Podcast appearances and mentions of marc effron

Moments before presenting at a large conference in Sydney, Gareth Flynn was confident in sharing his expertise on skills strategy. Suddenly, his friend Dart Lindsley tapped him on the shoulder and made a bold claim: skills strategies don't work. Faced with the unsettling possibility that his expertise might be flawed, Gareth began a research journey to uncover the truth. By engaging with both critics and advocates, he gained a fresh perspective on when and how skills should (or shouldn't) be prioritized in the workplace.Gareth Flynn is a writer, speaker, and talent and workforce expert with 25+ years of experience focused on strategy, skills, and leadership. He is the founder and CEO of TQSolutions, Australia's leading talent and workforce strategy and solutions business. In this episode, Dart and Gareth discuss:- How companies approach skills — and when they fall short- Company motivation for investing in skills strategies - Insights from the critics of skills strategy- The difference between skills and capabilities- The taxonomy of skills- How AI is grouping people into social classes- Career drivers vs. life drivers- And other topics…Gareth Flynn is a writer, speaker, and talent and workforce expert with 25+ years of experience focused on strategy, skills, and leadership. As the founder and CEO of TQSolutions, Australia's leading talent and workforce strategy and solutions business, Gareth and his team have advised companies like GE, Philips, Australia Post, and Westpac, among others. Prior to founding TQSolutions, Gareth co-founded The Career Conversation, an early careers experience and engagement business whose client list includes companies like Bank of America and Deloitte. Resources mentioned:“Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?” by Marc Effron: https://talentstrategygroup.com/is-the-juice-worth-the-squeeze/ Connect with Gareth: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethflynn Work with Dart:Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what's most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

As a man now in long term recovery, Marc Effron came up in the world with a strong work ethic and it served him well. Vice president of an insurance company at 24 years old, cocaine fueled his fire, until it didn't. Homeless on the street at 28. Now with many years of sobriety under his belt he joined me on the podcast to share his valuable insights and experiences on what happened, and how he maintains the recovery he has today.Check out Marc's Websitehttps://www.marc-effron.com/Support the showGet Tickets to the Possibilities Recovery Center Gala Happening April 19th 2024 HEREWe've got fresh merch and it's amazing! Pick yours up HERE Are you getting something from our content? Tap here and buy us a coffee to say thanks and help us keep this train on the tracks! Check us out on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@hardknoxtalksCheck out the AIMS-SK Program https://cmelearning.usask.ca/specialized-programs/aims-sk/aims_sk_overview.phpStronger Together CanadaHolding Hope CanadaHealing Hearts Canada

What's your approach to maintaining simplicity in performance management while ensuring it's thorough enough to capture the company's objectives? This episode features insights from the Talent Strategy Group's President, Marc Effron, as he sheds light on the power of simplifying processes and HR's critical role in fostering a goal-centric culture that thrives on clarity and focus. Marc details two critical steps that help drive employee performance: setting “stretchy” goals and building influencing skills. He also stresses the need for HR leaders to become “business junkies” who deeply understand the business to drive meaningful impact in an organization. The conversation dives further into the science of human performance and academic research to inform HR processes, maintaining the idea that performance management is strategy implementation.   Resources: For the entire interview, subscribe to HR Superstars on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube, Or tune in on our website. Original podcast track produced by Entheo. Want to connect with thousands of other strategic HR leaders like you? Join the HR Superstars Community! Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for HR Superstars in your favorite podcast player. Hear Adam's thoughts on elevating your HR career by following him on LinkedIn. Click here to download 15Five's Performance Review Playbook!

www.CPOPLAYBOOK.comEpisode TranscriptAboutWelcome to the sequel of the CPO PLAYBOOK Holiday Special. Here, we're joined by an exceptional lineup of leaders and experts shaping the future of HR and leadership. Dr. Daisy Grewal, Senior Manager at Intuit, digs into cutting-edge people analytics; Jon Stross, co-founder of Greenhouse, shares insights on talent acquisition and the future of AI; Brad Williams, from Northwestern Mutual, discusses strategies for leadership buy in; Matt Abrahams, a Stanford lecturer, focuses on impactful communication, while Matteo Turi, Chairman of Letoon Holding, offers a global leadership perspective; Marc Effron, President of The Talent Strategy Group, outlines high-impact talent strategies, and Chandler Bondan, CPO at BuzzFeed, wraps up with insights into fostering inclusive workplace cultures. Join us for a condensed yet enriching discussion, where these experts provide a roadmap for navigating the complexities of modern leadership practices.*Dr. Daisy GrewalA seasoned social psychologist, currently holds the position of Senior Manager, People Analytics & Research Partners at Intuit. Prior to this, she served as the Director of Evaluation at Stanford University.Jon StrossVisionary and co-founder of GreenhouseBrad WilliamsHead of HR Technology and People Analytics at Northwestern Mutual, a Fortune 100 company with nearly 9,000 employees.Matt AbrahamsAs a Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, he has helped countless presenters improve and hone their communication, including some who have delivered IPO road shows as well as TED, World Economic Forum, and Nobel Prize presentations. His online talks garner millions of views and he hosts the popular, award winning podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart: The PodcastMatteo TuriMatteo is an accomplished CFO, Board Director, and Entrepreneur, with a 28-year journey across clean technologies, water, infrastructures, medical technology/SaaS, telecom, retail banking, recruitment and renewable energy sectors.Marc EffronMarc founded and leads The Talent Strategy Group and created and publishes TalentQ magazine. He co-authored the Harvard Business Review Publishing best-seller One Page Talent Management and 8 Steps to High Performance.Chandler BondanAs BuzzFeed, Inc.'s Chief People Officer, Chandler manages a diverse People Team across the organization, and oversees all strategic initiatives related to organizational planning, talent acquisition, learning and development, performance management, compensation and benefits, labor relations, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.*Be a guest on the showAll media inquiries: media@cpoplaybook.com

This series, I'm sharing insights from my book Work/Life Flywheel.In this episode, I explain why niching down is important and share a practical exercise to help you identify your focus area.Chapter Summary:Writing is one of the critical skills for the future of work.The scale of the online audience for your product, service, or ideas is limitless.Digital writing allows you the opportunity to rapidly test and iterate your ideas.No-code technology means it's never been easier to produce a digital product.The secret to success as a digital writer, launching a new business or pivoting your career, is carving a niche.Being known for something specific is a career accelerant, particularly when combined with something you're genuinely passionate about.Going niche feels uncomfortable, but, by experimenting, you'll find something that resonates with you and your audience.LINKS:Book Ollie to speak with your teamOllie's LinkedInFuture Work/Life NewsletterWork/Life Flywheel: Harness the work revolution and reimagine your career without fear, is out now. You can order your copy HERE (UK) or HERE (US).Here's what Marc Effron, Nicolas Cole, 8x Author & Captain of Ship 30 for 30, has said about it:"Ollie and I have similar stories: burned-out agency owners who started writing online and experienced life-changing results. If this sounds like you too (whether you're an entrepreneur or a high-achieving, exhausted employee), then you'll feel right at home reading this book." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This series, I'm sharing insights from my book Work/Life Flywheel.In this episode, I discuss why stories are important to understand what's possible and helping you achieve it.Chapter Summary:Using character-driven stories with emotional content to illustrate your point of view makes it significantly more memorable.To reimagine your career, you must first address why you want a change, before crafting the story to help you achieve it.To be truly effective, you have to be specific about the new future you're trying to create and bring it to life.The ability to communicate effectively helps you build credibility and inspire others.You create powerful new possibilities in articulating your ideas and persuading others to join you on your mission by mastering storytelling.Recording 'story-worthy' moments allows you to spot trends in your thinking, trigger new ideas, and slow down time.Free-writing enables you to recall stories from your past that have helped form your personality and beliefs, helping contextualise decisions you make in the future.LINKS:Book Ollie to speak with your teamOllie's LinkedInFuture Work/Life NewsletterWork/Life Flywheel: Harness the work revolution and reimagine your career without fear, is out now. You can order your copy HERE (UK) or HERE (US).Here's what Marc Effron, author of 8 Steps to High Performance and President of The Talent Strategy Group, has said about it:“Henderson provides clear direction and practical steps to help you find the work/life harmony that you richly deserve. The Flywheel's 6 building blocks offer an easy to follow guide for your journey.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marc is a trusted advisor to top teams at the world's largest and most complex organizations. His clients include the premier brands across tech, bio-pharma and pharma, consumer products, transportation, manufacturing and more. As the founder and President of the Talent Strategy Group, he leads the firm's global consulting, education and publishing businesses. Marc co-authored the Harvard Business Review Publishing best-selling book One Page Talent Management, often called the “talent management bible.” His new book 8 Steps to High Performance, also published by Harvard, is quickly reaching best-seller status globally. He previously served as an HR executive at Bank of America and Avon Products. Marc has been published in or heard on Fast Company, Financial Times, BBC, Bloomberg Radio, Inc., Harvard Business Review, New York Post, Knowledge@Wharton radio and some of the world's most popular podcasts. Marc publishes TalentQ magazine which he founded in 2013 to help executives. Marc Effron's Books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=marc+effron - Learn more about IMS and future sessions with thought leaders like Marc Effron: https://ims-online.com/ Single Servings (bite-sized video clips that answer your most pressing leadership and management challenges) - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNwWl_bClmVyp_YJxfrDJy4kGhRxaxJZm Relevant IMS Leadership and Management Articles - https://blog.ims-online.com/ Connect on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesagood/ Chapters: (00:00) Introduction (01:17) Rules to success at work (02:11) How to be a high performer (03:14) Factors that predict performance (05:03) Theoretical maximum performance (05:51) High performer mindset (07:43) Work smart, not hard paradigm (09:53) Tool: 3 ways to screen ideas (13:10) Big goals are important (14:43) Promises instead of goals (16:10) Tool: Concept of SIM (Specific, Important & Measurable) (17:57) Concept: Derailer (18:59) Recognize your derailers (19:58) Identify transformational leaders (21:57) Tool: 70/20/10 - Grow in the right area (24:38) Feed forward instead of giving feedback (26:08) Networking matters (28:16) Sometimes you shouldn't be the "genuine" you (29:02) Fitness & high performance (33:14) Sleep & high performance (36:19) Avoiding distractions (37:58) Conclusion

May is always our favorite month of the year. On our second birthday, join Ankita as she chats with Marc Effron about the economics of marriage, why a revamp of an existing people analytics tool is still exciting and if kindness is a topic worth discussing. And don't forget to say hello - drop Ankita a tweet, message her on LinkedIn or email us at hrpartnerstory@gmail.com. Let us know what you've enjoyed best so far and what you'd like to see in the year ahead. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-growing-share-of-u-s-marriages-husbands-and-wives-earn-about-the-same/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/effron_every-april-1-the-talent-strategy-group-activity-7047538016394878976-9pXp/ https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/why-youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-and-other-powerful-women-keep-quitting.html https://www.hrdconnect.com/casestudy/disco-fever-spotifys-analytics-platform-takes-hr-from-administrative-to-strategic/ https://hbr.org/2021/05/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-kindness-at-work https://www.ted.com/talks/james_rhee_the_value_of_kindness_at_work?language=en Marc's LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/effron/ Ankita's Twitter: @ankitapoddar Ankita's LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankitapoddar/ 

Marc Effron has become a titan in the world of recovery.15 years sober today, he's the founder of Legacy Healing Center, which now has locations all over America.But at the core, he's an addict in recovery who has a story that is both compelling and inspiring.Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment Centerslegacyhealing.comhttps://www.legacyhealing.com/

What differentiates the best HR leaders from the rest? Why it isn't enough to “know the business, you must love the businessMy guest on this episode is Marc Effron, President, Talent Strategy Group.During our conversation, Marc and I discuss the following:Marc's career journey and what led him to co-author One Page Talent ManagementThe unforgettable advice that Marshall Goldsmith gave to MarcThe one question that will help advance your careerWhat differentiates the best HR leaders from the restBooks & Resources Discussed:7 Rules of Power: Surprising--But True--Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career by Jeffrey Pfeffer8 Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest) by Marc EffronOne Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value by Marc Effron & Miriam OrtTalent Management InstituteTalent QuarterlyConnecting with Marc:Marc Effron on LinkedInTalent Strategy Group

Why do some HR leaders have more influence and impact than others?How do you develop the skills and mindset to be a trusted advisor?My guest on this episode is former NiSource, CHRO turned Executive Coach, Ken Keener.During our conversation, Ken and I discuss the following:How he got his start in HRThe importance of HR leading, not managing changeThe steps he took to prepare and become an executive coach.Ken's Book Recommendations:The Advantage by Patrick LencioniFive Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick LencioniOne Page Talent Management by Marc Effron & Miriam OutPerformance Coaching by Dana Gaines Robinson & James C RobinsonWhat Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall GoldsmithConnecting with Ken:Ken Keener on LinkedInKeener Advisors

The HR Indiana Conference is one of the largest regional human resources conferences in the United States. For the 1st time in 3 years, everything will be in-person and under one roof! There are over 50 speakers scheduled, including keynotes from Marc Effron, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Val Grubb, plus 50 concurrent sessions. No matter if you are just starting out as an HR Generalist, or you are a Senior VP of HR, HR Indiana has just the right education for you.   Joining Geeks Geezers and Googlization co-hosts Ira S Wolfe and Jason Cochran for this special live stream episode will be the 2022 Conference Chair, JoDee Curtis. Ira and Jason will also be speaking at the event.  Ira: Monday, August 29, No App to Adapt Jason: Monday August 29, Creating Ideal Employee Experiences - 4 Principles Connection You can learn more about Indiana SHRM's HR Conference at https://hrindianashrm.org/conference. Past Geeks Geezers and Googlization guests who will also be speaking include Marc Effron, Kevin Grossman, Vivian Blade, and Jodi Brandstetter.  

