In part one, I shared that I often meet frustrated employees who wonder when normalcy will return to the post-recession workplace. My reply is simple: Cuts your company made to stay in business won’t be restored. This is the new reality. I tell them that it’s ultimately up to them to get things moving.

If we viewed our careers as the baton in a relay race, passing through many hands, we would work hard to cultivate relationships—to ensure that the baton doesn’t drop and that we have strong hands to carry us forward. Here’s an idea on how to put the relay back in your career.

List your top 50 relationships. Rank the depth of each relationship on a scale of one to five and do three tasks: 

1. Identify five people with whom you want to deepen your relationship—how will you do this?
2. Identify who is not on the list but should be as you consider your next career steps.
3. Determine if there are negative relationships on your list and decrease the time you spend with these individuals.

The next time you complain about your company, stop. Instead, spend that time cultivating your key relationships. By spending your energy on building your relay team, you’ll advance farther and faster than if you focus your attention on the company you work for and what it can or cannot do for you.

I don’t absolve employers of their responsibility to foster a great culture. To achieve excellence, companies must build systems and programs that connect their people, customers, and community. At FlashPoint I emphasize that organizations can build systems that foster communication, heighten performance, and much more. Balance can be achieved when employees work hard to build strong relationships and when companies do the same.

Krista Skidmore is cofounder and principal of FlashPoint.

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Recent economic challenges have caused many employers to make tough decisions regarding wage cuts, hiring freezes, cost-sharing in employee benefits, and more. As I help organizations make post-recession tweaks to compensation and performance systems, I meet frustrated employees who wonder when normalcy will return. My reply is simple: Cuts your company made to stay in business won’t be restored. This is the new reality.

These experiences have led me to ponder the employer-employee relationship—and, in particular, what professionals should expect of their employers. I’ve decided that people put too much emphasis on their employers and not enough time on their co-workers.

How many times have we heard our friends and family (and maybe even ourselves) lament about how much they dislike their company? A company is nothing more than an inanimate legal shell, so why do we spend so much energy on it, instead of focusing on the relationships we can build? The reason is because it’s easier to focus on the corporation or the boss than it is to focus on what we can control.

When I look at my career, I see that all my successes and opportunities have grown from the relationships I’ve developed. What if we viewed our careers as the baton in a relay race? Our careers pass through many hands. In order to ensure the baton doesn’t drop, we need to cultivate our relationships—to be sure we have strong hands to carry us forward. It’s about the people with whom we surround ourselves.

In part two, I’ll share three thought-provoking tasks to help cultivate relationships. I’ll also share what role the employer must play in creating a culture where talented people want to work.

Meanwhile, what do you think about placing emphasis on your relationships versus on your company?

Krista Skidmore is cofounder and principal of FlashPoint.

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Andrea Moore and I had the opportunity to give a presentation during the 2010 Indiana State Human Resources Conference. The topic, Linking Learning and Development to Organizational Strategies, resonated with the audience as evidenced by nodding heads and participation. Perhaps it will strike a chord with you, also.

We’ve summarized the presentation into a brief, six-part video series. Part one is below. Video topics for parts two through six with links to each follow.

Part 1: Determine what success looks like

Avoid myths of training

Begin with mission, vision, and values

Build/evaluate training initiatives

Define success measures

Define roles and responsibilities

Most business leaders understand the value of providing learning and development opportunities to their employees. Because human capital is such a significant investment, it’s important that employees have the knowledge and skills they need to produce quality work. Companies realize this.

What leaders and managers often fail to do, however, is to provide learning and development that aligns with their organization’s strategy. Sometimes the training they provide is haphazard or reactionary; much of it fails to develop abilities that help the company achieve its goals.

For learning and development to be successful, business leaders—along with the professionals who are in charge of designing and delivering it—must move beyond this myopic view. Instead, they must clearly define the organizational strategy and then identify core competencies that employees must develop and demonstrate in order to carry out that strategy. They must then build training that enhances these essential competencies.

What is your company doing well with regard to linking learning and development to organizational strategy? What could it do better?

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The following are follow-up resources to my blog post “Are you racked or on a roll: How HR and business leaders can stay connected to the deeper meaning in their work” posted July 27. Both books are strong resources that I recommend reading. The link takes you to a brief article on finding meaning in your work.

If you’ve already read the resources, what do you think? If you haven’t read them, I would value knowing your thoughts after you do.

Books

• Start With WHY by Simon Sinek

• The Why of Work by Dave and Wendy Ulrich

Article

• “Got Meaning? Creating a Why to Work” by Wendy Ulrich via Psychology Today

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How HR and business leaders can stay connected to the deeper meaning in their work.

We all work a lot—longer hours and wider job scopes leave many feeling stretched, pulled, and torn. I don’t make it through a day without hearing this sentiment and the visual that comes to mind is a common form of torture during the Middle Ages—racking.

Our work doesn’t have to torment us. In fact, it can be liberating and energizing. So, how do we get on a roll and find the momentum we need in our work and personal lives?

We can get started by discovering what is most meaningful in our lives and then focusing our time and energy accordingly.

Let’s tackle meaning first…

As it turns out, working on stuff we believe in is more satisfying—when we are happy with our work we perform better and our organizations are better for it. So, have you ever written down the answers to these questions?

• What do you want your life to look and feel like?
• What do you value most in your life?
• After it’s too late to do anything about it, what do you want to be able to say about your life?
• What is missing from your life?
• What are you most proud of? Least proud of?
• When you have the most energy, what are you doing? Who are you with?
• If you had to pick five words that describe what you want most in your life, what are those five words?

I invested some time recently in answering these questions again and my answers might be different than what you expect. It’s not human resource consulting or leadership development or leading FlashPoint or serving as a volunteer with Indiana community organizations. Finding meaning in my life hasn’t come through my job or my business or other positions (solely that is).

For me finding meaning started with knowing the answers to each of the above questions. My answers include growth, freedom, flow, integrity, big ideas, developing others, culture, art, travel, great relationships, and much more.

Your answers will be different, but no less meaningful.

Once I knew what was most important to me, I went to step two: focus

I began examining the things in my life and determined what fit and what didn’t fit—what activities were aligned with the life I wanted. This brought everything into focus and gave me a tool to make decisions and the momentum I needed to get on a roll. Sometimes we collect activities and tasks that are truly energy leaks…sometimes we feel obligated and sometimes we don’t know what we are getting into. This is exactly how we start to feel racked! In any case running our personal, work, and volunteer lives through a “meaning filter” could be just the trick to align your life with what is most important to you.

Since so many of my HR and business contacts feel the pressures in their work and personal life, I am curious what you have done to find meaning and focus in your life or how you have helped your employees do the same? Your turn to share!

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