Melva Gifford

Well, working on more works to help on my spelling. Here are the two latest:

Restaurant: eating establishment

I want to rest from my aunt’s rants by eating at the restaurant
REST AUnt’s RANTS

Continent: large land mass

conTINent: For a visual image, I think of an topology of landmass made from a thin plate of tin that shows mountains and valleys.

Well I finished with my next online corse provided by my company. It’s great they give us this opportunity and I’ve been please that I’ve been good on my goal to study for a half hour each weekday.

Today’s topci is Developing employees:
Here are my typed notes.

Developing employees:
-attention should be giving to employees who do what is expected and not just those who are over or under and over achievers.

Why develop employees?
-what can I do to keep employees at my company
-How to retain and develop top talent to contribute to the future success of the company
-inspired employees yield best business results
-inspired employs provide new solutions and collaboration better
-inspired employees feel accountable and tend to be loyal to the organization

A new approached to employee development
-all employees from high performers to poor performers get develop plans.
-employee development is the manager’s responsibility instead of HR.
-Employees given new challenges to strength their professions abilities.
-instead of ‘training’ sessions get instead
Stretch assignments
Job rotations
Self-paced e-learning
Action learning
Manager coaching and feedback
Mentoring
-Managers need to seek out opportunities, set goals and provide feedback.
-Managers need to be committed to cultivating the potential in your employees.

Why managers neglect employee development:
-don’t feel they have time.
-don’t want to discourage high performers when there aren’t any advancement opportunities in the company

Consequences of neglecting development:
-Top performers may feel neglected or unmotivated.
-If employees don’t see opportunities for growth they’ll seek elsewhere.
-Low per formers may have a false sense of their success and can’t understand why they’re not being promoted. And so share negativity.
-Miss the opportunity to align employee goals with company goals.
-don’t have back up (bench strength” among your ranks should a top performer leave.

Managers’ role in employee development:
-help guide employees to match skills, interest and values to job opportunities.
-Conduct frequent discussions of development outside of semiannual reviews.
-Give timely and specific feedback of employee’s work against established expectations
-Act as an informal teacher
-have employees draft individual plans for their development.
-Focus on an individual assets and how they can contribute to the company

The importance3 of seeing differences:
-A realistic expectation for one employee may not be for another.
-Tailoring an improvement program to specific needs will maximize their success in current and future jobs.
-seeing differences in employees helps manger access unique team members’ appropriate growth and job enhancements.

Ways to determine differences between employees:
– treat people as if they were what they out to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being ‘Goethe
-mangers separate employees into Top performers (exceptional performance) Solid performers (constantly meet expectations) and Underperformers (employees who get by with barely acceptable results.
-when considering potential you may consider past contributions but also future values.

Evaluate Employee Performance:
– Does the employee exceed expectations in at least one area of performance?
– Is the employee a key contributor to the team & organization?
– Does the employee act on corrective performance feedback in order to improve performance?
– Could the employee perform at a higher level in a different position or increased responsibilities?
– Could the employee learn new skills to increase ability?
– Does the employee demonstrate leadership ability? (showing imitative, vision, delivering promised results, communicating effectively & taking appropriate tasks).
– You can give points to your employee for their skills set and put it on a gride. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

How to motivate you employee:
-Motivate key employees for they work diligently and inspire others.
-Motivations include: company policies and benefits, working conditions, salary, status
-Intrinsic motives: Positive feedback about quality of work, opportunities for growth, A sense of responsibility at work & on the job achievement

Keeping top Employees Motivated:
-“It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.” – Vince Lombardi.
-The easiest way to see what motivates an employee is to ask them.
-set up frank conversations to find what they like doing and what drives them to do their best.
-What kind of work are you most passionate about.
-what type of opportunities for learning do you find to be most exciting.
-what type of rewards most motivates you? (money, autonomy, affiliation, title, time off, intellectual challenge).
-The answers to these may not be obvious so you might be able to gather the answers in a less direct way.
-What do you like/don’t like about your job?
-Pay attention to an employee’s behavior and see what tests they like and what motivates them most.
-also be sure to find out if anything about their job situation is frustrating them, such as too much travel, difficult colleagues, not enough challenge from day to day. Try to address these needs and eliminate obstacles.
-help them direct their careers in the direction they want to go and provide the right growth opportunities.

Provide mentors for A players:
-If you company does not have an established mentoring program create an informal one for your top employees.
-mentors outside your organization may have broader perspectives.
-mentors can help employees clarify career options, better understand the organization and navigate its politics, build support network and deal with obstacles.