What does the best academic science say about how people and companies operate together? Here to tell us is Marc Effron, Founder and President of The Talent Strategy Group, and co-author of Harvard Business Review books One Page Talent Management and 8 Steps to High Performance. In this episode, Marc shares his top learnings on talent management, the difference between high performance and high potential, and even his best coaching tip. As you listen, you'll learn how to scale talent management, set better goals, and accelerate your high-potential employees. Resources: One Page Talent Management by Marc Effron 8 Steps to High Performance by Marc Effron Articles, videos, and research by The Talent Strategy Group

We're often told we should have clear goals for ourselves. In fact, as we've heard from guests like Marc Effron and Grace Lordan in the past, there is a connection between effective goal-setting and high performance. The thing is, many of us still really struggle with this idea, so I wanted to explore it some more.And I figured if you want to dive deep into a subject, we may as well invite one of the world's leading experts onto the show. Today's guest is Emily Balcetis. She's an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University, where she runs the Social Perception Action and Motivation research lab. Or SPAM for short. Emily and her team have pioneered the scientific investigation of behavioural science and motivation. Their work has uncovered previously unknown strategies that increase, sustain, and direct people's efforts to meet their goals.She also explores these ideas in her excellent book, Clearer, Closer, Better, and with us today on the Future Work/Life podcast.Our conversation starts by examining why materialising goals is crucial to achieving them before digging into the relative benefits of a narrow focus of attention and applying a wide bracket.Along the way, we discuss how to motivate ourselves to pursue big, long-term goals and why, although vision boards can help us discover purpose, used in isolation, they can actually be detrimental to our success.I love the way Emily reframes goal-setting – literally, as her work is all focused on the power of our vision. She gives some fantastic practical examples of visual tactics that can help us meet and exceed our goals, all of which help build a tool kit for success.LINKS:Emily's bookThe Social Perception Action and Motivation research labFuture Work/Life newsletterFuture Work/Life website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marc Effron is the President of The Talent Strategy Group, a company that helps the world's leading organizations increase the quality and depth of their talent. As President, Effron leads the firm's global consulting, education, and publishing businesses. He also co-founded The Talent Management Institute, created TalentQ magazine, and co-authored the Harvard Business Publishing best-seller One Page Talent Management.  Before founding The Talent Strategy Group, Effron was the VP of Talent Management at Avon Products and led the Global Leadership Consulting practice for Aon Hewitt. He received his BA from the University of Washington and his MBA from Yale School of Management. In this episode: The tight labor market has forced leaders to scramble to rethink and redevelop the ways they compete for top talent and ensure that they're growing a strong team. In many companies, there's a kind of panic — a feeling of being caught unprepared, a sense that they lack a talent strategy, and that talent tools that once served them well aren‘t working. According to Marc Effron, a leading thinker and practitioner in the talent field, these challenges are nothing new. Over the past decade, exit rates have been on a steady, uninterrupted climb. The difference nowadays is that these talent issues are more noticeable — and solving them more expensive. If you want better talent faster, Effron says, a “production mindset” is what's going to get you there. You need to build a talent machine. Companies can raise the level of talent management if they look at talent acquisition and retention as if they were a production line. To develop a strong team, you must get clear on what you're trying to build, who you want in the company, the raw materials you need (that is, what people you need to fill pivotal roles), and the ways in which you assemble it (that is, your hiring processes, training and development, and retention tools). Effron talks about this and more as he joins Thomas A. Stewart on The Leading Edge — a place where new ideas emerge and are sharpened, and where leaders look to find the edge that brings success for themselves, their teams, and their enterprises. In this episode of The Leading Edge, Thomas A. Stewart is joined by Marc Effron, President of The Talent Strategy Group, to talk about building a talent machine to solve hiring and retention challenges. Effron breaks down the critical components of a successful talent strategy, why you should invest in your top employees, and how to de-risk your talent production process.

Marc founded and leads The Talent Strategy Group and consults with global corporations. His prior experience includes talent management roles at Bank of America and Avon Products and consulting at Hewitt Associates. He co-authored the Harvard Business Review Publishing best-seller One Page Talent Management and 8 Steps to High Performance and publishes Talent Quarterly magazine. Marc has an MBA from the Yale School of Management.We connected with Marc as we share a passion for building talent. We sat with him to talk about his own career journey, his advice to early career professionals, his take on the Great Resignation, his assessment of the HR and Talent functions, how organizations – including their business leaders – can build better talent faster, how to map out your career ambitions and create an experience map, and more about his plans for 2022.Links from the episode: Marc's firm The Talent Strategy Group  Talent Quarterly magazine Marc's last book 8 Steps to High PerformanceHarvard Business Review article A Simple Way to Map Out Your Career Ambition Marc's LinkedIn pageRead the transcriptThanks for listening!Visit our homepage at https://disrupt-your-career.comIf you like the podcast, please take a moment to rate it and leave a review in Apple Podcast

How do practitioners learn about our research? What topics and questions do they wish we would research? How can we communicate our research more effectively? In this episode, I speak to Marc Effron, talent management consultant and author of One Page Talent Management about these questions and many more. Check out the episode page for Marc's bio, links, and a full episode transcript.

If the quality of a podcast directly correlates with the practical value that you get from it, then I think today's episode might be the best one I've released so far. My guest is Marc Effron, the author of Eight Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest).We had a fantastic conversation in which we discussed the importance of big goals., what changes managers need to make now that they're working with remote teams, and the difference between evidence-based advice and management fads.He also offered some incredibly useful insights about how to build up a network from scratch and how to keep your connections engaged by LinkedIn and by email. We also discussed the connection between physical health and performance. As you'll hear, there isn't much evidence to prove the link, but one vitally important thing is a good night's sleep.LINKS: Eight Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest)Marc's LinkedIn profileFuture Work/Life newsletterFuture work/life website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mary and Marc discuss what it means and what it  takes to be a high performer and navigate a career today to reach your aspirations and be most successful. The post Episode 25: Insider Tips to Becoming a High Performer with Marc Effron  appeared first on Modern Career.

In this episode, Mary connects with Marc Effron, founder and President of The Talent Strategy Group. He helps the world's largest and most successful companies improve the quality and depth of their talent. During the episode, Mary and Marc discuss what it means and what it takes to be a high performer and navigate a career today to reach your aspirations and be most successful. As the founder and President of the Talent Strategy Group, Marc leads the firm's global consulting, education and publishing businesses. He co-authored the Harvard Business Review Publishing best-selling book One Page Talent Management, often called the “talent management bible.” His new book 8 Steps to High Performance is quickly reaching best-seller status. He previously served as an HR executive at Bank of America and Avon Products. Marc has been published in or heard on Fast Company, Financial Times, BBC, Bloomberg Radio, Inc., Harvard Business Review, New York Post, Knowledge@Wharton radio and some of the world's most popular podcasts. Marc earned a M.B.A. from the Yale University School of Management and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington.  Resources mentioned in the episode: * 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change by Marc Effron* One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value by Marc Effron and Miriam Ort* Dr. Robert Hogan, Hogan Assessments* Marshall Goldsmith, executive leadership coach

Marc Effron is begging you - do not build a nice culture! He also offers Nancy half a billion dollars. And since it's recorded, I'm holding him to it.

Oven-Ready HR - Reheated brings a selection of the key moments from Season 1.  The second of two compilation episodes revisits the following interviews:Steve Browne describes an innovative way to hire talent and how poor behaviour defines organisational culture;Emma Jones recommends that start-up and SME organisations should consider HR best-practice at the beginning of their journey;Jarmila Yu and Richard Merrin discuss the special relationship or indeed lack of, between the HR and Marketing functions:Carl Reader looks at the mindset of entrepreneurs when hiring and why under performance is often addressed too late;Aoife Martin vividly describes her conversation with HR when she reached the decision to transition;Marc Effron considers whether the rebrand from 'recruitment' to 'talent' really means anything and how organisational culture affects performance.The full episodes are all available for download. 

*This spotlight contains an excerpt from our 2019 interview. Marc Effron, author of 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest), joins the Talent Angle to discuss how to cut through the noise and boost workplace performance. He shares what behavioral changes and practical steps employees can take to improve performance and deliver outstanding results.

The last few years has seen an explosion in the terminology of talent. Processes, approaches and strategies when it comes attracting, managing, engaging and retaining talent are legion.  Alongside this growth comes a bewildering array of talent titles such as talent management; talent acquisition and talent lead.  But is all of this just a sexier re-brand of what used to be called ‘recruitment and succession planning?  Has the hiring industry hijacked the word ‘talent' from Hollywood turning this from ‘on-screen' talent into ‘on-zoom' talent?Shining a light on the world of talent is Marc Effron co-author of Harvard Business Review's best-selling book “One Page Talent Management' widely considered as the talent management bible.   Marc is the Founder and President of the Talent Strategy Group a New York based organisation that advises some of the world's largest and most complex organizations about human resource and talent management issues.  Marc also publishes TalentQ magazine a publication he founded in 2013 designed to help executives makes smart decisions about how to manage talent.  On the question of name change from Recruitment to Talent, Mark makes this interesting analogy: "I thought if I was eating at a horrible restaurant where the food was awful, and the servers were rude, and they changed their name, am I going back because, gee, they must've changed everything else because they swapped the sign? Probably not."

Have you ever watched someone blow out the candles on a birthday cake and wondered, “Do I really want to eat cake after someone blew and spit all over it?” I have -even long before Covid-19. So I start this episode with a look at the risks of eating that cake once the candles are out. http://foodnetwork.wikia.com/wiki/Food_Detectives A lot has been written about peak performance. There are books, articles, podcasts, seminars, speeches, and many gurus all claiming to know the magical steps to achieving high performance in your career. So, who’s right? What are you supposed to believe? Marc Effron, author of the book 8 Steps to High Performance (https://amzn.to/2OsZqso) has taken a look at a lot of the material and separated the fluff from the science. Listen as he explains what really works if you want to really excel in your career. Ever wondered whether or not you should buy a new car if your old car works just fine? Since cars last much longer than a generation or two ago, a lot of drivers struggle with the decision to buy a new car. If you are one of them, you should listen as I discuss this topic. https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2015/07/30/autos-average-age/30820613/ When you think about it, you write a lot. You likely write emails, text messages, memos, reports and more. So HOW you write really matters if you want people to understand what you are trying to say. Josh Bernoff author of the book, Writing Without BS (https://amzn.to/2KP08xF) is on a mission to help people improve communication through better writing. Listen to what he has to say and you will instantly become a better writer. PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! https://bestfiends.com Download Best Fiends FREE today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes Visit https://m1finance.com/something to sign up and get $30 to invest! The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of our favorite podcasts! Listen at https://jordanharbinger.com/subscribe , Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts. Let SelectQuote save you time and money! Get your free quote at https://SelectQuote.com today! Truebill is the smartest way to manage your finances like reoccurring subscription charges! Get started today at https://Truebill.com/SYSK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be your true self or fake it till you make it? The abundance of career advice is only rivalled by its degree of contradiction. But what does science and research say on the topic of authenticity at work. To figure it out, we asked the guru in the field of human performance - Marc Effron. So, should you fake it? More about Marc and his team: https://talentstrategygroup.com/about/  Marc's award-winning books: One-Page Talent Management 8 Steps to High Performance ----- Music credits: Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod

This week, we were joined by Marc Effron, best-selling author and founder of the Talent Strategy Group to talk about why "nice" cultures are not good for your business. Sometimes love means saying the tough things to your teammates, and that is often the nicest thing you can do for someone. Find out more about about our show and check out other episodes, transcripts, newsletters, and more at https://www.softway.com/laabs.

In episode 13 of The Science of Personality Podcast, Ryne and Blake are joined by Marc Effron, President & Founder of The Talent Strategy Group and Publisher of Talent Q Magazine. From gamified assessments to neuroscience, this episode covers some the latest fads and trends in HR and talent management, and also what we might see on the horizon.

