The Career Clinic Blog

Is there anything that inspires more dread at the office than the annual performance review?

Human resources consultant John Putzier has the antidote. Keep your people in a continuous feedback loop. Watch them at work. Notice what they're doing, and occasionally take five minutes to share your observations with them. Make a few notes, and stick those in a file.

You're on the lookout for what’s going well, so you can give credit where it's due.

You’ll also share what can be improved. Your high performers will appreciate the coaching. The people who don’t measure up will find it difficult to argue with the evidence when it’s time to make changes.

At the end of the year, your performance reviews are already finished. You open your files to find...no surprises!

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A star employee left your company to work for another one, and regrets it. She wants back.

Decision time.

Do you let her calls go unanswered, look the other way when you bump into each other at the grocery store, and, well, show her?

Your loss.

John Putzier's an expert in human resources and the co-author of The Everything HR Kit. He says boomerangs--employees who leave and want to come back--represent some of the easiest hiring decisions you'll ever make. You know them, they know you, end of story.

John suggests you make it clear to the soon-to-be departed stellar performers they're welcome back if you have openings for which they're qualified. It's a lovely parting gift, so much better than a pen.

That gift will also boomerang, John points out, because few things are as motivating to your existing staff as someone who went searching for a better place to work--and couldn't top what she already had.

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Quick. Name someone who makes husbands happy to take their wives to poetry readings.

Oh sure, that one's easy--because I've been talking about Taylor Mali all week.

Have you checked out his web site yet? Gathered the family around a computer for some of his videos? I dare you to watch just one.

Taylor keeps winning national poetry slams, but that isn't what makes him cool. What makes him cool is what he inspires. He inspires elegance in speaking and writing. He inspires kids to use their heads as they follow their hearts. And he inspires at least one talk show host to make every program sparkle the way it did when he was a guest.

Watch for the podcast soon--and share it with someone you love. They'll thank you. I promise.

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What can you say that will make you sound more intelligent, whether you're flipping burgers or flipping houses or flipping multi-billion dollar companies?

Nothing.

That's right. The poet Taylor Mali has a suggestion if you're tempted to fill a moment of silence with "um" or "uh" or "er."

Don't.

"People are afraid that silence will make them sound stupid," Taylor says. "So they fill it with something that's guaranteed to make them sound stupid."

How do you break the habit? Ask people who care about you to nag you until you quit. Wear a rubber band on your wrist as a reminder to snap out of it. Make a point of listening to yourself when you talk.

Better yet, record yourself and then listen. Silence won't feel as painful by comparison!

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One bright summer afternoon in early August when Katie was seven, we took treats to the library to thank the staff for how much fun she’d had during the summer reading program. “Why thank you, Katie!” one librarian exclaimed as she accepted the sweetness. “How did you know it was my birthday?”

We had a few chuckles about the coincidence, before the woman teased Kate she was twenty-nine. “Wow,” Katie said, taking it in. And then, in a louder-than-appropriate-for-the-library if not downright booming voice she added, “You look way older than you are.”

The room got very quiet as we took turns wondering whose turn it was to talk.

Katie’s older now, and has learned the art of--as a former White House spokesman once put it--telling the truth slowly. She also sprinkles almost everything with a heapin’ helpin’ of the word “like”--so much so the poet Taylor Mali took it to her when she helped host The Career Clinic the day he was a guest.

Taylor asked Kate if she was familiar with his poem, Like Lilly Like Wilson. She was. “Do you know why I’m asking?” he wondered. She did not. So he told her. The word “like” is not a comma!

Had this happened to me at Katie’s age, I think I would’ve had a little crisis about it. The embarrassment! My hero, pointing this out, on the radio. Not Kate. She was flattered. She already knows what a gift it is, to have someone like Taylor care enough about her to tell her the truth.

That’s one reason he loves teaching younger kids, Taylor says, to help them break bad language habits before it’s too late.

Next up, he has a suggestion for something all of us can do to sound more intelligent.

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Which kid in your elementary school got the most oohs and aahs during show and tell? The one who stood up and talked about his grandparents’ farm? Or the one who talked her grandpa into bringing a baby goat to class?

