Leadership

Leaders, Pain Free Journey to Engage Employee Accountability

Leaders and managers ask the same persistent question: How do you engage employee accountability?

Many are excited to engage employees to be more creative and innovative.
They picture building accountability as hard fought battles of weight, responsibility, and blame.

Leaders, Take This Pain Free Journey To Engage Employee Accountability

Repaint your picture leaders and take this pain free journey to engaging employee accountability.

Define accountability as a celebration of honor, ownership, and learning. Far too many see accountability as carrying the blame for mistakes. Why would employees jump up and engage that negative idea?
Honor employees contributions and they will honor their responsibilities.

Support this definition of accountability with your behavior and communication in positive and negative situations. Finding fault stops progress; finding solutions ignites success.

Abandon the no news is good news approach to leadership. Applaud incremental growth and smaller accomplishments. It builds interest and the confidence to be accountable. Practical Examples: Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement
When leaders speak only with criticism, employees will forever define accountability as blame.

Illustrate accountability in pain free moments. Use the phrase “I take responsibility for not being clear or “I own that delay”.
What leaders say and live becomes the culture of the organization.

Employees engage when they can see what’s in it for them. So, what does accountability do for the employees? Discuss it. Listen to their views on it. Open up to what holds them back from it and their ideas to fix it. A pain free step to accountability!

Honestly address mismatches in job fits. If people are truly wrong for the positions they hold, their continued misses frustrate the team to the brink of finger pointing.
Prevent this pain with honest reassessment of the best job fit.

End each day or week with: “What did we learn that improved our ability going forward?” With this practice, employees skip the fear of blame and the disease of perfectionism and become accountable for excellence.

Accountability doesn’t have to leave scars. It doesn’t have to come from a demanding leader constantly nagging employees to do what’s needed.

Create the opportunity and culture for excellence and watch employees engage and embrace accountability. It’s welcome and pain free!

I look forward to launching this journey with you. I will take you from inspiration to action!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

Leaders, recognize employees for their individual strengths and talents and spark employee engagement. Plenty of studies support this claim. Plenty of leaders think this means company recognition programs, awards, and celebratory events.

That’s nice yet nothing sparks other human souls like sincere appreciation of their worthy unique strengths.

Let your people-skills shine and applaud the employees’ natural talents with worthy kudos. No matter the age, the gender, the occupation, or the title, the employees connect with the future when you spotlight their present strengths.

Leaders, 12 Incredibly Evident Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement Image by:LexnGer

As you read through this list, think of the potential joy, energy, and engagement these kudos can spark.

12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

Organized without being rigid. In this day of do more with less, information overload, and enterprise integration of everything, organized people who can flex and adapt are a treasure to any business. Tell them. Applaud it!

Thirsty for knowledge and application. Business is moving fast and furious to fulfill the present and create the future. Employees who are constantly learning and applying it are both the fuel and the ballast for success. There’s a worthy kudo!

Sensing potential and spotting futility. Employees who can accurately sense when to advance an initiative and when to recommend scrubbing it propel the organization forward and prevent it from falling. Laud this worthy talent.

Tough, thorough, and reliable. How often do you overlook those that you can totally depend on? Change it. Tell them how much you truly appreciate their constancy and commitment.

Intuitively strong. Today’s focus on data sometimes minimizes those who use their intuition for everyone’s benefit. They move highly data driven people from stagnation to appropriate risk taking. Applaud their worthy insight.

Analytic and creative. These two talents are often thought of as mutually exclusive. They aren’t. There are employees who can create ideas and analyze to implement it. These dual talents also serve well to bring teams together for project success. How about another round of applause here!

Passionate and restrained. Passion is inspiration that renews itself and energizes others. It takes passion to ignite success and restraint to stay on course. Employees who contribute both make your job as leader easier. Worthy of applause and gratitude!

Positive and realistic. A positive attitude sustains everyone and realism sharpens the vision and prevents being blind sided. Successful entrepreneurs have and value it. If your employees have this, it’s worthy of a compliment!

Grateful. Employees who live their lives with gratitude often minimize workplace drama. Their inner sense of happiness and control filters noise instead of reacting to it. They aren’t doormats yet they easily see what truly matters and let the rest of the baloney fall away. They bring balance to new teams. Offer gratitude for their gratefulness!

Remarkable in people-skills. Great people-skills are the daily life blood of an organization. Interacting skillfully with each other, with customers, suppliers, regulators, auditors, and the media in a multitude of settings delivers success to the business. Don’t drain the lifeblood by ignoring it. Replenish it with an occasional remark of worthy appreciation.

Resourceful. Employees that shine in creative problem solving convert obstacles into pathways of success. Who in your organization is highly resourceful? Tell them how it makes a difference!

