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Nimble companies win business. Lumbering, slow companies lose. Agile companies empower employees to make quick decisions that meet customers’ high expectations and changing business conditions.

What happens when an empowered employee resists change and stops the new revenue stream?

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The Story Behind This Question of Empowered Employees

A company actively involved in promoting National Customer Service Week approached me to be an advertising sponsor. They had decided for the first time ever to sell advertising sponsorships. They sent information explaining levels of sponsorship, cost, and what each level of sponsorship gave me.   Because of my strong commitment to great customer service and brand of delivering customer service workshops I was very interested.  Initial discussions went well.  We agreed on the size of the online logo ad pretty easily.

He asked me to send a short paragraph about myself for their first email bulletin. After receiving my text, he replied that the paragraph looked great and they would run it as is.

Things suddenly changed when he sent a proof of the bulletin.  I was shocked to see they used only one line from my write-up. To make matters worse, they changed my verbiage into bland, boring words.

His question to me was “WOW, doesn’t it look great?” I called him and asked what happened? He said, “Don’t worry we want you to be happy. I’ll get back to you.” Before he hung up, I said if we are limited on the number of words, I will be happy to rewrite it.  However, the words must reflect my brand.

He emailed me a new version that was slightly longer. Sadly, the words were modified again.  It was after hours so I waited until the morning to call him. I left this voice message. “Since I don’t understand what is going on, can’t get any answers, and had no trust that the other advertising activities would be handled appropriately, I am going to pass on the opportunity to be a Gold Sponsor.  I wish you continued success.”

He sent me an email saying the source of yesterday’s struggle was the editor of the email bulletin who insisted the bulletin have the same look and feel as it had for the last 10 years.  He offered me a discount on the membership and said they would print my paragraph the way I wanted it.

What he didn’t address was the loss of trust. When I asked him if he could assure me that my other sponsorship ads for this event, my time, and my brand would not be affected by their internal struggles, he replied “Evidently you have a bad taste in your mouth about this and it’s best we terminate this relationship!”

The editor of the bulletin – one empowered employee in this whole process – stopped the revenue stream in its tracks.

Question

If you were the leader of that organization or team, what would you say to the empowered employee (the editor) as the internal disagreement emerged? Would you focus on total empowerment and talk it out for as long as it took to hear the employees concerns even if it meant missing deadlines and losing revenue?  Or would you remind everyone of the vision of this new undertaking and empower employees on how to make that new vision come true?

I look forward to your comments, learning, and sharing.

(Special thanks to Dan Rockwell, The Leadership Freak for insightful editing of this post before publication.)

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers training for the ultimate customer experience, creating dynamic dynamic agile teams, and coaching on leading change. She teaches how to bridge the gaps of diversity, generations, personality type, culture, and geography for success in this fast paced business world. See footage of her in action at KateNasser.com

A customer service trainer and colleague, Laurie Brown of TheDifference.Net, often asks customer service reps What Business Are You In?. What would you reply? The customer service and care business? Or would you reply the airline business, the retail business, the technology business, the healthcare business? As a leader, your answer directly impacts what you and your employees think, say, and do for the customer.

You may see this as logical for the teams directly tasked with customer service, customer care and sales. Yet leaders, ask yourselves, do all your employees think that customer care is their job? Do you think so? We know the legendary philosophy of Disney, Nordstroms, and Ritz Carlton. We also know that not every company embraces it. Reasons range from “cost” to “industry differences”.

So consider this post a plea to reconsider and a getting started guide for the sake of your business.

Even if you keep non-customer facing teams truly separated from the customer, they must think and act customer care in order to enable your sales, customer service, and customer care teams to wow the customer. If they do have occasion to speak with the customer, they must switch their mindset and communication from company focused to customer focused in an instant!

You can get started with no delay and little cost. Use the stories and questions below to spur conversation and action on customer care with the leaders that report to you and throughout your organization.

Accelerate to Customer Care

1. Exceptions. Non-customer facing teams often live in the world of procedures and standard practices. Customer facing teams like sales, customer service, and customer care live in the world of flexing and adapting to customers’ requests. The gap between these two worlds is where you lose customers and also lose morale among the customer facing teams.
   Action item: Minimize this gap by having customer facing and non-customer facing teams meet and identify the few highest risk areas where procedures must be followed. All else can be flexed and changed to meet the customers’ requests. The bonus from these meetings — better teamwork among all the teams.
   
