#HR #RRHH Making love and making personal #branding #leadership

A sales manager recently told me about an embarrassing scene that unfolded before an important client meeting. “Two teams from our firm were waiting in the lobby when the client walked in, and the groups didn’t recognize each other,” she said. “What a contradiction of our promise to provide integrated solutions! We looked like the Keystone Kops.”

A global electronics manufacturer seemed to live in a perpetual state of reorganization. A new line of communication devices for the Asian market required reorienting its sales, marketing, and support functions. Migration to cloud-based business applications called for changes to the IT organization. Altogether, it had reorganized six times in 10 years.

Suddenly, however, the company found itself facing a different challenge. Given the new technologies that had entered its category, and a sea change in customer expectations, it needed a new strategy. The CEO decided to shift from a product-based business model to a customer-centric one. That meant yet another reorganization, but this one would be different. It had to go beyond shifting the lines and boxes in an org chart.

While the components of a great job support, challenge, autonomy are hard to quantify, everyone understands free snacks in the pantry.

So perks become proxies for other upsides. They also tap into the psychology of gifts. While it seems crazy that doctors would be influenced to write prescriptions by free pens, they were (before an industry code ended the practice).

Likewise, freebies at work are loved beyond their actual dollar value. They invite reciprocity. Or, to put a more positive spin on it, “Maybe it’s just recognition,” says Danielle Saladino-Evans, who works in corporate communications at Fingerpaint, a marketing and communications firm, and is part of the committee that decides her company’s perks. “You’re working hard today. Go have something on us.”

You thought finding a place to sit in the cafeteria as the new kid or struggling to make friends in a new environment was over when you graduated high school--boy, were you wrong. Kids might grow up, but there are still cliques: mean girls, bullies, the cool lunch table. As the new kid on the block, joining a new department or company can be challenging, and not just because you have a brand new job to do. You also need to find your stride amongst your peers while also making a positive impact on the bosses.

And you thought middle school was tough.

Fortunately, you're older now, presumably wiser, and a lot more confident than you were as a bumbling teen. While every job environment is different, there are some hacks to adapting and fitting in from the start.

Here's an experiment: Name five iconic entrepreneurs. Actually, don't bother, because we can pretty much predict your answer. Every year, we ask the Inc. 500 honorees to name the entrepreneurs they most admire. The answers: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, and Bill Gates. We've also seen Mark Zuckerberg and Tony Hsieh. The list varies a bit each year, but one constant remains: They're all men.

That may not seem like much of a problem. After all, the entire country, and in many cases much of the world, has benefited from the contributions of these men: the jobs they've created, the technologies they've built, the instant access to European footwear. So what does it matter if they're all sporting a Y chromosome?

Givers are the kinds of people who will go out of their way to help others with no strings attached. This is in comparison to matchers--those who believe in an eye for an eye--and takers--people who are always trying to get as much as they can out of others.

Grant, a professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, spoke about his research on these three character profiles Wednesday at the annual Inc. 5000 conference in Phoenix. 

Grant found that overly generous people tend to fail in the short term, but succeed in the long run. Their failures are due to the fact that they often get trampled by the takers around them. However, if you as a leader, can weed out the greedy ones, you can pave the way for your employees', and your organization's, long-term success.

You want a team full of motivated employees and a rocking company culture. You're doing everything you can, but somehow it's just not working. Turnover is still high. Employees look good on paper, but seem to get demotivated no matter what you do. What could be going wrong?

Your human resources team could be the culprit. It's time to take a hard look at your company's interviewing practices.

Sometimes HR wants to "sell" a really great candidate on the position. So they start telling them all of the great things about being a part of the company or fulfilling the role they're trying to fill. There's nothing wrong with that on the surface. The problem arises when HR starts making promises on your behalf. Promises you can't keep, or won't keep, for whatever reason.

We focus on completing the task at hand, fighting for the next promotion, outperforming a colleague. But there are many seemingly minor actions that can have a major impact on your career’s trajectory. Ignore them and you risk arriving on a shore you didn’t choose, or worse, capsizing on an unexpected reef! Here are 5 career mistakes that can negatively impact your career down the road:

1.    Network only within your company. Most people are aware of the value of networking.