Confident. Distinctly different from arrogance, confidence delivers great presentations, strength in new challenges, accountability for results, and willing ownership of mistakes. Show your appreciation for this maturity. It’s worthy of it.

Noticing and applauding employees’ talents and strengths sparks joy and engagement. Who wouldn’t want to commit when they see and hear their value?

Sales teams get to see it in money. Show it to non-sales teams in your reflection, remarks of appreciation and worthy kudos. It’s a no cost and high return investment!

I welcome your additions to this list. What other employee talents and strengths have you applauded?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Leaders, Leave Meetings. Get to a Meeting of the Minds!

Musings on Effective Meetings from The People-Skills Coach™

In the workplace, leaders and teams still search for ways to hold tremendously effective meetings. Despite years of pundits’ advice, side trips into tangent land, chatty corner conversations, habitually late arrivals, vibrating smart phones and tablets, tunnel vision, resistance, and lack of focus keep everyone from the bulls-eye.

They also leave most people dreading the next meeting.

So I wonder, will we find the Holy Grail if we leave meetings in the dust and instead hold a meeting of the minds?

Leave Meetings! Got a Meeting of the Minds?

Words do matter and the word meeting has always been too vague for me. It has confused workplace teams for decades. A meeting and its 21st century cousin, a meet-up, suggest a free form event to which people can arrive fashionably late.

Whereas the phrase, a meeting of the minds, is packed with clear requirements.

A meeting of the minds,

Sounds the knell of knowledge exchange that calls everyone to be there on time — else there’s no exchange.

Suggests there is a specific topic and purpose. You wonder a meeting of the minds “on what”? It breeds interest and focus.

Prepares the mind to be ready to meet. Most would feel embarrassed to attend a meeting of the minds and say only I don’t know or I’m not prepared!

Inherently requires listening, discussing, and participation of all minds. Unless everyone is telepathic, all must engage else the views stay hidden in the minds.

Engenders all to speak in terms that others understand else the minds don’t meet.

Brings the endless talker up for air to hear what other minds think.

Bends the obstinate else why are they at a meeting of the minds?

Coaxes all to agreement and decision. After all, isn’t that the meaning of we came to a meeting of the minds?

In the workplace today we have multicultural teams, virtual technology, global reach, and still that pesky problem of ineffective meetings.

I say we’ve got nothing to lose by giving meetings a new moniker and seeing if it gets us to the Holy Grail.

Maybe we should even hold a contest to see what the new moniker should be if a meeting of the minds doesn’t hold everyone’s attention!

What say you?

From my professional experience (with a wry twist) to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, customer service, customer experience, and teamwork. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders’ Dilemma: Self-Serving High Performing Team Member

Six months ago, a leader described this dilemma to me:

A team member who produced results with the other team members had fallen very ill. Let’s call this team member “Reach”.

When the leader approached the team members for a show of empathy, cards, flowers, and other help for “Reach”, many team members quietly avoided the subject and some clearly declined the outreach. The leader was shocked to learn that the team members saw Reach as a self-serving opportunist.

Leaders Dilemma: Self-Serving High Performing Team Member Image by: ErickGonzalez50

The concerned leader asked me to speak with the team members to learn more about the situation, what he had missed, and how to lead better in the future.

I agreed and asked the leader to think about his definition of teamwork in the interim.

Inside the Team Members’ Perspective

Reach was well-known for saying things like: “Always associate with people better than you to achieve success.” The team members wondered who Reach was referring to? Meanwhile, they perceived Reach overlooking them while always (metaphorically) looking up.

Reach helped himself grow — he didn’t help others to grow. He was also well-known for saying, “people give and help because they want to. They shouldn’t expect anything in return.”

Did they ever speak to the leader about Reach’s attitude? Two team members reported they had separately spoken to the leader who refocused the discussion on Reach’s work contribution and results. As they compared notes of the leader’s outlook — which they shared with the rest of the team — they felt is was futile to mention it again.

How had they been able to produce results with Reach while having these negative feelings? Interestingly, they had completely shut out personal feelings for Reach and focused purely on work results.

When the leader approached them for empathy, cards, flowers and other help for Reach, they were shocked. They had accepted the leader’s results only focus and said they felt both confused and betrayed by his call for personal help for Reach — when neither Reach nor the leader had cared about them. They asked me: What is the leader’s definition of teamwork? Getting the job done or caring for and helping each other to get the job done?

I reported my findings to the leader (without identifying who said what). He was stunned. I asked him for his definition of teamwork?

He told me he always believed that teamwork included caring and helping each other to grow.

When I asked him about his results focus with Reach, he confessed he didn’t know what else to do when the team members came to him about Reach’s attitude.

He didn’t see himself as a psychologist and quickly fell back on a traditional results only focus.

People-Skills & Leadership Lessons Learned?

The risk is blindness to plummeting morale that can affect future work results.

Fear can mesmerize and stop a leader from growing.

