Leadership Trends and Realities

Emerging Customer Response Channels - Feb. Conference

Customer Service/Customer Care channels should be top of mind for all businesses today. I don't normally recommend any particular conference, but would like my readers to know about the Customer Response Summit that will be held next month in Florida.  If you go, let us know the great new ideas you plan to implement!

Jonena Relth, President and Leadership Evangelist, TBD Consulting

 

 CUSTOMER CARE FOR THE CONNECTED CONSUMER
SOCIAL, COMMUNITY, FORUMS, BLOGS, VIDEO, MOBILE

For those leaders who could use some nice weather and the opportunity to hear top-notch speakers, take a peek at the line up:

SCOTT MONTY, Global Digital &Multimedia Communications Manager
Ford Motor Company

DAVID MINGLE, Senior Director Customer Loyalty
Nissan North America

FRANK ELIASON, Director of Global Social Media
Citibank

GINNA SAUERWEIN, Managing Director
FedEx TechConnect

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, Business Strategist and Consultant
Social Media ROI Specialist

BILL KEEN, Director of Mobile Solutions
InterContinental Hotels Group

"Without a doubt, new channels of customer engagement have opened opportunities to grow and retain customers as well as enhance relationships. Customer Experience Professionals embrace! We are establishing new rules of engagement as we speak. You need to be in Florida for CRS5 to hear directly from your peers about the new guidelines and practical approaches being taken to drive overall customer engagement."

"Full details can be located at www.customerresponsesummit.com  - The gathering is relevant to the multi-channel and new connected consumer (i.e. social, video, mobile, chat, text, blogs, forums etc.)
– Driving the right mix of customer experience, set service goals, expectations, measured against cost and a variety of other considerations for customer experience executives faced with."
Chad McDaniel , President and Conference Chair

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TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization, create a Lean Academy, or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961. Email Jonena today!

Using Brain Science to Improve Training Methodologies Ensures ROI

Jonena Relth, President and Leadership Evangelist, TBD Consulting

Learning professionals and corporate leaders, I think we can all learn from Diane Laufenberg, an excellent teacher. Diane's teaching methods immerse her students in experiential learning experiences. They learn in an environment that encourages creativity, critical thinking, processing and reflection. And one very important element of the learning is that the students are given the freedom to fail and then learn from their mistakes.  This is smart teaching because we learn more when we fail, receive immediate feedback and are given the opportunity to try again the right way.

 

 

There is a lot of current data now that shows how the human brain works -- how it retains and then retrieves information.  When we learn, pathways in the brain are formed and then reinforced with retrieval practice.  Basically, when we learn something, our brain connects two or more concepts in memory, which psychologists call encoding.  It is important that we make this pathway to information easily accessible. 

Accessibility depends on some things that we should consider when we develop our training, including:

• How recently the learned information was thought about
• How often the information is thought about
• The level of emotional importance
• The similarity between the learning and retrieval contexts.

Trainers can't always take their trainees on a field trip, but we can walk them through the call center where they will be working after new-hire training.  The participants will see the call volume and wait times projected on message boards, do buddy-jacking with agents wearing headsets talking with customers, and experience the environment's lights, sounds and culture.  By experiencing this simple "field trip," the participants' brains will build pathways for their new information that has an emotional component and a similarity between the learning and retrieval contexts -- thus moving the information to long-term memory.

It's good business to teach our employees in ways that their new information is stored in their long-term memories so that they can excel at their jobs.  According to the 2011 Training Magazine's Industry Report, US corporations invested $59.7 Billion on training.  We should be using teaching and/or training methods that ensure that we are spending that money wisely!

 

Jonena

TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization, create a Lean Academy, or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961.  Email Jonena today!

Hire Above Yourself - The Key to Success

Jonena Relth, TBD Consulting

Michelle Braden's post from May 25th, What Does Leadership Look Like Today, got my juices flowing and I would like to tag onto her blog.

You've probably heard the phrase, "He always hires below himself." It never ceases to amaze me how many leaders hire people just like themselves or a bit "below" their skill/intelligence level. This is a natural phenomenon as we all like to associate with people who will see eye to eye with us. Our instinct is to hire people who we think will admire our skills and track record and eagerly follow our leading. However, we are limiting the creativity and brain power in our organizations with this hiring philosophy. And yes, this happens even when we have a sophisticated HR department because the final hiring decisions are normally left to the leader(s) the new employee will report to.

The reality, though, is that for organizations to grow and excel, leaders must stop hiring people like themselves whom they feel "comfortable" with. They must start employing people who possess skills and abilities that their existing employees, including themselves, don't have. We all have products or services to offer customers, but the truth remains that an organization is only as great as the collective talent of its people.

I hope your leaders are confident in their leadership skills and feel "good enough in their own skin" to allow for differences in thoughts and ideas to be brought forward by all your employees. Everyone has ideas for improvement and we need to value every single person who works for us. From the janitor to the CEO, every opinion is worth considering. MANY years ago, our receptionist, came up with simple security precautions that only she thought of. Her suggestions worked, and because of her sharing her ideas, we were able to protect our clients' data from computer viruses. This was several years before our clients were able to protect their own data from the very same viruses.

