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When it comes to confidence, many leaders now realize that it is displayed in different ways between genders and in diverse cultures.  Diversity requires seeing beyond our own perspective to know the truth about others.

Yet there is one commonly overlooked element of confidence that confounds leaders into misjudging their employees.  How clear is your understanding and vision on this angle of confidence?

The overlooked element of confidence is performance goal.

The gap between the level of performance people expect of themselves and our non-communicated expectations of them affect our view of their self-confidence.

A True Short Story of Blurred Vision

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A student pursuing a masters degree was required to take a graduate statistics course as part of the degree at the university. Let’s call him Pat.

On the first night of class, the professor (Dr. Thick) said, “The adjunct professor for this class backed out and they have just dumped this on me to teach. I already have a full load. So I’ve decided that each of you will take one chapter, learn it, and teach it to the rest of the class.”

After the first student presentation, Pat realized that he was not going to learn statistics from the other students at the level he expected and needed in order to do his research thesis the following year. Pat spoke with Dr. Thick privately and highlighted that he would like the value of his high level of knowledge. Dr. Thick’s response was: “Evidently, you don’t have very much self-confidence.”

Pat dropped the class and took a graduate statistics course during the summer from another professor to be adequately tooled for his research work the following year.

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Confidence was not Pat’s issue. The element that confounded Dr. Thick was performance level.

If he had explored more deeply he would have seen that Pat’s goal went beyond just passing the course. He wanted to learn graduate statistics at a level that would empower him to do a great research thesis the following year. Learning it from other students who knew no more than he did and were struggling with presentation skills did not meet Pat’s expectations.

Leaders, See & Communicate Clearly on Confidence

• What level of performance do employees expect of themselves? The more we get to know employees the more clearly we can see their expectations of themselves. If the level of expectation is very high, we might incorrectly judge a confident person to be weak. Communicate with them to reset expectations and see the truth more clearly.




• What personality type are they? If an employee is an analytic and thinks through everything before speaking, leaders often mistake this behavior as lack of confidence. It isn’t. It’s personality type.
  Related post by MaryJo Asmus: Don’t Underestimate The Quiet Ones




• What did their previous boss expect of them? If their previous boss was a perfectionist with ridiculous expectations, it’s possible that the employees’ expectations reset to that unrealistic level. We then see them as non-confident. When we look more deeply, we discover true confidence has simply been masked by previous experience.




• Do We Confuse Questions as Lack of Confidence? Driver type leaders who crave end results have a tendency to mislabel curious or thorough people as weak. Curiosity and/or thoroughness appear as questions. How we as leaders interpret this behavior comes from our own skew. If too many questions are annoying, it’s much better to clearly communicate the behavior we prefer rather than incorrectly branding employees with the label of no confidence.




• How is fear blurring our vision? The more concerned we are about an outcome, the more likely our fear will blur our vision. The positive side to fear is that we may select a highly experienced employee for a critical project. The negative side is that our fears may lead us to overlook talent that could handle the project. The result is we don’t develop employees’ experience for the future and the organization’s performance suffers in the long run.

We engage employees when we explore, see, and communicate clearly. We demoralize the entire team when we misjudge, label, and brand their efforts through a skewed lens.

What else can skew our vision of confidence and lead the teams astray? I welcome your views and discussion in the comments section below.

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

Related Posts:
Leaders, Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract and Keep Top Talent

Leaders, For Employee Engagement Learning is Better Than Proving

©2012 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.

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

Most leaders trigger change. Some are constantly pulling the trigger and often with disastrous results. If you are a leader who craves change, ask yourself:

Do you see change fatigue?

or

Think it’s all change resistance?

I see a great deal of change resistance as I consult to organizations. Most leaders and consultants focus on this for it is the big challenge of moving an organization forward.


I also see some leaders whose leadership philosophy breeds change fatigue. They are either very high drivers or high idea generators and often quite unaware that they are pulling the trigger far too often.


They see change fatigue as just more change resistance and continue on unchanged (ironically enough) with the same leadership behaviors.


They also convince themselves that because their goal is success, the difference between change fatigue and change resistance is irrelevant. Quite the opposite is true.

Change resistance occurs when people are still committed to the organization albeit the current picture.

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Change fatigue can sever their ability to be committed to the organization and redirect it to individual survival.

Moreover, change fatigue can neutralize your strongest proponents of change — those that aren’t resisting. Even they feel lost, disconnected, and incapable of achievement. Once this engine of change is shot, you and your organization can achieve very little.

Change fatigue will most likely occur when your leadership vision is driven by the treasure hunt syndrome or when your vision constantly changes.

The leaders and teams that report to you barely start to work on one initiative or direction when you reset and redirect. Although some of this happens in every organization, as a leadership style it can leave all exasperated, fatigued and disconnected.

The biggest risk of change fatigue is that organizational performance suffers. As a leader you are focusing on future success while the floor you are standing on is sagging beneath you. The new one you are trying to lay has poor supports as well.

• Your direct reports begin to delegate some of their responsibilities to their teams whether they are skilled or experienced enough to handle it or not. The outcomes are substandard.
• Collaboration and teamwork erode because the current path becomes a grapevine of misunderstandings.
• Their exasperation undermines their respect and trust for you and your leadership.

Change Loving Leaders — Prevent Change Fatigue!

1. Build the culture that goes with your vision. If you as a leader crave high innovation and change, then inspire a fun, creative, learn-from-mistakes type culture.

   Do you encourage all the employees to noodle new ideas? Participating in creativity breeds a more positive feeling about change.

   Or are you mistakenly reserving that privilege for yourself or a select few and holding all others responsible for the implementation and delivery? High driver leaders are prone to this misstep.




2. Ensure you understand what it takes to implement. Employees who shine at implementation and operation must see that your vision sees the reality of effort needed. You need these employees that can actually plan, build, or coordinate the building of those new processes, products or services. Do they see that you value and respect their talent for staying the course to the end to make these changes happen?




3. Procure extra resources to implement all your new ideas or make clear what can truly be pushed aside. If the myriad of ideas and changes you envision are to happen, then back fill the operations with additional contractors to truly allow the full time staff to work on the exciting new changes.




4. Communicate with the employees not to the employees. That does not mean they can set any vision they wish. Yet, the dialogue helps you to see a clearer picture of what’s needed for innovation and gives them a better understanding of what is possible going forward.

Knowing the difference between change resistance and change fatigue strengthens your success quotient.

- Fatigue is something you cause which can even crush the spirit of your change proponents.

- Resistance occurs within employees. You can ease and eliminate it with great communication, clear vision, and active employee engagement.

