Graziadio Business Report Blog

Wayne Strom, PhD

Today’s harsh economic realities continue to impact everyone. Hundreds of thousands have been losing their jobs each month. In California, even firemen and policemen are being laid off (California firemen are being laid off even as we approach fire season!). It does not matter if you work for a private enterprise or a tax-supported agency.

Everyone is somewhat at risk. Everything is somewhat on the line.

An attorney friend once told me, ‘When you have a fire, you get to choose: you can pour on water, or you can pour on gasoline.’ This is absolutely true in our business relationships.

When people feel at risk, they become anxious and can easily rise to defensiveness. Negotiations, even over the smallest issues, can become brittle.

But to pour on gasoline does not mean that one is operating from a position of strength and confidence! It does not signal the other person that you are competent to deal with what is happening. If I anxiously enter a business conversation, or if I am even just a little apprehensive (a form of defensiveness), or perhaps a little pushy, I may be setting the stage for a defensive push-back or confrontation. Continue reading ‘The Business Imperative for Staying Calm During Stressful Times’

(This blog post has been excerpted from a previous article by Dr. Strom in the Graziadio Business Report)

Wayne Strom, PhD

The global financial crisis is having echo effects across many business sectors. Having coached executives who had been fired or laid off, I would like to share some of the lessons I learned that are particularly relevant today.

If you were a manager or executive, the probability is that the ideal future job for you will never be advertised anywhere. Rather, executives are quietly looking for someone with the right skill sets. You, as a job seeker, must create the right circumstances through enough executive informational interviews to bring yourself to their attention. The executive informational interview is not an interview for a job. It is an interview for the purpose of learning more about an industry or more about a specific company. The primary objective of the executive informational interview is to establish personal chemistry-not to sell yourself. If there is any secret here, it is in knowing enough to allow “personal chemistry” to work to your advantage.

With that in mind, the following suggestions will help you cope with this challenging period.

What To Do

(click here for what NOT to do)

1. Be honest with yourself. If you made some mistakes, learn from them!
In interviewing executives who made firing decisions, they revealed the critical mistake leading to an employee’s termination is usually made two to four months before termination. Usually, that means the employee did not acknowledge his mistake nor take the steps to resolve it. Another example would be when the employee adopts an attitude of smugness or arrogance and is closed off to feedback or suggestions offered by others.

Could this apply to you? If so, do your best to learn from that experience. Continue reading ‘Suddenly Unemployed? What to do if you’re a victim of the current financial crisis.’