Employers are asking behavioral questions during and interview which seek specific examples of behavior from past experiences .  These questions are based on the idea that actions you took in the past are predictors of how you will react to future situations.

For example: Tell me about a creative solution you developed in approaching a problem.  It is very important that you give a specific example from your previous experience.

The “STAR” technique can be helpful to use here.  First describe the Situation or Task you needed to accomplish.  Then, describe the specific Actions you took to complete the task.  Lastly, be sure to list the Results you achieved.  Be specific about what happened, what you learned and what was accomplished.

From my Power and Politics Class
Professor Tracey Rockett
UTD School of Management

Interesting Statistic:

The greatest predictor for poverty is lack of education for men and having a child for women.

Top Mistakes some women make:

1. Avoiding politics at work. Not all politics are bad. Influence should be used. Power should be used, gaining resources is key.
2. Pretending it is not a game
3. Pinching pennies, not taking risk, then she is viewed as dealing in minutia
4. Waiting to be given what she wants
5. Polling to make a decision too much. Collaboration is good, but competing is respected
6. Needing to be liked
7. Acting too much like a man (it is obvious)
8. Telling the whole truth
9. Sharing too much personal information: ie: ‘I have to leave early to attend my daughter’s parent/teacher conference” Better to say “I am leaving early. See you tomorrow”
10. Ignoring networking relationships. There is a direct correlation to women’s advancement and her having strong male mentors.
11. Never saying no. If the work is beneath you, say” no.”
12. Limp handshake makes a bad first impression. Perception of warmth in handshake translate to trust and likability

Limiting her possibilities

You’ve heard it before: An interview can make or break your chance of getting a job. But what exactly can go wrong?

Keep reading for seven interview mistakes to avoid and more career tips from FINS.com.

UTD Coaching Happy Hour and Open House is scheduled for Thursday, April 14th at 5:30 p.m.

UTD Coaching Happy Hour and Open House is scheduled for Thursday, April 14th at 5:30 p.m. cdt at the UTD School of Management. There is no charge for this event. It is open to all students, graduates, faculty, ICF chapter members and friends and associates in the coaching community. In addition to refreshments and a friendly setting for mingling, we’ll have a brief educational presentation:

“Coaching in Organizations — From Zucchini to Outer Space” by Susan Shapiro, President of ICF-North Texas and a UTD Cohort 1 graduate.

Send an e-mail to coaching@utdallas.edu with “April Open House” in the subject line to receive details on location and parking instructions

Monday 4/11/11 WSJ article, very thought provoking study on Women in the economy.

By Rebecca Blumenstein

At a Wall Street Journal conference, business and government leaders examined what’s holding women back in the workplace— and set out an action plan for creating new opportunities.

When Sandra Day O’Connor graduated near the top of her class at Stanford University’s law school in 1952, she received only one job offer: to be a legal secretary.

Opportunities for women have expanded dramatically since then. But there is growing evidence that the progress of women in America’s workplace has stalled—and is now actually falling backward.

The Wall Street Journal convened almost 200 top leaders in government, business and academia not only to discuss the reasons for the slippage, but also to come up with an action plan for how companies, government, and men and women themselves can address it.

Women are now graduating from college and graduate school in greater numbers than men and entering the work force in equal numbers. But at each stage of advancement, men are at least twice as likely as women to move forward. Only 11 chief executives of Fortune 500 companies are women, down from 15 in 2010, according to Catalyst Inc., a nonprofit women’s research group.

“Middle-management women get promoted on performance. Many middle-management men get promoted on potential. Performance vs. potential,” said Vikram Malhotra, chairman of the Americas for McKinsey & Co., which conducted research commissioned by the Journal. “Qualified women actually enter the work force in sufficient numbers, but they begin to plateau or drop off…when they are eligible for their very first management positions. And it only gets worse after that.”

Among the top recommendations at the inaugural meeting of The Wall Street Journal Task Force for Women in the Economy: a proposal to encourage companies to break women out of traditional support positions like human resources and put them into jobs with bottom-line, profit-and-loss impact, considered essential preparation for the CEO spot. Other recommendations include the creation of a CEO Commission to make the business case for advancing talented women.