Awareness and listening are critical leadership skills.

well-known

It isn’t enough for a leader to let the team define teamwork.

The leader’s expectations of teamwork are critical in difficult times.

If you truly believe in a results only focus, be clear and consistent about it.

What Do You Think?

-What other lessons do you glean from this dilemma filled story?

-What does it leave you wondering? What other leadership questions does it raise?

-Are you concerned that you will lose high performing team members if you include more than just results in the definition of teamwork?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Leaders: 10 Essential Thoughts to Proficient People Skills

Leaders, people-skills are critical to success. Yet in a demanding business pace, people-skills are often last on the learning list.

Luckily leaders and teams can build proficient people-skills while attending to critical business. The proficiency starts with attitude and flows into people-skills’ behavior!

Leaders, 12 New Thoughts to Proficient People-Skills Image by:Sean MacEntee

Hold and Use These 10 Thoughts

An open mind creates phenomenal results.

Most people feel respected, honored, and uplifted by an open mind. Both in output and in morale, it produces positive results. There are some exceptions yet overall it is a winning thought. Build proficient people-skills from an open mind.

Teams strengthen a leader’s reality.

When we remember that our vision, understanding, and experience gains momentum with a team’s perspective, we are more likely to respect their input and collaboration. Build proficient people-skills from this awareness.

Understanding people leads to influence.

Most leadership is actually influence in action. To effectively influence others — team members, customers, and even your boss — understand what they care about. Knowledge of others builds proficient people-skills.

Know when your people-skills naturally shine.

Complete this sentence: I am best at people-skills when ____________________________. Identify when you usually interact well with others. Is it when you are happy? Confident? Relieved? Celebrating? Respected? In need? In difficulty? When is it? Capture what you do during these times and apply it across the board. Your natural pattern can build proficient people-skills.

People-skills deliver in tough times.

Contrary to popular belief, people-skills are not a sign of weakness. In tough times you can draw on the good will you have built through people-skills to deliver otherwise unachievable results. “Because of our long standing relationship, I’ll do it for you.” That’s an homage to your great people-skills!

People-skills are not just for extroverts.

If you are more introverted than extroverted, repaint the image you have about people-skills. It is not about gregarious, outspoken, high energy behavior. People-skills is stepping outside of your own perspective to understand and interact effectively with others. High extroverts have just as much adaptation to make as introverts. Both can succeed if they seek to understand.

Bonds are not bondage.

Many leaders having a driver personality crave end results not relationships. In fact, many believe that bonds with others are a detour to success and a trap that stops them just short of the finish line. Yet unless these leaders truly do everything themselves to reach success, bonds with others are the road to the finish line. Knowing the difference between bonds and bondage builds proficient people-skills.

Finding fault stops progress; finding solutions ignites success.

One of the riskiest people-skills moments for leaders is during a crisis or failure. That trigger voice that says: “Who’s at fault?” can bury future collaboration forever. Great people-skills can guide the organization back to success and to a culture of accountability. A focus on success, not blame, can build proficient people-skills.

If you overlook team problems, success overlooks your teams.

Morale matters. It impacts results. Team member people-skills affect morale of the team and the results of the organization. “They are not children. Let them work it out themselves.” These beliefs cost the organization money and sacrifice success. Accept the truth about morale and you build proficient people-skills.

Get over being comfortable; get versatile.

Global business success requires constant growth which means the discomfort of change. Focus on the versatility that people-skills bring to your success and you will build proficient people-skills!

Thoughts drive behavior and create a chain of reactions. Hold these thoughts about people-skills and build valuable bonds that strengthen results.

Which of these thoughts rings loudest to you? Or would you add to or delete something from this list?

From professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Post: Leaders, 10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

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Are You Too Nice to Lead?

The word leader used to mean strong, directive, and sometimes unfeeling. That picture has shifted to less directive and more in touch with employees’ needs.

Yet where is the balance between results-focused and people-focused? In tough moments …

Are you too nice to lead?

Are You Too Nice to Lead, Effectively?

Image by: SeanbJack via Creative Commons License

There are team members who want, welcome, and will only work for a nice leader — until they see that the nice leader won’t address poor performance and cannot negotiate tough issues with other teams and management.

They feel unprotected and at the mercy of slacking team members and other teams. So much for being nice!

Too Nice to Lead

Leaders, could this be you? How or when is this most likely to happen?

With Fear of Conflict. If you tend to avoid conflict and want people to just work things out for themselves, you may be seen as too nice to lead.
Alternative: Get a coach to help you develop your conflict resolution skills. Great leaders move past their fear. They know when to step in and even teach others how to work together.

In Times of Great Change. In everyday work, your teams think of you as a very effective leader. Then the organization announces a major change and you must lead your teams through it. The tension rises and your teams resist. In this moment of truth, do you lead them forward? If you cave in to their objections and resistance, your boss may see you as too nice to lead.
Alternative: Have the courage to draw on the good will you have with your team. Show them you believe in them and in the change. If you don’t believe it, why should they?