Most of my regular readers know that I am a huge proponent for transparent leadership, trust and teamwork. For these to be effective in our organizations, we need all types of intelligent people communicating and working together to provide best-in-class customer service and superior products for our customers. Notice that I mention communicating and working together first - before our service or products. Without great people, we might as well hang up our shingles. But with great employees and contractors, the sky's the limit for the success - and fun - we can achieve!

Jonena

TBD Consulting has a 21-year, proven track record for ensuring employee performance improvement which translates to employee performance success. Whether you need help developing an in-house training organization or simply need "extra hands" to meet your deadlines or ROI goals, please contact Jonena. She and her qualified staff are here to assist you with your organizational development, coaching and training initiatives.

Corporate Office 602-263-1961. Email Jonena today!

Leading Without Bullying

Robert Whipple, www.leadergrow.com 

As I was having breakfast today, I was gazing out the window watching some robins chase each other around the backyard. I started thinking of the various animal species and the fact that in every group of animals, a certain amount of bullying behavior goes on. It is a "survival of the fittest" world in the animal kingdom. Maybe that is why we humans often exhibit some form of bullying behavior in order to get our way.

Bullying has become a key concept in our society. We see forms of it in every area from the school yard to Congress, from the boardroom to the bar room. We universally abhor the behavior in school kids, yet we often see it practiced unchallenged as adults.

We know the incredible destructive nature of bullying because all of us have been bullied at some point in our lives, and we know it does not feel good. We know it leads to suicide in rare cases, especially in children, because they do not know how to cope with the powerless feeling of being bullied. They would simply rather die.

It is also true that each one of us has been guilty of bullying another person at some point. If you wish to deny that, you need to think harder. Some of us have played the role of the bully more than others. Some managers have it down to a fine art. Unfortunately, people in power positions have a greater temptation to use bullying because it is a way to obtain compliance.  The problem is that, in organizations, mere compliance is not going to get the job done.

Organizational bullying is not confined to verbal abuse or strong body language.  It also occurs when headstrong managers become so fixated on their own agenda that it renders them effectively deaf to the ideas or concerns of others. They become like a steamroller and push their agenda with little regard for what others think. In this area, there is a fine line between being a passionate, driving leader who really believes and advocates for the goal versus one who is willing to hear and consider alternate points of view.

While we are mammals, we have a more developed brain and greater power to reason than lesser species. If we use that power, we should realize that bullying behavior usually leads to the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.  It may seem like a convenient expedient, but it does not work well in the long run.

If you are an elk, you are only thinking of the situation at hand and reacting to a threat to your power or position. You are not thinking longer term about relationships and possible future alliances, nor do you care how your behaviors might inspire other elk to perform at their best. The aptitude to plan and care is what separates man from the animal world.

Applying this logic in an organization is pretty simple. Managers who bully their way to get people to do their bidding are actually building up resentment and hostility.  While this may produce short-term compliance, it works against objectives long term. By taking a kinder approach, managers can achieve more consistent results over the long haul and obtain full cooperation from people rather than simple compliance.

Here are 10 tips to reduce the tendency to bully other people:

1. Ask if you would want to be treated this way - Simply apply the Golden Rule.
2. Observe the reaction and body language in other people - If they cower or retreat when you bark out commands, you are coming on too strong.
3. Be sensitive to feedback - It takes courage to listen when someone tells you that you are being a bully. Ask for that feedback, and listen when it is given.
4. Speak more softly and slowly - Yelling at people makes them feel bullied even if that is not your intention. When you get excited, lower rather than raise your voice.
5. Ask for opinions often - Managers who seek knowledge as opposed to impressing their brilliance or agenda on others have less tendency to be bullies.
6. Think before speaking - Ask yourself if this is the way to gain real commitment or just temporary compliance. Is it good for the culture?
7. Reduce the number of absolutes you use - Saying "You never do anything right" cannot possibly be true. Soften absolutes to allow for some reason.
8. Listen more and talk less - When you are shouting at people you cannot possibly hear their rationale or their point of view. Hear people out; do not interrupt them.
9. Don't attack or abuse the weak - Just because you know an individual is too insecure to fight back is no reason to run over him or her. It only reveals your own weakness.
10. Write your epitaph - Regarding your relationships with people close to you, how would you like to be remembered after you are gone?

My breakfast observation for today was that animals have a hard time following the Golden Rule, and there is a bully in every group. We humans have the power to actually modify our behavior to think more strategically and do things that are not only right for now, but right for the long term. Caring for people creates a culture of trust that is sustainable.

Robert Whipple is also the author of Leading with Trust is like Sailing Downwind and Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online. Bob consults and speaks on these and other leadership topics. He is CEO of Leadergrow Inc. a company dedicated to growing leaders. Contact Bob at [email protected]