We need to focus on women in their 30s, get them to “hang on by their fingernails” if they are tempted to step back, said Sallie L. Krawcheck, president of global wealth and investment management at Bank of America Corp. “But that’s not going to be fast. It will take a long time.”

The disparity is increasingly becoming a competitive issue for the U.S. and its growth potential, according to economists, because many developing countries such as China and India are making rapid strides in how effectively they utilize women, which is helping fuel their growth rates.

Justice O’Connor, who served a quarter-century in the Supreme Court, received a standing ovation when she spoke to the participants. “Women bring a lot to the table and I think are effective as employees, as managers and CEOs, when they are given the chance.…And I just think we need to find a better path for women because they have had a hard time.”

Harnessing the power of real team building 12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Cheryl Hall

The interview pitch was irresistible: Meet the guy who turned the biggest screw-up in the history of science into a team-building system that’s second to none. Charlie Pellerin did not disappoint.

The 65-year-old former director of astrophysics for NASA led the team that built the hobbled Hubble Space Telescope and then redeemed himself by leading the mission to fix it.

“I became curious about something we never talked about at NASA: how a leadership failure could have trumped the hard work of literally thousands of the best technical minds in the world,” Pellerin said during a recent visit to Dallas.

It set him on a new course of research.

Now the founder of 4-D Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colo., teaches NASA employees and tech types around the globe how to transform underperforming groups into highly productive collaborative teams.

He was here last week to spread the gospel with folks at Texas Instruments Inc. and Raytheon Co. and to give a speech to a local technology group.

Pellerin has found that the softer skills of playing nice in the laboratory are alien to many of the brightest minds in our universe. So he developed a system called 4-D – for what he feels are the four most important dimensions of teamwork.

He presents touchy-feely HR concepts by using scientific analogies and performance graphs so that high-tech minds can grasp them. He has measurement tools so that team members can see results.

He offers a free online 15-minute diagnostic test at www.4-DSystems.com to identify eight troublesome behaviors – such as failure to show appreciation. Follow his Pavlovian modification processes, and he says a lagging group can increase performance 5 percent every six months.

“Appreciation has to be shown habitually, authentically, proportionately, specifically and promptly,” he says. “Everyone on the team learns the rationale of why this is important. They learn what good looks like.”

Rave reviews

Frankly, his promises sound too easy to be true. But Pellerin has impressive endorsers, including the former head of NASA and the chief architect of the Global Positioning System.

Current space agency officials are prohibited from giving commercial endorsements, but in the last eight years, 700 NASA project management and engineering teams have taken advantage of the agency’s training contract with Pellerin.

“Charlie’s teachings are universal,” says Martin Harwit, former director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. “People are not the product of cookie cutters. Charlie teaches us not only to recognize and respect inherent differences but to build on them to form stronger teams able to tackle the most demanding problems.”

You can read Pellerin’s $40 book, How NASA Builds Teams, or hire one of his NASA-certified coaches to fine-tune your approach. An initial assessment and several coaching sessions cost about $2,000.

But the laid-back Pellerin swears this isn’t about bringing in $5 million in annual revenue but rather about helping America prepare for societal changes that threaten our fundamental lifestyles if we don’t become more productive.

“Consider what it would be like for Dallas-Fort Worth if you could increase productivity of all its project teams by 10 percent per year with negligible effort,” Pellerin says. “How important would that be in dealing with the coming changes in our society?”

You might think Pellerin, as the son of an Air Force pilot, became an astrophysicist because he liked spaceships. But his career choice was an act of patriotism. Pellerin wanted to use his math and science acumen to thwart Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s Cold War threat of “We will bury you!”

“I’m serious when I say I’m quite the ordinary person,” Pellerin says. “But I find ways to connect to purpose. I got that from being at NASA during Apollo. All of us there had a mindset that we never lost: ‘We’re going to the moon. Get out of the way.’ ”

Pellerin had visions of the president pinning a medal on him in the White House Rose Garden after the Hubble Space Telescope was finished.

His NASA team had achieved the near impossible with an instrument that could focus on a target the size of a quarter from 200 miles away and maintain contact regardless of movement.

