KateNasser.com

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.

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.

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.

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

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1. 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!




2. 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!




3. 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.




4. 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.




5. 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.




6. 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!




7. 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!




8. 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!




9. 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!




10. 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.




11. 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!




12. 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.

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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™

Related Post: Leaders, 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.

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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.

Leaders, are you conflicted when your best performer is change resistant? As I highlight a change resistor to leaders who engage my consulting and training, many have said to me “but this person is our best performer!”


Behind that short reply from leaders is great risk to the success that lies ahead. Because of this, I ask leaders, can a change resistor get you to Oz? No and neither can denial.

Leading to Oz

1. Leaders, your shock and disappointment are normal. Your denial, deadly. Any employee can be a change resistor. Occupational performance does not guarantee change-ability.




2. Be ready for a show down in the evil forest. Some top performers believe they are indispensable and can resist the change. Before initiating significant change, know what internal and external resources you have to keep everything moving ahead. It also helps the resistors see they are not indispensable.




3. Replace your fear of performance loss with courage and belief in your vision. Most team members will buy into and even contribute to organizational change if they see that it is not debatable and understand what the vision means for them.




4. Redefine performance to include change-ability. Long term success means adapting to change. Discuss this with your team members and let them know that their skill is valuable if they apply it to a changing vision.




5. Top performers and high achievers sometimes want an extremely clear picture of the change before they buy into it because they want to be seen as a high achiever throughout the process. That is not always available. Other high achievers trust in their ability to succeed even in ambiguity.

   Let everyone know that you trust in their ability and know their will be ups and downs throughout the change. Commitment and focus is the key — not perfection.

Lead change with vision, courage, and communication.

What other factors contribute to a top performer resisting change instead of helping to lead change?

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

©2011-2012 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 that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times. Leading change, employee engagement, customer service experience, and teamwork. See this site for workshops outlines and customer results.

Long before employee engagement became a management trend, one very effective leader (who prefers to remain anonymous) was asking employees and teams a bold question to understand and engage them.

What’s in it for you?

By admitting a human truth, this question:

1. Grabs attention.
2. Provokes thought.
3. Unearths motivation.
4. Discovers the potential and uncovers the warts.

When used by a great leader, this question, starts the necessary discussion of balancing “I” and “we” and keeps this delicate balance on everyone’s radar.

This bold question sends a bleep every day asking employees to find something that motivates and engages themselves to contribute at their highest potential.

When used without connection to this delicate balance of “I” and “we”, it can spiral into a horrible case of entitlement and “me-itis — what will you, the leader, do to motivate me?”

The key difference:

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Do you inspire employees to engage themselves?
or
Do you think employee engagement is primarily your job as the leader?

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Leaders, who inspire employees to engage themselves deliver something very valuable to the organization –  unlimited possibilities from sustainable talent.

Even during critical changes in direction, these employees will still be thinking:

1. Here’s what I bring to this new initiative and what I will get out of it to keep me going.
2. How can I improve to contribute to the whole?
3. How can I manage my extremes and best fit my strengths to the new order?

Employee engagement that creates an entitled workforce is a disaster you can avoid. Ask a bold question to inspire employees to engage themselves and keep the balance. The results are startling.

What type of responses do you think you will get to this bold question?

What would you learn about potential hires, current team members, and potential leaders from asking it? Please add your voice in the comments section below.

From our shared experience to mutual success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops, keynotes, and consultations that inspire change, action, and success. Leaders have been booking Kate for 21 years to inspire teamwork for business wins. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

Leaders, did you ever want to tell employees to “grow up”?  What were they doing that brought you to that point?

Leaders continue to tell me that  employees don’t have sufficient critical thinking skills or commitment to go above and beyond.   Critical thinking, commitment, extra effort — these are all signs of maturity.  A mature employer/employee relationship, a mature team, a mature adult, etc…

Like many of the business greats of yore, if it doesn’t exist — create it! In this case leaders — cultivate maturity.

Maturity is about balance, readiness, consideration, and confidence.

Take Nine Chances to Cultivate Employee Maturity

1. When addressing employee concerns and complaints, always speak about the impact on the business. Today it’s popular to focus on changing the workplace to engage employees. If you want maturity in the workplace, balance catering to them with expectation of them.




2. Illustrate the difference between honesty with diplomacy and candor with rudeness. The former is a sign of maturity for it balances the message and the impact when selecting the words. The latter is a sign of selfish immaturity.




