Does the role of a leader include consensus decisions?

 

I have a doubt that I would like to clear. In what situations should a leader make consensus decisions? Please, write your opinion in the comment section. I was having a conversation with the president of a company during a business English class. I asked him if he had ever made decisions he had to regret afterwards. He said he always tries to make consensus decisions. Then, I asked him why consensus decisions? He responded by saying he does that to avoid conflict. I thought about this and decided to ask the readers to give your opinions on the issue. Do you think the president is right by making consensus decisions so as to avoid conflict? What about the leader of a country or religion? Give your opinion!

Have you accomplished your career goal?

 

Hello; welcome to the podcast about your career and finance. In today's podcast, we are going to look at how you can reach your career goal. By the way, I would like to ask you: what is your career goal? Have you reached your career goal or are you still in the process? If not achieved, what are you doing to achieve or reach your goal? So, let us look how you can each your career goal. 

HOW TO REACH YOUR CAREER GOAL!

One of the questions that are usually asked during job interview is: where do you see yourself in 5 years or in 10 years from now? Why is this question important? The question is important because the interviewer is indirectly asking you about your career goal. Although we think that the interviewer is invading our privacy, the fact of the matter is that one should have goals in life, no matter the stage in which you find yourself. When you have a goal, others will take you more seriously and consider you more prepared to face life or professional challenges. If you don’t have a goal, others will consider you as a person who can be taken to any direction wherever the wind is blowing. Even if you are in the high school, you should think about what to study in college and what to do after that. If you are working, you should have a position you would like to attain before retirement. That position is your career goal. It is normal for every employee of a company to aspire to reach, at least, the executive position. You may want to know how many of these employees reach that desired position. The answer is only a few. The first reason for this number is that executive positions in a company are not many. The second reason is that many who desire the position don’t have plan, and therefore, cannot take the risk required to reach their goal. So, the questions to ask yourself are:

(1)       what is your career goal?

(2)       Have you achieved your goal?

(3)       If not, where are you today in relation to your goal?

(4)       What is holding you back from achieving your goal?

In order to achieve your career goal, you must have a career plan. A career plan means the actions and things you need to do in order to arrive at your desired destination. Reaching your career goal cannot happen by accident. Having a career plan will help you know where you are today, where you want to be, and what you need to have or to do in order to reach your destination. In other words, your career plan must include:

(a)       knowing where you are now;

(b)       analyzing yourself to know who you are;

(c)       understanding the skills you have now;

(d)       doing gap analysis to know the skills that you need;

(e)       do a research on where you want to be;

(f)         collect the necessary data;

(g)       execute the plan as a project with dates and measurable results or by using

           the OKRs framework.

Executing the plan like a project is what will make you to wake up every morning and get you going. In order to achieve anything you desire in life, one should be ready to take some risks. The level of risk you can take depends on your level of desire for accomplishing the goal. Let me use the example of executive position again. Imagine a situation where you have all the skills necessary for the position in your present company, but wasn’t promoted. There are two options waiting for you. The first option is to continue where you are without job satisfaction and keep on complaining while the second option is to look for another company where there is an opportunity for you to grow. Changing a company is a risk. However, there is no way you could know if you would succeed or not if you didn’t try. I have seen many people held back by this dilemma. Even though dissatisfied with what they have, the fear of the unknown does not let them take the risk of going to another company. But, there is one question you should ask yourself at the end of the day. Have you accomplished your career goal? We have come to the end of this podcast. What is your opinion about the topic. Write your what you think should be included in the podcast or how long the podcast should be in the comment section. Thank you for listening and watch out for the next episode. 

What you do in your free time may say a lot about you more than you think!