   
   
2. Workarounds. To deliver on those exceptions, sometimes employees must first think workarounds rather than the total fix. Here is a story I have used for years to illustrate this as I teach customer care to non-customer facing teams: A customer facing team calls you about a customer’s pressing need. The customer reports he is having trouble printing the financial report and it must be in his CEO’s hands in 10 minutes.
   I then pose this question to workshop participants: What is the problem to be solved? Most of them reply “fix the printer” or “find out why the printer isn’t working”. Bzzzz — wrong answer. The problem to be solved is — get the report to the CEO in 10 minutes! Step 1: What are the possible solutions to achieving this in the time frame needed? Step 2: Once accomplished, what are the solutions to preventing a repeat call?
   Customer facing teams clearly see the purpose of two steps because they experience the urgency on the call. Non-customer facing teams often do not. They often skip step 1.
   Action item: Teach this simple yet powerful principle to your teams.
   
   
   
3. The New Boss. Non-customer facing teams’ loyalty and focus is frequently to their managers. Their managers write their performance reviews and have a say in promotions. Although this is true of customer facing teams as well, these managers know that in many ways the customer is the boss. The standards these managers use include customer satisfaction and customer WOW feedback. Not always so with the leaders and managers of non-customer facing teams.
   Action item: Include customer satisfaction and customer care teamwork in evaluations of non-customer facing team members.
   
   

What would you add to this list to get all employees to think customer care? Would love to hear from you in the comments field below.

©2010 Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach.  Please email for permission if you want to re-post on another site or republish.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has delivered customer care, customer service, and team building workshops for 20 years. Her new training DVD on adapting to regional differences of USA customers is now available. See preview Customer Service USA – What They Expect Coast to Coast.

Some leaders see conflict as active teamwork that produces the best ideas. Other leaders see conflict as non-teamwork. It is likely that conflict will occur on teams. The key question is: What are the best ways for leaders to address conflict for the best teamwork results?

I asked leaders: How do you address conflict on and between teams to get great teamwork results regardless of the situation?

The responses I received:

1. The best way to address conflict to ensure teamwork results is: “Select individual team members for their great attitude and for their ability to work on diverse teams in difficult situations.”
   
2. “We deal with each conflict as it arises. I first ask the people to work it out. If they can’t, I step in and resolve the conflict.”
3. “I tell everyone to stay focused on the team goals and overlook the rest.”
   
4. “I am not a baby sitter. Team members are adults. I tell them to work it out between them.”
   
5. “I don’t like conflict.  I try to make peace as quickly as possible when I am confronted. I am not sure how to arbitrate disputes when it is between two other people.”

Try My Proven Practices to Address Team Conflict

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Distinguish between opposing views and opposing each other. The first can lead to a great result. The second goes nowhere. You will clearly see which is happening once you are aware.

Have each person present the other person’s view. This helps turn the conflict into a productive exchange of ideas. Teach this technique and moderate while they are learning.

Hold a team development session to assess each team member’s personality type and discuss how to interact for best teamwork results. A diverse team often produces better results because it has more outlooks and talents. Yet, if team members do not know or understand the dynamics of personality types, you get interpersonal conflict or cliques of similar types. Personality types impact teamwork. Understanding personality types helps to both prevent and resolve interpersonal conflict. The return on your investment of time and money is significant.

Ask yourself, what conditions are leading to this conflict? As a leader, have you been unclear about goals? Have you fallen short in handling organizational politics and put teams at odds with each other? Do you hide from conflict and hope it will just go away?

Instead, show everyone how to communicate honestly with respect and without brutality. Read more at … 4 Spring Training Exercises for Best Teamwork Results

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, consults and trains leaders and their teams on effective communication for best teamwork results. Her 20 years of real life experience has produced these proven results. Sign up for her free info-packed newsletter in the sidebar on this page. Contact her directly for a free phone consultation on your team challenge.

Now picture an organization using this definition of teamwork: Growth and change within team members to achieve a common success.  It’s applicable to this century, is very clear — and it works. 

This definition of teamwork creates startling results when you use it with these precious gems.

RUBY. Passion for learning. When you create a learning (not training) culture, the team exercises its change muscles. Learning is change and one that most people welcome since it enhances their careers and no one can fail. 
The startling result is a stream of new contributions because all are involved in continuous improvement.

Creativity increases and critical thinking improves. Athletic teams regularly exercise for improved performance and theater troupes explore new ideas for this same reason. Unfortunately teams focused on production often get locked in daily routines. Create startling new results with a learning culture.

Action Item: Pick one topic related to business, teamwork, service, sales, or technology. Have each team member Google/Bing on the topic and collate those results online.  At a virtual team meeting, take 15 minutes for team members to identify aloud what info they can use and how.  Make this a weekly event and watch the teams create, collaborate, and flex to changing needs.

