Kebuki Vision: A new tool for Leadership and Management Coaches

This post is part of our Kebuki Vision series where we discuss our vision for Kebuki.  Topics discussed are not actively being worked on and may never appear in the product.  Purchasing decisions should be made on available functionality only.

There is a huge appetite in business for leadership and management consulting.  Companies want their managers to be well trained and a global industry exists to provide on-site and off-site coaching.

The challenge for the consulting industry is to turn this one-time training activity into a recurring revenue stream.  The fact that you are external to the client means it is hard to follow up with those that are on your courses.  Ultimately you are reliant on being called upon again - you can't exactly say "I think that last training will have worn off now - time for a refresher!"

We see Kebuki as a perfect complement to the training industry as it can enable you to maintain direct contact with the managers that you coach.  Imagine completing a three day training course with an implementation of Kebuki - purchased via yourself.  Not only have you trained your class - but you are also providing them with the real tools to continue the good work.

Immediately you have a recurring revenue stream from anyone you have coached, even if they never engage your services again.  But more than that, we envisage you being provided with secure access to the Kebuki Ratings of the managers you have sold to, giving you insight into their ongoing performance.

Imagine being able to know that out of 1000 managers that you have coached these 150 have got the lowest Kebuki Ratings.  This is fantastic information to enable you to proactively contact the companies concerned and propose some follow up coaching sessions.

It is our mission to ensure that Kebuki managers are more successful that non-Kebuki managers, and we feel that complements your objectives as well.

Are you a management consultant or leadership coach?  We'd love to know your thoughts on this vision and how you try to drive recurring revenues today.

The Social Leader's Team Treasure Hunt - get to know your team members

If you are a first time manager, or you have just taken over a new team, then one of your first objectives is to get to know your new team members as quickly as you can.  If you can build up a personal relationship and earn their trust then you will have a much better chance of truly leading them and delivering on your vision.

But how do you go about that, and how do you ensure you get to know every member of your team and not just the top performers?

We've put together a little Treasure Hunt for you to play!  For each of your team members we want you to find out 8 personal details about them - ranging from their middle name to their favourite shop.  If you want, you can edit the template to match the type of team members you lead.

Print out a template for each of your team and keep them somewhere discreet - perhaps in a folder away from prying eyes!

Set yourself a deadline of 4 or 8 weeks to uncover every bit of information about every team member.

"That's easy" you might say "I'll just ask them!" Well you could do - but it would be a bit wierd, and you wouldn't actually get to know your team members any better.  Your mission - should you choose to accept it, is to try and uncover these details by creating conversations with your team members and getting them to open up about their personal lives.  In doing so you will have to open up about your personal life and hopefully uncover some common ground.

Enjoy!  We hope you have fun with your Treasure Hunt!  Let us know if you have any other categories that you have used, and whether you were successful in your mission!  Did it help you build relationships with your new team members?

Not everyone you lead works in your team

As a manager it's easy to think that the people you lead need to have a direct line into you.  But your influence spreads much wider than that.

Consider people that work in other teams across your company

Consider external consultants supporting your team

Consider suppliers working on your projects

Consider partners and their sales teams selling your products

Consider customers who are using your products

All of these people can look to you and your vision for leadership and guidance.

When adding people to "My Team" in Kebuki look further than the people listed below you in your HR system!

Let your team members decide who gets the bonus

We loved reading this post on Inc so much that we had to mention it on our own blog, and especially one idea.  The original post was by Erik Markowitz entitled 3 weird, game-changing ways to make employees happy.

In his post Erik uncovers how Philip Rosedale of Linden Labs (the developers of Second Life) kept their team motivated.  We liked the post anyway because it holds to many of our beliefs on how to inspire a team - but Philip's second idea was one that we really loved!

Let employees decide who gets the bonus

Rosedale decided to give every team member $1000 as a bonus that they could give out to whoever they wanted, in whatever proportion.  The only stipulation was that they couldn't keep any of it themselves.

You might give some to an admin person that had helped you with a project, or a member of another team who had mentored you when you first arrived - or even up to your manager if they had been really supporting.

What comes out of this is that some of the top beneficiaries of this process are not the people who would have been bonused before.  Often it is now the quieter team members who have been consistently supporting the wider team that get recognised whereas in the past it was the louder more confident employees who were closer to the management.