The best way to inspire you to find work you love, in my opinion, is with introductions to people who have. The poet Taylor Mali graced The Career Clinic with his wit Saturday, and if you watch this video you’ll see why I was so excited about that show. Taylor makes a living doing what he loves, and he makes a better case for it than almost anyone I know.

Judging from one-too-many overheard cell phone conversations, we’re burning up our lives on the mundane--when that time would be so much better spent…coloring.

Why not change the world, instead? Let someone inspire you to make a difference.

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Did you leave it all on the floor?

That's what your basketball coach wants to know at the buzzer. Did you throw yourself, your whole self and nothing but your best self, into the game?

So why, in the process of leaving it all on the floor on one project, was I sweating the stall mode I'm in with projects two through infinity? It's just math. You can't give more than a hundred percent--and if it's all going toward one goal, the others will have to wait.

Or as my friend Jamie remarked, "One newborn in the house at a time." I think of that often. I smile, and cut myself some of the proverbial slack.

That's what friends are for. Smiles...and slack.

Thanks, Jamie!

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Ever notice when you go roller skating there's always one person who's either clutching the side of the rink or causing a ten-skater pileup after still another wipeout?

That's me.

To say I'm not a natural at the sport might qualify for a world record in understatement. So naturally, I love it. Every bit of coordination and even IQ has to go into staying upright. Any problems I have before I lace up just seem to...fall away. I'm terrified and totally relaxed, at once.

Meditation doesn't have to be boring.

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Once upon a time a new bride decided to whip up for dinner the duck her husband had shot, caught, whatever hunters do to wildlife after first declaring how beautiful those creatures are. I didn’t get it, but I was determined to make something tasty out of it--and yes, I followed a recipe. I wrapped the bird in bacon to keep it moist, and baked it for however many minutes at however many degrees.

Well, okay, possibly a few too many minutes at a few too many degrees--because what came out of the oven looked like…a hockey puck. Yes! A hockey puck!

Now in my recipe file under duck it just says, “Don’t make.”

Recipes are wonderful tools, in the right hands.

Have you seen this one?

(1) Figure out exactly what you want.

(2) Get your heart set on that. Want it so badly it hurts. Want it so much you’re embarrassed to admit how much you want it. Want it like a little kid wants something--with abandon.

(3) Go for it. Be gentle but determined, and stop at nothing in pursuit of your heart’s desire.

(4) Live happily ever after, or get your heart broken.

(5) Mark your lessons.

(6) Decide whether you still want what you want, or something else.

(7) Repeat.

The most important step you’ll take, as the saying goes, is the first one. The most important part of that step, in my opinion, is to not settle. “Job hunters search for half their vision with half their hearts,” says What Color Is Your Parachute? author Dick Bolles, “which is why they fail before they start.”

I’ve been testing Dick’s advice for nineteen years, and can report the following…

When I've been so specific about what I wanted it attracted ridicule, the dream was much more likely to come true. It couldn’t be just any broadcasting internship, it had to be with this network in this city working for this person. It couldn’t be just any literary agent, it had to be this one…

It's common sense, I suppose. Good luck getting what you want if you settle for something else.

Laurie Kahn knows a little something about targeting a job search. She’s the founder of the Media Staffing Network, and matches people who want jobs like mine with people who have the power to hire them. Check it out!

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I've always been fascinated by handwriting. Why, as a teenager, did my handwriting look like a tightly-wound telephone cord--so small, so scrunched together, so resembling one "w" after another? Why did I feel the need to cross every "t" backwards once I got divorced?

A handwriting analyst told me I have an extreme amount of gentleness and determination, two qualities he claimed are not often found in abundance in the same person.

What about my penmanship could've told him that, I don't know. But suddenly I felt like Goldie Wilson, the youngster who worked in the diner in the movie Back to the Future. I was as eager to live up to my handwriting analysis as Goldie was to become the mayor of Hill Valley.

Career consultant Anne Headley would approve of this spirit, I think. While she suggests you be wary of anyone who rushes to put you through a battery of expensive assessments, she finds the results as interesting as anyone.

There’s a place for testing, if you keep testing in its place. Test the test. Do the results make you feel better, or worse? Are they helpful, or not?

I’m partial to a good pop quiz.

One question--properly posed by the right person in a safe setting--might be all you need to get your career back on track.

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