How I Fell in Love with Guatemala

This is a report detailing my some of my experiences visiting Guatemala as part of a mission team from 12/28/13 to 1/4/14. This has nothing to do with HR, management, etc. But hopefully you’ll enjoy it anyway. If not, you know where the “delete” button is. :-)

I’ll start off by saying that it’s very difficult to put into words what this experience was like and how much it meant to me. It will be a long time before I realize all the impacts of my trip to Guatemala. For now I’ve just laid out a timeline of events, because that’s much easier to write at this point in time.

In the beginning

Back in November I was attending my small group at church and a friend mentioned that the mission team to Guatemala was short by a few people. I looked at my wife and we quickly decided that I would go. I have wanted to for a few years, but one excuse or another would pop up and keep me from committing. On the flip side, I have worked with our team at church to put on the annual holiday auction for the past few years. That annual event funds the feeding center and some of the other ministries within Guatemala, so I definitely had a significant interest in checking out what all the efforts had led to over the years.

Hanging out with my new friend Elsa

Hanging out with my new friend Elsa

I spent the next few weeks puzzling through my brain. Why was I going? What did I have to offer? To be completely honest, the thought of building a home was daunting. My skills are limited to “lift that” and “move this.” I’m not savvy with my hands when it comes to projects like that. I knew I wanted to spend time with the kids and just play and love on them, but what else could I offer? Why was I supposed to be there?

By the time I left, I still didn’t have an answer that satisfied me…

Fast forward to the end of December, and I was stepping onto a plane to head into Guatemala. I had spoken with a few previous visitors to get an idea of what to expect, but it was still a wide open canvas just waiting to be painted.

The plane ride was a quick hop from Huntsville to Atlanta, then a three hour flight from Atlanta to Guatemala.

We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and spent the evening resting and unpacking at the mission house located in San Pedro las Huertas.

Sunday-staying busy

On Sunday we got up, got ready, and went to a church service. The entire service was in Spanish, but they were very excited to have us there visiting, so they asked a few people to come up and speak to the group. Our music director also got up and sang two songs, which they enjoyed immensely. I speak some Spanish, but I couldn’t keep up with everything being said. However, when the pastor bent his head to pray, I heard, “Gracias” at least a dozen times in his prayer.

That made me stop and think. These people have so little, and yet they are incredibly thankful for the things they do have. It’s a powerful reminder that with all the things we have and take for granted on a daily basis…

I heard a great quote recently that this reminded me of: What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you were thankful for today? Take a moment to think on that. It’s pretty powerful. I do know that I’m going to be more thankful for everything, even something as simple as being able to drink water from a faucet without risking an illness!

Talking with Jonathan

“Working” with my new amigo, Jonathan

After church we ate and went to the building site to prepare the area for the home we planned to build throughout the week. We dug holes, set posts, and filled them with concrete to dry overnight. As it got dark, the family we were building the house for brought us food and drinks as a “thank you” for our efforts. It was amazing to me that this family was so giving (food for 7-8 guys is a lot), even when they had so little to give.

That night, I walked with a few of the team down to visit Elsa, the sponsored child of one of my good friends from home. Elsa’s eyes were enormous as she opened the small box and marveled at the toys, lip gloss, and other trinkets inside. It was an honor to be able to make that visit on behalf of my friends, and I know she and her family appreciated the gift very much.

Monday-let’s build a house

Monday we started early on the house. We started putting up the walls and roof. When you think “house,” this probably isn’t what comes to mind. This was basically a tin shed with a wood frame. However, by local standards, it was a fairly nice house. After we ate lunch and worked on the roof, I took a few minutes to wander out to the nearby area where the children were playing.

I absolutely love children, and I wanted to spend some time playing with them while I was there. I started swinging them around and letting them jump from the back of the truck into my arms, and it was my favorite few minutes of the entire day. Within minutes, the kids were saying, “Mono! Mono! Mono!” I couldn’t help but laugh, because that’s Spanish for “monkey.” Soon it was time to head back to the mission house, so I had to tell the children that I would be back the next day.

Tuesday-fun with concrete and monkeys

Playing with kids in the squatter's area

Showing the kids how to jump rope like a pro

On Tuesday we had to mix concrete to pour floors for the home. That involved shoveling sand and gravel and then mixing that with cement and water. All in all, it was a tough job, but certainly something that someone with my level of hands-on skills (i.e. zero!) could do without much fuss. After we got the floors poured, some of the guys began building the doors that we would put on after the floors set, so I wandered outside again to see the kids.

As soon as my head popped outside, they started shouting, “Mono!” and ran to me. I was swinging them and laughing, and then one little girl started saying, “Mono loco!” If you know how I act around kids, that’s a pretty fair translation: crazy monkey.