Manager your talent:
-“Ability is of little account without opportunity.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
– Strive to enhance collaboration among talented people. (informally through social networking opportunities or special tasks forces or work groups).
-Look for signs of burnout.(high performers are prone to overwork. Be careful of overloading your star performers or they’ll leave.

Understand your corporate backbone
-Be conscious of employees who meet expectations but are not standout performers. Its important to recognize, value and grow these employees.
-these steady reliable employees are your corporate backbone.
-Steady employees understand organizations history and process.
-Adapt to large scale organization change more easily than a players because they fell lest threat.
-were former superstars who left fast track for a variety of reasons such as work/life balance.
-to retain core employees you need to develop them and best match their competencies, potential and desires.
-some managers make the mistake of thinking only top performers need challenge, that included solid contributors.

Provide frequent Affirmation:
-Tell core employees that they are valued.
-Listen to their ideas. Listen and respond attentively. If you act on a suggestion, give them credit.
-Praise their accomplishments.
-Trust them- allow them to take actions and make decisions that are appropriate to their skill level.
-Accept them for who they are: solid performers upon whom your organization relies.
-develop core employees talents as you would a players.

The return on management ratio:
-You energy should be invested in activity that best contribute to your organization’s productivity and overall performance.
-spend the most time working with people that contribute the most value to the company such as star and core performers.

Actions toward lowest performers.
-Low performers would get less time from a manager since they contribute the least of all toward an organization.
-low performers can influence the habits of other workers and a business culture of mediocrity which repels highly talented and ambitious people.
-strategy for addressing lowest performers is on performance
-provide them with clearly defined goals.
-provide a path and timeline for achieving those goals.
-Be explicit about the ways in which they must improve.
-Be willing to coach and provide honest feedback.
-If they’re not meeting expectations maybe see I they work better in a different department or dismiss them.

Dismissing Lowest Performers:
-Need to make sure dismissing the low performer is the best thing to do.
-Make sure you have the correct documentation both of the employees performance or behavior problems and the steps you’ve taken to help him or her improve.

Career Development Discussion
-Arrange with employees that you want to have a discussion about career.
-Gather data to support the discussion
Past development plans
Employee self-appraisals
Performance reviews
History of training or courses attended.

Assess your preparedness to talk to the employee:
-what are the employee’s skills? (Range from leaderships to management to analytical abilities)
-What are the employees values and interests? (what provides meaning to their work)
-what employees are available to the employee? (What assignments offer challenges that encourage the employee to grow)

Follow up
-follow up with employee to monitor progress on a regular basis.
Schedule periodic check-ins
 

I have had the opportunity to visit a couple of different countries and I have found that when a little preparation precedes the trip you have a much more enjoyable trip.

A couple of trips to places such as London, Paris and Italy were done by join a tour group managed by a college or a travel company located inside the country. That was great because they managed all the transportation, places to stay, places to eat etc. The other thing that was nice was that they seemed to have made some type of arrangements that we didn’t have to wait for most tourist spots but were able to get in reasonably quickly.

When I went on a college related trips, the university had some presentation on the country in advance to the trip. That way, we were more informed travelers with the history of the country and by seeing slides, we knew what to expect.

When I go somewhere, I should remember to carry a dictionary; it would have helped when I was trying to get help at a camera shop about my camera or for directions to the restroom. If opportunity permits I could also find it useful to learn about the culture to learn what acceptable or unacceptable behavior is.

It was strange when my friends and I traveled with a group, many Americans would eat at American restaurants. I found it more interesting to eat in places that represented the country. Next time I travel somewhere, I need to learn the money system better so that I can know which currency is what so I can pay for something properly and not just ‘trust’ that the native of the country will take the appropriate amount for the bill.

Something that my friend Paul taught me is that if there is an opportunity; try to get as many different types of experiences as possible. On a trip to Hawaii we had a wide range of activities such as one day we went from the lowest point of the island the below the ocean in a submarine to the highest point of the island to walk around an observatory in the snow.

Those are just some ideas to consider when traveling internationally.

I absolutely love the smell of potpourri and I really love the aroma of cinnamon pine cones that usually pop up during Christmas. I hope that today’s object lesson will be of use to youth ministries, home devotionals and family home evenings. Today’s lesson touches upon the usefulness of working on a project as a team rather than doing something alone.

There are many projects that work just great being done by one person, but where there is a big or complex project it is often easier to distribute the work load among several people than just to do it alone. The additional advantage is that a big task that is shared can often be accomplished in a shorter period of time. Also with many people, different people have different skills sets and you can take advantage of the combined knowledgebase of many people. If something is too heavy for one person, it can often be lifted by many instead. Also distributing the work load can help prevent one particular person from over work or exhaustion.

