I’m sure you’ve heard of the ABC’s of selling. Always. Be. Closing. Well I think there should be a similar mantra in leadership. Always. Be. Developing. The ABD’s.
Sabrina.Baker
Sabrina Baker, PHR is the owner of Acacia HR Solutions a human resource consulting and recruiting firm. She specializes in the four main developmental stages of the employee life cycle: recruiting, training, succession and outplacement. You can connect with her on Twitter and Linkedin.
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Articles by Sabrina Baker
The title of this post is kind of a no-brainer right? You would think. Yet, companies all over the world put up a smoke and mirrors show through the interview process only for an excited candidate to take the job and find a very different reality.
So here’s my plea. Stop lying about your company culture.
I am always fascinated by the way we communicate with one another. We have an abundance of words available to us that we could weave into beautiful sentences. Yet we choose to be lazy with our words or not use them at all. Even more fascinating than the words we use might be the way in which we choose to communicate.
So much information comes from a conference of this size. It is clearly impossible to attend every session and soak up all of the great content shared. That’s why Twitter is amazing. I spent much of yesterday and last evening scrolling through the tweets from day 3 of the conference. I am listing what I think are the best below. Obviously I couldn’t have read through every tweet so this isn’t to slight anyone else’s brilliance, but these are the best of what I read through.
One of my clients is the CEO of a small business that was doing very well. The business had been around for 20 years and had grown to a modest level in that time. At one point she felt the growth had become too stagnant and she felt she needed to make some changes in order to take the business to the next level. The problem was that those changes were bound to anger some of her staff.
And she was a people pleaser.
Changing Employee Perspective can Change How They Work
Both job seeking and recruiting can be frustrating endeavors. Both can require a ton of work that seemingly gets little results. Both can leave an individual overwhelmed, stressed and irritated.
I can’t help but feel for the ones who are struggling.
Labor Day is a bittersweet day for me this year. First, it happens to fall on my birthday. Nice of the government to declare my birthday a national holiday! Second, it is a day purposed to celebrate the American worker.
Yet because job seekers have my heart right now, I’m having a hard time celebrating.
In the past year I have encountered thousands of HR professionals. From being a fellow attendee at a conference, to leading and planning a conference with over 500 HR professionals as attendees to speaking to placing HR professionals, I literally talk to fellow HR pro’s every day.
A Workforce Vacation Policy Can Be a Competitive Advantage
As small businesses grow, benefits packages become a large part of their competitive offering when attracting talent. For companies who may not be able to compete in the area of compensation, an enticing benefit package could sway an individual to join a company despite lower salary.
Trust is a big issue in business. If employees do not trust leadership, problems ensue. If leadership doesn’t trust employees, micromanagement runs rampant. Priorities are shifted from what is really important to drive the business to what must be done to keep an eye on employees.
Trust is a powerful thing.


In October this article ran on Forbes depicting the workforce trends we will see in 2014. I think it’s a pretty good list. Since a good majority of my clients are small businesses, I often think about how things will affect them. They have less ability to adjust or react than larger organizations and often have to think of things a little differently.
Are Problem Solving Skills Innate or Learned?
Employee Engagement Should Be a Focus Before It’s Broken
It really is our nature though isn’t it. To not think about things until they are completely screwed up. In the last few years the idea of employee engagement has taken a front seat in our book of leadership speak. It’s important. We like to talk about it. We believe it impacts the bottom line and that is important to us. Yet, we only begin to really focus on it when it’s completely jacked up. And that’s too late.
Can I be honest for a second? If you said no, stop reading.
While conducting leadership training not too long ago, an individual went on for several minutes about how he would never be a micromanager. In separate training with his staff, I found out that he, in fact was, a micromanager.
I often find this to be the case. Micromanager is such a negative word that no one wants to be defined that way. Yet it is the number one complaint from employees about their supervisors.