Again, I spent as much time out there playing with kids, learning names, and taking pictures before we headed back for the night.

Wednesday-concrete and sponsored kids

Taking a moment to speak with teammate Casandra and her buddy Carla

Taking a moment to speak with teammate Casandra and her buddy Carla

On Wednesday, we couldn’t return to the house as the floors were setting, so we went to the feeding center. Over the past few years mission teams have built a feeding center on the side of a mountain at San Cristobal el Bajo. This feeding center provides one meal, a vitamin, and a bible verse each day to over fifty children. For many of those kids, that is the only meal they will receive all day. The feeding center kitchen had a dirt floor, and to improve the conditions and make it more sanitary, the team mixed and poured a concrete floor in the cooking area. My only regret was that the feeding center was closed for the new year/holiday, so we didn’t get to see the children who normally visited the facility.

Thursday-house dedication and lots of hugs

home finish

Dedicating the new home for the family

On Thursday we returned to the home to put on the doors and dedicate the home. After that special occasion was celebrated, we all had a chance to go out and help with Vacation Bible School for the children living in the squatter’s area. As we helped the children make their crafts, one of the boys brought his and gave it to me as a gift. It was incredibly thoughtful and I will treasure it! It was our last time to see the kids before we would leave on Saturday, so we gave extra hugs and said our tearful farewells.

That afternoon, we made several home visits to sponsored children. It was especially exciting for me, because I got to meet with Cesar, our sponsored child. He is currently in his “career” level classes in school, and despite the language barrier I was absolutely thrilled to get a photo taken with him. As I was leaving, his mother handed me a few old photos of Cesar. The translator asked if I needed to return them, but she just smiled and told me to keep the photos. That small token of appreciation was so special!

Cesar and his family

Cesar and his family

Later, we stopped by another home to visit other sponsored children. I was able to deliver yet another gift on behalf of our friends, and it was such a neat experience to see Francisco Javier get excited about the small toys and other goodies in his box.

Friday-the “rest” day and youth night

Friday was our “off” day, after spending several days mixing concrete, pouring floors, doing construction, and going nonstop. We got to visit some interesting places around town, but for me the entire day was overshadowed by the upcoming departure. That night we hosted a youth group meeting for the local church and did some fun/funny skits and songs for them.

Saturday-regretfully heading home

Playing with kids

Spending time with the children at the squatter’s area

On Saturday morning we packed up and hit the road to head to the airport in Antigua. There were many hugs and kind words spoken, and I will not forget thinking about how we were heading back home and the others were heading back to the village to rest up for another day of ministering to the local children. Amazing.

This experience is difficult to describe in a few words, so I tried to give an account of the trip with some solid detail. However, I still can’t convey the lifechanging impact of the visit. I am anxious to return, and I hope to one day bring my family with me to visit the amazing people in Guatemala. Hope you enjoyed the story!

Essential HR Skills: Organization, Focus, and Negotiation

Recently I ran across an old article on “essential” HR skills. It was an interesting read, and I wanted to break it down and show how it’s true (and, in some ways, maybe not so much). Today we’ll tackle the first half of them. Here’s the original list:

  1. Organization
  2. Multitasking
  3. Dealing with Gray
  4. Negotiation
  5. Communication
  6. Discrete and Ethical
  7. Dual Focus
  8. Conflict Management and Problem Solving
  9. Change Management

Source: HR.BLR

Now I’d like to break these down individually and give some perspective on which ones are critical for the role of the HR professional. I’m framing this through the lens of a generalist, because that’s what I (and most of us, if I had to guess) do on a daily basis.

Organization

This is one of my weakest areas, but it’s also truly important to being great in this role. You’re balancing 50 priorities in different focus areas, and that doesn’t come easily. How do you know what is more important between a pending lawsuit that needs a response, 401k nondiscrimination testing, and handling a discrimination investigation? Whew. Be organized or be gone.

Multitasking

This one is on every list you’ll ever see for a “critical skill.” However, I think it’s less about multitasking and more about being able to shift focus quickly. Multitasking sounds like you’re trying to do 5 things at once. And in the end, that will just leave you with 5 things done in a so-so manner. Shifting focus at a moment’s notice to be able to handle a fast-moving priority IS an important skill. Multitasking can drop your IQ further than smoking marijuana, in case you were curious.

Dealing with Gray

Everything is not black and white, even in the world of policy creation and enforcement. You won’t think of everything, and that requires some level of discernment and backbone to make your job possible. If you are only interested in creating policies, adding amendments, and closing loopholes instead of using your brain, then this probably isn’t the profession for you. We have to work in the muddy areas frequently in this field, and it’s just part of the job description.

