Fear

Note: This week on the blog I am trying out a little experiment - writing on the first five (or so) subjects that popped out at random from a cool little app called Writing Exercises. The app provides suggestions for topics, characters, first lines - that kind of thing. I tapped the 'Random Subject' button a few times and will (try) to come up with something for each subject I was presented. It may be good, it may stink - who knows? But whatever the topic, I am taking like 20 minutes tops to bang something out. So here goes...

Today's subject: Fear

First of all, thanks a lot to the Writing Exercises app for following up yesterday's uplifting topic of 'Regret' with another pleasant subject, namely 'Fear'. Well, I am committed to this silly endeavor now, so plow on I shall. (19 minutes left on the clock...)

Fear comes from a few places obviously. The most urgent and primal kinds of fear are ones that are around physical safety, security, 'Will I have enough to eat today?' kinds of things. The next kind of fear that is probably more common among most of us is fear of failure. What if I don't hit the ball or know how to spell the word in the spelling bee or the client decided to award the business to my competitor? Those kinds of fears, fears of losing, while interesting to some extent, at least to me aren't the most compelling to think or write about. Anyone, heck pretty much everyone, has plenty of experience with competition and thus with losing. And most of us, eventually, tend to avoid the kinds of things that are likely cause us to lose, (saving for a moment the Powerball players out there), and consequently our fear of losing is addressed by avoiding competition and confrontation. Said differently, over time we gravitate towards things we are 'good' at.

I'd say the same things about the entire category of 'experiential' fears like fear of flying or of tall buildings or of public speaking. Eventually you get up the onions to conquer those kinds of fears or you don't. I just don't think in the big picture they matter all that much or are all that life-altering in most cases.

But the more interesting and sad kind of fear is the fear of not being needed or of being rejected and unwanted. The idea that no one really needs you whether it's in a workplace context, with family or friends, or in a relationship is pretty daunting and scary. Probably the saddest thing that one can hear is 'We won't be needing you anymore.' 

I think most of us want to be successful at what we do. We want to have good relationships with our families and a set of close friends that we can share experiences with. But behind most of those desires is one fundamental one - we want someone to need us. 

And waking up one day only to discover that no one out there, anywhere, really does need us is probably many people's greatest fear.

So tell the people in your life that you need and that you count on how much they mean to you today. You'd be surprised I think how important that is.

Dang, this content is kind of heavy, look for something more fun tomorrow.

One day in blogging, a partial list of pitches

Blogging has been pretty good to me over the years. So has doing the HR Happy Hour Show/Podcast. Both of these things have opened up plenty of doors, created some interesting opportunities, and enabled me to meet some great people along the way. One other thing about doing this is (and back when I started I had no idea was even a thing), is that once you have been blogging or podcasting for a while, you get on the radar of lots of news folks, PR firms, and other organizations that would like you to know about and potentially help publicize their news, product launches, their client's new book, or some event they are promoting.Jasper Johns, White Flag (which is what I am waving towards my Inbox)

Most of these outreach messages are perfectly professional, offer up some kind of interesting content or news that in theory might be interesting to me (or readers and listeners), and I honestly don't mind getting them one bit. I don't/can't respond to all of these PR pitches, (there can be lots of them in any given day), but I still appreciate them. Even after all this time doing this it is still sometimes surprising that (some) folks are interested in what I think, have to say, and want to connect with the audience. 

Why blog about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on with blogging, even a small, niche blog like this one?

I don't know, it just seemed interesting to me today. Which continues to be the primary reason I blog about anything (note for any PR folks who might read this). But just in the last hour or so as I was checking some email, planning out the day, I received four or five of the aforementioned 'pitch' emails, in quick succession. That seemed kind of unusual, and so I checked back at the last 24 hours or so of my received emails and I thought that, wow, I have gotten a ton of PR pitches already this week. So since I brought up the topic, and I am too far down the path of this post to start over with some other, better idea, I wanted to share a partial list of the PR pitches (mostly Email subject lines only) that have arrived in my Inbox in the last 24 hours or so. 

Submitted without comment, judgement, or endorsement...

1. Disturbing: Workplace Suicide the New Trend

2. Volcano Calbuca Erupts! Are you Prepared?

3. Innovating Service Summit Webinar Will Feature Internationally Customer Service Experts

4. Lee Hecht Harrison Poll Finds Most Workers Losing Sleep Due to Work-Related Stress

5. Gain Insight to Independent Workers to Build the Best Teams

6. Nepal Earthquake Rocks the World!

7. WiFi Will Run Future Wearables

8. 8th Annual Mobile Excellence Awards Coming Soon!

9. Special Invitation: HR Secrets You Need to Hear

10. The Lavender Graduating Class of 2015 Lacks Legal Protection Moving Into the Workplace

There's a bunch more, but you get the idea. If there is an idea.

Blogging is kind of a weird thing sometimes.

Have a great day!

Persistent sameness

I read two really interesting pieces over the weekend, the first was a really long, (I mean really long, give yourself an hour or so to take this one on), review and analysis of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack. This is an endlessly interesting and evolving story, I blogged about it briefly last week, but even just a week later it is probably worth revisiting, as the repercussions from this case are only just starting to be felt.

The second piece that caught my attention is quite unlike the Sony tale, is much lighter (fitting the start of what is for most a short, holiday week), but no less interesting, just in a different way.

The piece comes from Citylab.com and is titled 20 Years of Street Photography Shows Just How Boring We All Are, a review of the work of Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom over that past two decades.