Patrick Ungashick is the CEO of NAVIX Consultants. He is a business exit strategist, speaker, and author, you don't have to be selling a business to apply these leadership hacks! You will learn: The different emotional connections of CEO of Corporate vs Owner Managed CEO's Why people become less strategic in their thinking as they start to plan exit? How questions reveal the direction and decisions Why having a stop doing list is a leadership enabler Follow us and explore our social media tribe from our Website: https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more from Patrick: Patrick on LinkedIn Navix Consultants Website FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Patrick Ungashick is a guest on today's show. He is an Entrepreneur, CEO, renowned exit strategist and author of Dance In The End Zone. Before we get a chance to speak with Patrick, it is The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore with the positive thinking in leadership is overrated. Overestimating success is detrimental to the wellbeing compared to making decisions based on sound unbiased data according to new research. In a study of 1600 participants in the British Household Panel Survey, which is a national wellbeing gauge, launched almost three decades ago by scientists at the University of BATH have tracked people's life expectations, actual outcomes over the last 18 years. And according to their findings, overestimating success is detrimental to wellbeing compared of course, to setting realistic goals. In a team assessment, what positive thinking frames optimism, and is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Decisions based on accurate unbiased data will always lead to greatest satisfaction. The team pointed out that pessimist also fare badly compared to realists. However, numbers at the end of the spectrum are relatively sparse because around 80% of the UK population can be classes, unrealistic optimists. University of BATH, School of Management Associate Professor Dr. Chris Dawson said plans based on inaccurate beliefs, make for poor decisions and are bound to deliver worst outcomes than would rational, realistic beliefs leading to lower wellbeing for both optimists and pessimists, particularly prone to this, our decisions on employment, savings and any choice involved in risks and uncertainty. The study's co-author David De Mesa of the London School of Economics said findings of a particular resident for personal behaviours is a mix of current crisis too. Optimist will see themselves as less susceptible of the risk of COVID-19 than others and he said, therefore are less likely to take appropriate precautionary measures. Whereas pessimists on the other hand may be tempted to never leave the house or send their children to school again. And of course, neither strategy seems like a suitable recipe for wellbeing. Whereas realists take measures based on risk based assessments and scientific understanding of the disease.   The Institute of Leadership Management, head of research, policy and standards, Kate Cooper said. This is all about the pros and cons of a growth mind-set. Our guest on episode 12, Marc Effron of The Total Strategy Group. A couple of years ago, argued that advocating for a growth mind-set was only appropriate when speaking to children and even Carol Dweck who originated the term now recognizes that no one has ever got a hundred percent a growth mind-set the entire time. Surely, however, whatever you are thinking now, it is likely to be either a positive thought or somewhat of a negative thought. All of which is derived from our mindset. Guest on episode 23, Ryan Gottfredson said. It is about being more aware of one's mindset and that we are all on a continuum from negative to positive. His extensive research and studies show. Having more of a positive mind-set is more likely than not to unlock greater success in your life, your work and your leadership, and of course, that is also including your positive thinking. That has been The Leadership Hacker New. Please get in touch if you have any news, insights or stories.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: Today guest on the show is Patrick Ungashick. He is the CEO of NAVIX Consultants. He is a business exit strategist, speaker, and author of two books, Dance In The End Zone and Tale Of Two Owners, Patrick, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Patrick Ungashick: Thank you, Steve. It is my pleasure to be with you today.   Steve Rush: Really excited to get into the stories that you have about how people go about preparing for exiting their businesses. But before we do that and for the listeners tuning in today, perhaps you give us a little bit of your backstory as to how you ended up doing what you do?   Patrick Ungashick: Sure, it was a circuitous path. I am here in the States, of course, and I graduated with an undergraduate degree in political science, which qualified me for very few things to do and I got lucky. I joined a business at the time was led by my father but I did not work directly with him. I was apprentice to an investment banker who has since passed away. His name was Peter Collins, but he was a wonderful boss and wonderful mentor and I spent the first six or seven years of my career doing mid-market investment banking in New York City. And it was amazing experience because I was on a small team and Steve, as you know, when you're on a small team, you get to see and touch everything. And I saw an awful lot of very fine companies and an awful with owners who are typically very fine and certainly hardworking people. Struggle to ultimately exit successfully and that made a very big impression on me from the beginning of my career.   Steve Rush: It is a common problem, isn't it? With that mid-sized business where you have grown a successful business over a period of time. You have created wealth and capital in the business, but it is then what to do with it next. I guess, right?   Patrick Ungashick: That is right. For many owners of small to midsize companies, it is life's passion, it is a calling, it is something rightly, immensely proud of doing. And if they have success with that business success. Typically comes personal financial success. However, most of that financial success is tied up in the company and the emotional and psychological desire to make sure that the company survives and continues one day is incredibly important, just as important as the financial outcome. And all of that is wrapped up in how do I exit successfully one day. Yet most owners will exit only once and they only have one shot at success and it can be a very challenging, and uncertain and disorienting position to be in.   Steve Rush: And particularly if you have, been immersed in that business for many, many years, and it has been your life's work. There's lots of emotional attachments that come with that too, Isn't there?   Patrick Ungashick: Huge emotional attachments. If you have, two human children and you are a business owner. You typically thinking you have three kids and the third child, I mean, just look at the simple math. The third child gets more of your time over the course of your life than the first two do because you are working on it minimum five days a week and probably even more than that. It is a wonderful source of emotional sense of pleasure and achievement. Most business leaders define themselves and measure their accomplishments by what they achieve in their company and you have all of those emotions swirling and wrapped up. And as we get closer to exit, and as that event draws near in life, then you've got all those challenges and all that uncertainty yet all that desire to make sure that you go out the right way.   Steve Rush: And of course, if you are a CEO of a public limited company, you don't have that emotional attachment. You just have the attachment. That is the financial one, which comes with the share certificates, right?   Patrick Ungashick: That is right, A mean. Just look in the news media, you will see routinely CEOs and other C level leaders in publicly traded companies, talk about succession planning, which is an incredibly important responsibility. Succession planning I define as being the orderly transfer of leadership of an organization and that is the mandate of every business leader. Owners and leaders of privately held companies have to think about succession planning, the orderly transfer of leadership. In addition, they have to think about the orderly transfer of ownership as well, and so you've got a double responsibility there and sometimes they flow well together and sometimes they don't. So yes, absolutely. Publicly traded CEOs won't talk about exit planning. They will focus on that succession piece when the time draws near. The leaders and owners of privately held, Companies have to think about both realms.   Steve Rush: Right, now you have been helping organizations and businesses for over 20 years with their strategy to leave an exit and pass on that legacy.   Patrick Ungashick: Close to 30 at this point, yes.   Steve Rush: Oh, it is 30, Wow, okay. Excellent, as an exit strategy, when is the right time to start thinking about exit?   Patrick Ungashick: Day one but that rarely happens. Stephen Covey his well-regarded well-known book, 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. Points out that you have to begin with the end in mind and those five, six words sum it up rather nicely. The reality is most entrepreneurs, especially if they are a founder, you are not thinking about your exit on day one. You are excited about launching. You are excited about growing, you are excited about the customer needs that you are going to innovate, and you are going to meet and you are going to dominate your market and so on. It is natural that that thought is not part of the fabric of analysis and the picture when you first launch your company. But the reality is, that the longer that this topic is delayed, the longer that the business leader waits to start to think about exit. What happens is for that business owner and leader who is rarely, or maybe never thinking about exit, you end up making all of those strategic decisions about how you are going to grow your company without the backdrop in mind, without knowing where that is going to take you. The ideal scenario is on day one at the practical realistic scenario in the real world is when you get to your final 10 years and maybe even absolutely your final 5 years, if you're not very conscious around your exit goals and what your intentions are, you run the risk of getting yourself in trouble. I mean, five years, as you know, Steve, five years flies by. Five years is sixty months and so when you are at that point, absolutely. If you're not already consciously planning and strategizing and laying out the tactics for how you're going to exit, it'll come back to limit your success.   Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree and if you bring it into real terms, you've got 60 board meetings technically, or that kind of philosophy of thinking will start to help focus the mind on the right things, the right behaviours and the right strategy, I guess.   Patrick Ungashick: Absolutely, you've got 60 board meetings. If your exit strategy is to sell, which is not the only exit strategy, but the most common one. A typical midmarket company takes about 9 to 12 months to sell and that is starting from the point where you are shaking hands with your banking team. So now, you are actually down to 48 months of prep time, and your buyers typically going to want to see 5 years of financial history, so the month of revenue and profits that you are booking right now is actually going to be viewed by your potential buyer, 5 years from now, so you are right, 5 years out. I mean, it literally is the final stretch of the race.   Steve Rush: And of course your buyers or your partners. However you decide to exit are looking for much more than 5 years of strategic thinking and planning too, because they are buying something aren't they, that they want to inherit, grow and develop, so they get a return on their investment? And I wonder, Patrick, you're having that lens. Do you often notice people in that space become less strategic in their thinking as they start to leave or exit or more?   Patrick Ungashick: No, you are under, that is a great question Steve. You are under pressure to do things that you would not normally consider doing, or you would look through a different lens if exit wasn't on the immediate horizon. I will give you for an example. The classic scenario is perhaps I've got a sales team of a half, a dozen people, but I don't have a dedicated sales leader, chief sales officer, vice president sales. Should I go hire that person? If I am in the last few years before I am planning an exit. That person might have an annual salary wages cost of a few hundred thousand dollars or more, well, how much sales do I need to grow in order to justify that expense? Because on the surface, the immediate impact of that type of investment in expanding my senior team is a reduction in our profits. Is a reduction in our earnings, which is a reduction in company value, I need time depending upon my sales cycle, and my market and what my company does. I need time for the sales to recover and grow higher in order to justify that expense. If my time horizon for owning and leading my company is 10 years, 20 years or more, I might not even think about that decision. It might be a no brainer because I am pursuing the growth of my company but if I am anticipating selling the company, maybe sometime in the next two, three years, that decision becomes that much harder. And it's much more difficult to be strategic because I have the tactical to use your very appropriate word. I have the tactical pressure on the near term on maximizing earnings, so you are right. It pulls the leadership, the owner and the company in different directions as you are getting very close to that. What I like to call that one-yard line.   Steve Rush: Yeah, is a really fascinating approach. Isn't it? Because I wonder if that deadline of exit was not there. You would make different bets. You would make different decisions because you are still in that growth phase and I suspect as an exit strategic, do you find yourself having lots of conversations with exiting executives who are going through that push and pull kind of thinking?   Patrick Ungashick: Yes, another classic example is many companies small to mid-market size companies struggle with the issue of customer concentration. I have one, or maybe just a very small number of customers, or clients or accounts that account for 20, 30, 50% or more of our revenue. I mean, that is a very common scenario where businesses get launched. They get launched on the back of one key customer relationship and in the beginning years, you are excited by those opportunities and the customer becomes such a large portion of your revenue and your profits, because you're doing great work for that customer. Delivering superior products and services and therefore that customer is throwing more and more opportunities, your way. That is exciting, that's rewarding. Again, that is how many companies are birthed and grow to such great success. If you're in the homeward stretch, that's all danger because a buyer is going to come along and in most situations see great risk associated with such a significant amount of the revenue and or profits being tied to one, or maybe a very small number of customer relations. So just like, you said, if I am contemplating my exit and I am working to maximize the value of my company to my buyer or a successor. I now have an incentive as healthy of a manner as possible dilute the size and the impact of that one key account, that one key customer and try and grow the rest of the business even faster, which is a challenge in most situations in of itself.   Steve Rush: I wonder how many executives even have public companies have that mindset that you have just described about how they can drive value and if I guess if there was a direct correlation between a privately owned company and a publicly owned company. They are very similar thinking in activities that go on, but the mind-set shifts somewhat, doesn't it?   Patrick Ungashick: It does and there is that. You use the word, I believe a few minutes ago, tension and the tension applies here. I mean, growing a business and creating value often move arm and arm together, but not always. Clearly, a company that is a $500 million dollar company is in most situations without question, more valuable than a $50 million dollar company. So growth and size creates a value impact unto itself. However, growth and value are separate in a number of other characteristics. I just mentioned customer concentration. If that growth is largely achieved through a concentrated customer base, the growth might be inevitable, clearer, it is measurable, but that value increase might not be there and certainly not in proportion because of the risk that you are creating. Another challenge that is common, more common in privately held companies, but not uniquely so. Is the issue of we call owner dependency, Steve.   Steve Rush: Yep.   Patrick Ungashick: And what that is all about is. How much can this company not just survive, but actually thrive without the current owner playing a day to day role in operations, customer relations, vendor relations, and so on. A lot of small to mid-market size companies, very profitable, very successful companies will struggle if the owner or current owners are removed from the picture. So again, the growth might be there. You might be able to see the growth measured year by year, but that value is maybe not going to be there as soon as that owner who is such a key employee is removed from the picture.   Steve Rush: Right.   Patrick Ungashick: Now, that is a much more common scenario in private companies, but it is not unique to private companies. I mean, we have a wonderful business story going on right now with Tesla and Elon Musk, who is such an influential and impactful individual but at this point, where we are in the development of Tesla. Would you buy Tesla stock if Elon Musk was not in the picture tomorrow?   Steve Rush: Right.   Patrick Ungashick: A lot of investors probably would not because that publicly traded company is heavily dependent on its owner. I should say its Chief Executive at, this point in time.   Steve Rush: Can have a massive impact on the valuation of the company as well, can't it?   Patrick Ungashick: Massive, yes. I mean, you look at any industry and when you do a little bit of research, it is common. It is the norm that you will see, there's typically a range of multiples and multiples of earnings, but sometimes a multiple revenue, but there's a range of multiples that most often apply as guideposts in that industry. It could be six to nine times earnings, or five to ten or whatever the numbers are. Well, who determines who gets the six and who gets the nine? Or who determines who gets the low end or who gets the high end of those guideposts that may apply in industry. And the answer is typically not size driven because that's already factored into the guideposts. The answers is typically these other elements that drive value. One could argue independent of growth. We have listed two or three of them already, customer concentration, owner dependency. How compelling is that brand compared to its peer group? There is a number of elements. That you could point to and say, they may not directly drive growth, but they absolutely drive value, especially in sale.   Steve Rush: Sure, given your experience, Patrick, what are the key components that make for a successful exit?   Patrick Ungashick: I think it starts with the owner or owners if it is an ownership team. Having clarity around their goals, most owners have some aspirations. They can very quickly list. I want to reach a certain amount of financial reward. I want the company to survive without me. I want the culture to be preserved and the employees to be treated fairly. Those are rather universally held aspirations, but you need to probably be more specific in your goals and your outcomes in order to be able to implement the strategies or tactics they're going to achieve your variation in your interpretation of those aspirations. That is part of it. Then the other part of it is getting the company ready. Getting a company ready for exit, especially if it is going to be sale to an outside third party buyer. Is a very different process. Than just running and leading a well-managed company.   We talked about some of the issues already that drive value sometimes independently of growth. There is getting a company ready for buyers. There is the level of financial preparation that is involved in preparing the company's books and records and financial reports for buyers. That's a level of discipline and diligence that many privately held companies don't have, especially if their buyer buyers potentially going to be a publicly traded company, which is going to have a much more rigorous approach to financial underwriting, that deal. So it goes back to, we talked about when, you know, if you're down to five years, Steve you can see that there's a lot of work to do condensed in that five years on top of just keeping the company going and keeping the company growing and growing profitably,   Steve Rush: Now we both share the backgrounds of coming from investment banking and I was always taught on day one of fund manager school, never time the market, there is never a right time to invest. If everything stacks up, go. How does that square off though? When you are exiting, is there a right time to sell or exit?   Patrick Ungashick: Yes, I think there is. What they taught us in school is correct, but we have to talk about what market are we timing. If I am thinking about the publicly traded markets and opportunities as an investor, I would tend to agree with that statement. You don't time the market. You just go, when you are talking about a privately held company and anticipating when is the right time to exit, it is a Venn diagram, we've got three circles and we want to ideally target what happens in the middle of the overlap. On one of those circles, am I ready individually? Personally? The second of those circles is, is my company ready? Which we have talked about some of the issues there, and then the third circle is, is the market ready? And timing the market when you're anticipating exiting from a privately held company is hugely important.   