When You Require Emotional Support. Being humble and less directive can be good for your team because the void taps their talent and commitment. Being less confident and needing constant emotional support can scare the bejeebers out of them and earn you the label of too nice or weak to lead.
Alternative: Learn and understand the interplay between being confident and being humble. Confidence is strength for your team. Humbleness opens the door to growth. Both are valuable leadership traits. Lack of confidence isn’t.

If You Must Be Liked. Needing to be liked can steer you to many poor leadership behaviors. It can drive you to sacrifice results for the virtual hug. This can earn you the label of too nice to lead.
Alternative: Develop relationships outside of work that can fulfill this deep need. At work, focus on the balance of interpersonal connection and end results.

When You Get Promoted. Picture yourself leading your former peers and maybe even being a peer of your former boss. Guilt or feelings of unworthiness can make you seem timid or too solicitous. This can earn you the label of too nice to lead.
Alternative: Your boss or another leader put their faith in you. You were promoted for a reason. The team you lead needs your courage and talent. Even if some team members grouse in jealousy, the team’s success depends on your willingness to do the job. Embrace the responsibility you were given; don’t trigger the decision maker’s doubt and regret. Believe in yourself, the purpose, and the team. Lead.

If You Own Their Behavior. When you mistakenly believe that you are responsible for a team member’s behavior, you are at risk of giving an errant employee too many chances. You may take their behavior as your failure. If you are coaching one of your team members and they are not making progress, would you be able to tell them they are no longer on the team? If not, you may earn the label of too nice to lead.
Alternative: Afford your team members the adult responsibility of owning their own behavior. Coach, teach, guide — yes. Own their behavior? No.

When Your Career is Paramount. When you care about your career growth more than the current position, you may automatically say yes to other teams or management requests instead of using appropriate assessment and thought. You are busy pleasing everyone else and your current team’s success may suffer. If you are lucky, this may earn you the label of too nice to lead. If you are not lucky, it may earn you a different label that isn’t fit for print. Either way, it’s not what a great leader does.
Alternative: Let current successes, appropriate interactions, and great negotiation pave your career path.

As the definition of leadership has shifted from rough directive behavior to engaging employees, some leaders have veered off course and focused only on happiness.

Rediscover the balance and you foster success for all!

Leadership is not about telling or asking; it’s knowing when to do each.

Leadership is not about people or results; it’s about people achieving results.

Leadership is not one consistent approach; it’s using the best approach for the situation.

You can be liked and fail as a leader; you can be disliked and fail as a leader.

You succeed when you balance purpose and people, encouraging and deciding, listening and speaking up.

I wish you courage and strength and the insight to know how to use it.

From professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Leaders: Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

Leaders, you and your direct reports have great impact on attracting and keeping top talent. Though you might think it’s only about the money, it isn’t.

There are many behaviors that drive talent away. Talent includes full time employees, contractors, consultants, and even suppliers.

You as leaders and your directors and managers can attract and retain top talent by replacing behaviors that secretly repel them.

Leaders, Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

Image by: Dee_Gee via Creative Commons License

Behaviors repel talent for any of three reasons:

QL: They seriously reduce quality of life or
BS: They make it unnecessarily difficult to succeed or
$$: They indirectly cost the talent money.

Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

Highly disorganized or uncertain. Top talent blossoms when leaders set a clear vision. Wandering through a disorganized morass when deadlines loom, leaves talent wondering if success is possible. They envision more attractive opportunities and yearn for success. Replace disorganization and uncertainty with valuable vision.

Negativity. Top talent wants to hear what is possible. They feed off of a reality of belief, ideas, and action. Negativity drains their spirit for they see it as unnecessary difficulty. Replace this drain with energy and a call to action.

Perfectionism. Top talent see this as a triple whammy. It always comes across as unnecessary stress, it reduces the quality of their work life, and it costs them money. How? By reducing the time they can spend learning or accomplishing other valuable tasks or opportunities. Replace the scourge of perfectionism with the goal of excellence. What a difference!

Fear of failure. It produces behaviors that demoralize others. Even if you as leaders aren’t afraid, those that report to you may be. If you love to delegate, do it wisely. Replace delegation based on occupational skill with delegation based on inspirational leadership ability. Otherwise, top talent will move on to work with project managers and directors who aren’t stuck in fear.

Me-itis. Top talent tend to love a confident humble leader. Non-confident self-absorbed leaders drive top talent from the organization like a fire alarm. Replace the engineered comfort of me-itis with a belief in what the top talent can produce for the organization and thus for you.

Attracting top talent today is quite different than years ago. There was a time when casting doubt about a talent’s skill would make them work harder to prove you wrong and win out over other talent you are considering.