When Hubble launched in 1990, Pellerin wasn’t particularly worried about the slightly fuzzy images initially being transmitted, so he went off on vacation to Japan. He thought his boss was playing a stupid joke when he told Pellerin that a flawed mirror – the easiest piece of this monumentally intricate puzzle – had rendered the $1.7 billion telescope useless.

The fiasco was officially blamed on failed leadership, and Pellerin was leader of the team.

NASA bosses ordered him to keep clear of the repair mission, but he was intent on making things right. So he redeployed (i.e., confiscated) $60 million of his division’s $750 million budget to start an unauthorized mission.

“What I did at a certain level was illegal,” he says. “This was no minor infraction.”

All was forgiven as his repair strategy took hold. And when Hubble was ultimately fixed in 1993, Pellerin finally got his medal – NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal.

“It’s interesting how you can break something and then get rewarded for fixing it,” says Pellerin, who had left NASA a couple of months before to teach leadership at the University of Colorado’s business school in Boulder.

In early 2003, Pellerin assembled a team of 15 former NASA project managers to implement a major contract with the space agency. They were gathered at Pellerin’s home in Boulder discussing strategy on the morning that space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on live television.

“After a while, I turned off the TV and said, ‘We alone may be the most potent people to prevent such accidents in the future. Let’s get to work.’ ”

John Wiley & Sons Inc. published his book on NASA team building in July 2009 and has translated it into five foreign languages.

It’s red hot in China.

Measuring change

Dallas executive coach Susan Shapiro became a 4-D disciple and certified NASA coach last year. “I’ve used 4-D in non-NASA areas, including a bank in town. By testing the team, they become aware of the problems. Then they reinforce each other to change. HR loves this because you can measure the difference.”

Bill Townsend deployed Pellerin’s system as deputy director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He also implemented it at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, where the process helped boost profit in his division 40 percent.

“In both cases, there were some serious cultural differences amongst the involved organizations,” Townsend says. “But Charlie came in and worked his magic, and things improved dramatically.”

“You would think that all it takes to build successful project teams is to get a bunch of sharp, well-motivated, self-starting, creative people together,” Townsend says.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen that way. You need people who can work together without feeling threatened by equally creative people, people who can work together with people who think differently than themselves, and people who can work together without feeling the need to withhold information to maintain a position of power within the team.”

That’s the power of Pellerin’s system, Townsend says.

Lead or Fail – Guest Blog Post by Scott Span, MSOD

Leadership isn’t what it used to be. That is not to say that being a leader was or is ever easy, or that previous fundamentals should be tossed aside. However, in tough times, remaining a great leader can be even harder. So what makes a successful leader in turbulent times? First and foremost, the ability to adapt your leadership style to changing environmental influences is key to being a successful leader.

Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup says that in the new normal, old ways of doing business won’t work anymore. “The men and women who will conquer this new world will be the ones who best understand their constituencies’ state of mind.” By state of mind, Clifton is referring to new revelations being uncovered by behavioral economists — starting with the discovery that human decision making is more emotional than rational.  As a leader, Clifton shares a similar mindset to many behavioral scientists and organizational development practitioners.  His view is that one of the most fundamental states of mind that leaders need to understand is the needs and desires of their employees: “…their will to work, their will to live, their will to revolt, their will to follow you. Another element of state of mind is emotional affect: how much stress your constituency feels about money, about trying to get to work, about their relationship with their boss.”

Clifton believes that to be a successful leader you have to firmly understand states of mind. In his view, everything important, everything human comes down to states of mind. The leader who is the best at understanding, relating to and communicating states of mind will be the one who wins.

As an organizational development practitioner and behavioral scientist, I share Clifton’s views; understanding and exhibiting certain human behaviors help to shape great leaders and great organizations.

Some behaviors of great leaders:

• Transparency – People can usually tell when “something is up,” so before the rumors begin flying and productivity is impacted, leadership should inform employees. When making strategic decisions, determining organizational changes or facing issues that impact employees, successful leaders need to be transparent with their workforce about how these matters arose, their thought process for dealing with them, and how their solutions may directly impact those they lead.