I mean, Steve, as we all know, here we are, and we are dealing with a worldwide global pandemic that has unevenly impacted different countries and different communities in different ways.   Steve Rush: Definitely.   Patrick Ungashick: Here in the States, economically for most companies, most mid-market companies, this would be a disastrous time to try and exit at this point in time because of the noise, the distraction, the very difficult economic environment that's here in the States right now. Then you can't make that blanket statement across all industries and all situations, but I certainly can generalize and say for most companies, that would be true.   Steve Rush: Sure.   Patrick Ungashick: And you look at, you look at the global pattern of recessions and the periods of economic growth. They tend to fall in 6 to 10 year cycles. And when you look at valuations and this is true for North America, this is true for Europe. This is true for Australia. I know when you tend to look at market cycles, what we typically see is multiples will rise and fall by anywhere from 25 to 40% Steve. Depending upon whose data you're looking at, based upon the economic cycle, meaning when I'm in a recessionary environment, most industries, most of the time see multiples that are 25 to 40% lower than what they are likely to be four or five years later when we've moved past that recessionary cycle and we're moving into a sustained growth situation. Now, if you try and time it down to the day, down to the quarter, you're going to drive yourself crazy and it will be self-defeating, but broad macro-economic trends, a good banker can be paying attention into those trends and can see that multiples are strong and buyers are frothy to use the term we all learned. And in normal times in healthy economic times say, okay, this is a better time to sell.   Very quickly, here is the problem though Steve, is that in those higher growth, good economic times, what is the company doing? It is probably making money. It's got a great pipeline. The team has got high morale. We are hiring people. Customers are happy. You are making a lot of money. It is profitable. That is fun. That is exciting. That is why business owners signed up to be a business owner.   Steve Rush: Right.   Patrick Ungashick: That is the time that most owners don't want out, that's the time when they're having too much fun. It is when you know, I have a lot of phone calls on a typical month where I would hear, especially pre COVID-19, I'll hear business owners go, you know, making a lot of money. I am having a lot of fun. Like I said, the pipeline looks great. Why would I want to exit now? And my response often is, well, do you want to wait until the pipeline is thin? And the margins are down and you're breaking even, and morale is tight, and you know, the team is really tense, is that when you're going to want to exit? And you can hear the light bulb go off and go, yeah, that's probably not the right way to time the market, is it? No, it is not.   Steve Rush: It feels counterintuitive to leave something that is successful, and fun and energetic, but absolutely from a valuation perspective, it is probably the right time   Patrick Ungashick: So much, yeah. The emotionally the time that you will least want to exit is probably the time that you should. And the time that you probably are most emotionally interested in exiting is probably the time you should not.   Steve Rush: Do you often experience Patrick in the work that you do now, those leaders of these organizations that have built their life's work or most over a period of time, do you ever find that they also don't sell because there is this fear of what happens next? What happens after the life and the work that they have created for themselves?   Patrick Ungashick: Yeah, it's an issue that does not get the level of attention that it should. We call that issue life after exit. What am I going to do with my time and my talent and my skills and my capacities after I exit from my company? And in my experience, Steve, very few entrepreneurs seek to do nothing after they exit from their primary company. There is nothing wrong with a life of pure recreation. I am certainly not opposed to that in any way, but that is just not, what a lot of people wish to do. A lot of people see themselves doing something else and when you exit from your company and you don't have something else to occupy your time and your talent in a way that's engaging and rewarding. All kinds of negative things happen, and I have seen it. You begin to doubt. Why did I exit the first place? Did I make a huge mistake? And it's a mistake you can't undo. The risk there is either not having something else meaningful and engaging to do, or having something that you think is going to be meaningful and engaging to do, but you start doing it for a little while and you realize as a client once told me years ago, what was fun as a hobby stinks as a job.   Steve Rush: Oh, I like that.   Patrick Ungashick: And so sometimes, the mistake that gets made is I think I know what I want to do in life after exit. I do it for a little while and I realize it is not my next life calling and I end up still being stuck again. And it really doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank. If you wake up every day without something rewarding, and interesting and engaging to do. That is probably not going to be chopped up as a happy exit.   Steve Rush: Sure, purpose does not really cost a thing, does it? Having a real sense of purpose is void of money and void of other things.   Patrick Ungashick: Yes, absolutely.   Steve Rush: You created a couple of books. The first was Dance In The End Zone and it's real a playbook to help business owners with their active. What was the inspiration for you putting pen to paper?   Patrick Ungashick: True story is the inspiration was my coach and mentor at the time being frustrated with me. I remember very distinctly in our having a bite to eat. I thought I was talking with my coach to get coaching advice and I turns out, I think with a little bit of hindsight, I was probably whining in that moment, but I was telling him that, you know, at the time there's, and this is probably still true today. There is thousands of books out there on how to lead or grow a business. But at that time, there was only maybe a couple dozen about how to exit from a company and I wouldn't want to admit this in a social setting, but I had bought all of those books, courtesy of Amazon and read most of them, and I walked away disappointed.   My mentor looked at me over lunch and he said, well, why don't you go write your own damn books? And I walked away chagrined and I walked away not like being challenged. And I didn't tell anybody the rest of it, the true story Steve is I didn't tell anybody what I was going to do. I started to poll together. I had written a few articles for some publications, and I started to splice together and I got to about 30,000 words or so, and realize that I had to finish. It changed the direction of my company. It changed the direction of me as a speaker, because when you write a book and I encourage anybody who has not done it to think about the project, whether you are a writer or not. Simply because what it forces you to do is, it forces you to organize and synthesize and arrange your thoughts in a way that I think is much more clear, much more directive.   The book became an in many ways, a resource for my team to grow. It became the book we all work from, the playbook; if you will that, we all work from, so writing that first book, Dance In The End Zone. It is still very important to us from our marketing standpoint and I am pleased whenever I meet a business owner, who has read it and says it has been helpful. But I would do it all over. I would write a first book all over again, just from the internal benefits, if you will.   Steve Rush: And those thoughts that you write down can then turn into tools that you use every day, right?   Patrick Ungashick: Absolutely, yeah. Our marketing team still extracts articles through the book and white papers and slices and dices it, and we are actually working on an updated edition that will come out later this year, right now, as we speak. So it's an invaluable exercise for anyone who has even, you know, part of your job description is thinking and thought leadership, even if it never gets published. I think it is an incredible exercise.   Steve Rush: Of course yours did and so too did The Tale Of Two Owners, and I suspect is that to help people that cone an organization or cone a business, worked through some of their conflicts, goals and outcomes?   Patrick Ungashick: It is. We did some market research as part of my first book, A Dance In The End Zone and the market research had a few nuggets in there. Were incredibly surprising to us and this is a survey of North American privately held companies. The biggest learnings that came out of that research was, about 70% of privately held companies in North are owned by more than one individual. I have never seen any data for Europe, but I suspect it is probably similar.   Steve Rush: Right.   Patrick Ungashick: We went back, and looked at our client base hundreds of businesses over the years and found that it matched up perfectly. And I still wouldn't have a chance to survey if I'm speaking to a room of 300 business owners, pre COVID-19, I'll say, raise your hand if you have a business partner and typically about 7 out of 10 hands go up in the air.   And that's incredibly important because when you share ownership in a company with one or more other individuals, or maybe an organization like an investment company. Now all these things that you have to think about and address and plan for, and act on to be ready to exit. Now you are sharing that journey with somebody else and they may or may not have the same goals. Very often they don't, just because two different people, two or more different people. And so, yes, I ended up writing A Tale Of Two Owners. Exactly, as you said. As far as I know Steve. It is the only book in existence. That is specifically a resource for how business partners, should approach these issues as a team. As a partnership and how do they explore these issues together and how do they answer them in a way that is collaborative and maintains that alignment, which is probably so fundamental to their business success in the first place.   Steve Rush: Definitely so, in my experience, prior to do what I am doing now. Helping business owners that have different perspectives, different families, different outcomes, whilst they share the same goals and ambitions for the organization, they come from a different place, a different reason, and therefore the same reasons that they grow the business and want to achieve things, will definitely then play out when they come into exit, wont it?   Patrick Ungashick: Absolutely, we are working with a client right now. That's a large company based here in the United States, three owners. I will keep the example very quick and simple. Let's just say they all own a third, a third, a third and they're in the advanced stages of the investment banking process. They are likely to sell for a very successful number. They all have aspirations. They all have multiple things they want to see happen to this company that they have successfully created together. One of the owners, however, the primary drive is. What is going to be the price? How much are we going to sell for? What is the value we are going to walk away? Not that he does not care about other things, but that is the top of his mind.   Another the second, so let's just say the second or the third owners is about how are my people going to be treated? I mean, we've got hundreds of employees here. We want to make sure that they are treated fairly. It is not that he does not care about price, but the top of his mind and his priorities is what is going to be the impact of the team, and then the third owner just happens to be the youngest of the three and that individual wants to stay involved with the organization going forward. And he cares about money and he cares about the team, but he probably top of his mind is, what's this going to be an impact in him personally in his life, because he's probably got another 20, 30 working in front of him? So here, you've got three partners who share an immense bond with one another. They are very strongly rooted in their financials. They have a wonderful relationship. They built a very successful company, yet every turn and every development in the sale process, we are looking at each issue through three different lenses and they already know that it is beginning to tug and pull on them and go in different directions. And that's not a loss of personal respect, or it's not an erosion of their relationship with one another. Its three different shareholders, three different owners who are trying to row the boat in slightly different direction.   Steve Rush: Yeah, It is fascinating stuff, Isn't? Really fascinating stuff and thank you for sharing some of your insights as to what you do. This part of the show Patrick is where I turn the leadership lens on you, so you are a successful entrepreneur and CEO of your own businesses too. I want to hack into your leadership mind now and find out. What your top three leadership hacks would be?   Patrick Ungashick: I had fun with this. This is a great exercise, and I have enjoyed listening to others that you have worked with, share their leadership hacks. Mine came to me surprisingly quickly. Maybe that is a sign of a simple approach on my part, so my first one is. If you don't know what to do or say, ask a question. There has been great minds out there who have written entire books and Ted talks about the power of asking questions. My specific hack is if you are stuck, if you literally just don't know what to do in a particular moment, just keep asking questions. Usually that helps reveal the direction to go or the decision that needs to be made, so it is a trigger response. It is a default position I like to take.   My second is I didn't invent this question by any means but it's one that I find myself using often at both from my companies and also with the clients we work with. Is if I had no fear, what would I do? Or I'd like to substitute we in there. If we had no fear as a team, as an organization, what would we do? I think too many individuals and too many teams don't stop and let that question settle and really wrestle with it and explore. It changes thinking and expands thinking. It changes paradigms, so that is my second one.   And then my third, I know the source of the third. It comes from Jim Collins book, Good To Great, and my third leadership hack is a stop doing list. Most companies, leaders, leadership teams get pretty heavily bogged down with identifying those things that they need to do more of or add onto their plate or expand. And I think very few organizations or teams spend any time specifically and intentionally discussing what they need to stop doing, which is hugely important because if you can stop doing things, you create bed with, you create capacity, you increase focus with all the wonderful insights that Jim Collins shares in his book. It is one that I find myself utilizing on a pretty regular basis is just to stop and ask myself or ask my team or ask the client, Hey, what's on the stop doing list at this point in time.   Steve Rush: That is great hack Patrick, and actually, I think the reasons why people don't have much of a stop list. Is that fear of what will people think? What will people feel? It means I have invested all this time and energy doing something that might not be giving me the value, so they are super hacks. Thank you for sharing.   Patrick Ungashick: Sure.   Steve Rush: So the next part we are going to tap into is what we affectionately call Hack to Attack, so this is where something in your world in the past has not worked out in the way that you intended it to. And as a result of that, though, you've used that experience as something that's now positive in your life. So what would be your hand to attack?   Patrick Ungashick: Well, I mean, I've got a long list. If this is a list of leadership mistakes. I mean, how long has your podcast Steve? It was a variation on the first of the three hacks that you asked me to share, which is, if you don't know what to do, ask a question. When I first took over, I've got several companies and when I first took over as CEO of my first company I had a lot to learn on the job, and I was relying heavily on ask good question. And there was a moment where we were going through this, there was a recession going on. We were going through a difficult economic time and my controller came in to see me about a very difficult financial question. And as we were wrestling with it, she was getting more and more frustrated and exasperated and she turned to me in the middle of this meeting and she said, and she said something like Patrick, don't ask me another question for Pete's sake, I just need to know the answer. Tell me what to do and I think that the Hack to Attack is. There are moments to be listening, absolutely and there are moments to be asking questions of yourself and of your team.   There also are moments where got to step up and make the decision and even be directive. Teams need confident leadership. Even if you are not as confident as you would like to be, they still need a direction. They still need the decision then sometime, so there is a balance act there. Sure, we need to ask questions on a regular basis as a matter of habit and a response to situations, but there is also moments where I learned in that moment that there are times to just make a decision. Tell your team what you are going to do and get everyone alignment around it going forward and it is an art, right? It is not a science. But that's, my hack attack is sometimes I may be default too much to asking questions when there are moments where you've got to say, this is what the answer is, let's go forward.   Steve Rush: Yes, so right. Even this week, I was having a coaching conversation with one of my clients who was a very senior executive director of a fortune 500 company and yet the situation still came down to, I need to be collaborative. I need to be engaging. Yes, you do but sometimes you also just need to say, I think we should do these things.   Patrick Ungashick: Yes, yeah, and how do you read the situation? How do you read the moment? How do you the faces of the team? In order to know when you are at one of those situations, and it is a balancing act. I have made a mistake at that moment and we were all going to continue to make mistakes, but you have got to be intentional about feeling your way through it.   Steve Rush: Definitely so, and then the last thing we would like to do with you, Patrick, is do a bit of time travel. And this part of the show, we're going to ask you to jump into time machine, go back and bump into Patrick at 21 and you have a chance to give him some advice. What would it be?   Patrick Ungashick: Obey your instincts. The phrase that I think most of us fall back on is trust your instincts. Obey is a certain amount of.   Steve Rush: It is like that.   Patrick Ungashick: A certain amount more rigid disciplined response and this also an actionable. You are supposed to take action and as I mentioned, you asked me at the beginning, how I got started and I have got lucky. I must freely admit in the beginning of my career. I had aspirations around doing different things, but I did not act on those instincts. I did not obey my instincts and it is not just about, it would be fun to go back and have that conversation with ourselves to 21, wouldn't it? But I think it also applies. I know it applies for me too today. If I find myself struggling with a decision and struggling with a course of action as a business leader, very often, if I remember in the moment to stop and ask, am I obeying my instincts? If I am struggling, I probably am not. I am probably guilty of forgetting that one, so especially in the beginning of a career, back at age 21. When there is so much flexibility and so much good uncertainty, about where you can go with your time and your talents and your career, just obey your instincts and go chase whatever you want to chase at that point in time, the rest of life will figure itself out.   Steve Rush: Love that, super stuff. Thanks Patrick.   Patrick Ungashick: Thank you Steve.   Steve Rush: As folk have been listening to this, I suspect they will be wanting to know how they can get hold of a bit more information and insight about you, your firms, and what is you're doing at the moment. Where's the best place we can direct our listeners to, to find out a bit more about you.   Patrick Ungashick: Thank you so much, so our company that does the exit planning work is called NAVIX, N-A-V-I-X, as in navigate towards your exit and our website is navixconsultants with an S on the end. navixconsultants.com, you can find information about my two books there. We have dozens, hundreds, actually of videos and articles and a couple of dozen white papers and eBooks, all of which to help business owners and leaders understand these issues and get educated on the importance and how to prepare for exit. I think Steve, probably the best place to start; because there is just a lot of content on the website is an eBook that we created a couple of years ago. That is probably our most popular you book. It is called Your Last Five Years, and it lays out what do business owners need to be thinking about and doing and tackling during that final 60 months, it's free. People just need to log into the site and download the eBook, Your Last Five Year.   Steve Rush: And our listeners will also find links to all of those sits and all of the resources that we've just spoken about in our show notes as well.   Patrick Ungashick: Wonderful.   Steve Rush: So Patrick, whether I think our listeners are either in the space of growing, developing, or considering exit for their business, they will get loads out of listening to the show. So from my perspective, I just wanted to say, thanks ever so much for sharing your insights, your knowledge and your leadership hacks with us on The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Patrick Ungashick: Thank you, Steve a delight to be with you across the pond today. And I've, enjoyed becoming a subscriber to your podcast as well. Some wonderful material you are putting out. It is my honour and pleasure to be with you today.   Steve Rush: Thank you, Patrick, really appreciate that.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker!  