Though there is still some talent who respond that way, there is top talent who will walk away from you and toward positive inspirational leaders that embrace their talent.

Replace competition with collaboration and doubt with a coalition for success!

What other behaviors would you add to this list? What other leadership traits attract top talent?

From professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

8 Comments »

Leaders, Are Your Direct Reports a Wart on Arm of Progress?

Leaders have leaders reporting to them. If you are a top leader, do you know if your direct reports are fueling growth, change, and success?

Or are your direct reports a wart on the arm of progress — blocking change despite what they are telling you?

Leaders, Are Your Direct Reports a Wart on Arm of Progress? Image by: Charles Williams

5 signs that your leaders are a wart on progress:

They demoralize teams by speaking about the past instead of the future. Example: Why didn’t you or we should have. No matter how this is spoken, it doesn’t fuel commitment to change. It fuels resentment, fear, and guarded behavior. Progress flourishes with learning and confident exploration.

They say they will lead change while claiming there is not yet enough data, time, or resources to make a decision. Their wart may be the fear of failure or inability to see ahead from the current picture. Effective leaders know that progress materializes from incremental steps not a complete roadmap.
They seem like star performers yet can’t rally others to star performance. Their wart may be an unwillingness to stand back for others to shine. They are so headstrong, they listen to nobody and block team input. Teams need to have a voice else they sense progress is outside their grasp. Related Post: Is Our Knowedge Too Noisy to Listen?

They crush others with the demand for perfection. Their wart is perfectionism. The quest for excellence breeds progress; perfectionism kills it like the disease it is.

They are a lid that fits any pot. Their wart is lack of identity. Teams rarely trust them for they feel clueless. Flexible leaders inspire contribution and progress; nondescript leaders leave teams bewildered without a vision. Without vision, progress falters.

If your organization is not progressing toward the vision, look at the leaders reporting to you.

Are they inspiring teams, communicating, and breeding excellence? Or do they suffer from any of the 5 warts noted above?

Your mentoring or guidance from a professional coach can remove the warts and get the organization, once again, on the road to progress.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

3 Comments »

Leaders, Let’s Not Lead Back to the Future

As leaders, how we say things impacts both results and future interactions. If our words are future focused, we lead to the future. We inspire a learning culture.

When our words take employees back to the past, we create a guarded blaming culture and lead nowhere.

Leaders, Let's Not Lead Back, to the Future

Phrases like:

“I would have thought we would have …”

or “we should have …”

are blaming statements badly disguised as “we’re all in this together”.

Let’s Not Lead Back to the Future

Short Story. A recently promoted director of customer satisfaction, walked up to his former boss at the end of a training program that she helped design and said “I would have thought we would have approached this subject in another way.” He had provided no input during the development of the training program yet spoke with derision. Those around just stared at him. What was his goal?

Lesson. If we want to lead forward, let’s use forward focused words. “Going forward, I suggest xyz in phase II.” In this approach, the director would be contributing and leading forward, not back, to the future — like a know-it-all nit!

To do this, it helps to …

Want to encourage others instead of correcting others.
Consider that there are different views not just one view.
Believe that we don’t ever have the perfect answer.
Assess the emotional needs of others when trying to achieve results with them.

The newly promoted director, in the story above, is a Six Sigma Black Belt. His focus is to find root causes of customer satisfaction problems and improve them.

Root cause analysis is extremely valuable especially when it spawns future improvements. Whereas, black belting people about what they should have done leaves scars that impact future interactions and results.

Leading people back to the future with criticism demoralizes them with a blaming culture. Leading them forward — to the next times with lessons and insight — breeds commitment and outstanding future results.

Let us always remember that people-skills and emotional intelligence are just as important as vision, intellect, data, and drive in achieving the end results.

And the good news is, the words next time and going forward, are two no cost leadership phrases with dual power. They both inspire and deliver!

What do you think? Do words make a difference?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

19 Comments »

Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

Behind the labels of personality types lie the secrets to more profitable leadership and teamwork.

Workplace leaders often assess team member personality types — amiable, expressive, analytic, driver — and then get busy and do little with it. As I work with them and their teams, I highlight the profitable secrets they can tap.

The Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

Personality type impacts understanding and outcomes of leaders and teams. It guides you on how best to engage employees. It can make or break employee ability to thrive in organizational change.

Secrets of Personality Types:

Employee Engagement

Amiable personality types come alive through personal connection. If you want to tap the profit they can bring to the business, build interpersonal bonds with them. A just the facts approach makes them feel lonely and demoralized. You do not have to be their best friend yet if you skip the bonding you skip the profit. In today’s world of remote technology, remember to connect with amiable types face to face or on the phone. Video conference with remote amiable type employees for a winning solution!