In traditional performance reviews its all about 'them' and 'us' - saying the right thing to get the right score and receive the right bonus.

With Rosedale's idea it is the team that decides and in that process of thanking each other with bonuses the team becomes stronger for the next year.

Check out the full post here.  We're glad to highlight it - a great set of ideas.

Create a team handbook to welcome new starters.

When new team members join your Company they probably get given a Company Handbook along with their contract.  Probably quite a dry document produced by your HR team it will cover grievance procedures and a hundred different ways an employee can get fired.  Motivating.

Why not take it upon yourself to come up with a team handbook that you can provide to all new members of your team, that welcomes them and sets the tone for the culture you are trying to build.

Here are some tips to help you get going:

Vision and Goals

A team handbook is a great place to introduce your medium and long term goals for the team.  This immediately sets you apart as a leader with vision and not just a micro-manager.

Delegate production

A team handbook is a great opportunity to delegate some work to your current team members, and to get team members that don't often work together to join forces.  Ask your team members what information would really have been useful when they joined:

• Where is the best place to buy lunch?
• What sports and social activities take place?
• Who is the best person to speak to in IT support?

Ask each of your current team to contribute a profile with a photo, some key successes and their interests out-side of work.  Quickly uncovering a new team member supports the same football team, or has the same hobbies is a great ice breaker.

Add personality to your own profile

Don't take yourself too seriously - introduce a bit of your home life into your profile.  Yes you are the team's manager and leader, but you are also human too.  Detailing some of your own hobbies and passions gives you the opportunity to find some common ground with your team members.

Values

Your company may well have an agreed set of values, in which case you can build on these in your team handbook.  If not, perhaps agree some at your next team meeting?

• Do you embrace change?
• Do you work hard, play hard?
• Do you support everyone in the team?
• Do you accept failure?

Spending some time detailing the values that your team holds will make it easier for new team members to adopt them.

Feedback

When your team stop bringing you problems you stop leading them.  A team handbook is a great way to confirm that you welcome all feedback and to detail the channels that your team members can use - whether it is email, 1-2-1's, a suggestion box or team meetings.

Keep it updated

Perhaps each quarter allocate a couple of team members to 'own' the team handbook and to keep it updated.  As new members join the team they can have an up to date version printed off.  Keep asking new team members what they found useful in the handbook and what else they would like to see in it.

We hope this idea is of use!  Have you used a team handbook in addition to your company handbook?  What other articles would be of use to new starters?

Kebuki Vision: Disrupting the job market

This post is part of our Kebuki Vision series where we discuss our vision for Kebuki.  Topics discussed are not actively being worked on and may never appear in the product.  Purchasing decisions should be made on available functionality only.

Kebuki is built around our AIR proposition where we help managers to Attract, Inspire, and Retain amazing team members.

At the heart of AIR is the Kebuki Rating, a personal score held by Kebuki managers that is generated on a monthly basis from feedback given by current team members.  The Kebuki Rating is private by default, but managers can elect to make it public and use it to promote their own skills as an awesome leader.

As we add more and more managers to the platform, we see the Kebuki Rating becoming a de-facto standard of leadership quality - a seal of approval from existing teams that a manager is worth working for.

We believe having a great Kebuki Rating will have a high value when it comes to attracting amazing talent into your team.  Everyone knows of a team member (or entire team) that has switched companies to join a great manager they've worked for before.

People want to work for great people - more than they want to work for great companies.

Our vision for Kebuki allows managers to place their Kebuki Rating onto the public Kebuki site, to be searchable by job seekers.

Searches could be made by:

• Geography
• Industry
• Role
• Function

Imagine a marketing professional based in New York.  They could run a search for Kebuki managers within New York that work within Marketing departments in Technology companies.

The resulting search might pull up 100 managers ranked by their Kebuki Rating.  Our marketing professional can then elect to 'follow' those that he's interested in, essentially putting his hand up and saying "I'm interested in joining this team".

As a Kebuki manager you can now see a list building before your eyes of interested, relevant candidates that you can contact when you have open positions.

The advantage for Kebuki managers is that they can build up a personal pipeline of individuals that want to work for them, not just the company.  No longer do you need to wait for a specific job opening, and then ask your HR department to go out and get a snapshot of talent that is available and searching that week.