• Communication – Being in a leadership position can sometimes be a solitary role. Often leaders make decisions in a vacuum and rely on managers or supervisors to communicate important information downward. Successful leaders lead through two-way communication. Much of it is nonverbal. For instance, when leaders “set the example,” that communicates to their people that they would not ask them to perform anything that they would not be willing to do themselves, this only helps to make leaders appear more human to employees. Particularly in turbulent times, people value direct interaction and communication from leaders. This not only helps to show that leaders are remaining committed to the people in organization, but also offers an opportunity for them to step out of the “tower” and build relationships with employees.

• Trust – Trust is a fundamental behavior for any relationship, both personal and professional. According to a study by the Hay Group, a global management consultancy, there are 75 key components of employee satisfaction (Lamb & McKee, 2009). They found that: Trust and confidence in top leadership was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction in an organization. Trust must be earned. Leaders can earn employee trust by helping employees understand the company’s overall business strategy, informing them how they contribute to achieving key business objectives and sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee’s own division is doing relative to organizational objectives. It is much easier for employees to trust a leader that shows an interest in them.

• Compassion – The basis of good leadership is honorable character and selfless service to the organization; compassion for employees and both their professional and personal situations.  His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama says, “I call compassion the global staple…for all people in every endeavor.” In employees’ eyes, what leadership does effects the organization’s objectives and their well-being. When a person is deciding if they respect a leader, they don’t think about attributes, rather they observe what leaders do. Observations can often tell an employee if a leader is an honorable and trusted person or a self-serving person, one who misuses authority to look good and get promoted. Self-serving leaders are not as effective because their employees only obey them, not follow them. When leaders show compassion and understanding for employees and their situations, it becomes much easier for them to notice that their leaders are in fact interested and concerned, and not as self serving as possibly thought.

• Self Awareness – Successful leaders have a heightened level of self awareness, they have an understanding of themselves, their behaviors and actions, and how those behaviors and actions are interpreted by, and directly impact, employees. A good example of leadership self awareness is exhibited in the U.S. Army’s leadership philosophy, be, know, do. Be proficient and competent, know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, and do take responsibility and lead by example. Always be open to further growth and learning. Professional coaching is also a great well to help further develop leader self awareness.

A colleague shared a speech with me given last year by Marillyn Hewson President, Systems Integration-Owego, Lockheed Martin Corporation on leadership in turbulent times. To Marillyn, leadership is a set of personal behaviors that set the course and create an environment that energizes people to achieve a goal. Marillyn says “…it’s easy to be a leader when everything is going great. The challenge is how you act when things go wrong. In times of great change… or tremendous challenge… that’s when the leadership fundamentals matter most.” Most competitive and sustainable organizations have great leaders. Are you one?

Author Bio:

Scott Span, MSOD, is President of Tolero Solutions, an Organizational Development and Change Management consultancy. Tolero Solutions specializes in developing people and organizations to be more responsive, focused and effective to facilitate sustainable growth. Scott successfully delivers organizational improvement solutions to staff teams, individuals and organizations in multiple areas including change management, culture change, leadership development & coaching, engagement, retention, performance and sustainability. He is an author on various topics of organizational development including cross generational communication, generational alignment, and Gen Y in the workplace and the creator of the Gen Y Recruitment and Retention Lifecycle ™. His results have not only helped achieve desired goals, but have also increased personal growth and development, leading to a more efficient and effective work environment.  He may be reached at scott.span@tolerosolutions.com.

1. How Nasa Builds Teams by Charles J. Pellerin

Mission Critical Soft Skills for Engineers, Project Teams and Scientists. A must read for team leaders of technical people. After you read it, if you want help with implementing these principles in your organization, contact me, since I am certified to coach the 4-D method.

2. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

Succinctly shows how to deal with emotions creatively. Simple, easy to follow steps. Well written and includes enhanced online EQ assessment.

3. Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson

Want to change your perspective? This book, by an Improv instructor teaches simply, how to lead your life, saying yes to what is in front of you and how to open up your perspective to the world. This book challenges you to take a different look at your everyday life. Great to get you out of your old tired ways of thinking, doing, reacting…

4. Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

Six Thinking Hats is a flexible and easy-to-use thinking process that leads to amazing results with innovative thinking, improved communication, and reduced meeting time. Leaders will benefit from this problem solving method.

