Posted: August 25, 2023 | Categories: Customer service, Leadership, Self-Improvement, Team Building

If you are a parent, there usually comes a moment when your child needs to deal with a bully.  I also believe that adults in the workplace must sometimes deal with a bully.  According to the dictionary, a bully is, “A person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those who they perceive as vulnerable.”  In other words, a bully is a coward, and they enjoy picking on someone who lets them.  Please note the word enjoy.

I can truly say that I cannot recall allowing myself to be bullied in my childhood or adult life.  Many have tried.  I learned a valuable lesson early:  Bullies like to bully, but only if it is a pleasant experience for them. My commitment was to make sure any bully who tried to pick on me would find the experience unpleasant and not worth repeating.  We don’t need to be Chuck Norris, we just need to make sure that bullying us is not a pleasant experience

In adult life we can also be bullied.  When someone says something mean to us, we can take a time out with that person and say, “You just said _______.  I am not exactly sure what you meant by that.  Please elaborate” I would politely and respectfully put them on the spot rather than absorb the hit.  They soon got the message that bullying me was not going to be an experience worth repeating.

Many years ago, I was talking with a player on the Chicago Bears, and he mentioned he often had to face Walter Peyton in scrimmage.  He said he dreaded having to tackle Walter Peyton.  I said, “Gee, I thought he was a nice guy”.  The player said, “He is.  It just hurts to tackle him.”  Tackling Walter Peyton was like trying to stop a ton of bricks.  It wasn’t an experience you would want to repeat.

You may be a victim of bullying in the workplace or you may know someone who is.  If so, do your best within good reason to make the bully not want to try again.

Posted: July 18, 2023 | Categories: Customer service, Leadership, Self-Improvement, Team Building

Many years ago there was an aftershave commercial with the tagline:  “Hai Karate…be careful how you use it!”  When I think of the attributes of email, I often recall that aftershave commercial.  Email is a tool, and like a hammer, you can use it to build a house or tear it down.  In business, we want to build. 

Responding quickly when appropriate:  We have all been in a situation where we needed data, a model number, or a code to complete a task.  We email someone who we know can help, and we appreciate it when they get right back to us.  Downsde: Responding quickly to every email we receive could be a distraction, and affect our time management.

Send on Monday morning:  A postal employee once told me that the best time to go to the post office is before 10am on Saturday.  They were right!  Likewise, here is the rule for sending an important email:  Sent it out first thing Monday morning so that it will be at the top.

Using emoji’s:  According to email strategist Emma Russell, emoji’s can give us a nice emotional spike, but they work best when sending them to people you know.  “Using emoji’s with strangers can have unintended consequences.”

Question:  When should we phone rather than email?  That’s debatable.  My rule of thumb:  If someone is writing me an email and I can tell they are upset with me, my response would probably be two words”:  “Let’s talk”

Posted: May 18, 2023 | Categories: Leadership, Management, Team Building

Turnover is costly. Is that an understatement? How many times have we seen a treasured team member give their surprise two-week notice? In each case it is unlikely that the person leaving decided to do so that day.

Now let me ask you a question: Do you change the oil in your car regularly? Why? Your car is probably working fine.  Why bother? It is called preventive maintenance. We value our car and want to keep it properly maintained for a long life.

How about our team members? What do we do to stay in step with them so they don’t give us a farewell? Here is a recommendation from Richard Finnegan, a consultant specializing in engagement and retention. In his book, “The Stay Interview”, he recommends we conduct one-on-one “stay interviews” at regular intervals with our staff members. Here are the five questions he recommends:

1. When you come to work each day, what things do you look forward to?
2. What are you learning here?
3. Why do you stay here?
4. When was the last time you thought about leaving our team?  What prompted it?
5. What can I do to make your experience at work better for you?

If we can do these interviews we can greatly reduce the frequency of those “surprise” resignations. Let’s practice good, regular, preventive maintenance with our team!

Posted: March 23, 2023 | Categories: Customer service, Sales, Team Building

If you own a business, and you overheard someone talking about your company, what words would you want to hear?  I am guessing you would want people to say, “Nice play to work” or “Great customer service”, etc.  What if someone said, “The working environment feels very corporate”.  Such a comment probably would not excite you.  The “corporate feel” doesn’t sell like it used to.

For nearly 50 years I have been a loyal follower of a local restaurant chain in Chicago.  These restaurants were special places with a lively staff that knew how to have fun and make the dining experience special for you.

In the past few years, I have noticed these restaurants lose their luster.  Orders get messed up, people stopped smiling, and things just weren’t the same.  Three weeks ago my family and I had such a bad experience that we decided to end our 49-year old tradition.  Before I made my final decision, I called customer service and told them of my experience.  They promised to get back to me.  They did not.  It was time to move on.  I wish I could say the incident three weeks ago was an isolated incident.  It wasn’t.  We’ve had several sub-par visits in the past two years.  Last week I was relating this story to a stock broker, and he commented, “Oh yeah, that company was sold in 2014 and is now publicly traded.”  The lively team spirit this chain of restaurants had built had died a slow death.  They now had the “corporate feel”.  Do you work for a large corporatation?  What can you do to make sure your team has a “caring feel” versus a “corporate” one?

Posted: February 20, 2023 | Categories: Management, Self-Improvement, Team Building

One of the most remarkable traits of a strong leader shows up when we talk to them one-on-one.  We walk away feeling good about ourselves.  Good leaders are people builders.  By contrast, have you ever had a conversation with a “people shrinker’?  By that I mean, after the interaction, you feel a little smaller than you did before.  That’s no good.  We build our businesses by building our people.

I would like to illustrate by sharing the most indelible example of people-building I have ever experienced.  The year was 1976.  I was single, 27 years old, and managed a business in a modest sized suburb of Chicago.  I was headed into the bank to make a deposit, and as I entered the doorway, I passed by a young girl selling candy.  My first thought was, “Oh boy, here comes another person shoving something in my face and trying to sell something.”  She didn’t say anything.  She just smiled a beautiful, genuine, smile.  I got ahold of my attitude, and politely asked her what she was selling.  She was selling candy bars as a fundraiser for her sister’s school.  I told her I didn’t want a candy bar, but I would buy one for her.  I gave her the dollar.  We had a short conversation, and moved on.

Several months later I was looking forward to a first date with someone I had been interested in for a long time.  When I went to pick up my date at her house, her sister came down the stairs and said, “That’s him”!  You guessed it, that was the girl that I bought the candy bar for, and she was selling them for her sister, the person I was taking out for the first time.  Things went well.  The bottom line:  That first date and I have been married for 45 years.  Imagine if I didn’t get control of my attitude that day and was abrupt with her sister.  This may be a personal example, but we all know our own examples of people who act kindly.  I end with this question:  Are you a people builder or a people shrinker?  Every human interaction is a moment of truth.  Make it a good one!