Networking Events with Ivy Exec and Merrill Lynch

We are passing this along to our blog readers.  If you are interested, you may download the announcement here: Merrill Lynch Ivy Exec Networking Events and contact the individual below:

Dear Alumni Club Contact,

I am writing to invite the members of your club or organization to a series of recruiting events that my company Ivy Exec is co-hosting with our corporate partner Merrill Lynch. The event is geared towards professionals who are looking to re-enter the workforce or who are seeking a career change, greater flexibility, and more control over their schedules as well as unlimited upside potential. The event will include an overview of the Financial Advisor Career Track, as well as an Ivy Exec presentation discussing the opportunity from the perspective of women.  Both men and women are invited to attend the events, if they are interested in finding out more about a career with Merrill Lynch. Candidates with very diverse professional backgrounds have been very successful as Financial Advisors, we encourage anybody looking for a new opportunity to attend this recruiting event.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could forward this invitation to your members, include it in your organization’s list of events, or possibly include it in your newsletter if timing allows.  In addition, you may feel free to distribute the invitation to any other organizations or professionals who you believe would find the opportunity interesting.

Merrill Lynch is looking to staff a number of their offices nationwide.  The events currently planned are on the East Coast, but we are in the process of developing additional events in other regions of the country.  I will update you on our additional event as the information becomes available later this summer.  The more interest there is in the events, the more locations it will be feasible to sponsor events and panels in.

To register, professionals should use the link within the newsletter to email silvana@ivyexec.com, attaching a copy of their  resume as an RSVP.  They should also specify which event they are planning to attend, as well as which organization they received the invitation through.

Thank you very much for your consideration.  I am attaching the invitation to this email as a PDF. Please let me know if you prefer the newsletter in another format. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards,

Kirill Skok
Associate, Professional Development
kirill@ivyexec.com
(212) 431-3969

Karen

Top 10 Ways for a Leader to Build Trust

(with thanks to David Letterman)

10) Be Reliable: show up on time

9) Be open and honest: don’t hide information

8) Be competent: do your work as well as you possibly can

7) Be compassionate: show others that you care about them as much as you care about yourself

6) Listen deeply: put aside your own concerns for the moment to hear what others are trying to say

5) Think thank-you: find ways to let people know you are grateful for what they do

4) Keep the door open: let people know you are always available to hear their concerns

3) Help people hope: let others know that you are their strongest advocate

2) Apologize appropriately: when you are wrong, it is okay to say you are sorry

1) Be a ROCC Star: When you do all these things, you will be a trustworthy leader

-karen

Our Moms the Optimists

I always enjoy reading Tom Friedman’s columns in the New York Times, including today’s, and now I have a better sense of why I do. His mom, like my mom, was an optimist:

My mom left two indelible marks on me. The first was to never settle for the cards you’re dealt. My dad died suddenly when I was 19. My mom worked for a couple of years. But in 1975, I got a scholarship to go to graduate school in Britain and my mom surprised us all one day by announcing that she was going, too. I called it the “Jewish Mother Junior Year Abroad Program.”

My mom’s other big influence on me you can read between the lines of virtually every column — and that is a sense of optimism. She was the most uncynical person in the world. I don’t recall her ever uttering a word of cynicism. She was not naïve. She had taken her knocks. But every time life knocked her down, she got up, dusted herself off and kept on marching forward, motivated by the saying that pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but most great changes were made by optimists.

Mom died when I was 12, but she has left an indelible set of marks on me as well. She, too, gave me my strong sense of optimism and the ability to take what life throws at me and throw it right back.

She and Dad also contributed to my very strong extraversion: strangers to me are people who haven’t become my friends. My daughter Maggie also inherited this trait: as a little girl she was always inviting other little kids she met at the grocery store home for play dates!

Mom also gave me a strong desire to right the world’s wrongs, as she herself fought for justice and peace both in this country and in India where she and Dad were missionaries, and which is why I was born there.

She and Dad both contributed to drive for continual self-improvement through both formal education and experience. I will never forget her using flash cards with me and my brother Allan to memorize Greek and Latin roots and vocabulary words. Yes, I read the dictionary beginning in middle school and I’m proud of it.

Mom gave me a great curiosity about anything and everything. She read widely and encouraged us to do so as well. She took me to museums and orchestra concerts, encouraged my love of science and science fiction,

Mom and Dad through their many stories from her own life, motivated my love for telling jokes and storytelling, which is one of the motivations for Karen and I writing our book.

Mom taught me perseverance. She suffered for many years from hypoglycemia and severe headaches, both symptoms of a meningioma which was not discovered despite frequent doctor visits. She never let her pain and suffering interfere one bit with raising three boys, helping my dad with his research and writing, teaching vacation Bible School and Sunday School, and babysitting other kids to help save the money to buy our first home, right up until her untimely death at 39 following surgery to remove her tumor.

I only wish I had a perfect memory to remember all of the hundreds of lessons she taught me by her words, and more importantly, her example. I hope that I can pass along as much to Maggie and Jack as Mom passed along to me.

Aneil

Meet Bob: One of our ROCC Stars…

When you read our new book, Trust is Everything: How to become the leader others will follow, you will see why we respect and admire Bob Lintz. We have known Bob since the early ’90s when Aneil was working on his dissertation. He found out that Bob was an MSU alum and immediately teased him (Aneil being a Michigan alum) and we’ve all been good friends ever since.

We had the opportunity to write a case study about Bob and the way he turned around the General Motors Parma, Ohio plant which really allowed us to see the way Bob leads. His “open door” policy was revolutionary at a time when union members didn’t trust “management”. Bob has always had the ability to listen to other people’s concerns in a way that makes you know he truly appreciates your contributions to the organization. Aneil and I always told Bob that if we had met him while we were working at General Motors, we would have stayed longer.

We are excited for you to “meet” Bob and learn more about his trustworthy leadership style. Bob teaches us that we can all be trusted leaders if we care enough about other people and trust them to do what is right.

-karen

Ask the Trust Dr.

In our coaching, we are often asked questions about the specifics steps to take to build trust with colleagues or employees (hence, our book!).

Recently in my coaching, one executive admitted that he had dug a hole with his colleagues by always sharing bad news and blaming them for it. He figured that his last option was to either leave the company or really make a substantial change in his relationships with them. His question: “How do I prove to them that I am serious about changing the way I interact with them?”

My answer: Be deliberate about changing your ways.

First–apologize to your colleagues for your past impatience and tell them that you are serious about changing your relationship with them.

Second–show them you are serious by doing one new thing each day, like getting out of your office to go to their office (big thing actually to visit someone else) or scheduling time for coffee or lunch. Take the time to talk with them about work or themselves.

Third–Keep showing them day after day that you are serious about creating a better relationship and through those small steps they will see that you are

Aneil is on his way to Indiana to talk about Trust

On Friday, May 9th (his birthday!), Aneil is one of the guest speakers at Indiana Univerisity’s

Multi-Sector Leadership Forum
Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence
Indiana University
Indianapolis, Indiana

Aneil is one of the panelists scheduled to speak from 3:30 to 4:15, in case you happen to be in Indianapolis area tomorrow afternoon.

-karen

Great Leaders Build the ROCC of Trust

In our new book, we highlight how leaders build the ROCC of Trust: by being reliable, open, competent, and compassionate. The stories of these leaders from health care, manufacturing, the food and hotel industries, as well as nonprofits and franchising demonstrate the ways they build trust with their employees, customers, and colleagues. We have been inspired by them, and we hope you are, too.

P.S. Don’t you like this picture?  We love it!  It was designed for our book by Taylor Poole.