From the Citylab piece:

Since 1993, he has worked on his "photo notes"—arriving in a city, setting up on a major street, and then, within 10 to 15 minutes, choosing a recurring visual theme before shooting in the same spot for one to two hours. Once he's done, he puts the best examples into a grid, with the place and time at the bottom of the page. This technique yielded a stream of Louis Vuitton-style murses in 2006 Paris, a pack of Canadian tuxedos (denim on denim, see the image on the right) in 2007 Amsterdam, and an army of shirtless rollerbladers in 1997 New York.

I grabbed the example of the Canadian tuxedos to run with the post, but you really should click over to Citylab to see some of the other examples that Eijkelboom has captured over the years. And the interesting part is that these collages of sameness only take about an hour or two to compile, and probably could be even larger if they were not edited down for presentation.

I am not going to overthink the significance of these observations and images, it is pretty obvious I guess that most folks like to fit in, to swim with the prevailing tide with respect to fashion anyway. I suppose the greater danger arises when we allow this tendency towards sameness to extend other areas that are not as trivial as fashion choices. I will think about that when I see the 27th article this week about why 'Employee engagement is important' or '5 Tips to be Super Amazing in 2015' that gets shared relentlessly on social media.

When we all tend to dress the same you get the funny and sort of ridiculous images in the Eijkelboom works. When we all seem to read the same things, quote the same quotes, listen to the same Ted Talks - you get the idea, we end up with something worse that a picture of two dozen people in the same shirt.

It's worse that than, but it's much harder to take a picture of what it looks like.

Have a great week!

Ebook: The 8 Man Rotation - The 2013 Season

It's here!

It's finally here!

No, not summer and sunshine and three months spent slacking off while half of the office is nowhere to be found, I mean the next installment of the world-famous free Ebook on Sports and HR - The 8 Man Rotation - The 2013 Season.

What is The 8 Man Rotation?

It is a group of your HR pals, Lance Haun, Tim Sackett, Kris Dunn, Steve Boese, and Matt Stollak who made it a habit throughout the year serving up the HR/Talent version of the 'hot sports take', helping you to see and then exploit what happens in the sports world in your HR shop.

Whether its breaking down what the NBA draft means for your recruiting efforts, explaining why hiring lower division college athletes always makes sense for your organization, or learning from the greatest sports teams and players about setting performance goals, and lots more - chances are high that if there is a way to connect sports and HR/Talent, you will find it in the 2013 Ebook.

Compiled and edited by mighty Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak, the 2013 Season is (probably, I can't be bothered to check), the longest, and most comprehensive of all the 8 Man Rotation editions, coming in at a ridiculous 165 pages, all about the intersection of HR, Talent Management, Recruiting, Leadership and sports. And in 2013, we have a great introduction from HR pro and noted New Orleans Saints fan, Robin Schooling.

Of course you don't have to read all 165 pages (you should), you can bounce from topic to topic, and article to article, as Matt did a great job organizing a year's worth of sports takes into a coherent volume.

So please check out The 8 Man Rotation - The 2013 Season here, and I will even embed the Ebook below in case you don't want to click away from your favorite blog.

The 8 Man Rotation: The 2013 Season from The 8 Man Rotation

Thanks again to Matt for all the work (good job, good effort) and to the guys for keeping up the 8 Man tradition.

Have a great weekend!

The 3rd Annual Tim Sackett Day honors America's favorite sourcer - Kelly Dingee

First off - Happy Tim Sackett Day!

What the heck is Tim Sackett Day you might be wondering?

Let me take you back to a similar cold, windy, snowy January day just two years ago when a rag-tag band of Human Resources bloggers joined together to honor one of our own, one of the often unsung HR heroes, toiling in the trenches, working day-in and day-out to improve the workplace, one step at a time. The idea was to recognize and praise the type of HR, Talent, or Recruiting pro that all too often goes, well, unrecognized in an era where 'Look at me' sometimes trumps, 'See what I have accomplished.'

So in 2012 for the first and inaugrual Tim Sackett Day we honored, well duh, Tim Sackett. 

And last year for the 2nd Annual Tim Sackett Day, the HR blognoscenti honored another great hero of mine, and one of the stalwarts in the world of motivation, incentives, and influence -  none other than the amazing Paul Hebert.

And for the 3rd Annual Tim Sackett Day we recognize the great Kelly Dingee, aka, America's Favorite Sourcer!Hi Kelly!

You might know Kelly from her work over on the Fistful of Talent blog, where she regularly shares knowledge, strategies, new technologies, and her overall philosophy on all things candidate sourcing, engagement, and outreach. She might be the only contributor over at FOT that actually really and genuinely cares about sharing her ideas and helping the community to learn and get better at their jobs. 

Here are just a few of Kelly's recent takes over at FOT that if you are at all concerned about raising the talent level at your shop, and come on, that has to be all of us, that you should check out:

Is Google+ ready to be our sourcing darling?

My 4 Sourcing Lessons from 2013

Cheap Training for Your Home Grown Sourcer

If you check out these posts, and the rest of the Kelly archive you will come away the better for it. You will have learned something new, been given a compelling reason to try a new strategy or technology, or simply have been challenged to think about what you are doing, and might should not be doing, in a new way.

But the message is delivered in an honest and straightforward way. And the advice is backed up by Kelly's own real-world experience. And that combination makes Kelly pretty rare these days, an HR/Talent influencer that is actually working on her craft, (and sharing her wisdom), with the rest of us.

Congrats to America's Favorite Sourcer on this much-sought after recognition on the 3rd Annual Tim Sackett Day!