Address change resistance — prevent change fatigue. Fatigue is a pricey diversion with long lasting effects.


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

Related Posts:
Leaders, Leading Change Requires Networking Our Inspiration

5 Keys to Succeeding with Leaders Who Crave Change

©2012 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.

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

Business leaders, your customers have read your marketing message on commitment to superior customer service. Yet it takes only one moment, one bad experience with a negative attitude for that message to become null and void.

Leaders, are you and your teams — attitude ready? Can you say that team members display a highly positive attitude on each interaction with every customer?

Most leaders reply, “I think so” or “I hope so” and then quote satisfaction metrics to support their claim. The attitude metric for super customer experience must be 100%.

The challenge of excellence is consistency — not repetition.

Customers will always interpret a bad attitude as a sign of personal disrespect. It scrapes emotion and breaks the bonds of loyalty. It creates that horribly inevitable question: Shall I accept this insult? Thus it drives customers away from you and toward your competitors.

Leaders, Are You All Attitude Ready?

Here is a readiness checklist to develop and maintain consistently positive attitudes for super customer experience. Consistent attitude is not scripted and robotic. It is sincere, in the moment, and authentic.

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1. Are front line leaders selected and/or trained to inspire or just to manage? What do they believe is their primary focus? Ask them. For super customer experience, the answer must include “modelling and inspiring” great service. If their answers are mostly a list of tasks including handling escalations, monitoring performance, managing volume, etc…, the team members will not be living a culture of attitude excellence.




2. What is the team’s picture of displaying excellent attitudes? The definition of a great attitude including words like helpful, caring, respectful, warm, friendly, assuring, appreciative, going the extra mile … doesn’t completely drive behavior. Many reps display neutral attitudes and believe they are doing a great job because they are not insulting customers. The customers take this neutrality as lack of caring. It doesn’t produce bonds and loyalty.

   Spot displays of positive attitudes during interview role plays and hire them. Else train with role plays and behavioral displays of positive attitudes to create excellence.
   
   

3. Zero Tolerance of Bad Attitude. After hiring, training, and inspiring excellence, the zero tolerance of reps’ bad attitudes is critical.

   Many leaders today have mistaken the new leadership style of understanding and engagement to be tolerance of bad attitudes and behavior. This is a red herring. Bad employee attitudes and behavior are unacceptable in customer service.

   As a leader when you make excuses and create exceptions, you are creating the culture that will sink super customer experience. You also demotivate those with great attitudes for they want to work in a culture of excellence.

   Listen to reps to understand the tools and other resources they need. Bring those solutions to the table. They must bring their positive attitudes to the customer interaction — regardless of the situation. When my clients ask me: “How long should I coach a negative attitude?” My response is: never. Model and inspire it? Yes. Coach it? No. Reps who choose to display a bad attitude would do better in a non-customer facing position.

   What if great reps, who are consistently positive with customers, slip up in one instance? Anyone can have one bad moment right? Yes but their greatness is evident as they apologize to customers at that moment. They take ownership and make amends immediately. Their professional beliefs shine through. That’s the proof of greatness. They don’t make excuses or run and hide.




4. No shame in leaving policy. Many customer service leaders strive for low employee turnover. It’s understandable from a cost and image perspective. Yet taken too far, this goal can infect morale, performance and results.

   Managers have come to believe that high turnover on their team is an automatic black mark against them. They work to keep everyone there — including poor performers and those ill suited for the positions. Yikes!

   Zappos got it right. They even pay people to leave if it is not a match.

   There is no shame in reps leaving jobs they truly don’t want to do with a positive attitude.

   If turnover is high on your teams, surely check all aspects of the job including pay, training, teamwork, leadership style etc… Fix those issues to attract and retain top talent; don’t keep bad attitudes around just to prove you are a good manager.

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The consistently positive attitude for super customer experience has its roots in these beliefs:

• It is professional and rewarding to serve and give to others.
• Being highly responsible is better than highly entitled.
• People-skills matter as much as occupational skill and problem solving.
• Diversity is fun. It is an exciting way to learn and grow.

Succeeding on the Finer Points of Attitude
When customer service job applicants say that they like the feeling of helping others, dig deeper before hiring them. Will they only like it when the customer is being nice? If they are keying off how they themselves feel, they may struggle when the customer is not happy. Conversely if they see it as a professional goal to serve others, they can give empathy without getting it back.

Responsible vs. Entitled: One rep emailed his front line manager with the following request — “I would like to work from home three days a week. How can you make this happen for me?” This rep will not give superior customer service. There is no sign of responsibility, people-skills, or professional giving.

People who love to solve problems and do it well don’t always do well in customer service. If their focus is tunnel visioned on the end result, they may overlook the customers’ human needs for positive interaction along the road to the solution.


If you are a rep and or manager who loves and lives diversity, learning, responsibility, and professional giving, you are creating a culture of positive attitudes and super customer experience. You are strengthening the profession for the good of all those it touches. Bravo to you all!

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

Related Posts:
Psychological Barriers to Super Customer Experience

The Challenge of Excellence is Consistency Short video.

©2012 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.

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

From big brands to smaller local enterprises, the first truth is:

To make money you must attract customers, get them to buy, and hopefully get them to come back and buy again. This is why so many businesses today are focusing on delivering a super customer experience.

Getting them to buy again requires one unequaled treasure — their trust. It preserves the connection. Unlike confidence, which takes shape in the mind, trust flows to and from the heart. Trust is a risky choice; anything close to the heart is. It is a decision that has consequences and customers fear the worst.

To overcome that fear, the second truth is:

Rapport is the artery to the heart of trust

on the road to super customer experience.

Rapport is the interaction at every level and every moment.
It flows from your agents and reps.
It pings from your website.
It emanates from your packaging.
It springs from your marketing.
It shouts from your procedures.
Every move you make opens or closes the artery of trust.





Keep Rapport Positive & Open for Trust to Flow

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1. Review everything you ask customers to do. Keep doing what builds trust and change what blocks it.

   When your actions while selling show customers you trust them you open the artery to the heart of trust. Later if your customer service procedures cast doubt on their honesty, you cut the artery to the heart of that customer relationship.

   Keep trust flowing the entire time. Lands End is a great example of this. When a Lands End down coat I purchased 2 years ago (and didn’t wear during that time) spewed feathers all over my black business suit when I finally wore it, they told me to send it back for a full refund. It didn’t matter how long I had the coat! Can you just hear the trust coursing through my artery? Yes, Lands End, I will buy again.
   