Karen

Wrong Incentives Undermine Medical Diagnoses

In medicine, proper diagnosis is essential to effective treatment and healing, so I was disturbed (but not surprised) to see yet another example of how incentives in the U.S. health care system undermine proper diagnosis. Today’s example comes from the Wall Street Journal:

Many in health-policy circles have focused on how the current health-care payment system is helping create shortages among primary-care doctors, internists and others on the front lines of medicine. But often lost is how the system is endangering some of the country’s most highly trained specialties as well.

Endocrinologists, rheumatologists and pulmonologists — specialties that also don’t involve performing many procedures — face acute shortages. Many of the severest deficits affect children. Though nearly 300,000 children in the U.S. are diagnosed annually with juvenile arthritis, lupus or other complex rheumatic diseases, there are fewer than 200 pediatric rheumatologists to take care of them, according to the U.S. government’s Health Resources and Services Administration.

I think that the proper measure for rewarding health care practitioners and health care organizations is “value for patients,” where “value in health care is the health outcome per dollar of cost expended” (Porter & Teisberg, Redefining Health Care, 2006: 4).

Health Care Insurance for the Insured

Karen and I (and our children) have been blessed to have health care insurance our entire lives, having been employed by firms and universities that offer health insurance to their employees.  However, like the individuals depicted below in today’s New York Times article , our out-of-pocket costs have risen dramatically over the years, with significant increases in our health care insurance premiums, our co-pays for physician visits and prescriptions, and deductibles.

Since the recession of 2001, the employee’s average cost of an annual health care premium for family coverage has nearly doubled — to $3,300, up from $1,800 — while incomes have come nowhere close to keeping up. Factor in other out-of-pocket medical costs, and the portion of the average American household’s income that goes toward health care has risen about 12 percent, according to the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, and is now approaching one-fifth of the average household’s spending.

In a recent survey by Deloitte’s health research center, only 7 percent of people said they felt financially prepared for their future health care needs.

I believe that we should have universal private health care, similar to automobile insurance, in which everyone has to be insured, and everyone has to pay for it (with subsidies for the poor).   However, what treatments and prescriptions get covered, and how people need to be encouraged to live healthier lifestyles to reduce demand for certain services, will need to be carefully determined to avoid bankrupting both people and our economy.  The time to develop a solution is now.

Aneil

Members of Congress Get Cars (and Gas) for Free

In yet another example of the hypocrisy exhibited by our elected Federal representatives (in this case Representatives), members of Congress can receive free leases, gasoline and maintenance on just about any car they’d like to drive while in office, according to today’s New York Times:

Modest or more luxurious, the cars are all paid for by taxpayers. The use of a car — gas included — is one of the benefits of being a member of the House of Representatives.

There are few restrictions on what kind of car the members can choose, and there is no limit on how much they can spend. But the benefit can be politically sensitive, given the growing concerns about automobile emissions and an economy that has left many people struggling to pay for the rapidly rising cost of gas, which was averaging $3.63 a gallon nationwide earlier this week.

Not only does the federal government pick up the cost of the lease and the gas, but also general maintenance, insurance, registration fees and excess mileage charges. The perk itself may draw heightened attention in the coming weeks as members of Congress consider proposals to address gas prices, including one to suspend temporarily the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon.

Congressional records show that about 125 members of the House make use of the benefit, which has been in place since at least the 1980s and is part of the allowance provided for their office operations. They include Representatives Charlie Melancon of Louisiana (2007 Chevy Tahoe), Bobby L. Rush of Illinois (2007 Lincoln Navigator) and Alcee L. Hastings of Florida (2006 Infiniti M45).

The Senate does not permit its members to lease cars with public money.

With gasoline on its way to $4.00 a gallon, the cost of food and other basic necessities rapidly inflating, and the economy significantly weakening if not in actual recession, this perk is yet reminder that Federally-elected representatives live in another world than the rest of us. It’s no wonder that trust in government is at an all-time low, according to the latest Edelman survey.

Aneil