For the first few years of being fresh in the workforce, you are gathering all kinds of experience. Not only are you acquiring actual work experience while garnering a paycheck, you’re learning how to organize your time and how to deal with coworkers and clients. Meanwhile, you’ll be judged, sized-up, and oftentimes criticized (gently or harshly), not only by your manager, but by your coworkers as well.
How do good parenting skills affect employee engagement? What does parenting have to do with their son or daughter being engaged or disengaged at work?
If one is still lucky enough as I am to have their parents around to offer advice once in a while, consider how their influence can affect your work. My parents—my good parents—have always supported my goals in life, especially my talents. They are the wind beneath my wings, so to speak. I have always taken into account their honest feedback, good or bad, at several of the jobs I had in my life. That being said, sometimes when I felt I was not being treated fairly, they gave me open and honest feedback. If I was wrong, as hard as it was to take, I realized they were telling me for my own good in order to grow in the working world. So, there it is; growing up in the working world could use some parenting.
Dang! I’ll bet if you saw that title, you clicked right on over here to read more!
This is more of a confession than a sermon on swearing at work. Just because I write about things that happen in the work place and what I feel should be done to rectify situations, does not make me sanctimonious. Here’s an area where I should pay closer attention.
One of my fondest memories from the movie, “A Christmas Story,” is when Ralphie swears when trying to help his father fix a flat tire.
Ralphie: Oooh fuuudge!
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Only I didn’t say “Fudge.” I said THE word, the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the “F-dash-dash-dash” word!
Mr. Parker: [stunned] *What* did you say?
Ralphie: Uh, um…
Mr. Parker: That’s… what I thought you said. Get in the car. Go on!
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] It was all over – I was dead. What would it be? The guillotine? Hanging? The chair? The rack? The Chinese water torture? Hmmph. Mere child’s play compared to what surely awaited me. Continue Reading →
Our nation’s educators have found yet another way to upset parents and grandparents these days. In their infinite wisdom, many schools are no longer teaching the art of cursive penmanship to our youth. Most schools are making demands on parents to supply their children with tablets in lieu of paper and pencils. Okay, I’m with it. Kids are growing up in a fast digital age and need to be in the know as quick as lightening. Why go to the library when you can call up the answers in Wiki or Google? That’s a great resource to have, no question about it. One thing is good; we are all doing a heck of a lot more reading than a few generations back. Once upon a time, it was feared young people were losing reading skills by not picking up books. It was even said, that educators hoped kids would at least read comic books. Whatever, read, read, read was their motto then. What children are reading on these devices is another blog.
This story will sound like I’m bragging, but it’s just a fact. Sunday afternoon, I was driving my grands back home from their weekend at my house, when I noticed a few miles ahead of me on the highway there was smoke. And where there is smoke, there’s fire. Sure enough, traffic started slowing down and a fire truck and state trooper sped right by us. Fortunately, I was right at the only exit for several miles, so I quickly took it. Having taken that exit many times in the past, there are a lot of side roads to get to my destination and I always get lost.
Is this happening to you?
Just like the clown post I wrote the other day, it seems like there’s one of these in every crowd too. There are some folks out there who consider themselves a manager though they do not possess the proper title in order to actually manage anyone. Some lines you just don’t cross.
It is one thing when a coworker asks for your help with something, but another if he or she demands it as an order, thus assuming your manager’s role. You should only report to one person, and that’s your immediate manager/supervisor. He or she should know what your work load is and whether or not you can be “lent” out to help someone else.
Some advocates advise assuming a role as a manager in order to actually obtain the position. This hardly means that you start supervising others on your own. You should only assume certain tasks that your current manager approves.
Intro: This blog is written to further elaborate with my own views on the “8 Tips to Engage Your Employees” booklet written by our experts.
Tip #3 from our new booklet, “8 tips to Engage Your Employees,” discusses developing people in order to achieve success as a manager. “Opportunities for growth and development are a key driver of employee engagement as well as organizational success.”
Just when you think you have all the experience you need to be successful in your career, you might find yourself needing more education and training. Ugh! The thought of going back to a classroom may be pretty daunting in your forties and fifties. I remember my father having to go to management school for 3 years while he was in his forties in mid-stream of his working career with the Northern Illinois Gas Company. My father had no formal education other than high school. The Gas Company cared enough about him to send him to college for management training. He forced himself to read book after book on management and writing assignments every night until he graduated. The hard work paid off. The education was a great boost to his career and eventually led him to a much better stipend and a company vehicle.
We are NOT all equal
Here’s a thought for the older generations in the workplace today, and I refer to mostly Veterans and Baby Boomers: You are NOT equal to your millennial and Gen-Xer coworkers. It is my contention that when it comes to experience on-the-job, or just life experience in general, one cannot deny that “we should know better” so to speak when it comes to certain matters at work. Therefore, it is up to us to be the mature leaders that our younger counterparts will want to look up to. You do not have to be a manager or VP to be this kind of leader. Simply by virtue of your age, you are automatically a leader. HOWEVER, WE OLDER GENS LEAD BY EXAMPLE.
Is Parent Daycare on the Horizon?
As the workplace is changing, some Boomers are realizing they will never be able to retire unless forced out. To top it off, some may have parents to take care of. This could happen to anyone at any age depending on how old one’s parents are, but I’m looking at a potentially vast majority of us who are extending our working lives for one reason or another instead of retiring and taking care of one’s parents full time. In particular, I’m referring to parents who are not geriatrics, but lucid, and capable, to a certain extent, of maintaining a house, cleaning, driving, shopping, and the like.
Now I know why people in older generations say, “Life was so simple when I was young.” My response to that is, “That’s because you didn’t know as much as you do now.” When you accumulate knowledge, experience and history, things get complicated. Why? Because we are weighing issues, and not only in the present, but how they measure up to the past. Was it better? Was it worse?
I wager that nobody wants to be a traitor to his or her own generation. We look to our pasts when things were “less complicated” and we think our ways then were the best compared to the ways of today. In reality, those “things” – and there’s a lot of those “things” to discuss here – were probably very complicated back then too and they weren’t always better. We just didn’t realize it until later on, maybe way later on. Back then, we were probably more naïve and lacked the fear of consequences. Why? Because experience wasn’t there yet to tell us to be fearful.