   

2. Hire and train for emotional intelligence. Much is spent on training sales reps in customer rapport and people-skills. This is good. Do you do the same for your customer service reps? CSRs with poor people-skills can cut the artery of trust. Moreover, customers will mistrust your brand. “You’re nice to me to get my money and then treat me badly during after sales service.” Inconsistency & unreliability are the early signs of a hypocritical brand – unworthy of customers’ trust.




3. If you outsource your brand’s customer service to a BPO, measure and pay that company’s customer service reps (CSRs) for great rapport with your customers not just average handling time (AHT). You get what you pay for and rapport fades when you and thus the CSRs focus on cost. Else your customers believe that you value profit and saving money more than you trust in their value. Trust = buy again. Mistrust = stop and consider your competitors.




4. Design & deliver a friendly trust-building website. Is it easy to find contact information on your site? Does it build rapport with the customers before it asks them to trust you with their personal information?

   Websites that immediately show a squeeze page pop-up do not build rapport. They say “we’re greedy” and don’t want to build your trust. Related Post: We Are Selfish Websites & the Customer Experience

   Does your website truly welcome the customer? This is the beginning of rapport and trust. Does it talk about them or just about you? Related Post: The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business




5. Include rapport in the “r” of customer relationship management (CRM). Relationships are based on rapport and trust. Yet much of CRM can become overrun with metrics, predictions, and strategies. Ask yourselves, are we truly focusing on the relationship or are we skewing too much to the big picture predictors. Customers care about how you treat them at every moment. Do your actions tell them that? Even large success is the sum of each individual moment with customers.




6. Retain the personal touch even as you grow large. Do your known customers become unknown as your enterprise expands?

   Long time customers may frizzle at new procedures yet good rapport can ease them along if the new process is customer friendly. Bad rapport can send them running to your competitor for a tourniquet to stop the emotional bleeding from the loss of trust. Snippy answers like “times change” or “one bad apple spoils the bunch” will send them to social media for the empathy and validation of thousands.

   Becoming unknown is a deeper gash to the artery of trust than not being known at the start.

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Competence touches the mind and builds confidence.
Rapport touches the heart and builds trust.
Does your brand focus on confidence and overlook trust?


What Does Rapport & Trust Do For Your Brand?

• Pings a message to your customers – “friend” not “foe”.
• Gives you a second chance when your brand messes up – and remember no brand is perfect.
• Eases and speeds interactions.
• Makes negotiations more win/win vs. win/lose.
• Reduces or removes the customers’ desire to look around.
• Lowers costs by retaining customers instead of always farming for new leads and customers.
• Overcomes customer resistance to your innovation and changes or
• Surprises you with valuable customer reactions on your brand you couldn’t even pay to learn.
• Gives you the golden nuggets: Auto-renewals, auto-pay withdrawals, personal referrals.

Customer trust is an invitation for a bond and long term relationship. Your actions RSVP the truth about you and your brand.

Based on that, would your customers invite you back? Do they think you are worthy of their long term trust?

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

©2012 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.

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

In the past I have written that great choices create a super customer experience. A recent jaw dropping experience at the Hilton Garden Inn once again shows that the opposite is also true. Bad choices burn customers.

Many of these bad choices are driven by psychological barriers. Awareness of these psychological syndromes gives managers, CSRs, reps & agents the ability to make better behavior choices and deliver super customer experience.

Psychological Barriers to a Super Customer Experience

Which of these have you witnessed in service reps, agents, and managers?

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1. Cognitive Dissonance: When a person’s self-image or view of performance is in conflict with facts or another person’s perception, denial can set in.

   Example #1: When Jason, the general manager at the Hilton Garden Inn realized the horrible things Karen the front desk manager said to me, it was in conflict with his existing view of her.

   Burning behavior: He clearly declared that her behavior was unacceptable yet slipped into cognitive dissonance and thus burned my experience with “she is a good manager.”

   Caring behavior: Instead of changing the reality to meet his perception of Karen, he could instead admit the failure and the dissonance. “Her behavior is unacceptable and I must admit quite surprising to me.” Or simply admit the failure and keep the dissonance to his own private thoughts.

   Example #2: A patient said to a dental hygienist during a cleaning, “That’s painful. I am in pain.” The hygienist’s view of herself was that she does not inflict pain. What she was hearing didn’t fit with her self-image.
   Burning behavior: She simply responded, “Well there will be pressure!” in a sing-songy voice. In her mind she was applying pressure not inflicting pain. She offered no empathy because that would require her to accept that she had inflicted pain. The patient never went back. She told the story of the samurai hygienist to the next caring hygienist she found.
   Caring behavior: The next hygienist said: “I am sorry. I can put some fluoride on your gums to ease the pain then continue.”

   Cognitive dissonance burns customers because most don’t see that the rep or manager is the one struggling psychologically. Customers believe at that moment that the statements and behavior are a direct reflection of what the manager or rep thinks of them. This is a huge risk to super customer experience and loyalty.




2. Defense Mechanisms. Karen’s defense mechanisms were in full swing when I objected to her giving my room number to the cab driver. She was unable to accept that her actions were out of line and change course.
   Burning Behavior: Karen made it a win/lose between her and me. When you define customer interactions as win/lose, you trap yourself and in the end your company loses.
   Caring Behavior: Define interactions as win/win from the start. In that mindset, changing course is not backing down. Changing course is a logical way to finding a mutually agreeable road.

   When a manager, rep, or agent is defensive, they have basically declared that there is a war and their focus is protecting themselves. Customer service is not a war. It is the continuous improvement and delivery of superior interactions between ourselves and our customers. Otherwise, why would they come back? To fight a war?




3. Weak self-image. Even after 20 years of teaching customer service, I still encounter one or two reps in each class who admit they cannot say “I’m sorry” unless it is proven they themselves made a mistake.
   Burning behavior: I feel for these reps. Their inability to say to a customer, “we are sorry for the impact this had on you” is rooted in a struggle to always feel good about themselves. It will also leave the damaged relationship to smolder in pain as the customer shares their dissatisfaction and disappointment with other potential customers.
   Caring behavior: Experience the greatness of putting others’ feelings ahead of your own. A sincere apology for the service team’s failure to deliver outstanding service — bonds, corrects, and heals the wounds.




4. Overactive Ego The manager, rep, or agent who has to dominate any interaction with a customer comes across as a control freak.
   Burning behavior: The mindset, “you need my help so follow procedure and do it my way.” Communication may not be as blunt as that yet the tug-of-war that ensues can leave the customer fatigued and disinterested in your services.
   Caring behavior: Share control of the interaction with the customer. Give and take is far easier than any tug-of-war.