Marc Effron is the author of the Harvard Business Review Publishing books One Page Talent Management and 8 Steps to High Performance. Marc helps the world's biggest brands and most successful companies elevate the quality and impact of their talent and has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Influencers in HR globally. You can learn so much from Marc including: The science behind why people succeed and fail. Why big goals drive bigger results. How to “maximise your fit” with your company. Its ok to “Fake it” and be a success. The relationships that you have will either accelerate or decelerate your career. Follow us and explore our social media tribe from our Website: https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Find out more about Marc and his work below: Marc's Website: https://www.talentstrategygroup.com Follow Marc on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/effron/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalentStrategyG 8 Steps to High Performance https://www.the8steps.com   Full Transcript Below:----more---- Introduction   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you. On today's show, I am excited to be speaking with Marc Effron. He is the president of the Talent Strategy Group. He has co-authored One Page Talent Management and also authored The Eight Steps to High Performance. Before we get to speak to Marc, it is The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, many world leaders, politicians and businesses are coming under immense pressure from individuals and business owners who hold power, to relax safe distancing and quarantine measures, even though the signs say it's not quite time yet. How many of us have given permission or been asked to do things differently and then felt that weight of anxiety, nervousness and pressure within us, above us and around us, and particularly when the grounds full of noise is concrete to how we feel as leaders. So what will it take to hold our nerve when there is no roadmap for knowing where we're going or knowing how we're even going to get there? And how can we be sure that doing things differently bring better outcomes when there's no quick fix? The leadership problem here is if we give up too soon under pressure, we are likely to revert to old type, old behaviours and learn less. Of course, we will only know if we did the right thing in the future. So how will we hold our nerve in times like this? There's an old saying, “Aim for the moon and you might land in the stars”, well, that really applies now. We have been dealing with emotion and managing crisis and recognized our world and our businesses has changed. Science, Politics, Business and Economics have given us real guidance as to how we need to run and think about our businesses, and that should have informed and helped design our business plan. Oh, and if you haven't got a plan, but you just riding the waves here - get off your surfboard, look out to sea and see the next wave! Strategic thinking and planning can give us the foundations for success. Your plan should have strong foundations in which to work from to help you hold your nerve about doing the right thing and not necessarily doing things right. Because we are all learning and new behaviours, new attributes and new ways of working. So pivoting a plan is absolutely okay, but not having a plan, will see you washed out to sea metaphorically. Key here - watch out for a groupthink! This will be a massive distraction for us and a massive, de-railer. We will be faced with things like, “everybody else is doing X we should do X”, “most people doing Y, we should do Y”. Don't do anything that's not right for you and your business, don't be swayed by groupthink. There are three things here that will help you hold enough: Number one, Communication. Socialize and validate your thinking with the widest and diverse group of people that can help you avoid that groupthink and group action. Number two, Evaluate daily. Are you on track? Do you need to stop what you are doing? Do you need to pivot? Number three, Repetition. Repeat, repeat, repeat - creates new habits and new helpful routines in the way that you are working for the future. Whatever happens next, hold your nerve because your Leadership BarometerÔ is on show here. This is guiding the behaviours and actions of your team and your organization, and you may not even be aware that you have a Leadership BarometerÔ , but you do. You are the weather forecast for your business. That has been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have news, insights, ideas you think could be helpful for our listeners. Get in touch with us through our social media sites.   Start of Interview Steve Rush: On today's show, we have Marc Efforn. He is the president of the Talent Strategy Group and that's author of two Harvard Business books. One Page Talent Management and Eight Steps to High Performance. Marc, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast. Marc Effron: Steve, very happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Steve Rush: So you started out as a Yale graduate and after a number of different roles, ended up becoming the president of one of the world's leading talent strategy firms, tell us a little bit about that journey, Marc?  Marc Effron: Sure, so I will give you that brief history but let's even start before Yale. I had a very different life before that. I think what influenced a lot of what I do today, I learned there, so before I went to graduate school, I had experience as a congressional staff assistant and a political consultant. And learning a lot about influence and power in those roles was critically important. And I had no concept of big business when I got to business school at Yale, and so I think maybe it was helpful that I went in without any perspective about how companies operated. I got a lot of the raw material when I went to business school and then at business school really found out about this thing called organizational behaviour. And love the science around how people succeed and apply that in both consulting environments and corporate environments over the past 20 plus years and came to the realization that a lot of organizations that didn't manage talent well and that a lot of consulting firms didn't provide great advice about how to manage talent well. And so wrote that first book that you mentioned, One Page Talent Management as a way of saying, I think there is a better way of doing this and decided to put my money where my mouth was and start my firm, The Talent Strategy Group, about 11 years ago. Now, based on that book and luckily, things have grown. The firm has grown well since then, and that brings us to where we are today. A firm that helps some of the world's largest and most complex and successful organizations to manage talent and more effectively.  Steve Rush: And what do you think it is, sits behind talent? Is there a kind of a golden nugget? What would be the one thing that you would call out that sits at the core of managing talent? Marc Effron: I don't know if I am smart enough to boil it down to one thing, but I do think we start with the perspective that better quality talent delivers better results. If we can kind of agree on that point. The rest is simply execution and I think that is the challenge that we face in many organizations, is that we in the HR field sometimes grossly overcomplicate what it means to build better quality talent. And if we're going to start at that kind of the pinnacle, the discussion, do we agree? Steve, moreso, do you agree that better quality talent delivers better results? Oh, yeah, of course we do - Great, can we agree on what better quality talent looks like? Not physically, but now what are the capabilities, skills, mind-sets that better quality talent needs to have in our particular organization? So not looking for a universal truth, but at the Steven Mark Company. What are the three things that are going to differentiate better quality talent? And we agree on that. Oh yeah, there are A, B and C. Cool. Well, let's figure out how we can build more talent that demonstrates those three capabilities. So we think about what really differentiates kind of great talent or organizations who build great talent, it is fairly linear. It is that series of steps. Do we agree that better quality talent delivers better results? Yes, we do. Great, do we understand the few things that will differentiate better quality talent? Yes. Great, then how do we get more of that better quality talent into our organization more quickly? Steve Rush: And of course, each organization will have varying different degrees of different things, and I guess that's what keeps you so busy and so informed because everything is very different in terms of that differential behaviour as well?  Marc Effron: Yeah, absolutely and I think the key is not necessarily that there are a million different behaviours that will allow people to be successful at work. But in our organization, what are the few things that really matter? Because at the end of the day, organizations are both very similar and very unique. They are very similar in that people in organizations tend to behave like people in organizations so there are some universal truths we know about things like if we set big goals, people will perform better or if we work on engagement, they will stay more connected to the firm. But firms are also very different in that the three things that you need at Steve Co right now to succeed might be very different than the three things we need that Mark Co right now. Can we get clear about what those few most powerful, most differentiating elements are and ensure we are aligning everything we do around having more talent that has more of those few things. Steve Rush: Got it. It makes loads of sense. No, we share a very simple principle that I saw in your latest book and your principle was, “focus on what you can change and ignore the rest”. I think that is just absolutely brilliant, but what was it that was the trigger point for you to writing your second book. The Eight Steps to High Performance? Marc Effron: Sure. Well, I was probably two years ago now, maybe even more, my editor came to me and said, Hey, Marc, we think it is time that you wrote another book, and I said, thank you. I don't want to write another book. There are plenty of books out there already. Thanks very much. And she said, well, we actually think that there might be some room for another book on how people can be higher performers at work that takes this science based simplicity approach that you introduced in One Page Talent Management, and of course, appealing to my vanity is always a very good way to get me to do something. And I thought, well, if there is room in the book market place, where is that room found? What can I do differently in a book that others have not done? And I thought to myself, well, a lot of books actually don't focus on what's proven to be true. They are based on opinions or stories. A lot of books are written by very smart people. Professors, consultants, but not necessarily people who have had to manage and lead in the corporate world, and a lot of books are about one topic area, so they will tell you how to be more emotionally intelligent or know how to focus on your strengths but what they don't do is integrate. Well, here is all the advice that you may hear. Here is what has really proven, here are the few things that matter. And I thought, well, there probably is a gap in those three areas. So could I write a book that actually said what really matters? What can you focus on? That is proven to be true. What should you ignore? Because either not changeable or not easily changeable. Then practically exactly what should you do? And I thought, you know what? One of the things that we don't do with new university grads or anybody entering the workplace is just tell them exactly that. Here are the few things that you can focus on that are going to guaranteed to make you a higher performer at work and that you should simply do as much of as you can, and here are a bunch of things that you just can't do anything about, so don't worry about them. Worry about executing on the few things that are actually proven to make you a higher performer. So the focus on what you can change says there are a lot of things we can change, what the book goes into, what Eight Steps talks about, what are those things? One of the few most powerful things you can do to increase your performance. And then it's very clear about here is the stuff that's going to affect how you perform at work that you probably can't do much about, so stop worrying about that. Steve Rush: So when we leave university and college, there is no blueprint to becoming a highly successful individual at work and I guess The Eight Steps really gives us the foundations for some of those activities. So let's go ahead and step through those eight steps, starting with Big Goals. What was the reason Big Goals featured number one for you? Marc Effron: Sure, and Steve, let me even start with a precursor to The Eight Steps, because what I find is, before we even talk about The Eight Steps, one of the things that maybe isn't as clear in the literature, but it's certainly clear from my years of practice is that the foundation of being a high performer is to have a high performers mind-set. And high performers mind-set says that, if I want to be a high performer, I'm going to recognize that I'm probably going to simply put in more time at work than other people put in. Now, sometimes that very innocuous statement leads to a bit of screaming around. Well, it is not about hours, it is about quality, and I work smart, not hard. Great, but at the end of the day, two equally qualified, equally engaged, equally skilled people are put side by side. One dedicates 40 hours to their task. One dedicates 50 hours to their task. The person who dedicates 50 hours, to their task is likely to either be able to contribute more or learn more, connect more, develop more, do more things in those extra 10 hours a week that are going to quickly add up over the course of a year or two. So high performers mind-set starts with, I recognize all likely need to put in more hours in other people. I recognize that all likely need to sacrifice things that I enjoy because I am going to spend that time on work related activities. Maybe I am not going to go see my favourite sports team as often as I might like to. Maybe in my going to be able to attend to every social event that I would like to attend, there are things that I am going to do that are going to sacrifice, things I might enjoy doing. Spending time with my family because I am going to dedicate some of that time to work and being a higher performer. Finally, third part of that high performer's mind-set. I recognize that performance is always relative. If I hit one hundred twenty percent of my goals this year but Steve hit one hundred forty percent of his goals, and Susan hit one hundred sixty percent of her goals. I might still have exceeded my goals, but I am the lowest performer in the group. Performance is always going to be measured against who does the best, so those things really form that high performer's mind-set that underlies each of these eight steps. Without that mind-set, none of these eight steps are going to work. Steve Rush: That is really neat. Marc Effron: Yeah, and to be honest, that eliminates 75 percent of the folks out there, and I think that is fine. You don't need to be a high performer. People live wonderful lives. They contribute to their communities. They are good brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, without having to be a high performer. But if you want to be a high performer, it's likely that your mind-set needs to incorporate those three elements, let's dig into big goals. Steve Rush: Let's do that. Marc Effron: I read through about 2000 scientific articles to try to understand when I wrote the book. What is actually conclusively proven to be true about individual high performance at work? What is not? And the one factor that came out loud and clear and it wasn't that much of a surprise, was that one of the most conclusively proven pieces of science around what we can do at work to be a higher performer is to set a few big challenging goals. Now, that sounds pretty obvious, but here is the problem. Our consulting firm works with big global companies every day, really smart managers, great HR Resources available to them, and yet in most of those organizations, goal setting is done very poorly. What does the science say about goal setting, and why we should do it better? What it says is that big goals drive bigger results. Just flat out conclusive big goals drive bigger results, so if you are setting a few big stretch goals for yourself, it is very likely you're going to respond to those goals with more effort because we're hard wired to be high performers. If Steve says, Marc, jump a foot in the air, I will give you a dollar, I'm going to jump a foot. If you say two feet, two dollars, I will try that. Three feet, three dollars. I will try that. I'm going to keep responding to that additional challenge you give me with more effort up to the point where either I think, there's not a good relationship between the effort, the rewards, or if I say 4ft four dollars and you say no Marc, still three dollars, Then I probably won't do it. Or if I'm too physically exhausted to complete the task, I won't do it, but except for those two things, the bigger challenge that is given to us, the more effort that we'll respond with. And while more effort isn't always guaranteed to yield more performance, in many cases it is, so big goals drive big results but you can't have 20 big goals. You will kill yourself and that goes to how do we focus on the few things that matter most? That is another challenge a lot of us have. We are very busy. We have many tasks, many activities, and we oftentimes confuse tasks and activities with goals. One trick for your listeners is don't think about goals. Think about promises to your organization. If you had to make your boss or your company three big promises about what you will deliver this year, what would those three big promises be? What are those three big deliverables be? And that might sound like a cute word trick. It has not intended to be it's really intended to shift your mind-set and say we all have goals and we hope we achieve our goals, and sometimes you do. Sometimes we don't, but how many times do you make a promise to someone not intending to fulfil that promise? Steve Rush: And that is that intention and action gap, isn't it? Where we make lots of intentional statements of doing things, but the actions sometimes fall short. Is that goal based in your experience too? Marc Effron: Yeah, absolutely and so the question then is. How do we raise the stakes for ourselves? To say it is not just a goal. I have made an emotional commitment to that goal. So I've made you a promise about what I'm going to do during the year. How do we really elevate that? So it's not just. Oh, yeah, it is on my list of stuff to do. Well, that's likely not going to be anywhere near as motivational as here's a big stretch goal that I've set for myself or that my boss has set for me that I know is going to be challenging a little bit scary and I might need to learn something new or behave in a different way to achieve it. But I know I'm going to get bigger results by setting something that is probably just out of my reach. Steve Rush: That leads us to this second one, which is around behave to perform. What, does that really mean?  Marc Effron: Sure. I mentioned earlier, it would be really nice if we helped every new university grad to understand the few things that are going to matter most in their career. And one of the things that my experience shows most leaders don't hear about until they're mid thirty. Is this concept of leadership derailers, many of your leaders may be familiar with those for those who aren't? Think of leadership derailers as your personality turned up too high. Some of the things that might have made you successful earlier in your career but if you keep doing them or you turn the dial ups, you are doing them even more. They are actually going to backfire on you. Quick example. Let's say that you got early success because you're a brilliant project manager. Everything gets done on time, perfectly executed, no excuses. You pay a lot of attention to the detail. That is great, so you are a successful as a manager. People promote you or you promoted to be a director. You are still focusing on project management. You are really into the details, into the weeds. Stuff needs to get done, needs to get done on time. But you actually have some managers working for you who are supposed to be doing that and they kind of look at you sideways because you're playing around in their area. They kind of wish you would just manage instead, but because you drive good results, company likes that. They make you a vice president, man you are still in the weeds. Dig into those projects and really making sure that everything is perfectly executed. Well, now your peers and your boss are saying, well, I actually need more strategic thinking and more leadership. You need to be actually working with your team on projects and pushing that work down to the appropriate level. That type of factor says things that we do early in career may backfire on us or not be as helpful later in our career. Leadership derailers or exactly that, it might be that there is an element that you are very good at but you do it more frequently than you should, and it becomes something that derails you. Let's take a very practical example. Let's say that you are someone who is very good at building relationships and calling attention to yourself. You are happy to talk about the quality of your work. You think that is the right thing to do to showcase it. Now, that is very helpful to emerge as a leader, so if you are an unknown leader in your organization, one fast way to emerge is to make sure that people know who you are and they know the quality of the work that you're doing, so we'll call it kind of waving your hand around. I want to be noticed. I want to emerge quickly as a leader. The challenge is that behaviour, when you are 24 looks one way. That behaviour when you are 34 looks completely different. Now, it is well, you seem awfully bold and convinced that your ideas are right.  You are sucking up airtime in meetings when other people might want to talk. You are disempowering your staff because their ideas never come to light. It is always your ideas; so that exact same behaviour has changed from being an asset to a liability and I think the key around behave to perform. Chapter 2 in Eight Steps To High-Performance is. Those derailers that are going to harm our career and that we need to pay attention to earlier than most of us do. Too many of us focus on, well, what is a great leader do? They do A, B and C that will take you so far, but at some point it's those derailers that you need to be aware of and eliminate or also going to hold back how quickly you progressed in your role.  Steve Rush: Step 3 in your eight steps is growing yourself faster. How do we compete with fast vs. quality?  