What Makes A Good Leader? 4 Essentials

From STPCON

Software Test Professionals asked the speakers who are presenting at the Software Test Professionals Conference & Expo 2010 in Las Vegas several questions about leadership. When asked about the top characteristics of strong leaders in the testing field, the conference speaker’s highlighted four main attributes they considered important.

1. Knowledge of the Business
Linda Hayes, Worksoft, Inc. founder states, “It’s important that leaders have a solid grasp of the business drivers and risks.” Often times, people focus on the process to manage a testing department and don’t have a grasp on the higher level business objectives. Leaders should have a deep understanding of the complex needs of the stakeholders including the customers, the organization and the team.

2. Communication & Interpersonal Relationship Skills
It’s not enough to simply have knowledge of the overall business. The ability to share this information with your team is also important. Jim Hazen, Consultant from Connected Testing stated “…listen and talk to people within and outside your group … you don’t have to be a diplomat but you do need to be able to convey information clearly.” A leader who is able to convey information clearly inside the testing department as well as outside and at all levels will serve as an information bridge to close the gaps of miscommunications and build the testing department’s value to the organization. Furthermore, clearly conveying information helps to motivate and support the testing team, create positive morale and provide a clear vision for success.

3. Knowledge of the Technical Skills
Robert Walsh, President of EnvisionWare, Inc. states that “Leaders must have a good balance between communication and technical skills.” With balance, a strong leader who understands the testing process, tools, systems and solutions can help guide team members without getting involved in the tactical aspects of the project. A leader’s ability to use this technical knowledge to be decisive and lead the team will inspire the team’s confidence in their leader.

4. Strategic Skills
Operating in environments with heavy workloads and not enough resources can challenge a senior leader in testing. It’s important to carefully organize resources to match priorities. In order to successfully allocate resources, a leader must have a clear focus on the testing department’s end goals and maintain a visual above the minefield. When a leader understands both human and technical resource allocation they can most effectively be open-minded to revolutionizing change for the betterment of the organization. Bradley Baird, Principal SQA Engineer at Symantec summarizes, “Just because we did it that way last time doesn’t mean we should do it that way this time. Be open to ideas on how to improve processes and procedures.” With an open mind, clear vision and the ability to effectively allocate resources, strategic leaders can drive change and lead their teams into the future.

Attend Software Test Professionals Conference & Expo 2010 – Where Test Leadership, Management & Strategy Converge – to learn more about the human side of testing, managing testers and the software test areas of the product development lifecycle. You will learn techniques for working effectively in a leadership role with test and non-test teams and the differences between being a manager and being a leader.

Five Reasons You're Not Getting Job Interviews

By Alesia Benedict, CPRW, JCTC GetInterviews.com

It's a tough market out there. Not only is unemployment high, but the regular flux of the market has stilled somewhat as people hang on to jobs and paychecks rather than seeking advancement or relocation. Don't make your job search any tougher than it needs to be. Evaluate your efforts to see if you've made any of the following mistakes.

1 – Your resume and cover letter are not written aggressively. Most people only capture job duties and responsibilities in their resumes. That's just not enough to gain attention in these tough market conditions. Your resume and cover letter must be written to grab the interest of the employer or recruiter, plus win high rankings in applicant tracking systems and online resume databases. A great resume is powerfully written with strong industry keywords; it details specific accomplishments and brings in measurements of performance wherever possible; and it is focused and relevant to the targeted position. A poorly written resume can be a significant hindrance in winning interviews.

2 – You are limiting your efforts to answering online job advertisements on fewer than ten job sites. Fishermen know when fishing is poor, they have to cast a wider net. The same goes for job search. If you are limiting your efforts to a few online job sites, you miss out on a majority of the market. A strong job search will include not only big job boards, but also networking, targeted communications, and creative career marketing. Don't ignore job boards but don't limit yourself to just online ads for your marketing efforts.

3 – You are not targeting specific companies first. Most jobs are never advertised anywhere. They are filled from within, filled from employee referrals, or filled from prospective candidates whose resumes are already in the company's database. If you are only chasing advertised positions, you are behind in the race right from the beginning. Generate a list of companies for which you would like to work and get your resume and cover letter to all of them. Build a consistent marketing campaign targeting these companies and build a knowledge base on their operations, their missions, challenges they face, and markets in which they operate. Use this information to market yourself to the needs of the company. In your communication, always speak to how you can be valuable to the company and how you can meet their needs.

