Staff meetings? We don't need no stinking staff meetings...

How often to you talk with your folks?

Communication.

How often do you meet with your team?

Communication.

How well does your office interact?

Communication.

I guess you can tell I'm kind of hitting the "communication" topic a little hard today...ok, pretty hard.

That's because communication, whether good or poor, is the life-blood of an organization. To illustrate my point, let's take a look at a living organism. Let's take a cat (or a tiger or cougar if you need something more fierce). The cat has eyes that it can use to determine where it needs to go, where it's food is, who it likes or not. The cat has teeth to help bring nourishment into it's body or to protect itself from enemies. It has legs and paws and claws to help it run toward or away from people or things -- friends or threats. And it has a brain that does all the thinking that a cat does.

So how does a cat get the results of it's limited thinking -- whether to eat or fight or run or look around from it's brain to all the parts doing those activities? Why, it's the nervous system -- all the neurons and synapses and such. How well the nervous system operates can have great bearing on whether that cat lives or dies.

It's the same for us in business, in relationships, in life -- COMMUNICATION is like the nervous system in that cat. How well it works often has great impact on whether our relationships, our families, our businesses LIVE OR DIE.

You can tell that I am definitely biased. I believe you've got to meet with your team. I mean, how can your people know the priorities, understand what's important to you, and operate efficiently and effectively unless people are talking to each other?

It is said that most leaders think they communicate enough, yet in reality, we don't come close to spending enough time talking with our people.

A few excuses for not having regular staff meetings:

"We're too busy."
"I send them emails all the time."
"I don't call meetings just to have meetings."
"The team already knows what's important."
"They know what I'm thinking" (yikes!).

Hmmm.

Think about how well you and your team communicate and look for ways to improve.

I'll go into some detail about holding effective meetings in the next post.

Customer Service -- is it enough just to be nice?

I hear a lot of people talk about Customer Service and I've found out that a lot of people equate Customer Service as just being nice to their customers.

For sure, being nice and friendly to your customers are important and definitely a part of customer service, but that's only a small part. The problem is that you can be nice to a customer and still have the customer leave your store or company without ever getting what they want (but you're still nice).

Perhaps another way of thinking about what you provide -- instead of calling it customer service -- would be customer success.

What is Customer Success? Customer Success is helping customers do or get what they want -- to meet the goals or objectives they had when they came to your office or store or web site.

It's about VALUE. In order to have an out-of-this-world experience, customers need to KNOW that when they came to see you, they came to the right place; that your place is where they belong. Otherwise, a conversation like this can happen: "Those are really nice folks, but I'm going to shop over here instead, because these guys provide me the value I'm looking for."

This can apply anywhere from going to buy groceries to purchasing a vehicle to going to the doctor. Customers have an idea or ideas in their minds, either overtly or subconsciously, about what they want to have happen with you and your organization.

A great way to build customer loyalty and return business is to:

1. Understand what your customers value (maybe ask them?) and...
2. Help them get that value and achieve the success they're looking for.

Look at your organization and ask yourself: Are my folks just nice (and, hopefully, at least they're nice) or does our customer service continue on to customer success and value? If you don't like the answer you get...well, time for you to step up and make some changes.

Go get'em.

How Can I Make My People Trust Me?

OK, so you've been taught that -- and you believe -- to be an effective leader, in order to help your people develop and grow, to build a superb team, you've got to have a team that trusts you as their leader.

So how can you make them trust you?

YOU CAN'T!

You cannot make your people trust you.

You cannot tell them they can trust you...well, you can; but your words will ring hollow unless there's some "umphf" behind it.

What do you need to do? You can't just snap your fingers and make it happen, but there are actions you can take to move toward a "trust" relationship:

1. Let the team know what they can expect from you...and meet the expectations. In other words, do what you say you'll do.
2. Build relationships with your team members (and I don't mean being buddies). Understand what is important to your people so you can help them achieve.
3. Show your people that you have their best interests in mind (like I alluded to in #1), by your words, your expressions, your actions.

Ask yourself a question: do you have your team's best interests in mind? And if you do, do they think so? Remember, perception is reality -- yours and theirs.

I know from personal experience, unfortunately, that trust is a way easier thing to lose than it is to gain (and almost impossible to regain once lost) so make your relationship with your team a priority.

Lead by Example...because you already are

We often hear the exhortation "lead by example" and there are all sorts of web pages and books about how you can best do that.

While it's a great topic for discussion, I really don't want to go into the different ways you can lead by example. There are plenty of people who've already done that.

I'd rather step back for a second and think about what leading by example means. To me, it means that leaders are on display. These leaders can be parents, bosses, team leaders, project managers, countries (like America...since this IS the 4th of July) and those who wield influence or cause others to view them as beings to emulate.

If you're a leader, you're always on display. That means others -- bosses, colleagues and followers -- watch how you exhibit that leadership. They can see if you're having a good day or a bad one (and you know that if a boss is having a bad day, everybody's going to have a bad day). They can tell if you walk the walk -- if your actions line up with your words. They can tell what you really think is acceptable and what is not.

The adage, "lead by example" kind of makes me think that leaders have a choice of whether or not to do that or that "leading by example" is an achievement to strive for.

Unfortunately, it's not that way at all. As soon as put on the mantle of command, in whatever form that takes, you ARE leading by example and the sooner you realize it -- the sooner you embrace that constant scrutiny, the judgments make by all those around you -- the more successful leader you'll be.