 

We generally try to present ourselves using educational qualifications and job experience or by using the words we got from our feedback. We also do the same we are preparing our resume. We do not consider the section on hobbies or free time activities important. Depending on the company you want to work for, what you do in your free time can determine if they want to hire you or not. The reason for this is that people do not change. They tend to present the same behavior, be it professionally or personally. That is, at work or away from work. According to the psychologists related to the Human Resources Area, it is difficult for someone to present one behavior at work and present another one during his free time activities. This means that only one item we generally include as a hobby can determine someone’s fate regarding getting a job or not. Some examples given to illustrate this concept are free time activities, such as, participating in a religious institution, having pets, and taking part in sports. Someone participating in a religious organization will have the preference if the position requires a high level of trust, such as, the one demanded for financial position. If one has pets, the person should be suitable for customer attendment where empathy is necessary. For sports, the candidate is seen as suitable for teamwork. It should be obvious that the longer a person practices these activities, the more these implicit skills are developed. Therefore, a company will have more trust in you if you have had these free time activities for a long time. This information suggests that candidates include their free time activities or hobbies in a more structured form than only mentioning them as is usually done in resume. Presenting them in a structured way means saying exactly what you do, where you practice the activity, when you practice it, the frequency of practice, and how long you have been doing it. For those who are working, they need to update their profiles or include them in their resume or the internet or wherever they should include the information. Even if you are working, the information is still necessary during promotions, especially, for senior positions in companies. Now that you have had this information, you should try to develop a free time activity that is in alignment with your career objective.

What are your barriers to success?

 

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Common mistakes that can delay your wealth building

 

Wealth is the product of smartness and never of intelligence. Some years ago, precisely in 2008, we had a global financial crisis which caused many problems, such as unemployment, high level of debt, and misery all over the world. As a response to this problem, a Japanese created a digital currency called the bitcoin. According to the bitcoin creator, his objective was to create a digital currency in such a way that no country has control over the currency or has the power to manipulate the currency. As soon as the digital currency was launched in 2009, there were criticisms and skepticism across the board since it was not regulated. At the same time the concept of blockchain was rolled out and this created more confusion. Only few people understood the concept of blockchain and bitcoin. However, the explanation to the masses was a real hurdle. Although the objective of this post is not about the history of the cryptocurrencies, it is good to situate the reader in order to make meaning to the title of this work. If you check the Google, you will see that the cost of bitcoin in 2009 and 2010 was $0.01, that is, literally 1 cent of a dollar. The value of bitcoin at the time of writing this post was $ 57,000. The value had reached $65,000 before going down to $57,000. This means that if one had bought 100 bitcoins in 2010, the person would have made at least $5.7 million dollars after 11 years. From this episode, we can ask the obvious question: why didn’t many people buy the bitcoin even when the value was only 1 cent of a dollar? This question should be directed to the working class which always receive paycheck at the end of every month. Probably, there were afraid of taking risk. I refer to this omission as a mistake. It is a very big mistake because no worker will die because he or she took a risk and lost $100 in the process. $100 is considered insignificant in relation to a worker’s income. The worst mistake someone can make in this world is regret. It starts by saying ------ had I known, I would have done this or done that. Today, the cryptocurrency market has made many billionaires and millionaires while many are still waiting for regulation of the business. Do you know that large corporations like Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, among others are investing in cryptocurrencies? There is still time for you to start investing in other cheaper cryptocurrencies. Their values may go up or go down. The most important thing is to be cautious and invest only a little percentage of your income in them so that you don’t lose a lot if they go burst. There is another type of investment coming up. It is called NFTs. First, try to understand something about it and also give it a trial. It is better to give them a trail and lose than not participating in them and regret after the others have made it. The worst thing is that these people who became successful have much less income than those who did not participate as a result of fear of taking risk. One should understand that there has never been a time to be wealthy in the world than now. This is because of the internet and existence of various social media platforms. The only work you should do is to look for information and learn new things. Don’t turn your back to innovation because it may hurt and delay your wealth building!           

Why do call centers attendants experience more burnout?

