Inspiring Confidence

A local business owner shared an interesting experience with me recently. She received an inquiry through her company’s website. Would she be interested in a certain niche service for her business? Her interest was piqued enough to want additional information and she thought a phone call would be helpful.  So, she conferred with her business partner and then responded to the email suggesting a phone call with the individual who contacted her.

Now you know how difficult it is to coordinate a call among three people. Here’s what happened next:  After numerous emails among the three, a call was finally arranged with Billy, the business developer who’d sent the inquiry. The next day, Billy sent an email advising that the call would be with Justin, the founder, because Justin took all new business development calls. Strange, but okay thought the partners.  Justin tried to join a call on Tuesday, but the call was scheduled for Friday because Tuesday didn’t work for the partners. Justin wasn’t available on Friday, the day arranged by Billy.  Confused yet? They sure were. They asked Justin to provide available days and times for a call.  He took two weeks to respond.  

There’s an old saying — too many cooks spoil the broth. Justin sure spoiled a potential business opportunity for his firm for a number of reasons:

• Lack of clear communication — when would the call take place,
• Lack of clear expectations — with whom would the call take place; and
• Lack of trust, at least that’s what the partners perceived — didn’t he trust Billy to take an initial call with potential clients?

At this point, the partners had pretty much written off Justin and his firm. They were questioning if things were this difficult to get a simple call arranged, what would they encounter if they proceeded with a business arrangement? Simply stated, Justin hadn’t inspired confidence in himself or his firm.

Confidence, like trust, isn’t an event. It’s a process. Confidence and trust are something you build over time — with your employees, with your clients and customers and with your stakeholders.  Set expectations in the beginning of the business relationship and reinforce them. Have clear processes and communicate those processes early to everyone affected by them. You want your employees and your customers to be emotionally engaged in a positive way.  The emotional engagement the partners in this story experienced was confusion.  Justin’s going to have to work hard to change that.

You Know What You Should Do

Not long after we wrote The Big Book of HR, we were speaking at an event and signing books.  During a lull in the activity, someone came and sat down next to us — uninvited — and starting chatting away.  “My father wrote a book,” she said and proceeded to tell us about it.  We weren’t paying much attention, not that we were rude, but potential book buyers approached and we turned our focus to them. 

When the conference attendees returned to their session, our new best friend remained behind, once again engaging us in a conversation. “You know what you should do?” she said before proceeding to give us unsolicited advice about book marketing — this from someone who never wrote nor marketed a book.  You Know What You Should Do has become a standard joke between Barbara and me. But kidding aside, we are both always sensitive to offering advice to others — solicited or unsolicited.  And when we do, we frame it in positive terms and phrases: “You might consider” or “Have you ever thought of..” or “Something that might work is...”

I heard an interesting quote recently that says it all and has such wide application today — in business and in politics. “The world is changed by your example not by your opinion,” Paul Coelho. People are so quick to voice their opinions without stopping to think if anyone is interested, if they are relevant or if they add value.

Managers can take a valuable lesson from this and apply it to their interactions with team members and others in their organization. Remember that in your role as a manager, all eyes are on you. How you present yourself, how you communicate, how you act, all reflect on the type of leader and person you are — and you will want to reflect on those traits that project confidence, credibility and integrity.

For more insights on leading by example, you know what you should do?  Check out Section 4 of The Manager’s Answer Book. Seriously, if you don’t already have a copy, we’d be so honored and thankful if you’d pick one up.  And if you do have the book, we’re confident that you’ll find thought provoking ideas in that section and others.

Creativity - Use It or Lose It

I recently read a quote from Maya Angelou that I can’t stop thinking about.  She said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

She’s absolutely right – as if I’d ever disagree with someone as talented as Ms. Angelou.

When it comes to business, don’t we want our employees to be as creative as possible—unless their job requires they a task that is highly specific—like a surgeon.  Not sure I want my surgeon being too innovative while removing my appendix!