Negotiation

From handling compensation discussions to recruiting great candidates to working out your budget for the year, negotiation is something you need to work on if you plan to be successful in the HR field. In fact, I’d say the better you are at negotiating, the higher up the ladder of the profession you will go. The best and brightest HR pros I’ve run into over the years were not only unafraid of negotiating with vendors and management, they actually enjoyed the challenge! So put your negotiator hat on, because you have some work ahead of you…

Part 2: communication, discrete and ethical, dual focus, conflict management and problem solving, and change management

That’s all for today. We’ll cover the last half later this week!

Free Stuff

It’s the giving season around these parts, and I wanted to take a minute to remind everyone of some of the great (free) resources that have been published here over the years.

  • Building your HR department-some of the key tips and tricks for getting the HR function up and running, how to gain credibility, and how to manage it all without help!
  • Employee performance management guide-great content on managing employee performance in a way that doesn’t make them run screaming from the building
  • Employee retention eBook-great ideas on retaining your best and brightest
  • Employee engagement eBook-this was the handbook on engagement before engagement was cool :-)
  • New hire orientation and onboarding guide-If you want to shake up your new hire process (or develop one, if it doesn’t exist?), then this guide is for you. I’ve had dozens of “thank you!” comments on this over the past few years.
  • HRYP guide for young professionals-this short guide for young professionals touches on some of the key aspects of a solid career development plan
  • Rock your SHRM chapter-if you volunteer in the SHRM space for your chapter or state council, this guide is a phenomenal tool for helping to generate new ideas and drive engagement with your volunteers and members.
  • PHR Study Series Free eBook-as always, I am helping those preparing for the PHR/SPHR exams by providing guidance and insight on the exam. This was my first guide, so the writing style is more coarse; however, it gets the job done!

I appreciate each and every one of you, and I hope you are looking forward to an exciting 2014!

The Biggest Killer of Teams Is…

I have been studying the performance of several teams both within and outside our organization, and over time I have seen one key predictor of success or failure for team performance: community. When community is lacking, or in more common terms, when the team members don’t have care and concern for each other, failure will soon result.

Yes, having the right skills is important, but we’ve probably all worked on highly skilled, yet highly dysfunctional, teams in the past.

Video: Building Team Community

Check out the video below for how community ties into teamwork and 5 ways to develop a stronger sense of community for a team:

Email subscribers click here to view

Video Notes

5 tips to build community

  1. Get away from the office.
  2. Take time in meetings to talk about personal things, even if for a few minutes.
  3. Have inside jokes. If they don’t exist, create them.
  4. Create recurring opportunities for people to air grievances and get on the same page. And DO NOT let this become a “checklist” item. It must be meaningful or it’s not worth the effort.
  5. Individual success is team success. Individual failure is team failure. If it ever gets to “well, at least it wasn’t MY project that tanked,” then you’re in trouble. Because when your focus area is in need, the rest of the team will be able to reply, “well, at least it isn’t MY job…”

Teams don’t become great by accident or just by being lucky. Consider which of the methods you could use to inject some community into your team, then make it happen.

For more info and team-related goodness, check out The Orange Revolution book review.

Social Media Recruiting (Guest Post)

One of the highlights of my early career days was a year spent in a group called NMU–NASHRM Mentor University. I learned much, developed some amazing friendships that I still appreciate to this day, and got to participate in a pilot program to improve the career prospects of local HR professionals. This year the group is still going strong, and one of the assignments was to create a blog post and have it published online by a known HR blogger. Donna Quinney, an HR pro from Huntsville, was paired with me. Her first ever blog post is below. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Donna!

Social Media Recruiting: Should You Believe the Hype or Not?

I had the privilege of serving as a Mentee with NASHRM Mentor University program this past year. As part of the program, we were asked to prepare a 30 minute Powerpoint presentation, present to the class, and develop a blog post from that information. My presentation was titled “Social Media Recruiting: 7 Good Benefits Every Recruiter Should Know.”

Much to my surprise, I found that there was less negative and more positive information out there on social media recruiting. I've heard a lot about the security risks associated with having too much of your personal information hanging out on the internet. That's it…the only negative I could find on social media recruiting. But I must say, that one negative could potentially cause some major problems for you, your financial state, and most importantly your family. So be careful with that!

But, on the flip side, there are several positives for implementing a social media platform in your recruiting strategies. Here are just a few that I discovered:

  • Cost Saving – Post positions on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It's basically free!
  • Improves Talent Pool – Connects you to the largest active and passive job seekers!
  • Fill Positions Faster – Compared to traditional approaches: newspaper ads and/or job boards!
  • Increased Candidate Diversity – Helps widen your search options even further!
  • Company Branding – On-line presence gives candidates a glimpse into the company culture/ environment!

