• Home
  • About
    • About From Aid to Maturity
    • My Story
  • Contact
  • Newsletter

From Aid to Maturity

Struggle Less. Contribute More

3 Things You Can Do to Avoid Hiring Jerks

19/04/2018 by sissel Leave a Comment

Share
What We All Deserve. Copyright: Great Place to Work
 People should be evalutated on whether or not they positively influence others

[David Mayer] 

My last article was about the consequences of hiring jerks. This article is about a few simple steps to avoid them.

Often some form of so-called soft skills are included among the requirments  in a job advertisement. (Why are they called soft, when they are essential?) Still, most recruitment processes tend to focus on skills and experience.

The argument against hiring for character traits or attitude is that it is too complicated, too expensive or too something else.

So what can you do about it? If you are working with HR, part of any interview panel or otherwise engaged in recruitment.

Or perhaps you simply want to have a say, because you have experienced too many failed recruitments, too many promotions for the wrong reasons. And worked with too many managers, “bosses” or “heads” that are jerks or close to.

I have worked for “experienced” heads of offices of international organisations, who would have been fired if they had worked for a remote municipality in Lapland.

There are 3 simple things you can do or suggest no matter your position in an organization. And you can implement or suggest them with without needing much experience in recruiting.  [Read more…]

Share

Uncategorized Tagged: Work environment

Stop Recruiting Jerks: the Consequences for International Aid

29/03/2018 by sissel Leave a Comment

Share
My Boss Is A J-E-R-K! Photo: Nyttend

 

This is not another article about sexual harassment. But about its wider consequences for the aid sector. It is about the fact that a person cannot exploit and harass certain individuals, while at the same time exercise integrity and leadership.

Because as Gandhi said:
One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole

The Jerk

I would not trust a person widely known to harass women, or men,  if he speaks about the importance of “establishing trust with local communities.”

Harassment is just part of a rather dirty package. It affects the performance of the whole organisation; and what has now become obvious, as part of the latest harassment revelations: the whole aid industry.  [Read more…]

Share

Uncategorized Tagged: Work environment

A Tale of Two Teams – The Good versus The Bad and The Ugly

10/05/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

Share

 

 This is a story about two very different work teams I have been part of.

One of the teams was a UN team; the other was an emergency preparedness project team in Sweden. I leave it to you to guess which team was which one.

 

Credit : Rebecca Murphey

The Bad and The Ugly Team

This team was not actually a team. Its members worked side by side. The flow of information and number of interactions were kept to a minimum.

Some of the team members did not miss an opportunity to belittle other team members. It could be about rank, experience or anything else they could come up with. Many spent a lot of time and energy on dreading the next toxic email, or spiteful comment; and subsequently, strategies for how to handle them. [Read more…]

Share

Uncategorized Tagged: Trust, Work environment

Sunk Cost Bias. What Is That?

24/04/2017 by sissel Leave a Comment

Share
Burn money. Credit: http://taxrebate.org.uk/

Sunk cost bias is one the concepts presented in the World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society and Behaviour. Since I assume many of you do not have the time or the energy to read that report, I will try to give you an apprehensible explanation; and some reasons for why you should know.

 

In an aid context, sunk cost is when you persist with a project, despite its obvious flaws or absence of results. You, your office or your organization have invested so much money and effort into it that is hard to admit your failures. And the more you have invested, and the more you have lost, the more likely you are to head on; despite knowing that the project is beyond rescue.

Waste Aversion

Why do we humans do such a thing? Looking at it from the outside it seems rather stupid, to say the least. Especially if we claim ourselves to be well educated and “rational”? [Read more…]

Share

Uncategorized Tagged: Development, Trust, Work environment

How to Find Your Inner Strength In a Bad Work Environment

11/12/2016 by sissel Leave a Comment

Share

When I embarked on my mid-life career change into international aid I was full of optimism. Finally I had found what I was looking for: dedicating myself to meaningful tasks in an international and vibrant community.

Moreover, I thought I was well informed about the flaws and deficiencies of the UN system and I had received warnings about INGOs being bad employers.

I also had many years of work experience and believed I was seasoned and prepared.
I was not. [Read more…]

Share

Uncategorized Tagged: Maturity, Work environment

Follow Sissel

Newsletter

Get Your Free Ebook!

Please sign up for the newsletter. Just add your email address and press the [Sign Up] button.

Recent Posts

  • “Thinking takes too much time”. What has that got to do with Hurricane Dorian?
  • What We Didn’t Hear about Hurricane Dorian
  • How Easily We Are Duped
  • Expose Yourself to What You Do Not Like
  • Why We Need to Grow Up – A Review of “The Leadership Integrity Challenge”

Older Posts

Tags

Behaviour Cooperation Corruption Development Disaster Emotional maturity Inequality Integrity Leadership Maturity Political Correctness Responsibility Risk consciousness Sanitation Traffic Trust Work environment

Copyright © 2021 · Going Green Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in