Marc Effron: The key message there is that the science is pretty clear that we're going to grow most quickly through the experiences that we have. But far too often what we don't think about is what's the journey that I'm supposed to be going on? Meaning where am I today. So how do I show up today? How would I like to show up in the future? And in the book, I frame this as what we call a from too statement, and my colleague Jim Shanley. Who founded the Talent Management Institute at UNC with me, came up with this concept. It is brilliantly, simple concept that says before I develop my plan around how do I grow myself faster, let's chart out that journey and say, what do I need to move from or where do I need to move from and where do I need to move to? And that statement might sound like I need to move from being seen as a project manager who flawlessly executes and focuses on the smallest detail. To a leader who can bring others along and help them to execute in the same way that I would on large, complex global projects. So from that from too, says let's map the journey first. Where am I going from? And to, and then think about what are the few big experiences I need to get better at that. So grow yourself faster said, let's focus on the one thing that matters most in accelerating my development, which is getting me really high quality experiences. But let's plan those experiences by saying, am I clear about how I am perceived today at work and am I clear about how I want to be perceived at work going forward and then use experiences to fill that gap? Steve Rush: So I really like that whole using experiences to fill that gap, because actually I don't think many people spend time focusing on the experiences they've had and transferring that to core foundations. And I guess that leads on to your next step, which if ever there was a time for connection and you call your next step “connect”, it is probably now. Marc Effron: Sure. Connect is one of those steps that, to be honest, I didn't realize was as powerful as it was until I read through all that scientific research about how people connected to workplace and the strength in those relationships. Obviously, I intellectually understood that but when I read through connecting, what I realized is there is incredible power in connecting to help make you a higher performer, but it matters who you connect with and how you connect with them. What does the best science say about who to connect with? Well, it starts with your boss. That boss relationship is amazingly predictive of how far and how fast you will move up in your organization. Now, here is where things get tricky. Some people are very uncomfortable being nice to their boss. No, not being unnice, but kind of building that personal, warm, friendly relationship is what the science says is. It is that trusting relationship, not the transactional relationship. A boss asked me to do something. I did it for them. But really, that more personal relationship. Do I have a cup of coffee with him? Occasionally. Have I invited the boss and her or his family over for dinner at my house? Do we travel together? Are there ways that I am getting to know that leader in a way that they really trust me and they really value my judgment? And they feel more than that. Some of that transactional connection of this person is an employee and there is obviously a lot of grey in what that relationship looks like. But what the science would say is the stronger that relationship is, the more quickly you're going to move up in an organization and part of that is just the basics, treating your boss that you would treat any other friend. Not every conversation is a work conversation. Maybe you are asking that person out to grab a sandwich or a coffee on a regular basis, but you are working hard to consciously build that relationship. And the science would also say that peer relationships are important, and one of the things I say when I'm working with leaders on this step is map the quality of your relationship with all of your peers. All of the folks may be on the same team and other important folks who are peers in your organization. Rate those relationships on a basic scale. Let's called it a 5 to 1 scale. 5 is brilliant, 1 is you don't get along very well at all. Any of your peers who you would rate as a 3 or lower. You need to connect within the next two weeks. In this environment virtual coffee or just a check and call to say, hey, how are things going? That is not a transactional or call. And this might even be something that you need to preface with. Hey, Steve, I know we don't actually chat all that much, but I thought, you know, given the current environment, you can't hurt just to kind of have a bit more of a get to know call and understand what's going on with you and learn more about you and, you know, outside of the work environment. It might need to be that practiced of a conversation where you not kind of trying to suddenly say, oh, I am going to ask him a couple of questions about his weekend, but instead say, hey, I'm just trying to build better relationships. And I thought maybe we could just have a conversation. So connecting, doing it in a planned way, what is the quality of my relationship with my boss? What is the quality of the relationship with my peers and actively managing those to help you be a higher performer? Steve Rush: It is really fascinating, in the research that I've concluded also in a very similar way, I found also that those colleagues who avoid people they've connected with less, also trust them less - and they also mirror that same lack of trust because it's a bi-product, isn't of connection? Marc Effron: Absolutely. Steve Rush: The next one is around “maximizing your fit” Marc, tell us a little bit about what that refers to? Marc Effron: Mapping yourself is really understanding that your organization is going to change and evolve and organizations are changing, evolving more quickly than ever. They might get into a new market place. They might have a new strategy, a new way of having work get done, and if you want to stay a high performer, your job is to be looking at the future of your company and saying, given where I think my company is going. What are the few capabilities that are going to be valued in that environment that might be different than what's valued today? And to compare yourself to that future state and say, okay, I'm probably good at two of the four things they're looking for, I'm not really as good at two of the new things they're looking for. How do I build that capability as quickly as possible? Because High Performers are always thinking about how do I ensure that I fit perfectly with the needs of my organization and not relying on the company to come to them and say, Oh, Marc, we're going to retrain you to fit with the future environment. But being much more proactive if you can't translate yourself your organization's strategy into those capabilities, talking to your boss or your boss's, boss and saying very explicitly, I want to continue to be a strong performer here, what new capabilities do you see our organization needing that I might need to build in the short term? So Maximize Your Fit is saying, the science is very clear that our fit with an organization helps to predict our success. And so our high performers are always going to be looking at themselves and saying, given where our organization is going and the capabilities they need to be successful in the future, it needs to be successful the future. Do my capabilities match kind of well, not very well or very well with that future state and where ever there are gaps that high performers working to build those capabilities and close those gaps as quickly as possible. Steve Rush: That is great. Thank you Marc. When I read “fake it”, being one of your eight steps, so when we talk about faking it when I read this in your book, it really intrigued me because as I suddenly thought about, how does that square itself with authenticity? But in your book you write, “sometimes it's better than being your genuine you”. What does that mean Marc? Marc Effron: It is interesting. The chapter six on “fake it” probably yields more screaming than any of the other chapters and it is often misinterpreted. People say, oh, you don't really mean that people should fake a behaviour. You mean that they should just kind of adjust things or adapt. I double down and say, no actually! What we are talking about, it is very likely that you are good at many things at work, that you have a lot of the right behaviours, skills, but it's also very likely going back to the de-railers that we talked about earlier, that there are one or maybe two things that either you do too much of or do too little love and you genuinely feel that those are the right things to do. You generally feel that the level at which you display them is correct, but you know that other people succeed by doing something very different. So I mentioned earlier some people are very good at emerging as leaders by waving their hand around and calling attention to themselves. You might say, look, I feel that is just the wrong thing to do. Good work should speak for itself. I should not have to do that. You know, I just don't think that's the right thing to do. But the science would say if you do that, you're going to emerge more quickly as a leader. You might need to fake that behaviour. You might need to put on an actor's mask and say, I'm going to show up in this next meeting, not as myself, but as somebody who's more than happy to share what they've been working on and to draw some attention to themselves, because I know that is going to allow me to be a higher performer. And you might say, look, I don't like that behaviour. I don't believe in engaging in that behaviour, but I know it's the right thing to do to advance my career, and so what you might need to do is fundamentally fake that behaviour. Become for that one hour in that meeting a different version of you, and that's not adapting. That is not adjusting. That is saying I am going to be a different person in that meeting than I normally am and I can return to being the genuine or authentic me after that meeting. The challenges is, if we always want to be our authentic selves. It suggests that we think that our authentic selves are the best possible version of us or the most effective possible version. And the science would suggest that's fundamentally not true. What is this look like in practice? I do this all the time. There is a gentleman, some of your listeners might know of who is a brilliant writer and brilliant speaker and coach named Marshall Goldsmith. And if you've ever seen Marshall Goldsmith on stage, he is one of the most engaging, entertaining individuals that you'll ever come across. I am not naturally like that on stage, even though I do a lot of presenting. And so sometimes if I'm feeling maybe a little bit nervous before a speech or it's a particularly large group I'm talking to. Before I walk onto that stage, I don't think to myself, what would Marshall Goldsmith do? I say to myself, become Marshall Goldsmith and I walk out on that stage far more animated and energetic than I would ever naturally be in my life, because I am wearing that Marshall Goldsmith mask. I am faking being Marshall Goldsmith. Now, when I am off that stage, do I go back to being much more of an introverted and quiet individual? I certainly do, but what I did in that section was I showed up as what that audience needed to see, really forget about the genuine me or the authentic me or the me who I wanted to be at that moment. What I knew was that somebody had paid really good money for me to show up and entertain and engage that crowd. And the right person to do that was Marshall Goldsmith, so it's Marshall Goldsmith's mind-set and my content. I faked it and it delivered far better results. Steve Rush: I really like that. I think this demonstrates this is about modelling other behaviours to improve your capability, but not mimicking behaviours. And I think when you model and you are you still you, you're authentic. When you mimic, then that is where the intuition kicks in and says, I don't think that is true.  Marc Efforn: Great point. Steve Rush: Commit your body is the next one. Now, how do you commit your body to becoming highly successful and improved performance? Marc Efforn: It was interesting. As I read through all those academic articles, and the search simply started with let's find anything that claims that something improves performance at work. And I started to see all these articles come up that's talked about. Here are things that you could do to manage yourself as an individual to be more effective. Actually what I really thought I would find was a bunch of proof around exercise, that exercise was the key to being a higher performer at work because I could draw all sorts of logical threads and reasons why that was the case. But when all the research actually said was the single most powerful thing you can do to manage yourself is actually to manage your sleep properly. There has been a lot of writing on this recently. The challenges is that writing is oftentimes very confusing and sometimes contradictory. When you read across all the sleep literature. What does it say about how to ensure that you are a higher performer at work? Well, the first thing that your listeners would want to pay attention to is the separation between quality of sleep and quantity of sleep. The science would say quality of sleep matters much more than quantity of sleep. When you get low quality sleep, it affects what are called your executive functions. That does not mean that you function like an executive. It means things like strategic thinking and creativity and working well in groups of others. So low quality sleep actually undercuts the capabilities that are most likely to make you a high performer. Now, luckily, scientists have dug into how do you increase that quality of sleep. And it might be a lot of things your listeners have heard of before, but the question is, what are we doing about that? Those factors are things like we sleep better in a cool room, in a dark room, in a quiet room. When we have not had caffeine for at least eight hours and we have not had any alcohol for at least four hours, a very monastic type of existence. And since most people don't live that monastic type of existence, the question is, can you improve one of those things? Can you make the room a little darker, a little colder, a little quieter, a little less screen reading beforehand? So this is not the necessarily for most high performers. How can you live a perfectly monastic life to get great sleep? But can you adjust some of those factors because the improved quality of sleep is guaranteed to help with performance. Now, on the quantity side, quantity still matters. The challenge of the quantity side is that the advice is a bit all over the place. The National Science Foundation, or National Sleep Foundation says that the right number of hours of sleep is somewhere between 6 and 10. Well there is a four-hour difference in there and I can do a lot with those four hours. So is it six or is it 10? When you read through all the literature on sleep, it suggests that the sweet spot, if you're getting quality sleep as well as somewhere between six and a half and seven and a half hours. And if you don't get quantity of sleep, it's not going to affect your executive functions. It is going to actually affect your basic functions. You are going to be forgetful. You might not find your keys on the way out the door. You might stumble over somebody name in a meeting. It is not going to necessarily affect your higher order functions. Now, luckily, scientists have also studied, well, what happens if you can't get the quality or the quantity you want or any sleep hacks available to you? Staying with the theme of our conversation around hacking. Well, the good news is on the quality side, scientists have found that a 10 minute nap, not a five, not a fifteen, not an hour, a ten minute nap is the ideal length to make up for up to an hour of low quality sleep. So a 10 minute nap has amazingly restorative powers from being a high performer, recognizing that not everyone has a nap pod in their office. Science is very clear, 10 minutes of napping is amazingly powerful and for low quantity of sleep. What the science says is it is our old friend, caffeine. That is the best way to wake up some of those more basic functions, so sleep unbelievably strong foundation. The other six steps we have just talked about will not work well if you are not managing your sleep properly. Steve Rush: And I read some research not so long ago actually around sleep is about four or five times more important to daily routines as nutrition. In other words, if I did not eat for three days, the worst I would be is hungry. If I did not sleep for three days, then I would be starting to really lose my mental cognition. Marc Effron: I think that is a fantastic parallel. I think that that says a lot. Steve Rush: And then the last one is avoid distractions. And I think we can all be distracted by things at work and of course, our brain is naturally looking for those distractions as well. How do you reference in your book and maybe share a little bit about what that means for you? Marc Effron: Avoiding distractions is really all about focusing on what is proven to make you a higher performer, and that is challenging when every day there is a new TED Talks or a blog article or a book or something that says, hey. Look over here, here is a secret, simple, easy way to be a better leader or hear 3 secrets from billionaires or whatever the clickbait is that enters your browser, and we've just talked about seven factors that are absolutely conclusively scientifically proven to make you a higher performer. This step around avoiding distractions really said. Why don't you start with the things that we know are absolutely proven to be true. Instead of responding to whatever hit your inbox or whatever you see in your browser that seems like it is a fast and easy way to be a higher performer. The science is unbelievably crystal clear about what will make us a higher performer. Do those things first, as opposed to whatever seems trendy at the moment.  Steve Rush: Got it, and I think it is the whole philosophy of procrastination, isn't it? Marc Effron: Absolutely.  Steve Rush: At this point in the show, we normally ask our guests to share that top leadership hacks, but you have already shared an abundance of your hacks. What I am keen to learn though Marc is from your experiences. We call this Hack to Attack, where things in the past that you've done maybe not worked as well or you screwed up on. But we now use that information and those lessons as part of our work or life for the future. What would be your Hack to Attack?  Marc Effron: Sure. This hack comes from early in my career. I was twenty-five years old, working as a political consultant in Southern California in the United States. And we had a small firm, made up of five or six people and our job was to help people in the construction industry to lobby local officials to get big projects approved. So in Southern California, this was many, many years ago. There was lots of open land and builders wanted to buy that land and get approval to build on it as quickly as possible, so we got friendly candidates elected and then we lobbied those candidates to get those projects approved. And this was, I guess, the late 80s and what we found was that business went very well for about two years, and then there was a recession and that recession hit the housing industry hard, and we only had three big clients who we relied on for all of our revenues. And those three clients quickly went bankrupt and we were left with absolutely no income, and that was a very painful thing. As a young individual who was just getting by at the time and the two big lessons that taught me, and certainly how I manage my business today and at times like this have been very helpful. One always structure the business for the worst case scenario, meaning if things shut down and you still need to pay employees, are you going to have enough in that company bank account to weather a six month or 12 month storm? My structure right now is we always want to have a year of payroll in the bank and that might sound extremely conservative, but right now, it seems like a really good way to manage. So always structure your firm to survive the worst, but then also ensure that you are incredibly well connected across the industry, meaning at times like this when we look at the next year and aren't certain how business will go. I want as many people in our profession as possible to understand who our firm is, what we do, and how we can help them. Because, well, we have always known in the past where business would come from or likely would come from. It might be that all bets are off in the future. So I much rather work with a network of about thirty five thousand contacts. I'd much rather have thirty five thousand contacts and not be sure about which one of them will reach out next week, then rely on two or three companies and hope that they will continue to be the tent poles for the business. Steve Rush: Super lessons, and now, more than ever, planning for worst case scenario will call out whether or not business has got those foundations and a very good lesson learned. Thanks for sharing. So a final thing that we would like to ask of you today, Marc, is if you were able to do a bit of time travel and go back and bump into Marc at 21, what would be the best bit of advice you'd give him? Marc Effron: Probably two things and it reflects on what we have already talked about today. One is, recognize that the strength of the relationships that you have will either accelerate or decelerate your career. As an introvert, I am naturally not good at doing that, and it always seemed like a nice to do, not a need to do and it probably was not until the middle of my career when I understood exactly how essential that was. So one piece of advice I would give my younger self is, even if you don't feel comfortable doing it. Build lots of good relationships starting right now. And the second one and this is a very Marc specific. I can be a bit lazy at times. I'm motivated around things I love and I am pretty lazy around things I don't love to do, and I think my advice to my much younger self would be just work harder. You need to put in more hours if you are at your desk and you think, oh, I can go home now, I have nothing to do. Sit there for another hour and think of something to do. We talked about hard work is part of having a high performers mind-set. I got to business school and I got my butt kicked the first semester on grades. I realized actually Marc, you simply need to work harder and put in more hours, and I have been doing that ever since and I think it pays off well. So build great strong relationships and work really, really hard. Steve Rush: That is great advice as well, and I think it is that extra effort. The extra yards coupled with that mind-set of high performance will make a difference for people as they progress through their careers. So thank you for sharing. I suspect that colleagues and people have been listening to you talk today. We will be thinking where can I find out more about Marc. How can I get my hands on the eight steps? Where would you like people to go who have been listening in today?  Marc Effron: Sure. Well, if they want to learn more about the eight steps, I think the easiest way is to pick up the book. It is on Amazon and all the major platforms. If you wanted to just learn more about myself, read a lot more of my articles, then you can go to our corporate site. That is talentstrategygroup.com. There are probably 50 different articles that I have written parallel many of these same topics. Steve Rush: And we will also make sure they're in the show notes, so after listening to this podcast, folk can go click on it and go straight to find out where and what you're doing right now. So Marc just wanted to finally say it's been super listening to you today and I've learned loads listening to you and I'm grateful for you taking time out of what I know is a pretty busy time for you at The Talent Strategy Group. So thanks for joining us on The Leadership Podcast. Marc Effron: Thank you, Steve. I enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate your listeners tuning in.   Closing Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers. Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.      