When we talk about burnout, we always think about top executives and people in the high echelon. You might be surprised to know that the area or segment with people who have more burnout is the professionals in the call centres. The question then is: why do these workers have more burnout than the others? The first reason is that they are always dealing with human beings. The most difficult job in this world is the one that deals with human beings. All the problems we have in the world are caused by human beings. Objects do not cause problems by themselves. Remember that no one calls these centers to praise them or thank them for their good job. People generally call because they need information, with most calls being to complain about something. Imagine your behavior when you are complaining about something. People have rage when the problem is not solved. The rage increases when the problem is not solved and they see the professionals transferring telephone calls from one to the other. Imagine yourself working in a large corporation like Wal-Mart that sells many products. The more products a company sells, the more the complaints it receives. Professionals working in these big call centers are subjected to all different types of human behavior in abnormal situation. The abnormal situation being when someone is upset. These workers become overwhelmed. Another reason for this class of workers having this problem is that they aren't valued as other employees. You can notice that call centers are generally outsourced to small companies in poor countries. That means that although they render service to large corporations, they are not part of them. We know that professionals of call centers receive very low salaries in developed economies, imagine their salary in poor countries. It is obvious that salaries in large corporations is bigger than in small companies. The salaries of small companies in poor countries are even smaller. The two factors mentioned above are the main reasons why call center professionals have more burnout than other professionals. This is where corpoartions get it wrong. Someone is doing such an important work like customer attendment, but he or she is not even on the payroll of the company. Instead, he or she is dumped in third category company where salaries are not even paid on time, not to talk about having good payment. How does a company expect someone in this situation to represent it with pride or show empathy in solving clients' problems? Remember the buzzword now is customer empathy. Who will give the empathy to the customer? It is he or she who has contact will do that. If the person who will give the empathy is found in the situation described above, it will be impossible for hime or her to deliver the gold. Companies should think about this issue.             

 

The importance of hiring within the organization.

Organizations spend a lot of money on training their staff every year through short-term and long-term programs, such as, college degrees or even the graduate programs. Their justification for spending these money is that they want to retain their talents and give opportunity to their staff. However, only few companies do that when the need arises. Generally, organizations hire, from the outside, people with skills they want when the need arises. The question now becomes: why do they spend money to train their staff, but do not use their skills when they need them? There are two possible answers to this question. Either that the training they receive is in areas they don't need or that their staff leave the company after the training. The second part of the answer shouldn't be correct because organizations generally have agreement with their staff in such a way that they can't leave the company immediately after training. That leaves us with the first part of the answer. It will be good that organizations understand the future of career or the direction things are going so they can they provide training programs for the skills needed and not just provide training which cannot fulfill their needs when they are needed. Why is it important to give the right training and promote within or hire within the organization? First, it shows recognition of your staff who have been with the organization for some time. Second, it increases the workers' morale. Increasing workers' morale is very important because workers are more productive when they are excited and not when they are happy. Increasing workers' morale raises their excitement and motivation. Another benefit of hiring within is that your staff already know the culture and the mission of the organization. You don't need to spend time trying to teach a new employee about your culture and crossing your fingers to see if he or she fits within it. Fourth reason is that hiring from the outside is more expensive than hiring within. In some situations, you need to pay the head hunter or an employment agency to do the search and hiring for the organization. There are other costs related to moving from another city, training and coaching to adapt to the culture of the organization. Hiring within eliminates these extra costs besides increasing workers' morale. Therefore, organizations should think about hiring within as a means of strengthening corporate culture, the mission and vision. They should also see it as a way of recognition to existing employees, who in turn, become more productive. Productivity is what every organization needs in order to survive in a competitive market.           

 

Do your career gap analysis now before it becomes too late.

 

The title of this blog post suggests that you do your career gap analysis now before it becomes too late. The reason for this title is that people generally do career gap analysis when they lose their jobs and are looking for another job. This is not a good time to do the analysis. But before proceeding, I would like to define what a career gap analysis is. Career gap analysis means identifying new areas of knowledge or skills necessary to have excellence in your career, and analyzing how to acquire those skills. It is very common for us to relax when we have job. When we are not threatened about our jobs. I have come to the conclusion that workers should pretend that they are looking for job to see the new requirements or skills that are being demanded by the market or by their segment every 5 years. This period of time is necessary because of the speed with which technology disrupts everything. For example, a leader or an executive whose role has always been to make strategic decisions should now incorporate data analysis skills so he or she can make data-driven decisions. He or she has to discover this and acquire new skill before loosing his or her job. There is no need procrastinating this gap because no one will give him or her a new job without having the skill. Another example is the requirement for speaking English before getting job in many non-English speaking countries. Since English Language is always a gap, you should consider English language as one of your investments. This is because the good job you will get as a result of English language, will increase your income. Consequently, you will have money to invest and eventually, retire as a millionaire. From my experience as a business English teacher, I have seen many people trying to improve their English language after losing their jobs. They become desperate and want to be fluent in English language within 6 months. I generally tell them that it is impossible to be fluent in English language in 6 months. Although I understand their desperation, I have to be realistic with them. I do not understand how someone can ignore something that will make a dramatic change in his or her life. In conclusion, don't wait until you find yourself in desperation in order to do a career gap analysis. Do it now while you still have your job.     