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Every customer wants service to be easy. Paying their money to handle psychological syndromes, hangups, and barriers isn’t on their bucket list.

Free the customer and yourself from the trap of psychological distress. Embrace reality, make it a win/win, and create an easy super customer experience for everyone!

What other psychological traps would you add to this list?


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

Related Post: Simply Great Choices Create Super Customer Experience

©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.

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

PART I

Visionary customer experience leaders know that it takes more than a thin veneer of customer care to turn customers into their loyal advocates.

When you think of Ritz-Carlton, the image is one of universal excellence not because of the high end price tag but because the leaders consider every single aspect of delivering customer care. From vision through execution, the focus is success through the ultimate customer service.

This can happen in any organization of visionary leaders committed to superior customer experience.

It is a deep commitment, where loyalty takes root. The opposite of that — conquering customer loyalty with a few broad strokes — blocks the root of success and prevents growth.

Image by: Blockpartypress via creative commons license.

Plant Deep Roots for Customer Loyalty
The classic advice for building customer loyalty — from listening to the customer, planning & designing, to employee empowerment, brings success IF you attend to every aspect of it.

Recent Customer Experience: A Strong Growing Root Cut in Two Defensive Moments

On several trips to Minneapolis area, I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn in Eagan, MN. As a Hilton Honors member, I checked the Hilton family of hotels first for my upcoming trip. The Garden Inn had the features that I needed: Clean comfortable hotel near the work site, restaurant onsite, shuttle service to/from airport, accessibility to taxis, and a good star rating.

The first trip delighted me with positive customer service attitudes from managers and staff. So I automatically booked the Eagan Hilton Garden Inn for the second trip. Again, the service attitudes were warm, welcoming, attentive to detail, and flexible on special requests.

I thus booked it for the third trip on this project. My customer loyalty to the brand and property was well on its way. They had removed all reasons for me to even consider another hotel.

And then it happened. During that stay, they reserved a taxi for me to get to the work site. I came down at 7:15am, went outside to the cab driver, and he asked me for my room number. I replied that for safety reasons of course I never give out my room number. I gave him my first name and asked him if I was his ride? He insisted on my room number. I asked if he would like to go back inside with me so they could indeed confirm that I was his 7:15 am ride. He agreed.

I described the situation to the Karen at the front desk, gave her my name, and noted that of course I don’t give out my room number. She looked in the reservations book, looked me in the eye, turned to the cab driver and said, “Her room number is 210.”

Karen gave out my room number and threw my request back in my face with blatant disregard for my preference and concern. Shocked, I said to her, “Excuse me, you just gave my room number to this man.”

Karen replied, “the cab company requires it”.

I thought to myself: You take orders from the cab company and push my preferences and safety aside?
Instead I repeated, “You just gave this man my room number.”

Karen replied, “Nothing has ever happened.”
I thought to myself: So you will change the procedure after something bad happens? There is a reason room keys don’t have room numbers printed on them.

Nonetheless, I simply repeated one last time, “You just gave out my room number. How are you going to fix this?”

She then fired the final bullet: “Are you going to argue with me or are you going to get in the cab?”

What??#!? Since when is a customer objection to a hotel’s mistake seen as arguing? I immediately asked to speak with a manager. She replied: “I am the manager on duty.”

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After work I spoke with Jason, the general manager.

Even though he put me in a suite, comped me a room, and gave me dinner, he showed that he too defined customer experience as a veneer of customer care. He, general manager, severed my loyalty when, in the middle of telling me how sorry he was, added that Karen was a good manager.

Wrong Jason. A good manager doesn’t verbally attack a customer communicating a safety concern.

Karen’s approach to conquering my objection with an ultimatum about getting in the cab couldn’t even be called customer service. It was a rude, low class, insulting personal attack to silence me and get me out of the hotel. It showed defensiveness about her mistake and incompetence in service recovery.

If Karen were a staff member, you would consider remedial training. When a manager makes this attack and the general manager defends this manager as capable, it is a statement about the brand’s definition of a great service experience.

Although, they stated they would never again use any cab company that requires room numbers, their purely reactive view of great service means customers will suffer a bad experience before the hotel learns and improves. It also says nothing about delivering great care when a customer is highly dissatisfied — another critical moment, the studies show, for securing loyalty.

When I checked out the next morning and Karen was at the desk, I wondered how many other customers would unfortunately suffer that day and in the future. My memory is one of gross disrespect and disregard for me — not one of a free room and dinner.

I now have a reason to consider a different hotel brand for my next trip.

The root of customer loyalty grows from a deep and pervasive care about everything that affects the customer. The root at the Hilton Garden Inn Eagan stops growing at the bedrock of management’s expectations of its front line managers and the thin veneer of care that defines their view of great service.

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In the next post, Part II of this customer experience, I will provide a deeper list of the steps to customer experienced based loyalty. In the meantime, ask yourself — How do your staff and managers react when customers object?

Do they listen with great care and use their empowerment to make significant changes? Or do they snip back to conquer the customers’ objections and pretend to care with a thin veneer?

If you think they are doing it right, dig deep to make sure. Almost sure isn’t enough to build customer loyalty.

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

Related Post: THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience

©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.

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

Many leaders and managers get annoyed with employees’ complaints. Leaders tell me they expect employees to contribute their views and actions to make things better — not complain about what is.

In frustration, some unsuccessfully tell employees to stop whining. Some leaders even hang a no whining sign!

This does not get employees to contribute a positive can-do attitude, their innovative solutions, and full talents and commitment.

What will engage employees to move from complaints to action?

Image by: saschaaa via Creative Commons License.

6 positive replies to transform employee complaints into action:

1. I hear your frustration. I am ready now to hear your ideas/solutions. Validate the feeling. If you don’t, it will continue to crave attention. Once you do, transform the power of the emotion into ideas. You are coaching your employees at this moment so don’t let them slip back into speaking only the frustration. If they can’t break out of it at that point, let them know you will be happy to discuss solutions when they are ready. Then move on with your day!




2. You have talents for solving this. Would you like to brainstorm ideas? This direct approach shows confidence and belief in them and offers them a great opportunity. The reply shows the essence of any organization — a belief in people to contribute to the end result. You as leader/manager guide all on this mission to stay focused on the road to success.




3. Power to move ahead comes from negative and positive poles. You’ve highlighted the negative very well. What’s the positive suggestion to overcoming this problem? Leaders and managers who are either driven for results or hate negativity, often overlook the value of the negative jolt. You can remind yourself and teach your employees this negative/positive balance. It reshapes outlooks and practice.