The advantage for job seekers is that they can track individual managers whist they are passively job hunting, watching their Kebuki Ratings go up or down, and getting to see how the current team rate them as a leader.

We believe that in the future job seekers will want to be able to apply to managers and teams just as they apply to companies today.  Its our vision that we'll be at the front of that disruptive change to the job market.

What do you think?  Do you believe a great manager is more important than a great company?  As a manager how useful would it be to have a personal pipeline of candidates waiting for you?

Great managers want their top performers to leave their team!

Young men and women joining the workforce today do not expect the 'job for life' that their parents may have looked forward to.  Today's labour force expects to work for up to 10 employers over their career and feels quite comfortable with this level of change and diversity in their work lives.

As a manager you need to understand and embrace this change.  Your team members will not be sitting passively waiting for the next promotion, they will be actively seeking out new opportunities within your business, and outside of your business if they can't find them there.

You can no longer act as 'the boss' and treat your team members as if they should be glad to be in your team.  More so, you cannot hold your best team members back because they contribute so much to your team's performance.

In a previous post we looked at a great way of setting short, medium and long term goals with your team members.  This technique gives you a great insight into the personal and career goals that they have and gives you an opportunity to help them achieve their dreams.

As a leader, make sure that you are open and welcoming of goals that sit outside of your team - perhaps a move into another department, a move into your role, or a move into a different company or industry. By accepting these goals, and supporting your team members to achieve them (even if this means losing your top performers) you are proving you put your team's success before your own.  Ultimately this will help you attract more top performers in to replace those that leave.

Being closed to these conversations, or not accepting your team member's career plans outside of your team does not change their plans, or limit their ambition - it just excludes you from the conversation and leaves you with a more critical situation when they do leave.

Build out the goals templates with your team members, understand where they want to go next, and support them in their career.  They will remember it and you'll be more successful as a result.

Do you embrace this type of conversation with your team members?  Have you felt you might have held a team member back for your own benefit?  We'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject!

Should you take up that smart new Manager's Office?

Whatever sport you play, from football, to tennis, to motoring you aren't going to get through many lessons before your coach discusses positioning.  Where you position yourself on the field of play can have major consequences on your success, and the effort required to achieve it.

Managing a team is no different, and so before you take up that corner office you've had your eye on whilst you've risen up the ranks take a moment to think about whether it's the best thing for your team's success.

My door is always open

Actions speak louder than words, and "My door is always open" is right up there with "I want this presentation to be interactive" in the phrases that mean nothing ranks.  When you put youself in a closed office with walls and a door you put up a barrier between yourself and your team.  Even if your door is actually 'open' it still creates a reason for an employee to not approach you - "hmm, she looks busy, I'll wait".

Work alongside your team

Nothing says 'leader' like a manager that is happy to work alongside and within his or her own team.  It says that you have nothing to hide and that you are keen to get your hands dirty at the coal face.  Whatever department you are in you can make calls, take calls, make sales, solve cases alongside your team and earn their respect.  At the same time, by really understanding the environment they work in and the day to day challenges they face you'll be much more able to deliver them support that really matters.

Use meeting rooms for personal matters

You might have wanted that closed office because as a manager you have to deal with personal issues.   Now that you are sitting alongside your team, we'd recommend using meeting rooms when you need to.  You might even get an unexpected benefit that a meeting room is neutral territory giving you much more productive 1-2-1s.  Most of your team member's confidential documentation should be held with your HR department, but if you do need to keep confidential forecasts and planning information then a locked cabinet by your desk is a wise investment.

Visit your remote workers

We discussed managing remote workers in our post "Strategies for managing a virtual team".  Don't rely on your remote workers to come into the office for team meetings.  Just as you should spend time sitting with your office-based team, so you should with your remote workers.  Understand their environment, see how they work, and deliver better support to them.

Office Hours

If you still want to go for that slick office you've been pining for for years, then create some structure that invites your team in to speak with you.  We love the way Marissa Mayer at Google runs Office Hours.  Every day at 4pm for 90 minutes she is available on a first come first served basis for whatever her team need.  Employees can add their name to the list on her office door and get a short time to discuss whatever is on their mind.

By creating a structure and sicking to it you can make sure your team know that they can see you every day at a time when you are receptive and they aren't interrupting.

Think about your position on the field

We hope this post has given you some food for thought.  Spend some time to think about where you are positioning yourself and what signals that sends to your team.  Are you one of them?  Are you open for questions?  Are you aware of what's going on in their lives?