How did you make your career decision and job research?

 

How can one make a career choice? This is difficult, especially, for someone who had never worked before. It is easier for someone who wants to make a career change. However, one needs to make decision in both cases, either to start a new career or to change to another direction. The first thing is to decide the career you want and the second thing is to do a research about it. Although it is difficult to make a decision about career, one has to do it. What are the red flags that will help you know it is time to make a career decision? 

(a) when you hate going to work;

(b) when you are afaraid of Monday approaching;

(c) when you don't sleep well;

(d) when you are involved in work, but you are not part of it;

(e) when the enthusiasm and passion are lacking;

(f) when everything is easy and you feel that you are not challenged;

(g) when one finished college and starts work, but finds out that someone has to die for him or her to be promoted.

Once you identify these symptoms, it is time to do a self-analysis to see who are and what motivates you as an individual. Then, you can go and check where you fit well. 

Once a decision has been made, the next thing is to go for a research. The next challenge is to find out where to get information about careers, professions, and occupations. You can get free resources from colleges and universities career centres. On the other hand, you can get updated information from the US Depatment of Labor, section on industry outline. You can also find useful information specialized websites, such as, Vault.com, Indeed.com, and Glassdoor.com. You can get specific information by interviewing someone who is already in the career you want and working in the segment you wish you work for. You can ask him or her out for lunch where you can ask specific questions about his or her career. Examples of questions you can ask the person (mentor) (https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/what-is-a-mentor) are:

(1) How did you get into your career?;

(2) Which obstacles have you had in your career and how did you handle them?;

(3) What career accomplisments are you proud of?;

(4) Have you read any books that helped you develop your career?;

(5) What do you see as my strengths?;

(6) What areas can I improve?;

(7) How am I viewed by others?;

(8) How can I prepare for my performance review?;

 (9) What is your leadership style?

These questions will help you see how prepared you are for the new challenges. I would like you to write a comment regarding your career decision, what provoked it and how you made it. 

   

What are you gong to do with the money from extra benefits?

 

The COVID-19 pandemic created many obstacles, but at the same time, created many opportunities. One of these opportunities is lack of labor force, especially, in the USA. In order to retain old workers or find new ones, many companies are giving some extra benefits. One of the benefits is eliminating the pension plan matching contributon done by workers. Under the new arrangement, the company will pay all. That means that what you used to pay for your private pension plan will remain with you. On the other front, other companies are giving paid vacation to their employees while others add bereavement allowance to that. This means that you are making extra money than before. Now, the question is: what are you going to do with this extra cash? Will you go on a spending spree, change your car, live in a bigger house, or increase your emergency fund and invest the rest? You might justify yourself arguing that the amount involved is just too small. Let's see how much it is. Imagine a 5% extra cash on a salary of $5,000 a month. That gives you an extra cash of $250. Now, here is the magic. If you invest R$250 every month for the period of 40 years in a mutual fund or ETF with annual return of 10%, you will retire with about $1.8 m. If you increase the amount to $500 every month, you will retire with about $3.5 m. If you are lucky to have a 12% annual return, your money will grow to $6.5 m. You can do these calculations by youself and see if they are true or false. So, this is an opportunity you have been waiting for to start investing. In order to have a successful career, you need to know how to invest. Stop complaining about your company or the management. You can provide yourself with the financial freedom you deserve.     

Why do many workers live paycheck-to-paycheck?

It might be disheartening to know that many workers live from paycheck to paycheck. But, why is it so? Living in this way is another way of saying that the person is broke! The working class, which should be considered the priviledged, has many of them broke. The working class is considered priviledged because they have income. However, this income becomes a source of addiction instead. If you doubt it, how can you explain that many people who are rich today, started with nothing? The question now becomes, how can someone who started with nothing become rich and someone who had a good income is struggling with money? The answer is simple. The one who had nothing understood that he is living in a capitalist economy and therefore, money is vital to everything while the one who has income thinks he or she is better than many and there is no reason to be desperate. What many do not know is that desperation is the fuel that takes you to another level because it shows that you are not satisfied with what you have. If one knows how to manage his or her income, the person will be rich in distant time. There is no business that others do that a salaried worker cannot do. It is a question of choice whether to do or not. There are different types of investments or businesses which you can take advantage of because you have income. Stop thinking about vacations you can take and the places you can visit when you are broke. What type of life is it that you should spend 2 years paying for 1 trip you will make in the future? That means that you spend more time thinking about things that don't give you money than thinking on how to incease your income. Becoming wealthy does not occur by accident. Think about it!         

