Bearing Fruit Consulting

Servant Leadership For Real

Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant...

My dear, dear punker Laurie Ruettimann (who I love) recently had a post and thread on servant leadership over at Punk Rock HR in which she, and many others, portrayed it as a weak, soft and touchy-feely sort leadership that really wasn't wanted or needed in businesses that need to get results, drive revenue or be successful.  She says:

Here’s my message to anyone who calls himself a servant leader.

• You want to demonstrate empathy, bring out the best in people, and facilitate personal growth? Go home and spend some time with your kids.

I don’t need that kind of emotional baggage at work, yo.

The detractors of servant leadership preferred someone who only cared about results and didn't try to "serve" them in any way shape or form.  Too "nanny state"!  Servant leaders nurture bad employees and keep them around too long others said.  Oh, read the comments on that thread and you will see it all.   

The word SERVE and SERVANT are automatically associated with indecisiveness, weakness, subordinate and a bunch of other terms.  When the term SERVANT, and by extension the auto-associated terms, are combined with a power word like LEADER or LEADERSHIP it seems to be a paradox and people's brains malfunction trying to make sense of it.  Instead they just "got to guns" and start hammering away at what some might call the "softer" aspects of servant leadership while ignoring the essence of strength imbedded in the execution of servant leadership.  True servant leaders are, in fact and by definition, strong, decisive and results oriented.  At heart, the individual is a servant first, making the conscious decision to lead in order to better serve others, not to increase their own power.

Lipstick On Pig Over At Carnival of HR

Just wanted to point everyone over to the latest Carnival of HR hosted by Inflexion Advisors.  The Lipstick On A Pig post defining the key differences between Talent Acquisition and Recruiting is included in the carnival.

Some others I like and you should read (taken right from The Carnival):

• For smaller (and less politically correct) bacon, Chris Ferdinandi of Renegade HR instructs you to, “Use your employees as guinea pigs“. Please note that no animals were actually harmed during the application of the Guinea Pig Method.
• Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR follows a shoulder-tapping bar encounter with, “Social Media, Recruiting & Millennials“. This reminds me of our young tightrope walkers who constantly updated their Facebook status (may they rest in peace).
• Michael Haberman of Omega HR Solutions asks, “Want to Learn How to Sell HR to Your CEO?” Boy do I! The last thing sold to my CEO came with it’s own Wolf Boy.

Go there and read up...there are a bunch of other really smart and interesting posts but these were the few I wanted to highlight. 

Make it a great day! 

Omaha Stylee Did Not Think There Was One - Maren Hogan Over On FOT

Juiced the title a bit here with a lyric from 311.  Maren Hogan, from Omaha, Nebraska, shows us a little of her Omaha Stylee today over at FOT.  Her post, Like Paris Hilton, You've Got To Work It To Be A Good Recruiter... gets into some interesting ideas around what sourcing and recruiting really are as well as what the perception of those concepts might be. 

An interesting discussion is starting to unfold with her post as well.  Of course, never without an opinion, I jumped into the comments and discussion myself. 

Maren is an up and coming recruiting professional who has a pretty diverse background outside of recruiting.  She is fun to talk to and fun to read (her blog is Big O Recruiting)because she hasn't been in recruiting forever and thus has some unique perspectives.  Because of her minimal recruiting industry experience it is also fun to watch her learn and grow in this space right before our very eyes.

By the way, I found an old school skater video using 311's Omaha Stylee as the backdrop music.  It is pretty funny and if you want to check it out it can be found after the jump.    

Moving from ATS to TRMS Over at FOT

Is that enough of an acronym tease for ya?

Just a quick note to alert you all to one of my latest posts over at Fistful of Talent on converting your ATS to a TRMS.  I provide some guidance on how to take your ordinary, process swamped, compliance focused, administrivia driven Animal Tracking System and tweak it to start getting more TRM from it. 

Have a read...if you aren't sick of reading my stuff  yet. 

Jessica Lee On How Lame Careerbuilder Is...errr...Has Always Been

I have become quite the fan of Jessica Lee.  She is a cohort on my other gig over at Fistful of Talent who is smart, brash and has just enough of that "take on the world" mentality to make her just my type.  In short, I dig her approach and the way she thinks. 

Today she unleashed on Careerbuilder and their lame marketing ploys.  Careerbuilder has really sunk to new lows since the funny, witty and engaging monkey bits during the Super Bowl.  Her post is strong and got me so fired up I let loose a tirade in the comments section of her post.

I recommend you check it out! 

If, for some odd reason, you want to just read my comments you can do so after the jump.

HR Wench In All Her Wenchiness

I don't often specifically mention a blog to read in a post.  I usually just link over to them in that fancy little blog roll on the right hand side of this page.  I am going to quickly break that tradition to introduce you, if you haven't already read it, to HR Wench. 

