Soak in With the Enemy

I had a boss in the Army, probably the best boss I ever had in my life, who used to read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". When he was stressed, he read it and re-read it constantly. I would walk into his office and he would be sitting behind his desk pouring through the book or maybe just holding it up against his forehead like the information was moving through his skull. He would often say, "soak in with the enemy, Captain Hall." He would follow up with, "get inside their heads and think like they do. Know what they think before they do." His point was that you could defeat your enemy if you knew what he was thinking before he did. That way you could anticipate and beat him before he hurt you.

The thing was that many times the enemy was our Commanding General. I don't know if my boss looked at him truly as the enemy although he was an extremely difficult man to deal with. What the General really was, was our customer. My boss was dealing with a very demanding customer.

The way my boss beat the enemy (our General) in the customer service sense was to ask questions, know the General's expectations and what he was thinking, and then respond in such a way as to exceed the General's expectations...in fact to exceed them before the General even fully knew what they were.

My boss was a great role model. He knew his job was to make his customers know that he and his team were the BEST service providers possible. He never, ever quit and when he or we had a down day in the service department, he would ensure we all redoubled our efforts and attacked the enemy again.

So maybe I should say, "soak in with your customers" so you can provide them the absolute best possible service ever.

Credit and Blame

Have you ever had a boss take the credit for your work or the work of your team?

Have you ever made a mistake and then watched your boss, when the **** started hitting the fan, step back, point at you and say "there he is"?

I have.

It sucks.

To me, those are no kind of leaders at all.

I was taught a long time ago, so long ago that I don't remember who taught me, "leaders share the credit and take the blame". I think it must have been back in my Army days. It's a code I've tried to live by for many years. Sometimes I've done better than others.

Sharing the credit. You want to build loyalty among your troops? You want to build up leaders who can carry on in future roles? You want to see your folks flourish? Then get them recognized. When your team (including you) does something great, ensure others know that they did it (not you).

Don't worry. Along with completing the mission, your team is responsible for making you look good. If you take care of them by teaching, coaching, developing and then showcasing them, you won't have any trouble looking G R E A T.

Taking the blame. Your job, as a leader, is to keep the crap off your folks so they can focus on and excel at their duties. Your job is to protect them from outside forces that might harm them. You're the mother hen, the mama bear that ensures your young survive. When your team screws up (and they will), you did it. You let those outside your team know that you take the responsibility and not because you're great, but because it's your job.

Just because you take the blame for one or more of your team when they mess up, it doesn't mean they get away with the mistake. You, as their boss, can provide the coaching and correction needed to get the culprits back on track...but you're doing it inside your team. And, hopefully, as a leader in a position of authority, you've had the opportunity to build some funds in your "credibility bank" so you can take more of the heat from outside than your team member(s) can. You've built up a thick hide so "no worries", right?

So, don't be one of those leaders who says "I" when the good stuff happens. Instead, say "we" or "they". And when the bad stuff happens, you'll have your opportunity to say "I".

Effective Meetings

In this post, I’ll share some tips I’ve found pretty useful for me and my teams as well as for some of the managers I’ve trained.

1. Meet regularly
~In my opinion, staff meetings should happen weekly, but no less than every 2 weeks…otherwise, maybe your team doesn't have enough going on.
~Consider using daily/shift huddles with all your team(s) (or the people present for the day or that shift) to cover daily information:
--who’s working
--goals for the day
--other pertinent items
--something upbeat to get everyone going and "pumped" for the day and your customers
~Huddles should be no more than 5-15 minutes in length (I recommend having them standing up around the front desk or in the break room before customers arrive). Let the more formal staff meetings cover items at a higher level than daily unless that’s needed or you don’t do huddles.

2. Have a written agenda (even if it’s up on a board)...and stick to it.

3. Take notes that list tasks with deadlines and assignments. Assign a team member to take and distribute the notes. Please ensure you follow up on deadlines and assignments or they’re less worthwhile.

4. Show respect to your people by starting and ending meetings on time (regular meetings should be able to run no longer than 1 hour...that's why you should have them more often than once a month).

5. Staff meetings should be a 2-way street. Team members should be allowed and encouraged (if not assigned) to be involved in the dialog.

6. Whenever possible, include a few minutes for team development like a book or article review or a piece of training germane to your work.

Let me leave you with this thought that one of my team members found when preparing for a training session on effective meetings:

“Meetings matter because that’s where an organization’s culture perpetuates itself. So every day, if we go to boring meetings full of boring people, then we can’t help but think that we work for a boring company. Bad meetings are a source of negative messages about our company and ourselves.” -William R. Daniels

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.