How is your career going in 2021 1?

The question people often ask is: how is your career going? If someone asks you this question today, how will respond the person? Is it like photo 1 or photo 2? Please, write your comments on the comment section.

 

What are your strenghts and weaknesses?

 In this episode, we are going to look at your strenghts and weakesses. So we will start by asking you about your strenghts and weaknesses. What are things that make standout from the others? Is it your intelligence, your problem solving skills, your empathy, your leadership quality, your teamwork ability, your time management skill, or your result-oriented skill? The first thing you do is to discover where you excel. Although it took me time to find that, I recently discovered that I can express myself more by wting than speaking. How do I know that? I discovered that when I began writing books and blogs. Once I sit down to write, the information will keep on coming to the point that I don't think a lot about what I am writing on. You need to discover this about yourself. Why is this important? It is important because once you know it, you can use it to your advantage. The second reason is that you can leverage in such a way that you are the best in that. 

    The other side of the equation is knowing your weak points. This is easier to identify because your Human Resources Area generally gives you your performance feedback. Your weak points are the ones they tell you and reinforce them by offering you training for improvement.  

    However, there are two schools of thought in this area. Some professionals say that one should leverage his or her strenghts instead of trying to improve his or her weak points. The other side says that it is better to improve the weak points in order to be balanced. Some companies are using both methods now and that is why some companies have positions they call "specialists" today. These are individuals that are highly specialized in their area, but cannot do well in teamwork or in leading people. Since they are also assets to the company, they are recognized as such and work solely. 

   So, it is very important you know your strenghts and weaknesses, and depending on the type of company you work, you can go for improvement of the weak points or choose to work as a specialist. Do not let ignorance block your way of progress!       

Your Career and the COVID-19 pandemic

 How are you dealing with your career challenges in the midst of covid-19 pandemic? This happened unexpectedly. No one had ever prepared for a world-wide lockdown neither had a world-wide lockdown  happened before. Even large corporations didn't know what to do. One of the solutions adopted was to work from home or what is known as telecommuting. However, many employees found it difficult to adopt to that, resulting in many cases of depression. On the other end of the extreme were many people losing their jobs because there was a complete lockdown. The takehome from the whole episode was that employees need to be flexible and adaptable to changes. Although we know that the older one gets, the more difficult it is to be flexible and adaptable. The recommendation here is that companies should incorporate flexibility and adaptability training in their programs in order to prepare their workforce for situations like the covid-19 pandemic case.    

 I am Walter Okpala, the author of this blog. I am sorry for being too long without publishing anything. This is due to personal problems that I had all this time. I am now back to start publishing articles and I hope to see you back, read and enjoy them. Thank you once again and see you in my next post. 😂

Walter Okpala: High unemployment and workers' morale

Walter Okpala: High unemployment and workers' morale: We are in an era of high unemployment rate. Over 12 million people without jobs. How can someone protect himself from this bad economic situ...

Walter Okpala: High unemployment and workers' morale

Walter Okpala: High unemployment and workers' morale: We are in an era of high unemployment rate. Over 12 million people without jobs. How can someone protect himself from this bad economic situ...

High unemployment and workers' morale

We are in an era of high unemployment rate. Over 12 million people without jobs. How can someone protect himself from this bad economic situation? How can the morale of people and motivation be established? 

How can someone currently working be sure that he or she will be on the list of the unemployed tomorrow? What should people do? I would like to receive your input.

Walter Okpala: Your New Year's projects

Walter Okpala: Your New Year's projects: I would like to ask you if you have set your New Year's goals. What projects would you like to execute this year? How much do you want t...

Your New Year's projects

I would like to ask you if you have set your New Year's goals. What projects would you like to execute this year? How much do you want these projects executed? Do you have these projects as wish or strong desire? Your success depends on how much you need something. Think about it.