4. Your feelings and view of the problem are important. Your ideas for solving it — critical. What do you propose?

   If the next couple of statements from them are still complaints: We move forward with solutions. Here are three statements to get you started:

   • We could ________________________________________________.
   • I can contribute ___________________________________________.
   • I am willing to _____________________________________________.

   Take time to think about it and then let’s get started!




5. Let’s take your understandable emotion on this issue and turn it into a power source for solving it. I’d love to hear your ideas. Many employees feel like followers not contributors. Daily reminders that they have power to lead from within their talents help shape the organization and its success.




6. Optimism and skepticism are healthy; endless pessimism is poison to a team. With chronic complainers who offer no solutions or actions, let them know that their endless pessimism can stop success much the same way that blinded optimism can put everyone at risk. As the leader, I will forge ahead on this balanced mission. I want your talent with us. Please bring your balance to this team’s challenges.

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These positive replies will work if you are engaging employees on a daily basis for their ideas and solutions. If you are a directive leader and use these replies when employees complain, they will have little effect.

Complaints without suggestions are an indicator that the employees feel powerless. If you lead daily through employee engagement, you connect with them emotionally by tapping their ideas. This in turn validates their worth and helps tremendously when you all must endure things that cannot change.

Employee engagement generates their sense of power and desire to contribute solutions; it doesn’t give away your power. It actually generates a powerful success for the organization you lead. The exact result you seek!

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


Related posts:
Leaders, Coach and Perform Like a Ferrari

Leaders, Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Performance & Talent

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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes on leadership, employee engagement, teamwork, and customer experience. She turns interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshops outlines, action footage, and customer results.

A recent CBS Sunday Morning Show featured behind the scenes details of derogatory names companies have for their customers.

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Some Wall Street firms refer to their investors as “muppets”.

Airlines nickname their infrequent passengers “hillbillies or Clampetts” referring to the old TV show The Beverly Hillbillies.

They dub very frequent customers as “Platinum Trash”.

Credit card companies nail the tag “deadbeats” to their customers who pay their balance in full every month.

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As a customer service/experience pro, I listened with some outrage, sadness, and then wonderment.

The leaders of these companies don’t get it  Even if they don’t use these words themselves, they have not done enough to establish a positive culture of valuing the customer.

THE Threat to Superior Customer Experience

Corporate Narcissism

Loving Everything But the Customer

Misapplied Thinking That Fuels This Threat

• Freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not justify hating the customers. If you cannot respect customers, then perhaps it’s best not to build your livelihood on serving them.




• Bluntness relieves stress. There are days when individual workers may find working with customers frustrating. They may blow off some steam privately and offline to relieve the stress.

  Yet the leadership is there to correct that course to ensure it doesn’t become a culture of disrespecting the customers. Leadership is there to teach and remind everyone what it feels like to be a customer and what the customer means to the business.




• Treat the employees well and they will treat customers well. Not necessarily. If leadership and employees treat each other well and collectively disrespect the customers, it will not produce superior customer experience. You cannot hide loathing.

I travel a great deal and can always spot flight attendants and hotel staff who think positively about the customers and those who don’t.

I’m not psychic. It’s in every gesture and word they say. It’s in their proactive help or their indifferent delay.

When company leaders tolerate thinking that degrades customers – even behind the scenes — they are agreeing to it. From thinking comes attitudes and daily behavior with long term strategy not far behind.


How Sad
Picture flight attendants thinking, “I wonder how many platinum trash I will grovel around today?” Can you imagine flight crews dreading the boarding process with so many hillbillies?

Will these crews come across as personable and caring or resentful, impatient, and patronizing?

Do the employees of credit card companies know the value of a customer who pays their balance in full every month? It would be much more valuable to have each employee know that than to foster or tolerate corporate disgust of customers. If there is no business value, why keep them as customers?

As for Wall Street, the world has witnessed the outcome of runaway disregard for customers and their money. From the epithet of investors as “muppets”, we can see the thinking that produced the second greatest economic crisis in modern history.


Good News
There are many companies who have established a customer valued culture that inspires the thoughts and the actions of all employees.

There are airlines now helping the customers as they traverse airport concourses as well as on the flights. They are using kool technology, like Ipads, yet realize that the care comes from the heart.

As other airlines redesign planes to have more economy plus seats with extra leg room in coach class and fully reclining seats in business first, hopefully they will redesign the culture to value everyone who buys and flies. Why improve anything for people you view as trash?

As companies like Ritz-Carlton, Nordstroms, and Zappos, and outstanding hospitals like St. Jude’s Childrens’ Hospital and magnet nursing centers continue to shine their customer care for all to see, we can encourage leaders in other companies to see the true benefit of a customer valued culture.

Call to Action
CEOs and their leadership teams of confused corporations would do well to look at how companies have embraced customer value.

Delivering superior customer service experience doesn’t come from fancy technology, or marketing, or metrics, or branding. It starts at the heart of how a company thinks about customers and brings that thinking to life in its strategy, policies, and interactions.

Thoughts breed actions and many companies ask customers for feedback on their actions. What are your customers saying about your thoughts and culture? That’s worth exploring.

I am honored and thrilled to be working with many companies and professional practices that want to move beyond surveys and go all the way to a customer valued culture.

April is customer loyalty month. Let’s get started!


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

Related Post: Simply Great Choices for Super Customer Experience

Special thanks to CXJourney on Twitter for sending me the URL link for the airline story.

©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.

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

Over the past 20 years, many people have asked me how I could have walked away from a well paying high perks career at a major pharmaceutical company to start my own business. Why would anyone want to leave?

The question always brings me back to one word — more. I wanted to do more, think more, learn more, share more, engage more, produce more, and have more of a values based work life.

Sounds like employee engagement doesn’t it? In the hierarchical corporate culture of twenty years ago, that didn’t exist.

Today, there are many employees who do not want the risk of self-employment yet are ready to be more engaged at work. Leaders you can take the organization to new heights of success when you engage employees through their entrepreneurial spirit.

Engage Employees Through Their Entrepreneurial Spirit

Engage with the funnel up.
20 years ago the funnel was inverted.

When you engage these entrepreneurial desires, you funnel talents into results.

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• Desire to learn. Entrepreneurs are always learning and they work beyond the normal level to make this happen. Picture the benefits to the organization of engaging this desire! Let this image replace the misguided focus and worry of people leaving after gaining experience.

  There is no shortage of entrepreneurial talent who want the security of a paycheck with the opportunity to learn and contribute.




• Desire to contribute all their talents. Entrepreneurs love the freedom to use any/all of their talents wherever needed and helpful.

  Engage this spirit to build cross teamwork, bridge the gaps between departments, and help bring down the organizational silos.

