Posted: January 9, 2020 | Categories: Team Building

Years ago a colleague and I were facilitating a session in management training.  We were working on accountability, and my partner made a statement to the class that I have never forgotten:

“It’s like being a good parent:  If we are too strict and allow no latitude, we often find that the child can be rebellious and resentful.  If, on the other hand, we are too lax, and have no rules, we end up raising a child that no one wants to be around”

So how do we find a happy medium?  Assuming we have clearly defined roles and expectations, we will eventually come to a point where we have to re-direct a team member who has strayed from the standard.  How rigid should we be?  It can depend on the situation, the severity of the error, and many times the temperament and track record of the person we are addressing.

Just recently, a manager I know had to fire an office assistant.  He and his partner had hired Sue.  His partner, Jim, was like a drill sergeant, and one day Sue came in one minute late.  He approached her about it, and she became very defensive.  From that point on, things were not the same.  Sue’s work began to suffer, and the on-time conversation seemed to mark the beginning of the decline.  Should Jim have spoken up?  How did he approach her?  Should he have let it go?  I wish I could give you a “silver-bullet” answer.  Instead, I will leave you with another favorite quote from an old mentor of mine from many years back:

“Better to let a little wrong live than a lot of love die”

Posted: January 7, 2020 | Categories: Presentation skills, Sales, Self-Improvement

“You can get anything you want if you help enough other people get what they want”

–  Zig Ziglar

Mr. Ziglar shared his priceless secret.  As much sense as it makes, I still see so many folks trying to be persuasive by talking about what they want.  Sorry to burst your bubble…most people aren’t thinking about what you want:  They are thinking about what they want.

For example, many years ago I was working with a manager on her communication skills with her boss.  She wanted her boss to give her a raise, and when she approached him he wasn’t receptive.  We talked about her strategy, and changed it to a WIFM discussion.  (What’s in it for me?).  She talked in terms of what her boss wanted.  Here is what happened in her own words:

“On Tuesday of this week I met with my boss and asked for my promotion.  This has been a sore point for well over a year now, and this time I tried a different approach.  I laid out figures and talked about what he was interested in, and how I had helped meet some of his main corporate objectives,  Towards the end, he said, “Maybe it’s time we started paying you for the management job you are doing”.  It works! 

Some sales professionals need to learn from Barb.  Instead of saying, “I want to meet with you”, say something like, “I help people achieve more peace of mind with their financial future.  I may be able to do the same for you.  My goal in calling you is to set a time when we can get together, understand your situation and what you are looking to do, and see if we have some common ground.  Would you like to set a time?”

When selling yourself or your ideas, remember to talk in terms of the other person’s interest.  You will have more success!

Posted: December 27, 2019 | Categories: Self-Improvement

We are at the threshold of entering a new year and decade.  If you believe that each of us as individuals have special gifts and that every day is a gift from the almighty, you are probably one who strives to live a life of purpose and fulfillment.

In my coaching, I occasionally will come across people who are unsure of what they should be doing and where they should be going.  If this is a challenge for you, allow me to share some questions you can ask yourself that can channel your thoughts in a direction that is right for you.  These questions are from Brian Tracy, a noted speaker and author.  .  Here they are:

8 Ways for you to identify and determine your special talent and what you are uniquely suited to do:

1. You will always be the best at something that you love to do. If you could afford it, you would do it without pay.  It brings out the very best in you, and you get a tremendous amount of satisfaction and enjoyment when you are engaged in that particular work.

2. You do it well. You seem to have a natural ability to perform in that area.

3. This talent has been responsible for most of your success and happiness in life up to now. From an early age, it is something you enjoyed to do and you got the greatest rewards and compliments from other people.

4. It is something that was easy for you to learn, and easy to do. In fact, it was so easy to do, you forgot when and how you learned it.  You just found yourself doing it easy and well one day.

5. It holds your attention. It absorbs you and fascinates you.  You like to read about it, talk about it, and learn about it. It seems to attract you like a moth to a flame.

6. You love to learn about it, and become better at it all your life. You have a deep inner desire to really excel in this particular area.

7. When you do what you are ideally suited to do, time stands still.  You can often work in your area of special talent for long periods without eating or sleeping hour after hour because you get so involved in it.

8. You really admire and respect other people who are good at what you are most suited to do. You want to be like them and be around them, and emulate them in every way.

It is the holidays.  You likely have some extra time.  Why not dig in to a couple of these questions?

Posted: December 3, 2019 | Categories: Leadership, Management, Team Building

You may have noticed a couple of pervasive buzz words going around in the business world today:  Synergy and/or collaboration.  It means teams getting out of their silos, putting all their heads together, and solving problems.  The first and most important step is defining the problem.  By defining a problem, it means that you have simply stated the situation in a factual, non-blameful way.

As simple as this sounds, I find that people struggle with this step.  Too often in problem-solving team members start out with blame or just a symptom of the problem.

Several years ago, I was teaching a management class, Ralph was one of the class participants, and he decided to apply this fundamental with his team.  He asked for a statement of the problem, and he heard comments like, “Sam didn’t do the quality check in time”, or “the belts were not changed in time and the machine broke down”.  Ralph stopped them right there by saying, “That’s not the problem”.  He stuck with it, and they finally came up with a simple statement they could all agree on:  “The problem is we had a late delivery to a key customer”.  Now we are cooking!  Instead of getting into blame and finger-pointing, we can work through the next three steps of the problem solving process.

2.  What are the causes of the problem?

3.  What are the possible solutions?

4.  What is the best possible solution?

The team agreed on the best solution, laid out their action steps, and were well on their way to making the changes to improve delivery time.  Ralph said that had he not insisted they define the problem, they would have gone round and round.  Remember, if you have a problem to solve, begin by defining it.  Consider the old maxim, “A problem defined is a problem half solved”

Posted: November 18, 2019 | Categories: Management, Sales

In sales training we are drilled on asking well-crafted questions that uncover what our prospect wants and why they want it.  There is one more thing:  How bad do they want it?

About 20 years ago I was talking to an owner and founder of a highly successful graphic arts business.  Mike, the owner, had just finished designing a book cover for a very famous athlete.  I was there as a  consultant to help him advance in his management and delegation skills.  His company was growing fast.

I had prepared well for our first meeting, and designed my questions to get to the heart of his primary interest and dominant buying motive.  (What he wanted and why he wanted it).  Mike said, “When me and my team are meeting with customers, I’ve heard people say afterwards, “Mike, whenever you leave the room, the value of your company cuts in half”.  From this conversation I surmised that Mike wanted to change this.  I assumed he wanted to build a team that was strong and would sustain that strength even when he wasn’t there.

We started with some training in management and delegation.  It wasn’t long before he lost interest.  When I interviewed him afterwards, he finally admitted that he liked being indispensable, and didn’t want anyone else to share the stage.  In other words, even though he wanted his company to grow, he wasn’t willing to subordinate his ego in favor of building others.  He couldn’t let go of what he loved.

Do you want your company to grow?  Are you willing to let go of what you love?
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