Marc Effron, author of 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest), joins the Talent Angle to discuss how to cut through the noise and boost workplace performance. He shares what behavioral changes and practical steps employees can take to improve performance and deliver outstanding results. 

What’s the secret to increasing your performance (even if you’re already a high performer)? Anyone can increase their performance, says Marc Effron, president of the…

Are there shortcuts? It's a rare week that goes by without seeing a post here on LinkedIn reminding us that success is a game of grit and grind, hard work and perseverance, and all of that is true. But are there shortcuts? In this brief video, I share a lesson told to me by a workshop participant today. It calls back to lessons we've hit in previous episodes with guests such as Shane Snow, Marc Effron, Liz Wiseman, Eric Barker, and Whitney Johnson (check those out and earn some free PDUs by listening). Let Me Hear From You! I'd love to hear from you! What do you think about this idea that you grow faster by spending intentional time with those who are more experienced than you? What are some things you've done to accelerate your growth? Let's connect on LinkedIn and discuss! I'd love to hear your thoughts! Also, what have you been learning lately? What are you reading? Please e-mail me (show [AT] PeopleAndProjectsPodcast [DOT] com) or leave a message on our Listener Feedback Line (847-550-3747). I look forward to hearing from you! Please give us feedback about The People and Projects Podcast! Take our Listener Survey at https://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/ListenerSurvey. Thank you! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Have a great week! Talent Triangle: Leadership Total Duration 2:41 Download episode 264

