KateNasser.com

Leaders of customer service organizations — have you set the bar as high as your customers expect? Do you lower the bar without realizing it and thus retard customer service excellence?

As I work with leaders of customer service teams and IT technical support teams, I see their inspiration sour without their awareness.

So here is a checklist to help you assess whether you inspire all team members to service excellence every day or inadvertently stop them from delivering the best.

Leaders, Are You Souring Customer Service Excellence?

• Letting your own inspiration sour. Do you stay passionate about customer service excellence every day or is your passion waning? When customers give negative feedback, do you welcome it as a gift or justify it with a list of service obstacles? Action: Listen to your own thoughts for one full day. Replace any justification with an inquiry of how to make things better.
  
  

• Skipping daily inspiration of the teams. If you are passionate about service, do you inspire the teams every day or proclaim you aren’t a cheerleader? Developing and leading a culture of service excellence is not about cheerleading.
  Action: Take everyone from inspiration to action with vision, strategy, and mentoring.
  
  

• Blaming customers instead of improving delivery. As customers’ service expectations rise, do your teams hear you calling customers unreasonable? Or do you engage the teams to innovate for customer service excellence?
  Action: Replace blame with curiosity and inventiveness. Blame short circuits success.
  
  

• Accepting second class status. Have you accepted upper management’s definition of customer service as an expense not an asset? It happens to many leaders and skews them to focus only on the metrics that prove cost effectiveness. Cost effective is important yet it is not an inspirational mission.
  Action: Build strong service bonds with revenue generating functions and through them redefine customer service as an asset.
  
  

• Over empathizing with employees’ challenges. Do you lower the bar of excellence to make team members happy? Or do you inspire them to raise the bar and find satisfaction in delivering excellence?
  Action: Empathize with the struggle; engage for solutions.
  
  

• Spending too much time on operations and not enough time on relations. Customer service excellence is found at the nexus of great relationships and effective operations. An extreme focus on operations buries reps in procedures and makes service feel labored and uncaring to customers.
  Action: Start each day with a service mantra and use procedures as guidelines to make excellence come to life.

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Much can happen to customer service leaders as they raise the flag of customer service in the daily charge for excellence. Upper management’s demands for value and the customers’ never ending expectations can eventually turn your exhilaration into exasperation unless you re-inspire yourselves and your teams daily.

Find the light of your passion and keep it burning bright. If you don’t, how will your teams continue to shine?


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

Additional posts of interest:
Do You WOW Customers w/Every Exception?
10 Winning Beliefs for Superior Customer Experience

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, 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 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.

One of the questions leaders often ask me is, “How do we increase employee accountability?”

The short answer is — by not blaming anyone. Accountability is the profitable practice of initiative, ownership, and follow-through. It is not blame.

A culture of blame …

• Kills all hope of initiative.
• Teaches people to avoid.
• Turns high function into dysfunction.
• Elevates politics while deflating spirit.
• Disengages for the purpose of self-preservation.
• Wastes time that could be spent on outstanding results.

While we engage in blame, our competition is:

• Learning, repairing, rebuilding, and solving
• Innovating over new challenges
• Valuing and tapping the talent it hired
• Expanding insights and knowledge
• Collaborating for success
• Growing the business and developing the talent
• Farming new business territory
• Wowing each customer
• Producing profits

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Why fall into the trap of the blame game? Blame drains the success out of every organization.

It reveals a broken leadership culture that has spiraled down into self-preservation instead of ascending to inspiration and productivity.

It wastes opportunities for employee engagement and accountability as everyone stays trapped in a constant sense of vague fear.

We can achieve greatness, productivity, and profit when we lead with a culture of learning, initiative, engagement, and accountability.

Celebrate and develop accountability as the honorable practice of ownership that breeds results.

Change the conversation from fault and fear to learning and accountability. Success is constantly within reach.

Tempus fugit. Breed accountability not blame.

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

Special thanks to my twitter colleague Ryan Setter for his generosity of time and technical help with the flash object above. The image licensed via Istock.

Related Post: Pain Free Journey to Engage Employee Accountability

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, 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.

A recent article in Inc. magazine, 9 People You Must Remove From You Inner Circle, offers some solid advice for creating a top notch inner circle — aka leadership team.

Yet one tip it offers could spell failure. It suggests that the need to check in and maintain relationships means the person is needy and therefore a threat to success.

There is a difference between needy people who only produce when you connect with them and those who produce well through maintained relationships and collaboration. I agree that you wouldn’t want truly needy people on the leadership team. Yet, employee engagement with those in your inner circle is not the same thing as catering to the needy.

In fact, connecting with your inner circle on a regular basis removes key threats to success.