  This spirit is contagious and contributes to cohesive results.




• Desire to be acknowledged. Yes, entrepreneurs value the recognition of their exhaustive commitment and work. So do employees. Acknowledgement of talents and contributions refreshes the spirit and commitment to your organization.

  Acknowledgement of individual contributions to the whole, strengthens (not weakens) organizational results. It isn’t favoritism. It is a celebration of talents that inspires and engages more contribution and commitment.

  More on this: 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement




• Desire to conquer obstacles. Employees who have seen tough times may have the same stamina and persistence to overcome hardship as entrepreneurs generally do. When you spot this trait, engage it with opportunity and acknowledgement.

  Their gung ho spirit can be off putting to others in everyday work conditions yet it is invaluable for producing results and reaching organizational success.




• Desire to use lessons learned. So many organizations are passing over people who are unemployed due to the economic crisis.

  They also pass over people age 50+ claiming they are overqualified for positions. Others believe they will be resistant to change and innovation. What a huge employee engagement mistake!

  If they are talented and interested in contributing their wealth of lessons learned, seize the day. They aren’t overqualified. They are exceedingly qualified. And innovative ability and maturity often coexist. They aren’t polar opposites.




• Desire for responsibility. The entrepreneurial spirit is filled with the desire to make things happen. It is a deep reliability that is difficult to teach or coach. When you find it in your employees, tap it. It takes engagement to the ultimate goal — results.

  This entrepreneurial drive for results is not a desire to replace you as leader. It is a thirst to fulfill their purpose for working.

  Engage this desire with more responsibility without limiting it to leadership positions. Don’t mistake it as a challenge to your authority. Your organization will experience the full potential and unforeseen benefits of employee engagement.

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Who in your organization has exhibited these strong entrepreneurial traits?

Engage these talents without structure. Remove barriers to using it. Tap the spirit without rewriting job descriptions. Spark a new culture of contribution that converts potential opportunities into transformational results for the organization.

Related Post: Leaders, Replace These 5 Legacy Attitudes for Employee Engagement

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

©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.

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

I am pleased to welcome writer Pattie Roberts as the guest blogger for this post. Her thought-provoking personal stories serve up many lessons. Welcome back Pattie!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my Uncle Fritz lately.  Every spring, as I begin the early garden cleanup, I see the coffee can “Tin Man” he made for me hanging next to the rose bed, and it makes me laugh and cry at the same time.  I laugh because Uncle Fritz was a delightful nutball – wildly successful as an insurance agent, devoted to my Aunt Franny throughout her long battle with breast cancer, and truly offbeat in the way he expressed himself.

I cry because he was the definitive example of the one key thing that continues to be broken about customer service in American business.  I cry even more when I think about how simple it is to fix it.

The Story

Let me back up to 1987.  My mother had just passed away and, as is typical in many families (especially Italian families like mine), we shared our grief over mountains of food.  One evening we were at dinner at Ventura’s, which to this day remains my favorite restaurant.  As usual, Uncle Fritz presided over the table and made his recommendation for our entrée choices.  “Try the veal,” he exhorted, and everyone but me agreed.

I hadn’t had a good plate of spaghetti and meatballs in a while, and that’s what I wanted.  Besides, I don’t eat baby things.  Like veal.  It’s a quirk, I know, but it is what it is, and it doesn’t really affect anyone but me, so I don’t see it as something I need to ‘fix’.  “You should really try the veal,” he said to me as I was making my final selection from the menu.  Non-sequitur:  as I write this, I am really wishing for some Ventura’s spaghetti and meatballs.

Anyway, I try not to be confrontational over small issues (how could my food preferences possibly matter to anyone but me?), so I said something like “I’m sure it’s delicious but I am really jonesing for spaghetti and meatballs.”  After a couple more exchanges like this we ordered – veal for everyone else, my beloved spaghetti for me.  “Did you order the veal?” Fritz asked me.  Fortunately Aunt Rose interrupted with a glowing anticipatory review of the much-vaunted veal so I didn’t have to answer – again.

This is what happened when our orders arrived.   Uncle Fritz:  “You didn’t get the veal?”  Me:  “I’m really happy with my spaghetti.”  Uncle Fritz: “Here, try a piece” Me:  “No, really, save it for yourself, I’m going to have enough trouble eating all this yummy pasta.”  Uncle Fritz (cutting a big chunk of veal and putting it on my plate):  “Try the veal.”  Me (on the verge of an aneurism): “I don’t want the veal! I don’t like veal! It’s BABY COW! It’s bad enough that we eat grown up cows, we don’t need to eat the BABIES too! Take this off my plate!”  Uncle Fritz (to my father):  “What, she doesn’t eat meat?”

So what does any of this have to do with customer service?  If I am the customer, and Uncle Fritz is the CSR, why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t he listen?  He was sweet throughout the entire exchange, he was never snippy or mean, and he was paying for everyone’s dinner.

I had nothing to complain about except the fact that I was benignly but completely ignored.  He wanted to make me happy, but he was rooted in his own idea of what that was, and oblivious to mine.

I think about veal, Ventura’s, and Uncle Fritz every time a CSR tries to talk me into or out of something I want or need.  Being pleasant, concerned-sounding, and even generous is important, but it’s not enough.

Customer service has to be grounded in listening before anything meaningful can take place between the customer and the company.  Even if the veal is scrumptious.

Some questions to ponder:
- Does passion and caring block good listening?
- Is it caring if the CSR isn’t listening?
- How can we balance passion and listening?

©2012 Pattie Roberts. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Guest blogger, Pattie Roberts, is a writer and research analyst in Annapolis MD. You can follow her on Twitter @hughsboo or on LinkedIn.

As The People-Skills Coach™, leaders often ask me why they haven’t been able to engage employees.

In many cases, I discover that their attitude and communication is one of several reasons. In fact, there are 5 legacy attitudes to replace for employee engagement.

I see leaders holding on to these legacy attitudes when they are solely focused on results and not the teams who must get there. They also do it when they assume that the people they lead are just like them.

These leaders succeed when they shift their philosophical beliefs. They engage employees much better once they see that people are diverse and that employee engagement does not block, reduce, or delay results.

Employee engagement drives results through inspiration and nourishes commitment to the highest quality, best results.

Your communication, people-skills, and interpersonal connection engage with employees to that end.


Leaders, Replace These 5 Legacy Attitudes to Engage Employees

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• Prove me wrong. Although this sounds like an inspirational challenge to employees, it also smacks of the legacy attitude — “I, the leader, am right until or unless you prove me wrong.” Change the focus from you to the idea in question. Engage employees around ideas and results, not around you.