So, if creativity is to be encouraged, let’s talk specifics about how managers can maximize the creativity their employees possess.

To get started, managers should let employees know that they are open to hearing them and genuinely seeking new ideas and approaches. And if your team brings new ideas to you, listen and withhold judgment before you agree or shoot the new idea down.

We’ve talked before in this blog about avoiding phrases like, “No, that won’t work here” or “But we’ve always done it this way” or “We tried that in 2000 and it failed miserably.”   Nothing will shut down creativity like being told what you’re proposing is a bad idea.

Encourage your employees to take a step back from the routine work and imagine how it could be better. It is so easy to get caught up in just getting things done and not consider how something might be improved.

Try reserving one staff meeting a month to hold a classic brainstorming session. Start by setting ground rules that should include things like:

• Be specific about the topic you want ideas about. Let people know ahead of time so they can come with their thoughts and ideas
• Get as many ideas out before you analyze each one
• Don’t criticize someone’s idea
• Get everyone involved.  Don’t let one or two people dominate the session.  Encourage your introverts to participate
• Make it fun. Play music. Use colored markers and sticky notes.  Liven things up

Odds are if you encourage creativity you will get it from your team and remember the words of Maya Angelou, “The more you use, the more you have.”

Everyone Has a Story

Think about the last presentation you sat through or the latest speech you heard. What do you remember? Odds are, you remember a story the speaker shared but maybe not all the details that were also included in the presentation.

Why? Because people love to hear stories and people connect to stories. Stories are interesting. Stories can be emotional. Stories can be humorous.  Stories are easy to remember and easy to repeat! 

Our friend and colleague, Sally Strackbein, (www.definingstories.com) says it best: “Facts bore. Stories score.”

Wherever you are called upon to present, if you can tell stories, your odds of being heard and remembered go up exponentially. 

I remember being at a client’s office just after a new CEO had been introduced at a town hall meeting.  People couldn’t wait to share how excited they were about what he was bringing to the organization. They repeated stories they’d heard from him. Some were funny and personal, while others told them about his values. One story he shared was about something he’d been part of that hadn’t been a success.

They loved hearing him honestly share that he didn’t think he was perfect and that he wasn’t going to expect perfection from them.  

 Here’s the best part — everyone has stories! Keep yours short and simple and practice before going public with your story. Odds are, you will begin to see the impact you’re having on your team or others in the organization.

Your story needs to be jargon-free and relevant to the topic — don’t be that person who tells a story that gets the group off target! Your story should have a beginning, middle, and end.  And, if you possibly can, include something in the story that your audience won’t be expecting.  If appropriate, use emotion — that’s where your story will have the greatest impact.

And speaking of stories, we told you last month that we’re working on a new book that will be released during 2020. It is a very different type of book from our usual business books. It’s based on stories we collected from business colleagues around the world. So, we’re committed to the power of telling stories, and as the months go by, we’ll be sharing more about what’s to come next year.

In the meantime, we hope you’ll incorporate some powerful stories of your own into your work!

Freedom — A Powerful Word

Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom of the press. Freedom of peaceable assembly. Freedom to petition the government.  These are all rights guaranteed by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, of abridging the …” above mentioned freedoms.

Along with freedoms and rights comes responsibility.  These freedoms exist to the extent that they don’t trample the rights of others. Freedoms have to be exercised responsibly. For example, a person can’t run into a building and yell FIRE when there is none and claim to be exercising his freedom of speech. 

A rather disgruntled employee once asked me during a sexual harassment workshop, “What about my freedom of speech?”  It’s the government that can’t make laws prohibiting the free exercise of speech, not your employer. Private employers can implement policies and curtail behavior to assure that their workplaces are respectful ones. We’ve come across some great stories that reflect this – stories we’ve included in our next book.

As you celebrate Independence Day this Thursday, reflect on our freedoms and the responsibilities that go along with them.  Cherish your freedoms and respect the freedoms of