4 – You ask your network if they know of any job openings. The question "Do you know of any open positions?" is a yes or no question. Once you get a "no" from your network contacts, you have exhausted your efforts, right? If you feel like you have a limited reach in your network, it is because you are asking the wrong question. You should be asking your network contacts for information about specific companies. As you work your network, you will build a significant knowledge base that will eventually lead to specific contacts within companies and give you insight that will be valuable in your marketing efforts. Asking for information instead of asking about open jobs also makes networking easier! You don't put your network contacts in the uncomfortable position of not being able to help. If you have ten different companies you are researching, more than likely your contact will be able to give you some kind of information on at least one of those companies. You actually make it easier for your network contacts to help you!

5 – You are not following up on your efforts. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. You must be a squeaky wheel. When employers get hundreds of applicants for a single opening, the five percent who take the trouble to follow up and keep following up will stand out in the crowd. You want to be in that five percent who rise above the masses. Sure, it's an extra step and it sometimes feels superfluous, but it is not wasted effort. You are not being a pest or bothersome. You are demonstrating you have an interest in the company and an ongoing interest in being considered for employment. Make some noise and be sure to follow up on your resume submissions.

Job search takes a lot of effort. With unemployment near double-digits, there are a lot of candidates in the market. The ones who get results are the ones who put forth the extra effort to conduct a smart, complete job search

Seven Leadership Traits That The Gurus Don't Tell You

Repost from Bnet

By Jo Owen

July 26th, 2010 @ 3:26 am

Most leadership gurus tell you half the truth, at best, about what it takes to be a leader.

They will tell you about the need for vision, handling people, dealing with crises and all the other good stuff that makes up the corporate speaking circuit. Here are seven vital qualities you are less likely to hear them talk about:

1. Sleeping on planes and dealing with jet lag. In any large organisation, a leader will spend a large amount of time on planes: I did 250,000 miles a year. The routine was simple: one glass of champagne and one melatonin pill forty minutes before take off, and I would be able to sleep all the way. Business class is not for fancy meals and watching movies: it is for work or sleep.
2. Working in vehicles. If you can not work in taxis and cars, you will waste more time than you can afford. Staring out of the window mindlessly is not good.
3. Dieting. Leaders are surrounded by biscuits, cookies and other corporate death food; and then there are the inevitable lunches, dinners and hotel breakfasts. Either learn to love the fruit, or start jogging. Or die early as an obese alcoholic. But to this day, some firms demand that you put your liver on the line: if you do not drink and entertain, you fail. Pick your diet to fit your firm.
4. Ruthless time management: queues were invented to let leaders catch up with emails and phone calls; ditch or delegate everything you can; fix appointments around your diary, not around other people’s.
5. Work the politics. Find the right assignments, right support and right mentors. Set expectations well. Negotiate budgets hard. Wake up to the reality of corporate life.
6. Be ambitious, for your organisation and yourself. Stretch yourself and your team to achieve more than ever; keep on learning and growing. Don’t accept excuses, don’t be a victim: take responsibility.
7. Learn to speak well. To small groups, to individuals and to large groups. As one tribal elder told me: “Words are like gods: words create whole new world’s in someone’s head. So use words well.” For many people, having a tooth extracted is less daunting than speaking in public. But it is a skill anyone can develop, with practice, over the years. And leaders must have this skill.

These seven qualities add up to a person who is pretty driven: they are often not comfortable people to be with. Not surprisingly, many people prefer to keep their humanity and their life than make the sacrifices to get to the top.

When I first started out, my boss told me: “one of the benefits of this job is that you will never suffer the rush hour. You will arrive before it and leave after it.” And if you keep that lifestyle going for ten to twenty years, you can reach the top. It was not a good choice, but at least it was a clear choice.

Choose well.

Posting using Graphics

Learning to use graphics in Posts - YinYang and
Captain America Emoticon

Lessons for when you get it right and it still sucks

Highlight from BNET posting

For those times when you get it right and it sucks, remember these lessons:

1. Not only can’t you control other people’s actions, but it’s not your job. Good managers and leaders know that.
2. If you can feel empathy for everyone involved: those who got it wrong, those who suffered as a result, and for yourself, that’s a leadership quality.
3. Learn from the experience because next time, the situation might be reversed, i.e. you might warn someone and be wrong, or somebody may warn you and be right.
4. You’re not responsible for the failure of others unless they work for you, in which case you were a good leader by allowing them the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own.
   

Tightrope: Manage your time, and you'll manage just fine

Repost from USA Today

By Gladys Edmunds for USA TODAY

Do you remember school days when your teacher would write on your papers: "Does not use time wisely?" I sure do!