Like me, HR Wench likes to take on norms, challenge traditional thinking and generally be a provocateur in the HR space.  I like that and I think you will as well. 

This latest post, It's Called Research.  Do Some.  Is a great example of what you can expect. 

Rage Against The Talent Machine - Blog Style

Kris Dunn over at HR Capitalist has hung out the help wanted sign.  Seems there is an as yet unnamed blog being launched that will provide an edgy, opinionated, provocative, engaging and witty perspective on all things talent.  Specifically it looks as if it will touch on talent management, talent acquisition, hr, organizational effectiveness etc. from real practitioners.

What is even more interesting is the vast disciplines, experiences and generational differences the assembled group of misfits might come from.  Kris even uses the term dysfunctional which makes us even more interested. 

As any follower of ours knows, we are well known for taking the course less traveled and espousing and executing tactics that have often been met with controversy.  They have also been met with great success and performance that far exceeds the average recruiting team.  Whenever you take risk and challenge the norm you have the opportunity to be great.  Doing the same old things and expecting different results is...well...do I really need to say the rest?   

Sounds like it won't be your run of the mill blog.  Worth keeping our eye on I suppose!

Monday Morning Quick Hits

Every Monday morning I thought I would post a few links to some of the more interesting things I read over the weekend or first thing Monday morning.  Well, at least interesting to me and I hope you will agree.  My intent in sharing these is not to comment at length but to bring your attention to some interesting items that, in my opinion, resonate and have congruence with recruiting, talent management and leadership.

• Jason Goldberg, former Chief Jobster, hits on the hot topic of buying your presence online or growing it organically.  I have lots of thoughts on this topic but I will hold off on getting detailed until later.  His blog Social Median is smart and should be on your short list of those you read regularly.
• My good friend Dennis Smith (excellent recruiting leader and all around good guy) shares a conversation he had with Jason Davis, (great recruiter and recruiting blogosphere leader) in which he explains the sourcing and recruiting advantages of blogging.  Dennis claims he won't stop blogging - a good thing for us all.
• Great real life lessons in sourcing from people who don't source for a living.  Read this carefully and apply some the creativity and thinking to your next search.
• Collegerecruiter.com has 14 Ways to Get More Candidates To Apply.  Here you will find some great suggestions for how to structure your online application and a few other ideas.  The only question left unanswered here is how do you get the more of the RIGHT candidates to apply?
• Finally, Seth Godin got my attention again.  This time with a post called Who Are These People?  Of course he speaks from a social media and marketing perspective but again the cross over to talent acquisition and talent relationship management is obvious and significant.  Is it better to attract hordes of people to your jobs or just the right people?  As Seth says:

Doesn't it make more sense to incrementally earn the attention of a smaller, less glitzy but far more valuable group of people who actually engage with you? And the best part is, your odds of success are a lot better.

Extrapolating this concept the question becomes; Is it better to practice candidate relationships management or talent relationship management?  Is there a difference?  CRM is pointless in recruiting.  You can't possibly have relationships with every candidate.  To get the maximum ROI for your time and effort you should only have relationships with talent in your industry or career discipline.  Develop, manage and grow relationships with great talent and you will find the very best for your current and future openings.   

Blogging By The Numbers

My good friend Jim Durbin (who is the consultant working with me on this blog) posted some interesting blogging statistics yesterday that he picked up from Blog World Expo who compiled the numbers.  Take a look at them as they certainly demonstrate the power, reach and revenue possibilities of blogs. 

Perhaps they are available, I didn't research it yet, but I would be curious to know a few things:

1. Of the 12 million American adults who maintain a blog, how many of them are active?  Meaning, how many of them are adding new and meaningful content on a weekly basis?  Blogging seemed to catch on as something of a fad in recent years and I imagine a large number of people started blogs but quickly tired of the novelty and no longer add content consistently.  The impact of lagging or non-existent content certainly diminishes a blogs value.
2. 89% of companies surveyed said they believed blogs will be more important in the next 5 years.  That is certainly interesting given that most of the clients I work with don't have a corporate blog, a recruiting or talent management blog or a strategy to launch one any time soon.  I agree they are going to be more important and we have only scratched the surface of their value but why are so many companies resisting starting blogs?  I have a lot of of thoughts on this and I will address them in the not so distant future. 
3. Blog readers average 23 hours online each week.  How much of that time do you think is spent online during the work day reading blogs and tinkering around on the Internet?  How much of that time is actually spent reading blogs? Since the statistic apparently just examines time on the Internet it would be interesting to know how much time is spent actually reading blogs.  How does this number relate to worker productivity in the United States?