Expressive personality types shine in and through communication. Two-way communication, a critical skill of any good leader, brings these people to full contribution. If you are fast paced, results-oriented and minimize communication, these expressive types feel shunned. You are leaving the profit by the wayside.

Analytic personality types function in an ordered thought process. They have much to contribute if you always allow for some ordered discussion. If you are brainstorming, take a small pause to capture the analytic’s ideas. If you are a highly creative leader, summarize your thoughts in an ordered manner after your creativity. Skip the order and you leave analytic types frustrated and the value they provide, suppressed.

Driver personality types crave end results and achievement. Give them the big picture, highlight critical milestones and risk factors, and then let them deliver. If you micro-manage them or ask them to have lengthy discussions on non-critical factors, they feel trapped and repressed. Although many other types dislike micro-management, driver types resent it for you are keeping them from the brass ring! They may look for a new position that gives them a real shot.

During Times of Great Organizational Change

Double driver leaders intent on pushing through massive change often overwhelm the other personality types because they focus only on the results. They issue announcements instead of holding all hands meetings. They tell themselves it’s all for organizational results. Yet the methods they use are self-serving and fulfill their driver personality type needs. Ironically, they are leaving the profit of personality types untapped and results suffer.

Likewise, amiable type leaders can get caught up in feelings and bonding sacrificing the organizational change goal. It doesn’t have to be that way. I have seen amiable leaders use their incredible bonding skills to rally support for the change and tap everyone’s talent to make it happen.

Analytic type leaders may falter in organizational change if they demand too much information before making decisions. In this case, analytics do well to trust the other personality types on the team and profit from their decision skills.

Expressive type leaders often shine in organizational change because they are natural communicators. They must remember to engage in two-way communcation. Profit from the analytic, amiable, and driver types’ ideas by remembering to let them express!

To engage employees and lead them in tough times of change, tap the profit in their personality types.

If instead you revel in the comfort of your own personality type, you leave the profit for the (next) adaptable leader.

Related post: GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

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The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork

Teamwork within one team is quite achievable. Cross teamwork (between teams in an organization) remains the elusive brass ring of effectiveness.

Leaders who want to break through an organization’s performance barriers find the greatest — seemingly unsolvable — obstacles in cross teamwork. Much has been studied and tested yet the obstacles persist.

For this reason, it is worthwhile to look at the issues again.

The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork Image by:EvaTheWeaver

The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork

Perhaps listing the seemingly unsolvable obstacles here will bring new focus and insight — especially for new leaders and managers in the thick of it.

Shared Goals With Greatly Opposing Pathways. We can all nod our heads and say yes this happens. Experts will chime in with facilitation techniques and processes that can resolve the differences. Wonderful. Yet when this happens in between teams in great volume, it represents a loss of performance.

Individual Preservation. An obstacle that surprises many is a rogue individual acting purely from self-preservation.
An illustration: In an episode of the old television show MASH, the unit calls for ambulances to take the post-op patients away to make room for the new wounded. A corporal at HQ refuses to send the ambulances because he was told to take care of those Army resources. A general finally says to him, I can see you care about the ambulances. Why don’t you drive them up here yourself to ensure their safety! The corporal then releases the ambulances. The general identified the cross teamwork barrier – self preservation — and turned it into a solution.

Are any team members so risk averse that they are taking actions that actually prevent cross teamwork and organizational success? The first place to look for this is in areas where leaders have stressed security, monitoring, metrics, and strict processes. Has it gone too far?

Too Much Change and Chaos. When high volume organizational change creates a feeling of total chaos, the results on cross teamwork can be disastrous. Each team, struggling to grasp the new direction, closes in a virtual huddle to manage the chaos. Reaching out to other teams would feel like increased chaos.
How steep is your change curve? It might look great in strategy sessions yet if it puts the teams into preservation mode, it creates a performance barrier instead of solving one.

Mistaken Empowerment. Many an organization has dipped in performance as a result of mistaken empowerment. When a leader taps someone who is not ready or capable of key responsibility, many teams shut down in response to the incompetence. If it’s within a team, the leader can more easily correct the mistake. Yet when this mistake affects other teams, it affects cross teamwork and organizational performance.

Politics and Hidden Agendas. After a leadership strategy session, does each leader send the same message to his or her team? If leaders, consiously or subconsiously filter the strategy through their political or private agendas, the message comes out differently to each team. The obstacles to cross teamwork are enormous in this case because they may be hidden. The teams nod in agreement over stated goals yet each team is acting on the message received from its leader.

There are other obstacles to cross teamwork including different occupational perspectives, incompatible technology, time zones, cultural differences and so forth. However, concrete steps tend to remove these barriers.

The 5 greatest obstacles noted above take root and the effects spread like weeds strangling organizational performance. They seem unsolvable even though they aren’t. Awareness, vision, commitment, courage, and action can turn it around. Who will initiate it? That’s the question.