We Do As We Practice

Have you ever heard that? "We do as we practice" I definitely have. I know you've heard "practice makes perfect." That's why professional organizations -- military, first responders, medical, sports teams -- if they're any good, practice their tasks until they're sometimes sick of it...and they can perform them in their sleep.

We can't reasonably expect that our team members will perform consistently and at top of their game unless:

1. They know what's expected of them (and often you need to show or model the expectations to them).
2. Training is in place to complete the expected tasks in an
outstanding fashion
3. They practice, practice, practice.
4. Leaders and peers shadow/observe team members carrying out their tasks (directly, not listening from the other room like one manager told me).
5. Feedback is provided, both immediate and on-going (like during staff meetings or periodic training or practice sessions).

Both training and practice should include role-playing in front of the rest of the team...people don't think it's always fun, but the way the leadership approaches role-playing has a lot to do with how it's accepted by the group. Constructive feedback should be provided, "this is what I think Bob did great and these are the areas I think Bob could do even better" or words to that effect.

If your team makes practice a regular habit, then when a team member is not feeling 100% "there" on a given day, or if you're short-handed and people are scurrying around to get everything done, or if something else out of the ordinary is occuring, then you don't have to worry about how they'll interact with your customers...they'll just fall back on the way they practice.

Practice won't make you perfect, but, if it's a regular part of your team's activities, they will be that much closer than ever before.

Hiring Awareness Tip

Hiring people is always a crap-shoot, isn't it? We hope we're hiring the best person for the job, but it's really hard to tell what we're getting.

I learned a very important tip from a friend a couple of years ago that I wished I'd known way before then. He told me, "remember, when you're interviewing candidates, they are probably at their best right then. This is when they're minding their Ps and Qs. If you don't LOVE them during the interview, you probably won't later either."

I've hired a lot of people and a lot of them have been candidates who I thought were pretty good, but I didn't love them. What I sometimes did was convince myself and others that a) I just needed a body and it didn't matter that much what they were like as long as they didn't have a criminal record, b) the candidate was good enough, or c) that they probably just didn't interview that well and they'd get better. I was often wrong and regretted my decisions.

In business, we often have dual messaging coming at us or from us regarding hiring. The overt directive is typically to hire the best candidate (the one who can do the best job and gel with the rest of the team or organization) and not push the fit. The unspoken directive is to get a body right away. Now, rarely do both of these directives get accomplished simultaneously. Both are important, but the first one...don't push the fit...should take precedence every time. When you examine the cost in time and money and headaches to hire, train, discipline and terminate someone, it really doesn't make sense just to fill the position.

There's a lot more that goes into hiring than just my tip today, but still...if you don't love them during the interview, you probably won't love them later.

Apathy -- Do we really want customers?

I recently saw this poster and had to have it so I bought a framed one off eBay the other day. In case you can't read the words in white at the bottom of the poster, it reads,

"If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us."

This is both very funny and very sad at the same time. It's very funny because it's so true and it's very sad for the same reason. Now, I don't know any business owners who feel this way about customers, but I have run into many people working for businesses who feel this way -- most of them not ALL the time -- but many of them periodically.

I've heard managers and other leaders say that they're really glad it's "quiet" today so they can get some work done or that they are so busy with customers that they can't get their own tasks taken care of. It's easy to think like this and I have to admit that I've felt that way more than once in my life.

I do think the title of "Apathy" doesn't apply to most people, but the poster does make a point. If we don't take care of our customers, they won't be back. Historically, this hasn't been the case in the medical industry where so many doctors and their staff have felt like the patients needed them more than they needed the patients...and it was often true. However, with healthcare reform being such a hot topic, many medical practices are taking a much harder look at their customer service practices and working to shape up.

What if you determine your office has more than it's fair share of apathetic reactions to customers ("more than fair share" = ANY)? What do you do about it? It's very possible that it's ingrained in the fabric of your office. It's very possible that it's been such a long pattern of behavior that it just seems that this is the way it is.

CULTURE SHIFT time. And it very well may be a tough shift. By having a shift in culture, I mean that the office or organization, as a whole, takes a look at the business and decides to change, at the core, the way things are done. For culture shifts to be successful, they must start at the very top of the team or organization. It's often easier to successfully shift a culture when there's a major change like new leadership. Then the new leader can set expectations at the beginning of how things will run.

Let's say that you've determined that the focus of your group is way too centered on the team than on the customer, meaning policies, procedures, hours, interactions, etc, are designed more for the pleasure of your team. You want to make a change, but you've been around a while so you may be part of the problem. Some people will tell you that "this is the way we've always done it" or "this is what you led us to do". These statements may be true, but when you see a mistake, do you continue making that mistake just because you've always been doing it...even if it was your idea?

So, is it impossible to change the culture to a more customer-centric one? NO. But, as the leader, it's going to take a large commitment of effort to ensure the change takes place. Where do you start?

1. Identify the problem and communicate it to everyone on the team directly.
2. Set expectations for yourself, your other leaders, and your team members.
3. Train all parties as necessary. I find that a lot of times, people know the right things to do, but they're out of practice or just haven't been doing those right things.
4. Observe staff interacting with customers
5. Coach to the behavior you want.
6. Correct, as appropriate and REWARD the same way.
7. Don't be afraid to say "good-bye" to those team members who can't or won't learn the new focus on customers (institute the "Good to Great" approach that Jim Collins laid out and decide who should be "on the bus" and in what seats).

Let's face it. You're in business to make money and you make money...long-term...by taking care of your customers and providing them the value they're looking for.