I would waste time talking to my classmates or on rainy days watching raindrops for patterns as they rolled down the windowpane. Or, some days would find me doodling on my notebook while I daydreamed of being a princess in some far off kingdom.

After writing those telling words in red on a weeks' worth of writing assignments, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Daly, told me that I was very intelligent and that I could use it to do and be anything I wanted to be. Or, she said, I could use that intelligence to continue wasting time, which would result in my becoming the oldest third grader in the history of education. The choice was mine. Of course having the desire to move from third to fourth grade made me choose the former.

Success eludes many because time isn't used wisely. There are people who live like they have 500 years of life left to live and so they waste precious time and don't reach their life dreams.

Recently a friend whom I will call Barb talked with me about her husband's employment situation. According to Barb, Harry is in a job beneath his skill and education. He is very talented, with a degree from Yale University. Barb says that he talks about starting his own consulting firm. He always says that he doesn't have time right now, but will definitely get to it. Yet he is able to find time to play long hours of chess with his friends and read all of the best-selling fiction as soon as it gets to the bookstore.

Barb says that deep down he wants to be an entrepreneur, but so far he has done nothing toward getting started.

Barb wanted any information that I could offer so that she could help her husband make a start toward his dream of having his own company.

There are many people like Harry who don't properly value their time. There are those among us who find plenty of ways to pass the hours and proceed to live like they have no time constraints at all. These are usually the folks who reach old age and feel like life has cheated them of living.

Some of the signs are: Taking jobs below your skill level, like Harry; spending time playing computer games; or, allowing friends to interrupt you with long useless telephone conversations.

A few months ago a woman I know told me that she had set a goal to complete 2,500 crossword puzzles that she had located on the Internet. At the time of our conversation she had managed to complete 750 of them in six months. She is a very talented photographer who is constantly complaining that she hasn't gotten a photo contract in weeks. When she's not figuring out crossword puzzles she's calling people on the phone just for a chat. At least that's the reason she said that she called me.

A good way for Harry or anyone to cure this problem is to be mindful of their day-to-day activities. Some folks move through the day in complete unawareness. They don't recall at the end of it what went on in their lives nor how it impacted them. Unless of course something earth-shattering happened. Setting small daily goals and making a point to reach them would help improve things.

As for my friend, she should encourage Harry to recognize the time-wasting trait in his personality. However, she must keep in mind that sometimes even the most intelligent person cannot easily take advice and must learn about life on their own. On the other hand, I told her that she could try giving him a nudge by helping him become more involved with people who are in business. This could be done by socializing with friends or getting Harry to join business networking groups.

In the meantime, is life delivering your business dreams and visions? Are you meeting both your short- and long-term goals? Or are you one of those people who needs someone to hand you a piece of paper with "Does not use time wisely" written across it?

Richard Branson's Top 5 Tips for Entrepreneurial Success

Repost Highlights from American Express OpenForum

While the current thinking in business schools holds that all someone with an idea needs to succeed are focus, clarity and a good business plan, I have found that bringing together a great team that’s united by strong motivation, determination and bravery is much more important. Let’s look at how to get started.

1. Find good people.

The successes of Virgin businesses such as Active, Atlantic, Money and Mobile were all based on our assembling a great management team that had a vision, passion and a real sense of ownership.

Specifically, we look for leaders who have the ability to listen to feedback from employees and customers – this is crucial to keeping a service or product fresh and innovative. Often, when things start going wrong, you’ll notice that the staff members feel they are being ignored and good ideas are not bubbling to the top.

Leaders should have the character to make tough decisions and the passion and ability to inspire their staff and carry them through difficult times. Our best CEOs tend to be unconcerned about the size of their office or the thickness of the carpet.

2. Realize that the employees are the business.

A successful business isn’t the product or service it sells, its supply chain or its corporate culture: It is a group of people bound together by a common purpose and vision. In Virgin’s case, we fly the same planes as our competitors and our gyms offer much of the same equipment as other gyms. What separates our businesses from the competition? Our employees.

The best designed business plan will come to nothing if it is not carried out by an enthusiastic and passionate staff. This is especially true when things go slightly wrong; a friendly and proactive team can often win people round, averting a potential disaster or even turning it to your benefit.

Earlier this year, a Virgin America flight was diverted from New York to an airport in nearby Connecticut due to bad weather. The passengers were stuck on the plane for many hours while the small airport struggled to cope with the huge number of extra planes. It took far too long.

Afterward, CEO David Cush himself called many of the passengers to apologize, which may have helped to give those customers a sense of all the Virgin staffers who had been worrying about them and working to fix the situation.

3. Always look for the best in your people. Lavish praise. Never criticize.

Rather than focusing on mistakes, a leader needs to catch someone doing something right every day. If this culture of fostering employee development through praise and recognition starts at the top, it will go far toward stamping out the employee fear of failure that can stunt a business, particularly in its early days.

When mistakes happen – which is inevitable – I always take the position that you have to learn from them and try not to dwell on what went wrong. It’s almost always better not to go over the obvious with the people involved. They know exactly what happened.

4. Don't take yourself too seriously.

We at Virgin pride ourselves on trying to find the fun in our businesses, by which I mean that we try to ensure that both our staff and customers feel a real sense of warmth and affection.

I have led from the front on this – dressing up in costumes, trying all manner of stunts (not all going 100 percent right!), and generally showing that I do not take myself too seriously. My approach will not work for all businesses, but keeping a sense of perspective and not allowing management to be seen as aloof will help keep your staff onside.

To foster employees’ sense of warm, personal interest in clients’ needs, it’s crucial to ensure that everyone who works with you enjoys what he or she is doing, which means that everyone must be proud of the company. This is vital to building lasting success and ensuring your service has an edge over the competition.

To find employees who will take such an interest in our customers, we look for people who show genuine enthusiasm and character. We have a bit of an advantage over our competitors, partly because of our brand and partly because our roots include having hired people to work in the music industry, and now aviation and space, all of which attract real enthusiasts.

5. Screw it, just do it.

Finally, to succeed in business, you must have the bravery to give it a go. Starting a business is a big risk; an entrepreneur needs resolve and conviction to overcome the early hurdles. Most start-ups fail in the first few years, so a key ingredient of success is the ability to pick yourself up and try again.

If it starts to look like your business is not going to make it, some on your team might start to lose courage. At that crucial time, your knowledge of the people factor may make or break your company. Let’s look at this aspect further next week.

Richard Branson

Founder of the Virgin Group (The Virgin Group)

Common misconceptions about job networking

Re-posted from a post at New Grad Life blog

I like the first myth example as representative of many people I've seem to met of late. Doesn't just apply to new college grads either.

Job Networking Myths for College Grads

Posted by: Kevin Cormac

Common misconceptions about job networking

Myth #1: Networking is simply getting a job because you know someone.

The following is not a likely scenario:

You: I know Darren - he's a big shot at Accenture. He said you'd give me a job.

Recruiting Director: Of course, I will. You're hired. We'll see you on Monday morning at 9:00. I'm assuming $200,000 will work for you as your new IT Specialist salary.

Sadly, that's not what networking is all about.

Networking is about tapping into connections you have to help you gain the opportunity to get a job. When they say that 66% of people get jobs through networking, it doesn't mean that 2/3 of people were handed their job because they happened to know someone. It means someone helped them get the interview or helped them get their resume noticed by HR.

When it's time to hire a candidate, recruiting directors are looking for some help. This is because the recruiting department is flooded with resumes. As a result, there's no way to interview all the qualified applicants. There might be sixty or seventy people in the pile of 500 resumes who could do the job, but it's tough to know who the best ones are.

If you are recommended by someone in the company, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed a job - or even an interview. However, the fact that you come "prescreened" by someone at the organization dramatically enhances your chance of getting that interview.

At smaller organizations, the situation can be similar. Without a dedicated recruiting department, usually someone at the company says, "Hey, we need a new receptionist. Does anyone know someone?"

In either scenario, having a connection is your key to landing a job.

Myth #2: You need to know some heavy hitter or the Director of HR to network.

In order to network, you simply need someone - anyone - in the company to pass your resume on to HR. It doesn't need to be an employee in the department that interests you, and it doesn't need to be a senior executive.

In fact, when I worked at Leo Burnett, I actually preferred recommendations from more junior employees. Let's be honest, the CEO's country club's friend's daughter's college roommate probably hasn't been vetted by the CEO. But the Account Executive's buddy, who has worked at a competitive agency, is probably a much better candidate.

Just make sure you find someone at the company to pass along your resume.

Myth #3: You need to know tons of connected people to network.

You may be surprised with how big your network is once you expand your perspective. In fact, you probably have more connections than you think for job networking. Just consider a few of these:

• Your friends
• Your parents
• Your parents' friends
• Your friends' parents
• Your neighbors
• Your dentist
• Your hairstylist
• Your personal trainer
• Your old colleagues
• Your old professors

If there's a company where you really want to land a job, make sure you start talking to anyone you know to find the connection. It's called six degrees of separation. Sure, you may not know anyone at Google, but does anyone you know know someone who works there?

Don't forget your college career center - even if you graduated years ago. At some schools, alumni organizations provide amazing resources and opportunities. Also, don't be shy about using LinkedIn or even Facebook to find contacts.

Networking Advice for the Shy Job Seeker

Networking Advice for the Shy Job Seeker
You can also read this in full on The Doostang Blog.

During a job search, individuals often distress over the fact that networking and asking people they know for career help can feel awkward. It's especially uncomfortable establishing contact with someone they don't know very well or haven't kept in great touch with. Our advice? Suck it up and play the game anyway.

The first thing you need to realize is that people enjoy helping others. When an individual receives a phone call or an email from someone asking for assistance, they often go out of their way to provide it because being asked makes them feel important and needed. The trick here is to be tactful in the way that you ask for help. Asking for career advice goes much farther than flat out asking for a job from someone you rarely talk to. Many job seekers are hesitant to reach out to their contacts because they do not want those people to feel like they are being used. The best way to make sure that your contacts don't feel that way is to always be gracious and request guidance instead of asking them to get you through the door straight away.

One way to avoid this conundrum in the first place is to sharpen your networking skills early on. Try to touch base with your contacts every so often, even if it's only once every other month. A quick email to say hello and catch up or a link to an article you feel they might find interesting is all it takes. If you stay in touch with people, you will feel much more at ease when you need to contact them to ask for help because you already speak with them on occasion, and they won't feel like you only come to them when you want something.

The job market is showing a bit more promise these days, but it's still tough out there. Our networks are extremely valuable in helping us gain leads and eventually land jobs. Branching out and asking for help doesn't come easily to everyone, but it is the way things are done. Don't let a little shyness hold you back.

Top searches from last 30 days from Google Trends.

First attempt at embedded table from Google Trends - Top Food & Beverage Searches in the US.

Drucker: What a manager does

Peter Drucker divided the job of the manager into five basic tasks:

1) Sets objectives. The manager sets goals for the group, and decides what work needs to be done to meet those goals.

2) Organizes. The manager divides the work into manageable activities, and selects people to accomplish the tasks that need to be done.

3) Motivates and communicates. The manager creates a team out of his people, through decisions on pay, placement, promotion, and through his communications with the team. Drucker also referred to this as the “integrating” function of the manager.

4) Measures. The manager establishes appropriate targets and yardsticks, and analyzes, appraises and interprets performance.

5) Develops people. With the rise of the knowledge worker, this task has taken on added importance. In a knowledge economy, people are the company’s most important asset, and it is up to the manager to develop that asset.

Four steps for creating a game plan

Taken from an article at Baseline Magazine.

Generic Four Steps for creating a good plan

Step 1: Write it down.
Step 2: Stop and think.
Step 3: Be logical.
Step 4: Stay committed.

Step 1: Write it down. The first step in creating any plan is simple. Yet most people never do: this first step. Write it down. If your plan is only in your head, it’s a thought and not a plan.

Thoughts have no real value until written down. Writing a plan accomplishes three things: It formalizes your thought process, creates confidence, and creates milestones, lists actions to take and results.

Step 2: Stop and think. Creating a plan, you are forced to stop and look at the desired results. You also need to focus on what activities are required to achieve those goals.

This focus and thought process are beneficial. They establish the framework in which to review what has works, what isn’t, and what you things need deeper thought. Taking a page from David Allen's Getting Things Done philosophy, your step may be at too high a level and need to be decomposed to the "next action".

Creating a plan makes the planner more confident and motivated to take action. Taking action is critical but it also gives a framework for that action.

Step 3: Be logical. A plan should not be simply a dream - that is aspirational goal. Many business consultants and leaders advocate making a plan realistic. Some believe this a guaranteed way to limit one’s success. Realistic is a poor measure if it’s limited by the past and provides a rationalization for failing to reach your goal.

Activities and goals should be logical as well as than "realistic". If you are planning a driving vacation trip starting in Washington, D.C. you wouldn't plan a sequence of first going to Chicago, then to Philadelphia, then to St. Louis, then Dallas then back home!

Step 4: Stay committed. So many people have great ideas and intentions, but fall short when executing and maintaining a plan. Watch out for the “Power of New” syndrome, which an individual or group is excited about new programs, starts strong and then fails to complete as they get distracted by the next new thing"