What say you? Would you add to this list of 5? Subtract? Or do you disagree?

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

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What Do Workplace Pit Bulls Do to Accountability?

Leaders, do you appoint someone the workplace pit bull believing it will make everyone more responsible and accountable? Let’s consider what workplace pit bulls do to accountability.

What Do Workplace Pit Bulls Do to Accountability?

Image by:Vectorportal.com

The Story.
In a meeting with a brand new customer, one of my clients introduced herself to me as the one who pit bulls everyone. The boss had given her that responsibility believing it would make everyone more accountable.

I finished the engagement and for the first time turned down follow on business when they asserted the pit bull approach would remain. Her actions had few positive outcomes and many negative.

The Claim. Driving and pressuring people to the maximum creates accountability.

The Truth. Driving and pressuring people to the maximum creates a flurry of activity and fear of blame. It might create short term productivity but not accountability.

What Do Workplace Pit Bulls Do to Accountability?

Make team members very risk averse. They take the safe approach to avoid the pit bull’s bite. This has little to do with producing the quality outcome and is hardly accountable to the organization’s goals.

Breed a not my fault culture to avoid blame and punishment. This is the exact opposite of responsibility and accountability.

Stress people right out … of their knowledge. Have you ever been so stressed that you can’t even think? How can you be accountable to the organization’s goals if you can’t apply your knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking on a daily basis?

Reduce trust and respect. When a blame culture takes root, people begin to mistrust not only the pit bull but everyone around. Everyone covers their tracks instead of investing in true collaboration and teamwork to reach the organization’s goals. This is not accountability.

Demoralize team members. Workplace pit bulls may produce obedience yet it’s at the cost of morale, spirit, and the desire to be accountable.

Workplace pit bulls (or those who appoint them) are filled with fear of organizational failure and instill fear to prevent it. Ironic, isn’t it, that they can end up producing the very thing they wish to avoid — organizational failure!

Accountability does not foster this culture of fear and blame. It thrives in learning organizations that empower people within appropriate boundaries.

It rises out of honoring individual accomplishments as well as team successes. It both requires and engenders high levels of achievement by inspiring new possibilities and tapping the team’s current knowledge and ideas.

If you are a leader and aren’t seeing the performance and results you need from the teams, don’t seal your fate by confusing accountability and blame.

Blame won’t change their behavior; a change in your behavior will. Honestly assess your leadership style and make changes to produce change.

Inspire accountability in your teams. Don’t pit bull them into obedience.

What is the greatest approach you have ever used or witnessed that produced accountability? What resources will you recommend in the comments section below?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Resource for Entrepreneurial Leaders: Something Needs to Change Around Here by Liz Weber, CMC.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and leading change to corporate teams. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders, 10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

A recent Twitter chat called leadfromwithin raised a question in my mind that affects every leader and manager especially in times of change. When you attempt to inspire teams with your passion, do you scar them or ignite their greatness?

Use Passion to Ignite Greatness Not Scar Others Image by:fsamuels

Passion that burns others undermines the goal.

Passion that ignites others fuels success.

10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

Keep Your Mind Open. When your mind is open to different ways of reaching the end goal, your passion ignites the team’s ideas and greatness. If you close your mind to ideas, it scars the team’s spirit and douses their passion.

Establish the limits of freedom. That might seem like an oxymoron yet it is true. If there are boundaries, state them and then let innovation, creativity, and great talent surface and develop. If you pretend there are no boundaries and inflict them later, it scars the team’s work rhythm and their trust. When boundaries legitimately change, communicate them clearly.

Become a geyser of goodwill. The more times you communicate the positives (when they are true), the more trust and goodwill you build with the team. This goodwil builds the team’s strength to then hear the negatives with objectivity. The sum ignites greatness.

Be honest not blunt. Honesty that doesn’t insult catapults all to greatness. Bluntness leaves emotional scars that toughen future interactions. Classic wisdom says: Attack the idea not the I. That’s a good start. I add, “Disagree without being disagreeable.”

Question before feedback. Your passion for the vision or goal, will scar others if you give negative feedback before understanding their actions. You also scar your credibility and their trust in you.

Refine your message to critical points. Passion has the power to confuse. It causes you to leave out critical information that can ignite the team’s greatness. Exercise: Write your message as a headline and then the bullet points to support it. It is annoying when you first start. Once you know how, your communication will ignite the team’s greatness.

Show You Are Listening. Ever work for leaders who are so passionate that they keep blazing new trails without showing you they heard your concerns? Don’t be a listening leader who appears deaf. Dialogues ignite actionable greatness.
See Talent in Mistakes. A team’s greatness is harnessed through individual contributions to the same goal. Differences in talent and perspective often produce outcomes that you might see as mistakes in light of the end goal. You can also see the talent that produces those unexpected outcomes to ignite future greatness.