 

 

EMERALD. Leader with a confident ego. If you have a learning culture, the leader must feel confident even with constructive dissenters and creative strategic thinkers on the team. This confident leader is the emerald gem of teamwork reminding us all of The Wizard of Oz. Toward the end of the movie the curtain is drawn back to reveal there is no all-powerful wizard. He is instead a wise caring person.  His insights flow from there.

 

 

 

SAPPHIRE. Human bonding on diverse and distributed teams.  The evil of isolation due to distance or differences undermines the full potential of teams. Picture world-wide technology rollout teams who have never met, come from different cultures, and rotate team members. If no bonding is addressed, the teams will fall short of full success. Use video-based virtual meetings to introduce team members. Build understanding on topics of personality type, generational differences, cultural norms, learning style, and pet peeves!

 

 

 

DIAMOND. The I’s in Team. There are several I’s in teamwork – individual initiative and identity committed to the team. Respect and acknowledge individual talents contributed to the whole. It inspires greater contributions and willingness to share and teach. Some organizations call this the essential piece culture where each person knows how s/he contributes to the whole success.

 

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers team building workshops, distance bonding, and innovative solutions for startling team results.

Guest Blogger, Pattie Roberts, shares this leadership lesson: What are you dancing to? 

I met my friend Tracey’s Aunt Jane in a blues bar and she taught me an astonishingly simple lesson about the dance of leading and following. 

Tracey and I were there because our husbands are musicians and as loyal “groupies” we were supporting their band.  We’ve done this many times over the years and I thought this particular evening would be just another opportunity for us to catch up over a glass of wine.  I never expected to discover a plain, powerful truth about interpersonal skills in a dark cinderblock building that smelled like old beer. 

As the small and remarkably diverse crowd began trickling in, Tracey and I staked out seats at the bar and she introduced me to Aunt Jane.  Jane and her husband Steve were regulars of a sort here.  I wondered why they chose this place – dim and windowless, with wobbly tables, a three-item menu, and a large disco ball over a cleared space in the center.  I had my answer when the music started.  “We come here to dance,” Jane said, and was she ever right.  Almost everyone left their rickety chairs and headed for the glittering dance floor.  Every person there seemed to be Dancing with the Stars-ready on the floor.  “It’s like a club,” Jane told me.  She and Steve and the others would go from venue to venue, depending on where the music was, and dance all night. 

It was fascinating, watching the mismatched couples move perfectly in harmony with each other and the music. There was a tall young black man dancing with a small elderly white woman; a middle-aged woman in shorts and tennis shoes danced with a man in a baggy old suit and a flowing white beard; two women who looked like mother and daughter swung around each other, catching hands and releasing them like dancing together was all they had ever done.  One man who, outside of this venue, would have appeared to be homeless, walked in and made a beeline for a woman with long grey hair and a shapeless sweater.  In moments they were in the crowd under the disco ball, looking for all the world as though they were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Or perhaps I should say Maksim and Karina?  I’m not what anyone might call graceful so it all looked like magic to me.  How can people who appear so unlike each other all dance together so smoothly, to song after dissimilar song?

Steve was working that night so Jane was happy to sit with me at the bar and narrate the scene.   “It’s all about knowing what your partner is dancing to,” she said.  I didn’t get it.  “Aren’t they all dancing to the music?”  Yes, she said, but some people dance to the melody of a song and some people dance to the rhythm.  She told me that when she and Steve first met, she couldn’t figure out how to dance with him.  No matter how hard they tried, they were always out of synch.  She couldn’t follow when he lead and he couldn’t follow her.  Finally she asked him what he was doing.  “Dancing to the beat” he said, “what are you doing?”  “I dance to the melody” she told me, “and once we realized that we were OK.  Sometimes he leads and I follow to the beat.  Sometimes I lead and he follows to the melody.”

Such a universal quandary.  Such a simple, elegant solution.  Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow. It’s all about knowing what your partner is dancing to.  I wish I had met Aunt Jane 30 years ago.

Author: Pattie Roberts.
Guest Blogger, Pattie Roberts is a freelance writer and researcher specializing in business -related writing.  Her analytic side loves to find the patterns that live in the numbers.  Her expressive side tells a compelling story in the analyses, plans, briefings, and presentations she writes for you.  She is currently writing strategic plans and developing research audits for trade associations, and is taking on new clients.   Pattie lives in Annapolis, MD, with her husband, the musician Hugh Feeley, and their two rescue Yorkies.   When she is not writing for your business,  Pattie fusses over her roses, nurses her addiction to Yankees baseball, and avidly follows her soon-to-be- married stepdaughter’s career in the USMC .  You can Tweet her at http://twitter.com/pavroberts email her at pavroberts@comcast.net , or visit her at http://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciaroberts.

