Articles - Snippits

Today's most vocal business leaders are emphasizing that "the world is flat," that labor moves freely, and that the lowest price, whether it's from Atlanta or Argentina, always wins. Million dollar orders can be placed online without so much as speaking to a live person, and the "faces" of corporate communications are increasingly those of models or paid spokespersons rather than real business leaders.

Are people skills even relevant, at a time when posting a job opening online will get you applications from around the world? The answer is a resounding "yes": at the end of the day, someone is still designing the products, the web sites, and the marketing material.

Especially if (and not "even if") that person was born and raised outside of the country, he or she needs a proper environment in which to perform his or her job. Immigrants and guest workers are members of the corporate world as much as anyone else. However, they have special issues and hardships that concurrently require closer attention to bring out the best in them, and that means mental coaching. As one of the most important functions of today's human resource management, mental coaching is an excellent way of integrating someone from a different culture fully into the team.

Although mental coaches, such as Dr. John F. Murray, who developed "Mental Performance Index" for American football (and proceeded to help Vincent Spadea overcome a losing streak that was one of the longest in the history of tennis), might be associated with professional sports, outdoor sales-people, or CEO's, the truth is that mental coaching is relevant from the highest to the lowest rung of the corporate ladder.

After all, if someone is worth spending tens of thousands of dollars to hire and train, doesn't it make sense allow the Human Resources department the freedom to bring out the most in him or her? If sports teams can hire mental coaches to increase their performance, so can corporate teams. Even if the labor they're coaching is fresh off the Internet.

Whatever shape the world is- round or flat- humans still live on it. No human performs at his best without good management and training. Companies are, have always been, and will always be as good or as bad as the people working for them, and the internet doesn't change that at all.