• “If that’s all you can do.” As changes in business require new skills of employees, they often struggle with how to stay competent and feel competent. On more than one occasion, I have heard managers say to these concerned employees, “well if that’s all you can do … ” (meaning their current skill).

  This legacy attitude of questioning employees’ competence does not make them work harder. The issue is not effort; it’s skill redevelopment. They are already concerned about their continued competence. Lift them up and engage them with diverse opportunities to learn new skills. Disdain does not engage!







The Assembly Line Approach to Leading People

• No news is good news. This not-so-golden legacy nugget is based on the idea that employees should routinely do what they are initially told until further orders arrive. Yikes – the assembly line approach to people! Can’t you just picture the little people widgets rolling along?

  Meanwhile, communicating engages employees for best results. It gives them information about focus and purpose, and it inspires commitment to results. Engage with knowledge on how the company makes money. Offer worthy kudos for their specific talents that contributed to the end results.

Communicating how employees’ contributions advance the company’s greatness, nourishes greatness. Anaerobic bacteria are the only things that grow in a vacuum; people and businesses don’t.




• Work things out for yourselves – you’re adults. Leaders who want to focus primarily on end results often side step team issues under the guise of empowerment. One recent article (the URL for which I cannot find at this moment) claims we should “take the bubble wrap off employees” and let them work everything out themselves.

  Leaders, aren’t you employees too? Why not share your special insight to help reduce conflict and re-engage the team on the end result?

  When you overlook team issues, success overlooks your teams. Abandonment is not a success strategy.
  
  

• If you don’t see me doing it, don’t do it. Wow — the Simons Says approach to 21st century success. Leaders, will this attract top talent to your team? It might get you obedient followers but that burdens you with creating all the success.
  
  If you want collaborative innovators who use their talent and acumen to produce success — replace Simon Says with something at least at the level of Pictionary! It’s much more engaging. (What game would you suggest?)

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If your personality or experience makes you highly engaged and focused on results, you may make the classic mistake of assuming all employees are just as engaged. Yet if they were you wouldn’t wonder why they aren’t.

Focus on the reality of today’s leadership requirements. Engage employees through knowledge of the business, training, appreciation, and accountability to draw out maximum contribution to the best end results.

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


Related Post: Leaders, Take This Pain Free Journey to Engaging Employee Accountability

©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.

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

As I read 7 Horrible Phrases Job Applicants Say That Are Warning Signs, I discovered seriously bad advice that can ruin your customer service hiring.

It suggests that if a job applicant uses the phrase my pleasure or no problem, they will not serve customers well. It claims these are bizarre phrases showing the applicant it out of touch with customers.

Quite the opposite is true.

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In fact, these my pleasure employees deliver super customer experience.

Hiring agents, CSRs, reps, and specialists who find serving a pleasure sustains customer experience in a way that training can’t.

The author and those he consulted have misunderstood this time honored phrase of deep service and civility. The phrase my pleasure is not, as he proposes, a focus on the employees’ needs.

My pleasure is a shortened version of:

• My pleasure to serve you …
• It is a pleasure to serve you
• It is a true pleasure to be in service to you and others

The phrase no problem is a shortened version of no problem doing anything you request.

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Many brands use the phrase my pleasure — from high end hotels to fast food chains like Chick-Fil-A restaurants.

Yet even if you believe that your customers would not like these traditional expressions of civility, employees with naturally giving hearts can learn to say other phrases. The retraining is quite simple. Not hiring this natural service talent would be a serious error of omission and disastrous for customer experience and your brand.

The Bonus of Morale

Employees who feel it is a pleasure to serve have self-sustaining morale. When you have enough of them on one team, the teamwork shines as they unite in this spirit. Their can-do attitudes make the difficult, easy and the mundane, special.

I would hate a simple misunderstanding about these phrases lead you to exclude the very customer service employees that will treat customers with pleasure and deliver super results.

Unless you detect true signs of selfishness or immaturity in the interview, hire this natural talent.

My pleasure and no problem are not red flags in hiring. In fact, they are green lights to super customer experience!

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

Related Post: Simply Great Choices Create Super Customer Experience

©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.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on the ultimate 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.

Harvard Business Review recently featured The No Whining Rule for Managers by Ron Ashkenas. His main point about accountability and focusing on solutions is rock solid.  The question is how to get people to do that.

One of his client’s, a high level leader, resorted to a no whining sign. Be careful of this approach. It is not just a catchy slogan. It is a demeaning and dangerous approach to leadership people-skills that can infect your organization and spread like antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Her outlook is that employees are adults, not children – so she tells them to stop acting like children (i.e. no whining).

But you  show your immaturity as a leader by trying to ban behavior that is not based in laziness but in real barriers to adult communication (silos, titles etc…).

She assumes they know or should know what she wants.  Don’t assume.  As Doug Conant,  former CEO of Campbell’s Soup, advises “Declare yourself. Then walk the talk.

If you want your direct reports to engage in substantive problem solving communication, then, as a leader, show them by doing it yourself.

The phrase, stop whining is a whine! It is a complaint about what you don’t like — poorly disguised as an order.


“Leadership is about being effective in the moment with others.” ~Doug Conant, former CEO Campbell’s Soup.

Leaders, Replace the No Whining Sign!
Model the Positive to Eliminate the Negative

• Model and model and model.
  The best way to teach actionable behavior is to do it!  If someone dumps a problem in your lap without any suggestions, ask them for their ideas.  If they launch into complaints, ask them how to overcome those barriers. Don’t yield. Model.

  Skip the labels.  Labels demean.  Stop whining may shame people into a short term behavior change yet it won’t breed positive can-do attitudes or develop a high performance organization.  It simply breeds compliance to a commandant leader’s orders — when the leader is around.

  It also breeds communication avoidance in those who don’t know how to break through barriers but don’t want to be demeaned.  Avoidance reduces productivity – the exact opposite of accountability and performance.  I have seen it repeatedly in response to leaders whose favorite phrases begin with the word stop or no.

  Even with children, you see quicker success when you show them what you want them to do vs. what you don’t want them to do.




• Create a culture of positive action by showing managers how well it works.
  How leaders treat their managers is how the managers treat the staff.  If you want the whole organization to replace complaining with problem solving and innovating, replace the no whining sign with your non-whining communication.  They will then model it with their direct reports.

  Do you really want an entire organization issuing stop orders? Or would you prefer they engage in behaviors that create success?




• Free yourself from the trap of the should.
  The danger of assuming is common knowledge.  When leaders hear themselves saying, “we assume the employees have good skills“, they stop themselves and finish with, “yet it’s dangerous to assume. Let’s handle it.”