Recognize Initiative and Celebrate Learning. One uncomfortable truth about igniting greatness is that not all team members will want to be great or rise to greatness. Leaders and managers, with heart, mistakenly minimize greatness in the quest for team harmony. The good news is there’s a better way. If you recognize those who are showing more initiative and achieving greatness and also celebrate all that are learning, you preserve team harmony without sacrificing greatness.

What is #10? How do you make sure your passion ignites greatness without scarring others?

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on customer service, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

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Our Future is Behind Every Customer

This year for National Customer Service Week, I ask each of you to look behind every customer.

For a moment, don’t look at metrics, scripts, forms, procedures, the structure, the flashing queue light, the long line, or the clock. Look behind every customer to discover the true need, the future, and success. Our future is behind every customer.

Graphic by: Kimb Manson

Customer Service – Stripped to the Core

Behind every customer is the unknown yearning to be known. That’s our future of customer loyalty.

Empathize!

Behind every customer ID number, is a person with a name whose needs we can fulfill. That’s our future. That’s success.

Ask for their name before their ID number!

Behind every customer question – odd, crazy, simplistic, or repetitive — is a chance to move them to the future and success.

Listen with an open mind!

Behind every customer is another person whom we impact with our actions. Our care is growth for both. That’s our future and theirs.

Follow-through!

Behind every impatient customer is our future success with the tough times of life. That’s a future of skill and ability.

Study up!

Behind every customer are the factors that define great service to them. Look behind the customer to reach that future.

It’s a one-to-one match!

Behind every customer is limitless potential. Cultivate the future.

Go to the well!

Behind every customer is the heart of our success. It beats for our future.

Maintain heart health!

Behind every customer is a wealth of knowledge free for the taking. Learn!

Is there a #10? What would you add to this list?

Lead the future of customer loyalty …

Listen
Emapthize
Assess
Deliver

Don’t leave it behind!

Offer: Subscribe to this Smart SenseAbilities™ blog and download your thank you gift poster of Our Future is Behind Every Customer. Print it and hang in your customer service area for continued inspiration!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes for customer service and teamwork — that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

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7 Steps from Brutally Blunt to Helpfully Honest

In my last people-skills post, I wrote that honesty may hurt for a bit but blunt burns forever.

One reader asked me for specific steps to go from blunt to honest for better work relationships. Here they are — from my professional experience to your success.

People-Skills:7 Steps from Brutally Blunt to Helpfully Honest

Image by: Nomadic Lass Creative Commons License

7 Steps From Brutally Blunt to Helpfully Honest

When you are done speaking, do you want others to look and feel like the little blunt above? Or do you want them to see you that way? If not …

#1 Honor people as well as your purpose and message.

Much of the brutal bluntness

only

less clear

Before speaking, ask yourself what impact your words will have on people. Honesty without honoring the human comes out blunt.

#2 Openness to other possibilities makes you less blunt.

live this openness

honest dialogue

instead of

blunt monologue

#3 Never start a sentence with the word “you” in difficult situations.

Starting with “you” sets the hearing up for a blunt attack and a defensive reply.

Saying “Here is what we are expecting from you and this is what you are doing. We need these changes …”. Now the person can hear your message and has specifics on what to change.

#4 Emotion (negative) will come out as brutally blunt.

you want to speak honestly without insulting them

blunt

However, do not use this intro as a justification for being blunt. It doesn’t work. You must be truly trying to honor with honesty.

#5 Sense of proportion reduces the brutality.

Brutally blunt, by definition, is the extreme outpost of communication. Ask yourself, why must you use this extreme and risk inflicting scars? What words, with better proportion, can clearly communicate your message?

#6 Timing and tone of voice transform results.

The faster you speak in tough moments, the more brutal it sounds. Meanwhile, speaking too slowly or softly risks sounding patronizing.

Using a normal even pace of speech communicates honesty and avoids the brutality.

#7 Yes. Thinking “agreement” makes you less blunt.

Even if agreement is not your goal, think “yes” and your words will be more helpfully honest and less brutally blunt.

Respect is the cushion. It allows you to honor with honesty instead of bullying with bluntness. When disagreeing strongly, state your perspective with “I respectfully disagree.”

Some claim that there are people with whom you must be brutally blunt else they don’t understand. I have met some where subtlety didn’t work. I was more direct not brutally blunt. I still honored with honesty.

Others think they are speaking honestly yet are quite blunt. They inflict scars that block productive relationships and singe success.

The 7 steps above will block the bluntness and give you honest words for success in any situation.

What would you add to this list to save yourself and others from being blunt?

Respectfully and successfully yours,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

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Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork

What Do Workplace Pit Bulls Do to Accountability?

Leaders, 10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

Our Future is Behind Every Customer

7 Steps from Brutally Blunt to Helpfully Honest

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