Notes: Why he wrote a book The science behind talent management The importance of starting with the science when dealing with people’s lives What gets in the way of setting and achieving big goals What is a goal and how to achieve it? The mistakes companies make when making decisions without scinece Dunne and Kruger effect Using data to support performance management process Nine lies about work and incorrect claims about feedback The truth behind the 70/20/10 model The state of talent management today What makes great talent management? HRBP’s are the foundation for the rest of talent management How talent development can support HRBPs Trend: AI to help us make smarter decisions What AI can do and where it might fail Book: What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith Advice: Be planful in getting experiences Links: Book: One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value by Marc Effron Book: 8 Steps to High Performance by Marc Effron Book: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith Talent Strategy Group Email Address: marc@talentstrategygroup.com For questions, comments and guest suggestions, contact the host, Andy Storch, at storch@advantageperformance.com

Notes: Why he wrote a book The science behind talent management The importance of starting with the science when dealing with people’s lives What gets in the way of setting and achieving big goals What is a goal and how to achieve it? The mistakes companies make when making decisions without scinece Dunne and Kruger […]

Notes: Why he wrote a book The science behind talent management The importance of starting with the science when dealing with people’s lives What gets in the way of setting and achieving big goals What is a goal and how to achieve it? The mistakes companies make when making decisions without scinece Dunne and Kruger effect Using data to support performance management process Nine lies about work and incorrect claims about feedback The truth behind the 70/20/10 model The state of talent management today What makes great talent management? HRBP’s are the foundation for the rest of talent management How talent development can support HRBPs Trend: AI to help us make smarter decisions What AI can do and where it might fail Book: What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith Advice: Be planful in getting experiences Links: Book: One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value by Marc Effron Book: 8 Steps to High Performance by Marc Effron Book: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith Talent Strategy Group Email Address: marc@talentstrategygroup.com For questions, comments and guest suggestions, contact the host, Andy Storch, at storch@advantageperformance.com

Marc Effron is the Founder and President of the talent strategy group and Publisher of Talent Quarterly Magazine. He is an expert in how to achieve high performance. He is a Harvard Business Press best-selling author and recently released his book ‘8 Steps to High Performance’.  He has been recognised as one of the top…Read More

I was never a proponent of throwing one of our young kids into the deep end and saying, "OK, swim!" But could it be that the best way to learn how to lead is to, well, have to lead? We continue our series of short videos to share something that I've recently taught or learned, and in this episode, I share an important lesson learned from our discussion with Marc Effron back in episode 226 regarding his book 8 Steps to High Performance. Let Me Hear From You! What's your take on the 70/20/10 idea? What's an example of how you've learned by doing or by spending time with people who are doing it? What questions do you have about the idea? Let's connect on LinkedIn and discuss! I'd love to hear your thoughts! Also, what have you been learning lately? What are you reading? Please e-mail me (show [AT] PeopleAndProjectsPodcast [DOT] com) or leave a message on our Listener Feedback Line (847-550-3747). I look forward to hearing from you! Please give us feedback about The People and Projects Podcast! Take our Listener Survey at https://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/ListenerSurvey. Thank you! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! Have a great week! Total Duration 3:18 Download episode 243 FUNKORAMA by Kevin Macleod Licensed under a Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 License.

Kelly talks to talent performance expert Marc Effron about the science behind high performance in business and where our focus should be to get the most out of our people. [audio http://serve.castfire.com/audio/3574605/3574605_2018-12-07-170405.64kmono.mp3]

Become a High Performer Performance whores come in many forms. Marc Effron is the kind that is obsessed with getting people fire on all cylinders. Much like the PA approach to athleticism, Marc focuses on finding where a person or business is deficient and then attacking the weakness. Through his years developing high performers in…

In this episode we discuss how to become a high performer at work. We look at one simple question you can use to double your productivity, we talk about how to decipher scientific evidence and determine what’s really important to focus on for maximum performance, we examine how to get quality feedback on your work, share strategies for creating high performance habits and behaviors, and uncover what it takes to quickly improve your performance with our guest Marc Effron. Marc Effron is the founder and president of the Talent Strategy Group and publisher of the Talent Quarterly Magazine. He is a Harvard Business Press best-selling author and just released his latest book 8 Steps To High Performance. He has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Influencers in H.R. and he has worked and consulted with some of the largest companies in the country.We have so much science that tell us many of the right things to do - and yet its often so hard to discern signal from noise People like writing about individual topics - but often don’t combine them all into one cohesive view of reality as a whole“The Three Tiers of Proof” Bottom tier “Research" - a consulting firm does a study and comes out with a report - not peer reviewed, not validated, not controlled - but still may have some valueNext step up - "Science" - someone has published an article in a peer reviewed journal The best - "Conclusive Science" - 100 people do the experiment and all come to the exact same conclusion If you want to get better you’re much better off asking others for feedback than just looking at yourselfWhat’s your disciplined approach for gathering feedback from others about what makes you so successful?How do we gather quality feedback?Source of opinions and quality of opinion are not equal. Find your high performing peersFind your high performing people at your bosses level that you would like feedback fromIf you’re a solo entrepreneur your customers or investors are probably the best people to askCan we set goals that are too big and too ambitious? How do we strike that balance?Ask yourself - is your big goal too disengaging? Could it be harmful to the organization?Given where my company is - what needs to happen for me to be the most high performance I can be? What are the few behaviors that matter the most for performance right now?Three “buckets” of behaviors that cause us to derail:“Moving away” behaviors - behaviors that cause you to put distance between you and other people. Passive aggression, shyness, etc. “Moving against” behaviors - putting you into other people’s space and make them want to spend less time with you“Moving towards” behaviors - suck up behavior, managing up and the people below you don’t like itThere are many fixed traits of your life, background, abilities etc that you can’t change - focus on what you can change It’s the experience we have that grow us fastest - the most big, challenging, scary, risky experiences you have the faster you’re going to learn. It’s easy to get comfortable, but comfort is the enemy of growthWe often exaggerate the downside and underestimate the upsideHomework: Action begins with an assessment of where we are today - how do you compare against the 8 step framework - then determine what your ONE key priority going forward should be Homework: Ask your boss: I want to deliver 2x next year - what’s the ONE thing I could do differently to deliver more on that goal? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill Horan talks with Marc Effron, author of 8 STEPS TO HIGH PERFORMANCE. Marc will discuss why no one ever tells you how to be successful, why he follows the theory of 'let’s do what works," why many smart people under perform because they don't know the 8 steps, how high performers deliver 100 to 500% more output than lower performers, and why we should focus on what we can change.

Bill Horan talks with Marc Effron, author of 8 STEPS TO HIGH PERFORMANCE. Marc will discuss why no one ever tells you how to be successful, why he follows the theory of 'let’s do what works," why many smart people under perform because they don't know the 8 steps, how high performers deliver 100 to 500% more output than lower performers, and why we should focus on what we can change.

Total Duration 50:37 Download episode 226 High Performing Project Managers What does it mean to be a high performer? In a world where everyone seems to think they're above average, what does it take to truly stand out? And what advice has multiple research studies backing it up, making it more reliable for you to focus on? In this episode, I'm joined by Marc Effron, author of 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest), and I'm excited to introduce you to his ideas in the book. Learn more about Marc and his organization at https://www.talentstrategygroup.com. Let's Stay In Touch! I hear from listeners almost every day, and I love it! How about you and I connect on LinkedIn? Go to https://PeopleAndProjectsPodcast.com/LinkedIn and send me an invite! Also, if you know of a group at your organization that has an upcoming large group gathering and uses outside speakers, let them know about the podcast! I'd love to work with them to help improve their ability to lead and deliver. Learn more at https://i-leadonline.com/keynotes. Thanks! Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast! FUN IN A BOTTLE and ACES HIGH by Kevin Macleod Licensed under a Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 License.

Marc Effron, president of the Talent Strategy Group, looked at the scientific literature behind high performance at work and identified eight steps we can all take to get an edge. Among those steps is taking care of your body -- sleep, exercise, and nutrition. But the most important is sleep. He offers some practical advice on getting more and better rest, and making time to exercise. Effron is the author of the new book, "8 Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest)."

Marc Effron shares his extensive research on the eight essential steps to becoming a high performer at work.   You'll Learn: The eight steps to high performance The difference between goals and promises How to estimate and achieve your theoretical maximum of effort   About Marc: Marc Effron is the founder and President of the Talent Strategy Group and founder and publisher of Talent Quarterly magazine. He is coauthor of the book One-Page Talent Management and has been recognized as one of the Top 100 Influencers in HR.   View transcript, show notes, and links at http://AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep335

Have you ever watched someone blow out the candles on a birthday cake and wondered, “Do I really want to eat cake after someone blew and spit all over it?” I have. So I start this episode with a look at the risks of eating that cake once the candles are out. http://foodnetwork.wikia.com/wiki/Food_DetectivesA lot has been written about peak performance. There are books, articles, podcasts, seminars, speeches and many gurus all claiming to know the magical steps to achieving high performance in your career. So, who’s right? What are you supposed to believe? Marc Effron, author of the book 8 Steps to High Performance https://amzn.to/2OsZqso has taken a look at a lot of the material and separated the fluff from the science. Listen as he explains what really works if you want to really excel in your career. Ever wondered whether or not you should buy a new car if your old car works just fine? Since cars last much longer than a generation or two ago, a lot of drivers struggle with the decision to buy a new car. If you are one of them, you should listen as I discuss this topic. http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/the-average-american-car-is-a-record-115-years-old/ar-AAdGzIGWhen you think about it, you write a lot. You likely write emails, text messages, memos, reports and more. So HOW you write really matters if you want people to understand what you are trying to say. Josh Bernoff author of the book, Writing Without BS is on a mission to help people improve communication through better writing. Listen to what he has to say and you will instantly become a better writer. https://amzn.to/2KP08xFThis Week's SponsorsHoka One One. Get free expedited shipping on your first pair of shoes by going to www.hokaoneone.com/SYSK and use the promo code SYSKDaily Harvest. Go to www.Daily-Harvest.com and enter promo code SOMETHING to get three cups FREE in your first box!Hotel Tonight. Download the app Hotel Tonight to your phone and get $25 off your first eligible booking.Bombas Socks.Get 20% off your first order by going towww.Bombas.com/something and use the promo code SOMETHINGLinkedIn Marketing Solutions. To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to www.LinkedIn.com/SOMETHING

@NewTalentMgmtNt .....Marc Effron visits with Bryan Wempen and William Tincup about HR and whatever else keeps him up at night with Corporate America. DriveThruHR more than not talks about Human Resources with HR professionals every day at lunch time for 30 minutes. Give us a listen at (347) 996-5600 and share your thoughts on twitter using #dthr or @drivethruhr. We talk HR along with lots of clever bantor and thoughts every day at 12 Noon Central time at "DTHR".

Marc Effron, global leadership expert, author, founder of the New Talent Management Network, and Vice President of Talent Management for Avon Products, Inc., will share his insights on successful on-boarding and how to begin the process the day you accept the offer.