Jay Forte is a former financial executive and corporate educator who is now a performance consultant, speaker, author and nationally ranked Thought Leader. Jay, who is president of Humanetrics, teaches organizations how to maximize manager performance, ignite employee performance and advance women’s performance, all with an underlying focus on first advancing personal performance. He has helped organizations and individuals become more performance-driven, more successful and more content in work and life. Jay is also the author of "Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition" (2009) and the online resource, "Stand Out and Get Hired" (2009). More information at www.LiveFiredUp.com.
Expert Answers
Re: What has been your biggest management challenge to date?
Sunday Mar 7, 2010The greatest management challenge is changing management's understanding of what influences employee performance in an intellectual (not industrial) workplace. Great performance is now dependent on an employee being good at what he does and passionateRe: What can I do to encourage my teams to work together more?
Sunday Mar 7, 2010Hi Barry, Before offering a coupled of ideas, I use this thinking: the key to collaboration is shared values and purpose. To that end here are some ways I recommend organizations improve their collaboration: Clearly state the personal and company valueWhat are you reading right now?
Sunday Feb 14, 2010New ones to suggest: Drive by Daniel Pink. Outstanding presentation of how to motivate today's employees. First 30 Days by Ariane de Bonvoisin. Outstanding for help everyone accommodate change successfully in both work and life. The People Code byRe: What are some simple ways to get the most out of your employees?
Wednesday Feb 3, 2010Three simple things come to mind: 1. Put them in jobs that match what they are good at. When you are good at what you do, your performance is better. 2. Share your performance expectations with your employees. Most want to be great at their jobs, theyRe: What kind of relationship should the customer service team have with the rest of the company?
Monday Feb 1, 2010I hear you - and I see what you see. This keeps me committed to finding organizations who know they want better but are looking find out how to achieve it, and to speak to organizations who don't know they could have better until someone lets them know.Re: What kind of relationship should the customer service team have with the rest of the company?
Thursday Jan 28, 2010Jacqueline - It comes from the mindset of the organization's leadership. Here are a few examples of those who do it well (though most of the best ones you never hear about because they have easily incorporated it into their culture and live itRe: What kind of relationship should the customer service team have with the rest of the company?
Saturday Jan 16, 2010I have a little broader perspective than just the focus on a customer service team. Here are two thoughts. FIrst, a customer-focused workplace must first be an employee-focused workplace . The right, engaged, passionate and fired up employees'How can you objectively identify your most valuable employees?
Saturday Jan 9, 2010Sophisticated assessment tools will not be more beneficial than the establishment of performance expectations , combined with a r ecurring performance discussion (constant contact between management and employees) to identify which employees are mostRe: Performance and success of an employee
Wednesday Dec 30, 2009Ira, Looking forward to your insight. JayRe: How can I make Performance Reviews more impactful?
Wednesday Dec 30, 2009Great. I am always "blogging" about employee performance and how to manage intellectual-age employees on my blogs on www.LiveFiredUp.com and on this site at Power Performance. You may find more information there on a regular basis. Hope this helps.
Content
What Michelangelo Teaches Us About Talent Management
by Jay Forte Thursday Mar 11, 2010It is not the same workplace. Gone are the industrial-age days of managers watching over and controlling employees’ performance. Today's intellectual and service workplace needs self-motivated, passionate, fired up and engaged employees constantly thinking, hunting for opportunities and wowing customers. To activate this requires a different management approach.
The Critical Difference Between Loyal and Satisfied Employees (and Customers)
by Jay Forte Wednesday Mar 10, 2010In a great Op-Ed piece titled,"The Emotion of Reform," NY Times columnist David Brooks writes that unless a political party is passionate about an issue, it just doesn’t advance the issue’s progress. Republicans seem dispassionate about health care reform; Democrats seem dispassionate about helping small businesses. What each is passionate about takes all their attention, time and focus. What they are dispassionate about never seems to go very far.
5 Questions to Ask Both Employees and Customers
by Jay Forte Tuesday Mar 9, 2010I am a frequent blogger about the power of questions and how they create the essential dialogue that moves information, ideas and solutions. The great thing in today’s intellectual economy is the questions you need to ask customers are the same ones you must ask employees. Both the service event and the workplace now are “human-based” — these events are personal and emotional — and both benefit from questions that engage and connect to our humanity, our sense of belonging, and to feeling important. Here are examples of effective employee and customer questions:
Are You Hiring the Wrong People? 5 Steps to Picking Winners
by Jay Forte Monday Mar 8, 2010It is a difficult and personally troubling lesson when you hire someone you feel to be a good employee and are soon disappointed by the performance and the inability to live up to your expectations.
Have Employees Own Problems and Create Solutions
by Jay Forte Thursday Mar 4, 2010At a business presentation this week, I was introduced to a new construction industry approach called the IPD — Integrated Product Delivery. It includes the constructor, designer and owner as a united front in the design and build process. All parties are included in the same contract and are, therefore, mutually accountable for quality, completion and cost control. This is an entirely new approach to construction. I thought of two things worth sharing as I heard Bob Caine, of Project Caine, mechanical and electrical engineers in Ft Lauderdale, Fla., explain the concept:
Why Keeping Employees in the Dark Is Never Good
by Jay Forte Tuesday Mar 2, 2010You know how the quote goes: “mushroom management, the practice of keeping people in the dark and every now and then dumping dirt on them.” You may know another ending as well. That approach may work for mushrooms, but it destroys performance in today’s economy. What had me thinking about mushrooms is a program I have to present at the Society for Human Resource Management conference in San Diego in June. My topic is workplace culture — and how it activates or inhibits exceptional performance.
People Don't Leave Jobs - They Leave Bosses
by Jay Forte Monday Mar 1, 2010There, I said it. You should take it personally because more often than not, employees leave because of you, not because of their work. So, if that is true, then the reverse must also be true — employees stay because of you, not just because of their work. What is it about your behavior as a manager or a boss that activates their loyalty or terminates it?
When Making Your Next Hire, Think About M&Ms (Seriously)
by Jay Forte Thursday Feb 25, 2010Think of an M&M — great candy filling on the inside, colorful candy coating on the outside. That is today’s worker — talents and passions on the inside, diversity on the outside. We choose M&M’s based on their filling — the candy coating is a bonus. We hire employees based on their talents and passions (inside) — their diversity (outside) is a bonus.
How to Reinvent Your Business -- Every Day
by Jay Forte Wednesday Feb 24, 2010What is your process to challenge what you do and to regularly reinvent? Is it part of your normal workday? If you are like most companies, reinvention is the response only when an obstacle or challenging event happens, like a recession, a new competitor, a bankrupt supplier, etc. Something from the outside forces you to readjust and reinvent. Otherwise every day’s approach is just like every other day.
4 Ways to Silence Employee Whining
by Jay Forte Tuesday Feb 23, 2010Tough times — we are in one. We’ve had them before and we’ll have them again. What makes this one different is we have never been so connected during a tough time. We have the ability to share everything we feel with whomever will listen — and there are plenty who tweet, post, email and blog about how they feel. We have created a national whine center. Instead of solving, we have found places to commiserate about how bad things are. And these whine centers have moved into the workplace.