  Leaders are not so commonly aware of the trap of the should.  “These are high level managers. They should already have good skills.“   This thinking is a trap.  It makes leaders replace the reality (lack of skills) with another label for the behavior (e.g. childlike, lazy, whiner).

  Reality: Many managers are promoted by being good staff members.  They were highly responsible for their own work.  They weren’t facilitating solutions across organizational boundaries. Unless you witnessed stellar management skills in them when they were staff members that suddenly disappeared when they became managers, the issue is skill level.

  As managers, they are apprentices who can shine in the new skills with great coaching and mentoring. If you believe or have evidence they are not capable of improving, then courageously find the right people for these management positions.

  So free yourself from the trap of the should.  It takes your eye off the real target — instilling more successful behavior and better performance.

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To build mature accountability, show everyone what that is.  Replace the no whining sign with behavior that green lights success.

I welcome your questions on how to turn interaction obstacles into (non-whining) successful business behavior.

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

Related Post: Leaders, Here’s the Pain Free Way to Engage Employee Accountability

©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.

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

People often focus on major career shaping milestones like earning a degree or relocating for a better job. It’s harder to see the psychologically uncomfortable career shaping opportunities yet well worth the effort.

When leaders and managers must decide who to place on new projects, in newly vacated job spots, and in managerial and leadership posts, they draw on their everyday observations of staff behavior. How you behave in difficult and uncomfortable situations creates an impression that shapes your career opportunities.


5 Psychologically Uncomfortable Career Shaping Opportunities

• When You’re the New Kid on the Block. Moving onto an existing team can be uncomfortable. How will your expertise be received before you’ve had time to build trust? If you are adept at asserting without pushing, leaders see you as an asset to critical collaborations and sudden teams.




• When Deadlines Loom and You Have Little Information. These situations can challenge your sense of self-confidence and competence. If you perform well without blaming other groups for the void, leaders see you as a resourceful asset worthy of trust for tough high profile assignments.




• When You’re On a Toxic Negative Team. Do you succumb to the negativity — even if just to fit in? Or are you the lonely voice of inspiration that holds strong and re-inspires others? If you inspire in the face of naysayers, leaders see you as the turnaround titan that keeps productivity flowing.




• When Emotions Are Running High. Many people hate conflict. Avoiding it impacts results. Fueling it can be disastrous. If your focus and insight triumphs over emotion, you pop to the top of the next leader list!




• During Rapid Start-ups. Start-ups present a huge revenue and public relations challenge to companies. The learning curve is an expense. Delay is risky. The stress of these start-ups crushes many people. If you are a fast fearless learner undaunted by a lack of structured training programs, leaders see you as pure profit and risk reduction.

What does it take to develop these traits and seize these opportunities?

1. Desire
2. Persistence
3. Continuous improvement

You can strengthen your ability to blend into new teams, handle ambiguity, stay inspired, improve focus, and embrace fast change. In fact, you can achieve most anything you desire.

Leaders will notice; confidence and commitment burns bright.

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

Related Post: Be & Perform Like a Ferrari

©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.

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

For decades, leaders have heard the same outcry from customer service, call center, and technical support teams: “We have to treat the customers well even when they are yelling at us. Why do they get treated better than they treat us?”

Service and support leaders, managers, and team leads ask me: “Kate, how do we counter that?  Beyond our efforts to treat team members well, what’s the answer to this endless outcry?”

It depends on what you think the team members seek. If you hear it as an outcry for equality and fairness, you might be tempted to say “because they are the customers” or the old standard “the customer is always right.” Your reply affirms that it is not an equal relationship.

Well fairness and equality may be part of what customer service and tech support teams want. Everyone deserves to be treated with basic human respect and most organizations do not tolerate true verbal abuse on either side.

Nonetheless, the outcry continues.


I can affirm, after 23 years of training these wonderful teams, that the other part of the outcry is envy. 

It’s understandable how agents, reps, analysts, and associates could envy the customers’ privilege of:

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1. Showing anger and dissatisfaction; they can’t.
2. Receiving help; they give it and often don’t get help from other teams.
3. Participating in industry conferences; they rarely see the light of day.
4. Attending training for professional growth; they have limited access.
5. Having time to work projects completely; they are expected to perform well while simultaneously clearing the queue.
6. Working a regular schedule with holidays and weekends off; they often work shifts or are on-call.
7. Being respected and valued; few top leaders recognize service and support as vital to the organization.

Leaders, The Impact of Envy in Customer Service
The risk and impact of this envy is worthy of your attention.

• It stops teams from consistently delivering the ultimate in customer service. If their heads and hearts don’t love being in service, they won’t.
• Unchecked envy emphasizes the feelings of unworthiness and diverts valuable focus from service to the imbalance.
• It impacts the teamwork critical to delivering outstanding service.
• Unaddressed envy can fuel high staff turnover. Some turnover is healthy for service teams. High levels are a warning sign of a service organization in trouble.

Understanding this has given many leaders and me the chance to cultivate a non-envy culture that inspires and delivers service greatness.

Through workshops, we have helped the front line managers, supervisors, team leads, and staff to replace envy of customers’ privileges with pride in:

• Breadth of knowledge
• Continuous learning through experience
• Great ease and style in working with people — valuable and not everyone has this prowess
• Multi-tasking and ability to work under pressure
• Professional skill of being empathetic and objective — many doctors don’t even have this
• Inspiring yourself and others to excellence

To build and sustain a non-envy service culture, it is necessary to help service team members discover a sense of fulfillment. I rarely hear the cry of envy from service team members who are fulfilled in other ways.

Fulfillment squelches envy whether it comes from their family life, years of work experience, inner peace, gratitude for having a job, comparison to previous jobs, or a tremendous high from reaching results in the face of adversity.

Leaders, showing appreciation and recognition for service team’s work and helping them build a positive service team identity feeds fulfillment. Working with your peer leaders of non-customer facing teams to build the cross teamwork necessary for mutual success feeds fulfillment.

Declare your vision to your teams and ask them for their insight on how to achieve it. Telling does not engage excellence; asking does.

Offer training to develop their professional skills. Budget for temps to cover service demands while service team members present a case study of their achievements at an industry conference.


Face team problems, like envy, stress, and morale, and your teams will achieve success.

I look forward to helping you take your customer service and tech support teams from inspiration to action.

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

Related Posts:
Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement
The Ultimate Customer Experience – Challenge of Excellence (video with sound)

©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.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. For 23 years, she has turned interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer testimonials and results.