen in the hiring process. You will attract better qualified candidates when you make your intentions known.

How Do You Find Commitment?

Commitment
If you’ve been successful in determining whether your candidate has the skills that make a person of action by this point you’ve been though a lot already. Next you’ll want to determine what their commitments in life are.

Commitment is an essential skill if you are looking for someone who can make an impact on your business and on your customers. Lets explore what commitment is for a moment so I can impress upon you how important this skill is.

Commitment is having a sound set of beliefs and faithfully adhering to them with ones actions or behaviors. Inquire about the commitments your interviewee has had in their life. Ask questions that show how they have supported their beliefs by improving themselves or their actions. You can start by finding out what their commitment is to self-improvement. Ask questions such as:

1. How do you improve your skills?
2. What are some of the most important commitments you have made in your life?
3. How do these commitments effect your daily decisions?
4. What do you do in the community?
5. What are some of your passions? How do you pursue them?

As you can imagine, the answers you get to these types of questions will show a lot about the persons commitments or lack their of. Never the less, such answers will give you confidence in this person or not.

Those who are truly committed show a deliberate emphasis on continual self-improvement.


Take from the Special Report #4 How to Get Someone Qualified! Found at The Image Foundry

How Do You Find Integrity?

Integrity
You will be able to tell the integrity of most people by the way they describe the things they do or have done. As explored in those whose allegiance is to good they have experiences that have helped them develop more character; making them a better candidate.

Inquire as to the character of the person you are interviewing. Ask what they would do in certain situation? Ask for examples where they have done such.

Ask questions to determine if they are flexible, positive and have a can-do attitude. Do they make excuses for mistakes made? Do they do a great job every time? And do they genuinely try not to make mistakes?

Do they and how do they ensure that they remember every detail of what they are supposed to do? One way to help your employees with this is to provide a detailed job description—a living document that can be added to by you and the employee.

Will they be part of the solution, not the problem? Are they a team worker and will they be on time ready to work every day? You need to let them know these things are required of you. And find out what their stand on gossip is! This is a no-no and must not be tolerated in any form.

As you can see, there is a lot to consider. The consequences are expensive if you make a wrong decision. Spend the time needed to develop documentation that you can give to your potential employees before the come in for an interview. This will help you get more qualified candidates.

NOTE: See Special Report #5 — The Top 10 Employee Essentials. In my classes, “Excellence In The Workplace” basic training classes, I teach the following employee skill that every employee must master.

The Top 10 Employee Essentials
1. Attitude of Gratitude 6. Ask Engaging Questions
2. Service 7. Build Value
3. Eye Contact 8. Schmooze
4. Communicate 9. Adopt a Positive Attitude
5. Be a Good Listener 10. Never Gossip About Others

Commitment is a byproduct of the person who shows integrity.

Take from the Special Report #4 How to Get Someone Qualified! Found at The Image Foundry