Posing questions to job candidates in interviews, no matter how behaviorally based, doesn’t show you what they will contribute.  Perhaps this is one reason temp-to-perm positions became so popular even with the buy-out fee the employer pays.  The employer has seen the temporary staff in action.

Yet you can achieve a similar success by engaging job candidates in action interviews.  If you are looking for candidates with 21^st century skills like creativity, conceptualizing, synthesis, re-invention, and true empathy/customer service, action interviews will get you there.  You can do them in-person or via videoconferencing.

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To find creative problem-solvers …

Hold a mock meeting on solving a generic problem.  Have the job candidate participate.  See if s/he offers out-of-the-box or safe ideas.  Does s/he contribute any ideas or simply listen?  You can assess the people-skills as well as creative problem solving. 

To spot empathetic staff for customer service …

Have your best customer service staff role play true-to-life scenarios with the job candidate.  Use blatant and subtle examples needing empathy and see what the job candidate responds.  It is one thing to discuss how you would handle a customer interaction and quite another to do it. 

To find synthesizers who can see new ideas in disparate details …

Pick a recent example that you solved through synthesis of different ideas. Give the different ideas to the job candidate and see how and what s/he synthesizes. 

To tap the pool of reinvention talent …

Give the candidate 2-3 everyday objects and ask them to make a new useful object out of them.  The useful object can be anything; it does not have to relate to work.  You are tapping innate abilities with this activity that you can later apply to work related challenges.

To find conceptualizers …

Have the team of interviewers and the job candidate play “What If We”.  You can use a hypothetical product or service that relates to your industry or customize it to relate to your organization’s products and service.   State the product or service in question.  Then each person states aloud “What If We …” to conceptualize a new angle or improvement.  This is also a great way to find out what the candidate knows about your industry and company.

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Remember: To find the best talent in the 21st century, engage candidates in action interviews.  Replace the bad surprises you get after hiring with happy surprises about job talent you find during action interviews. Combine them with resume/references and certain skill or interests tests where appropriate to get a fuller picture of the job candidate’s potential and interpersonal style.   

I welcome your comments, new ideas, and questions below. 

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

As a leader, your vision and focus affect, perhaps even determine, the ultimate outcome.  How is your vision of the organization?  Is it a perfect 20/20?  Well I hope you are multi-focal corrective lenses to sharpen your daily vision because many things can cloud the picture.

Personality type. 

If you are a driver personality, you may miss seeing the potential in people if it isn’t straight at you.  Caring primarily about the end-result, you often see the distance better than anyone yet your close vision is blurred.

If you are an analytic personality type, your vision of details is superb yet you may miss the ultimate destination because you aren’t looking far enough ahead to steer others to success. 

If you are an amiable personality type, your desire for harmony seeds great bonding yet your team may falter in the completion of tasks.

If you are an expressive, your team will know what you want yet you may not necessarily hear their questions or input.

If you are wearing corrective lenses, you can balance out your dominant trait with focus on these other important aspects.

Economic Conditions.  Do you make the same wise decisions in tough economic times as you do in good times?  Or is your vision blurred by the pressure of financial impact?  The corrective lenses to wear in this case – a checklist of the questions that have guided you to wise decisions in the past.  Update the list and use it!

A New Team Given to You.  Picture it – you have accepted a leadership position of an existing team you did not previously know.  As you do a quick assessment you sense they are not the right people for these jobs.  If you are thinking, “I would never have hired these people”, your thinking will block your vision for success.  The corrective lenses to wear in this situation are discussions with each person to truly understand what they have to offer.  It is very possible that conditions have buried their talents.  If it isn’t true, your vision for success will still be clearer than had you not worn these corrective lenses.

You Get a New Boss.  There is a shake-up above and a new leader is over your organization.  What is your reaction after you hear her/him say that there will be big changes in how things are done?  Do you sub-consciously or consciously think “Oh s_ _ _ !”   Get those corrective lenses on your thinking quickly and go into creative exploration mode.  You and your teams will enjoy the journey through the changes and your new boss will have an exponentially better view of your value!

Your Customers’ Business Changes.  They say that businesses fail when the market changes and businesses don’t.  Are you in touch with where your customers’ businesses are going?  Are their markets changing?  As a leader, you need to be wearing multi-focal lenses to see far ahead so you have time to re-focus your teams.  For example, if your customers are scientific researchers and their results take them in a completely different direction – it can have far reaching affects on your organization as a supplier or service provider.  Keep your corrective lenses focused on your customers to stay current with their needs.

Remember, multi-focal corrective lenses sharpen your leadership vision and remove the clouds that can block your success.  Is it any wonder that these lenses are known as progressives?

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach