9/11 Tears Remembered - A Memorial Poem

On 9/11/2001, I had a “meeting cancelled due to what happened today.” I then found out while Americans were at work or on their way to work, a terrible tragedy happened that we now refer to as 9/11. Some were trying to track down what happened to associates or family, while most of us cried and hugged our loved of us or were glued to the television for more bad news.

Some might say a leadership blog is not the place to share the below poem. I would disagree, as great leadership was shown that day. Not only by our president, first responders, and the passengers on 93, but also by many Americans across the nation who both worked and wept trying to turn things around. I wrote the short poem below as a way to express our continued sorrow at the memory of that day, as well as encourage hope and healing.

Please fell free to share the poem with others. You may get the video at http://youtu.be/eEoRlgLcARU. If you want the word text, a slide, or to find out more about the author: go to my OrgThis blog. If you use the poem, please credit the source. Thanks.

More on how to have a RARA meeting! Podcasts and Poetry

In a prior post, What is a RARA Meeting explained RARA as an acronym and it gave lots of references including the book RARA A Meeting Wizard's Approach.  In this post, I want to share links to four downloadable podcasts  (MP3 files) by Shirley Fine Lee (author) lasting around 5 minutes each on just the main four RARA components from the book.

Required Roles
Action-based Agendas
Relevant Records
Assigning Actions

** NOTE:
The website here these podcast titles below were is no longer available.  Email me the title you want to hear and I will send it to you.

Podcasts MP3 recordings of less than one minute poems from the back of three books are also available upon request.

• Meetings - Madness or Sanity? (Poetry Reading from RARA Meeting Management)
• Where Is My Priority? (Poetry Reading from TAPP Time Management)
• How Goes The Project?  (Poetry Reading from OPIE Project Management)

Four Step Performance Management Model with Employees

In the new book “Solving Employee Performance Problems” by Bruce, Hampel, and Lamont, a 4-step performance management model is explained in Chapter 2. Then follow-on chapters provide detail how to and templates for different aspects of each step. Here I will attempt to summarize the provided model.

1. Assess the situation before deciding on action or judging employee. To do this gather information about the employee such as work samples, project results, and co-worker comments to validate the assumption before going ahead with a plan for improvement. If an issue truly exists, then proceed to next step.

2. Set expectations for the employee by going over the expected work output and associated deadlines with them. They will not meet management expectations without clear guidelines on what they must do. This process of setting expectations should start with on-boarding and continue through the employee’s career by including personalized SMART goals for the individual as well as communicating the goals of the team they are part of.

3. Coach and correct to help employee through the performance improvement process by providing corrective feedback and reinforcement of positive behaviors. This will build employee confidence and create a better relationship with their manager. (Note: chapters 4, 6, 8 provide excellent examples of 19 common behavior problems, 30 ways to begin a conversations with the problem employee, and 14 examples for a coaching and development plans.)

4. Measure results so that both you and the employee know how they are doing towards their performance goals. This way you can meet regularly to adjust goals or set new goals as needed, rather than wait until the employee has completely missed a goal which means the manager did not help them avoid failure.

In chapter 8, the book also provides a link to HumanResourcesSources.org where a 15-minute podcast interview with Stephanie Montanez in available. Managers and Human Resources may find that interview helpful for step 3 above. The podcast is titled Problem Solving Toolkit for Employee Performance Improvement and contains 7 steps for management and HR.