5. Zapp, the Lightnting of Empowerment by William C. Byham, Ph.D.

It will teach the manager to stop fire fighting, inspire and motivate your team. Written in the form of a fairy tale, this book provides situational examples of issues that greatly affect employee performance, attitude, and motivation. It’s a quick easy read, one that details situations most readers have undoubtedly experienced at work. It’s wacky, funny, enlightening and entertaining. Once you get zapped you’ll remember just how simple empowerment and motivation can be, and have some tools to improve your organization. Have a sense of humor reading it, the format is a parable, but the learning is sound.

6. The Thin book of Smart People Skills, 8 Tools for the Savvy Leader by Katina Cremona

For new managers and experienced managers who struggle with emotional intelligence skills. These tips give a quick revision and are perfect for busy managers. All the skills are applicable. Concise, short must have book!

7. What Got you Here won’t get you There by Marshall Goldsmith

Straightforward advise for all leaders. Blunt and clear, this book will give you 20 habits that may be keeping you from the top. Once you identify yourself, you can learn how to improve.

8. Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath or Now Discover your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham

For most people, our natural talents go untapped, especially at work. Our society has taught us to focus on fixing our shortcomings, rather than developing our strengths. To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of the StrengthsFinder in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists.

In StrengthsFinder 2.0 Gallup unveils a new and improved version of its popular assessment. While you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll use it as a reference for decades. It’s loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, and helps you to understand those around you who have strengths and tendencies that are different from your own.

9. Soar with Your Strengths by Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson

This book is good as an introduction to a more fruitful organizational culture. It will help the manager let go and engage tools for helping his/her team to do their best. It teaches the manager to do more of what you do well and stop doing (delegate) what you are not good at. Our culture teaches us to fix weaknesses, when maximizing and honing strengths generates better results.

10. Never check Email in the Morning, and other unexpected strategies for making your work life work By Julie Morgenstern

Deciding what is most important to add more value. “How close am I to the revenue line? Am I saving or making money?” are the two criteria for your daily decisions. Grab and go solutions can dramatically improve efficiency.

11. Managing Transitions, Making the most of change by William Bridges

The Classic guide to the human side of change. Useful for manager leading change. Gives practical staratgies for minimizing the disruptions caused by workplace change.

12. Crucial Conversations< by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

How to have more powerful dialogue that gets results without being abrasive.

13. True Purpose by Tim Kelley

A specific and comprehensive approach to finding your purpose. The book is filled with exercises that will help you hone in on your very specific life purpose- the real power of this book is in your application of the exercises as you gain greater and greater clarity about your true purpose. Great for those in mid life or transition or wondering, “What should I be doing with my life?” Most useful if working with a trained coach to provide assistance and support while you do the excercises.

14. Taming Your Gremlin, A surprisingly simple method for getting out of your own way by Rick Carson

We all have inner conflicts that are holding us back from being our best. This is a funny book complete with excercises for helping you identify what limiting beliefs and defeating behaviors you have and then freeing you from them.

15. The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes

An inspirational and practical handbook, this expanded revision of a bestselling manual originally published in 1987 offers sound advice to corporate leaders and entrepreneurs, to managers and employees and to aspiring leaders in retail, manufacturing, government, community, church and school settings. Drawing on interviews and a questionnaire survey of more than 3000 leaders, the authors identify five fundamental practices of exemplary leadership: challenge the status quo; inspire a shared vision; enable others to act; model the way forward by setting an example; tap individuals’ inner drives by linking rewards and performance. Kouzes, chairman and CEO of TPG/Learning Systems, and Posner, managing partner of Santa Clara University’s Executive Development Center in California, write insightful, down-to-earth, jargon-free prose.

Women helping other women achieve their
career goals just doesn't make for good TV.

During the "The Real
Housewives of New York City" reunion show last month, two of the
housewives, Alex McCord and Jill Zarin, were engaged in what can only be
called bitchy behavior.  Read the full article HERE.