Object lesson: open a new package of potpourri and start piling like items together in separate piles. Sniff and identify the similar items and discuss the advantages to the aroma of those standalone items. Now combine them again and just brainstorm as a family or class on the possible ways of how many people can contribute to the success of a project. If you have a past activity or event that a team has worked on, than refer to that project and give specific examples of how each member of the team contributed to the success of the whole.

My Goulash post for Friday is to announce the story telling retreat in June. Here are the details:

We will be having the roots and wings retreat on June friday and
saturday june 1st and 2nd. What I need from you is to organize the
evening and morning workshops. Set the info out to Rachel Hedman to
let all USG members know about the retreat. It will be free for Timp Tellers, and $10 for all others wishing to participate. I have
several beds availble for women if they want to sleep over on Friday.

It is a first come first serve basis. I think the earliest we want to have breakfast is 8am, as some people will come travel just for that day. Friday evening should start around 6pm with dinner, then the workshops at 7pm. I think we should end around 9:30 to 10 pm, so people traveling home it isn’t too far.

My address is 1001 N. 800 E. Springville UT 84663. Since I have given bad directions before, I would get them off mapquest for people. If you get the email ready send it to me, and I will send it out to all timp tellers. I would like to have one of you be the contact person, just let me know how many plan to be here total, and how many plan to sleep over. You guys can figure out how to organize it. Paige said she would manage the food end, me my house, and Melva & Sharon the workshops. Good Luck!

Ginger (Chapter President)

Melva’s Next story telling Performances:
Conduit: memorial day weekend: Traits of a Her.o
June 1st: Traits of a Hero presentation at the Roots and Wings story tellers retreat.
June 9th: Traits of a Hero, Springville children’s museum.

As you have probably noticed by now, I make sure that many of my blogs are quite self-serving. I am a bad speller so my weekly Thursday blog is on how I try to remember how to spell words I struggle with.

I am constantly mixing up the spelling these two words. I am notoriously using a third word of “corse” in my writing and it is an outdated word. So today’s spelling mnemonic is on the difference between coarse and course. We’ll see if I can improve on the spelling of these two words after this presentation eh?

Coarse: rough or possessing larger pieces and is the opposite of soft.
A COAt made of wool often means it’s made of a COArse material.

Course: a direction or route taken.
When yOU walk down a specific path, yOU’ve chosen your cOUrse.

Corse: is a century old word that meant corpse.
The hORSE was so old that it died and and just laid there as a cORSE on the side of the road.

One of the biggest challenges for me to eat healthy is to find creative ways to make healthy food tasty. I try to do that by putting different seasonings on vegetables and butter rather than margarine. My favorite seasonings is onion, garlic and curry for various tastes.

But this brings up the question of what kind of seasons are good for a kitchen and how should they be used. So after checkout out some sources I’ve created a list. Here they are for your reading pleasure. Some of these are how I use them. Others may choose to use them in a different way

Basil = good with chicken or tomatoes
Balsamic vinegar = recently got introduced to this one within the last year or so. Yum. Good with olive oil for bread dipping.
Cinnamon = great on buttered toast and cinnamon rolls of course. (heard that some people will use ginger to enhance the taste of cinnamon. I’ll have to try that sometime.
Cumin = soup, beans
Curry (thickened) is a great alternative to ‘gravy’. Great on rice.
Garlic = much of the time on a collection of mixed vegetables and often for Italian dishes. Also good to flavor up plain rice mixed with butter.
Ginger = rice, stir fry, fish
Lemon juice = fish
Lemon Pepper = beef, fish, chicken. Heard some advice that you don’t use lemon pepper and season salt at the same time.
Mrs Dash – I use primarily use for salads
Mustard = egg, Salmon, asparagus
Onion = Practically everything
Oregano = Mexican and Italian dishes. Heard some advice once that one should duse Basil and Oregano at the same time as oregano often can overpower the basil. Just a head’s up.
Paprika = great for potato salad or deviled eggs
Parsley = chicken, fish, soups
Pepper = most all meats but very little for fish.
Rosemary = chicken and turkey
Salt = helps liven up nearly everything. But be warned. There is already salt in prepackaged meals and even in canned vegetables. You don’t want to automatically add salt to premade dishes. Taste it and you’ll likely find it taste fine as it is.
Soy sauce = good with rice or stir fry
Thyme = salads, soups

I came across this web site: http://www.frontiercoop.com/learn/ss_usage.php