3. Applaud, highlight, and reinforce excellence. When you set and reward a high standard, you set the bar for that level of mature commitment. If you treat basic behaviors (like meeting objectives or showing up on time) as something special, you cultivate weeds.




4. Replace the misguided adage “treat each other like customers” with the more mature team mantra “grow and change to reach a shared success and common goal”. Team maturity has a deeper honesty and type of trust that surpasses that of a business and its customers. Cultivate it from the beginning and you cultivate maturity.




5. Frequently ask, “what are you doing to be ready for tomorrow?” When leaders pose this question, it asks employees to initiate their own growth. This is a call to maturity. Providing training is appropriate yet it develops skills not maturity.




6. Within a certain sphere, make it OK to make mistakes. Confidence builds faster when mistakes are lessons learned. Sometimes maturity comes from jumping a hurdle and knowing how to prevent a crash next time.




7. Maturity owns the impact of behavior. Show them how to do it even in difficult moments. Related post: The Perfect Apology and The ONE Word That Destroys It.




8. Give them access to situations that cultivate a mature open mind. 25 Rules for a Perfect Brainstorm.
   
   

9. Think out loud. Employees learn critical thinking by hearing it and participating in it. If you want to speed this aspect of maturity, tell them how you arrive at a decision not just the decision.

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

What other chances would you add to this list? Or do you disagree with the premise altogether?

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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers workshops, keynotes, and consultations that turn interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. Leaders have been booking Kate for 21 years to fill the gaps of diversity with teamwork for business wins. See this site for customer results and book Kate now.

I received an ad in my email box for a customer service training video.  Even after 20 years of teaching customer service, I still learn new things.  So I took a quick look at the sample footage.  What I saw was fake, neutral, and difficult for the customer.

They advise you to give an irate customer something specific - like a  form to fill out!  Tell an irate customer to fill out a form?  If you were the irate customer, how would you respond? I laughed so hard at this video I could barely find the esc key to stop the footage.  And this training video is for sale!

Now that I have stopped laughing, I deal you the ACE for top notch customer service: ACE – authentic, committed, and easy.

Authentic.  Customers want you to sincerely care.  Sincere caring shows in your authenticity.  This is why I rail against call center scripts.  Scripts sound company-focused not customer-focused.    Authenticity shines through when you paraphrase the customer’s request, use a tone of voice that reflects interest not script reading, and validate the customer’s situation including his/her emotion.  If you are face-to-face with the customer, then your body language as well as your courteous words also reveal your level of authentic caring.

To come across as authentic and caring, it helps to first be able to read the customer’s needs.  

Action steps: Take this well-known EQ (empathy quotient) test online free of charge to assess your ability to read others: http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuotient.aspx.  I was thrilled with my very high score.  Can you imagine The People-Skills Coach scoring low on EQ?

If you want to test your ability to read others’ authenticity, here is a twenty question quiz based on the work of Dr. Paul Eckman: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

Committed.  On one of my many trips, I was driving to a smaller city.  I had a terrible headache and no medication.  I spotted a large mall and went in to buy some Tylenol.  Thankfully the first thing I saw was an information booth.  So I asked the young woman, “Where is the closest drug store in this mall?  I have a terrible headache and have never been here.”  Her answer in a flat voice was: “I don’t know (IDK).”

My unspoken reaction was “Then why are you in the booth? Get out of the booth!”  Even if it was her first day, she could make an authentic attempt to help. Customers judge your commitment from your “first” –  first greeting, first response, first facial expression, first tone of voice, first attempt. 

Long pauses, IDKs, blank stares, attention to other people/things show lack of commitment – i.e. not caring.  What would you add to this list as signs of non-commitment?  I would love your comments below.

Easy.  Although customers’ expectations vary, there is one thing every customer celebrates – an easy experience.

Here are 5 things you can do to make it easy for your customer:

• Listen and speak from his/her perspective. http://tinyurl.com/cjbdhl 
• Quickly paraphrase his/her request and take action.
• If you don’t know the answer, find the answer.
• Use words that focus forward not back.
• Spot his/her personality type and treat them that way. http://tinyurl.com/ddfhgq

I would love your comments and insights below.  You are welcome to share the info in this article with others if you will credit me and the URL as the source.

These stories and tips are just a small sample of what I deliver in my sessions on customer service.   Tap me to speak at your next customer service event or for training to ACE every customer service moment. 

From my 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.