How do you position yourself on the field of play?  What tips have you got for the rest of the community?

The manager's guide to using LinkedIn for recruiting

You'd think with the current economic climate that it would be easier to fill positions with a surplus of candidates in the market.  The reality however is that great people are less likely to move jobs for fear of being "last in first out" in a rapidly changing business environment.

However, there is hope! As a social leader you now have access to amazing tools to help you with your recruiting.  Networks like LinkedIn simply didn't exist ten years ago but can now be put to great use as you attempt to fill your open positions.

Here are our top tips to get LinkedIn to work for you.

1. Update your profile - the resume works both ways

As a social leader you are probably already checking out your candidates on social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter to see what you can learn about your possible new team members.  Remember that your candidates are probably doing the same thing as well!  It's easy to uncover who a hiring manager might be, or who the Finance Director is at the business they are applying for an accounting role.

A well filled out profile that explains the value that your company delivers to your customers will help your business stand out from the competition.  Try to use "we" and "our" instead of "I" and "my" - is this a team that you run or a dictatorship?  Discuss as much of your vision as you can publicly - you want a candidate to read your profile and feel excited to get on board.

Garner some LinkedIn recommendations from your current team.  As we've looked at in our post on using LinkedIn to lead your team we suggest providing recommendations to your own team members as a great way of getting them back.  Recommendations are best when they are specific so see if you can get your team members to detail something you've done to help them rather than a general "I'd recommend him as a manager".

2. Post Jobs

On LinkedIn it is simple for a hiring manager to post a single job for under $100 and have it displayed to profiles that match your requirements.  The benefit of using LinkedIn to promote your position is that you are targeting passive candidates - those that are not actually looking for new jobs at the moment.

A well written job description, linked to your awesome updated profile, could be the trigger for a passive candidate to make contact with you.

As with any job board you need to make sure you are clear about what you are looking for - in terms of skills, location, previous experience.  You will always receive a number of poor applications where candidates have just fired off to any job posting they can find, but LinkedIn makes it very easy to hide these and focus on the good applications.

3. Update your Company Page

If no-one else in your company has picked this up, then why not work on it with some members of your team.  It's a great opportunity to work together on a project and build up some team relationships.  Anyone with your company email address can edit the page (unless already locked down by another member of your company).

Add in all your company details - size, locations, website and Twitter feed.  Link up your company blog so you get a regular feed of news onto your company page, and get your logo in there as well.

On the Products and Services page add in what you offer and make use of the rotating banner feature that can showcase your company.  Perhaps make one of these a link to your careers page.  Once your products and services are added in work with your marketing, sales and customer services teams to encourage customer recommendations.  This is useful when you are hiring as candidates can see that customers are passionate about what you offer - this all helps your company stand out from the competition.

4. Join Groups

You can join up to 50 groups in LinkedIn and we'd recommend joining groups where you think you'll find great candidates for your team.  These might be industry specific groups, or role specific.  Keep an eye on who is in the groups - who is asking great questions, or who answers the questions you pose.

When you receive applications from candidates take a look at the groups they are members of in LinkedIn as it can give you additional insight into their previous history that you might not get from their employment record.

5. Use Advanced Search and Profile Organizer

Use LinkedIn to uncover passive candidates

If you were asked the type of candidates you'd like to apply you could probably list them:

• Works in X industry
• Lives near Y
• Has this level of seniority
• Speaks these languages

LinkedIn's advanced search allows you to define a number of criteria and understand who fits your target market.  Sales people and marketers are using this to find leads, and you can use it to find candidates.

As a premium user of LinkedIn you can unlock additional search criteria including their experience, function and seniority.

Once you have run your search and found some great passive candidates, then use LinkedIn's profile organizer to save them into a folder.  You might have 20 or 30 passive candidates that you want to keep an eye on and this is an easy way of doing it.  Additionally, spend time reviewing your passive candidates profiles to look out for Groups that you should be a member of to further widen your search.

Summary

We hope these tips give you a good head start with using LinkedIn for recruiting.  Social Leaders understand that recruiting is no longer the domain of recruitment agents passing qualified candidates to hiring managers.  Modern managers will need to take on much more of the process and position themselves as exciting, inspiring and successful leaders that candidates want to work for.