Now that you are up to speed on a few benefits of social media recruiting, are you ready to jump on board and recruit your next new hire via LinkedIn or Facebook? Are you convinced that social media recruiting is here to stay or is it just the next big hype? I'll let you decide!

Thank you NASHRM Mentor University for a great year…and the yummy cookies! I've officially been HR stretched!

Split Testing Internal Communications

Split testing is a marketing tool that companies use to evaluate the impact of their marketing messages. They will take a key message and test variations of it against two (or more) groups, then compare the results to see what worked best. It helps over time to define the best and most effective communication method for the target audience. So why don’t we do this internally?

In addition to my day-to-day HR work, I’m also tagged as the Communications lead at work. I get to distribute the minutiae, but I also have a hand in delivering news with a larger impact. Recently I had to share some news that I assumed would not be popular. I was given the core details and had to craft the communication around that in a way that eased the message and helped people understand why the process was changing.

If only…

If I had split tested the message, I could have sent a test to 4 or 5 people, then sent another test to another 4 or 5 people. Next I would have compared notes on which message was better received, easier to understand, etc. Then I could have sent the best and most effective message out to the masses, confident that I’d delivered the best information available.

But I didn’t. And I’ve learned my lesson.

Since then I have had to help respond to many of the questions and comments surrounding the decision. A few tweaks I had considered making before delivering the message were discarded as “too much information” or “redundant,” yet the questions I’m getting make me realize that I could have taken care of those by adding those seemingly useless elements to the original message. Lesson definitely learned.

Sometimes speed is important, but don’t sacrifice the morale of your staff because you want to rush information out the door.

Thankfully all is good now, but I have been kicking myself mentally over something I should have done. Anyone else ever done any split testing at work, whether in communications or not? I’d be curious to hear the results…

Anonymous Review-Are You Worried?

Recently one of our departments initiated an anonymous review to determine how the staff perceived its performance. There were questions on processes and people, and it generally revolved around the employees’ satisfaction with the performance of the department. It made me wonder a few things:

  • Would HR be bold enough to initiate an anonymous review?
  • What would the results be?
  • How would HR respond to the results?

Initiating the review

When the department lead came to me asking for help in developing the short survey, I asked what their goal was. Simply put, it was to find out from the user’s point of view what gaps they had in their products/services and fill those needs as quickly and effectively as possible.

Think about it–for many people, they are not interested in learning their weaknesses and don’t really want to hear from anyone about what they could do better. It takes an open mind and sincere dedication to getting the job done properly to step out and ask for that criticism.

As far as the anonymous element, they understood that when you attribute responses to individual people, you sometimes get skewed results. Allowing respondents to be free and unfettered in their responses will provide a better picture of the situation and the needs of the user base.

Finding the pulse

Think for a moment. If I walked around with a stack of survey forms and a pen and interviewed the staff at your company, how would they respond to these questions?

  1. How important does the HR Department at our company make you feel?
  2. How well do you think the HR Department understands what you need to be successful in your position or project?
  3. Overall, how responsive has the HR Department been to your questions or concerns?
  4. How clear was the information provided to you regarding benefits, policies, and processes.?
  5. How user friendly are the HR Processes?
  6. Overall, are you satisfied with the HR Department at our company?
  7. What do you like most about the HR Department?
  8. What would you like the Procurement Department to do better?

Are you confident in how they would respond? Are you a little shaky in some areas? Surely you’re not a 100% “extremely satisfied” across the board…

Following up

The hard part about surveys is not delivering them. It’s analyzing the data and determining what follow up (if any) is required. So let’s just assume that you’re normal and you get a negative response on one question. It’s probably not a complete surprise, but now the pressure is on to actually work to solve the problem. When someone has the opportunity to respond to a survey with their concerns, they expect those concerns to be addressed now that they are a known factor.

For instance, if #5 didn’t get great responses, then you need to do some research on what specifically in the processes are bothering people. Are they too cumbersome? Too slow? Too process-oriented when it needs to have more of a personal touch? First determine the exact problem, and then work to resolve it.

One final note on the solution side–don’t be afraid to use employees as guinea pigs. One of my friends always used to say, “Treat your employees like guinea pigs.” It meant that you should test new ideas, try pilot programs, and evaluate big changes against a small sample size before rolling out to the entire organization. Feel free to do that here. It’s less risky for you, it allows employees to have some say in the final direction, and generally everyone is happier than if you had thrown out yet another blanket policy that didn’t address the needs of the staff properly.

What are your thoughts? Any chance of you doing an anonymous survey of your department/team any time soon?