A Message from Ujima Donalson, POD Executive Director
While summer is often seen as a reprieve, it’s also a time of change and highly focused work as we prepare for the coming academic year. That’s certainly been true in POD this summer as we’ve contributed work to the new HR website while also preparing for a number of new offerings and programs launching this fall. In the meantime, I’ve tried to carve out time for myself and my family and have supported my staff in doing the same because I know that without those breaks, we might start to crack. As leaders, taking time for ourselves is imperative. Self-care enables us to care for others—be that family, friends, colleagues, clients, or students. Read More
"The true genius of a great manager is his or her ability to individualize. A great manager is one who understands how to trip each person's trigger." ~ Marcus Buckingham
Fostering Intrinsic Motivation
Lynne Lazaroff
According to noted author Daniel H. Pink, "A lot of white-collar work requires less of the routine, rule-based, what we might call algorithmic set of capabilities, and more of the harder-to-outsource, harder-to-automate, non-routine, creative, juristic—as the scholars call it—abilities."
The kind of work Pink describes (and the kind of workers who do it) requires managers to be less routine and more creative in how they engage and motivate people. My colleagues in POD and I have been refining how we look at engaging staff to provide more distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as well as between "satisifiers" and "motivators," and to help managers better align their approach with today’s workforce. I’d like to highlight some aspects of our new framework for examining motivation, which we’ll debut in SLP Level 1 this fall. Read More
"Work is harder than, or at least different from, how it used to be, and we increasingly need the full involvement of employees. To be successful we need not only their hands, but also their ideas and enthusiasms." ~ Alexander Hiam
Susan Templeton’s Top Picks
As I look toward my retirement this September, it’s only natural to reflect on the influences that have shaped my practice as a consultant and trainer. Each of the books below has changed the way I work—I’ve drawn on them for content for the leadership courses I’ve taught, they’ve impacted how I’ve coached and counseled clients, and I’ve recommended them frequently to others.
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Transitions and Managing Transitions by William Bridges
Transitions was recommended to me over 20 years ago by a dear colleague and career counselor, Vic Snyder, who recently retired as associate director at the UW Career Center. He shared many wise tips with me on how to deal with the emotions inherent in change, and reading Transitions was among his best advice. It helped me appreciate the time between leaving a familiar situation and starting something new. Managing Transitions is a sequel that speaks to managers and leaders on how they can best support their employees and teams to successfully manage change. Read More
"While I recognize that all problems are system problems, there is nothing to the work system if the human system is taken out." ~ Edith Seashore
Introducing Our New Website
UW Human Resources launched its new website on July 25! The site reflects UW branding and complements the look of the main UW site while presenting a uniquely HR flavor. Moreover, it offers greater ease of use through its visually engaging format, a site-wide top-down navigation with popular HR topics, an A-Z index, an improved information architecture within each HR unit’s site, and high functionality across mobile and other devices. POD has a new home within the HR site (http://hr.uw.edu/pod/), with major improvements throughout. Read More
"I’ve tried to create a culture of caring for people in the totality of their lives, not just at work. There’s not magic formula. It’s like building a giant mosaic—it takes thousands of little pieces."~ Herb Kelleher, CEO, Southwest Airlines
SLP Supervisor Orientation: Improving How We Serve New Leaders
Ujima Donalson
This September POD is introducing SLP Supervisor Orientation, a stand-alone training that will replace the HR Basics segment from Level 1 of the Strategic Leadership Program. Over the years we’ve learned that SLP is most successful when it is delivered at the optimal time in a leader’s career, and this change will allow new or newly promoted supervisors to gain a deeper understanding of their role in human resources administration in a timely fashion. A workshop dedicated to HR fundamentals will also enable leaders to more fully delve into the material and ask questions of subject-matter experts. Finally, it gives us the opportunity to unify the messaging that supervisors receive in regard to HR operations and to support the larger HR and UW strategies of centralizing information and making pertinent tools and services more readily accessible. Read More
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