Image by: JimmyMac210 via Creative Commons License

Leaders Remove These Threats by Connecting to Inner Circle

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• The Threat of Arcs Instead of One Circle. Top leaders love to believe that once leaders in their inner circle understand the vision and mission, all efforts of their teams will connect to reach the goals. The truth is with this approach you can get many arcs of effort that do not unite. As the inner circle leaders lead their teams, the challenges, constraints, diverse work styles and time pressures that surface stop cross-team communication. Inner circle leaders who check in with each other model the value of relationships and replace the threat of these arcs with teamwork and communication.




• The Common Sense Threat. Many leaders have failed from the assumptions they live. I call it the common sense syndrome. They don’t communicate and clarify what they mean for they believe it is just common sense. The antidote to the common sense syndrome is two-fold: stronger relationships to ensure all are comfortable questioning what the top leader says and of course, communicating expectations. Regular check ins sustain this comfort and keep the message clear and unified. Related post: Leaders, Common Sense Doesn’t Actually Exist.




• The Threat of the Ordinary. No matter how inspired you stay as the top leader, inspiration does not automatically remain high among your inner circle of leaders. Just like a head coach of a major sports team, your regular connection with them removes the threat that daily work becomes ordinary. Inspiration is not a touchy-feely waste of time. It builds and sustains greatness. It fuels success.




• The Threat of Protection. People are people no matter how inspired or talented. When you as top leader continue to check in with your inner circle, you develop intuition about them and can spot the littlest change in their behavior. When they are struggling with a mistake and whether or not to tell you, you will prevent the threat of protection by drawing them out. Whether they are protecting you or themselves, you can prevent disaster by ensuring that the threat of protection has no reason or place to hide.




• The Threat of the Needy Label. When your leadership approach is “come around when you need something”, your inner circle leaders will be concerned about looking needy when they do come to you. When you check in with them on a regular basis, you define connection as the vehicle for success instead of the sign of weakness.




• The Threat of Many Cultures. Top leaders who reach out to their inner circle of leaders and engage their discussions, model a culture of employee engagement that those leaders can use with their teams. Conversely, assuming they know how to engage their employees or that it is the preferred culture to do so, creates the threat of many cultures. People generally lead from their comfort zone. If your inner circle leaders are not naturally comfortable with or do not value outreach to engage employees, they too will lead with the message “come around only if you need something.” You will end up with a less than engaged organization and results falls short of what they could be.

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Traditional leadership theory and practice operated on the tenet: “come around when you need something” else don’t bother. Many claim it worked well. Perhaps in more command-and-control static business environments it was effective because it saved time. However, when you look more deeply at leadership inner circles of the past, they did spend time building and maintaining relationships — be it on the golf course, over drinks after work, or at frequent fund raisers.

Nonetheless, the diversity within inner circles today masters diverse challenges and feeds business success. Maintaining relationships in that diversity makes them work well together.

Do not fall into the trap of connecting only when there is a need. In tough times, strong relationships are what speed collaborative solutions to critical challenges with accountability and a unified purpose. In other words, get to know each other. It makes a big difference.


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

Related Posts:
10 Gritty Questions to Define Teamwork
Leading Change Requires Networking Our Inspiration

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, 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 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.

As leaders, we question why we must spend time and money developing employees and teams to do things that seem like common sense. At the top of the list are issues like: listen, collaborate, do important things first, and treat customers well.

As our frustration rises in our moments of disbelief, the truth about common sense emerges.

Common sense is our set of expectations more than an innate ability.

Leaders, From Common Sense to Common Practice

One might actually say that beyond the basics of human survival, the most of what we label as common sense is whatever meets our expectations of others’ behavior. Those expectations are founded in our own knowledge, education, experience, and perspective. When people happen to meet our expectations, by chance, we feel both validated and thrilled.

Yet we increase the chance of organizational and team success by:

• Making our expectations explicit vs. implicit
• Hiring for as much of it as possible
• Identifying what causes the variation in behavior
• Engaging employees to develop shared expectations and applicable behavior

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The Crux of Variation in Behavior

As we identify what causes variation in behavior, we gain insight to spot it in during interviews, to communicate clearly what we expect, and to engage employees for successful behaviors.

1. Previous leaders’ expectations. Professors in school, parents, and previous bosses leave a decided mark on our job candidates and employees. It might be the behaviors that we value or not. If their manager was a highly critical micro-manager, then we may not see the common sense we expect like engaged listening, initiative in customer care, or critical assessment skills about the most important activities. All the more reason for us to make our behavioral expectations explicitly clear. Then spot and understand any variation and train/coach for successful outcomes.




2. Personality types. People view situations and process them differently. Most of us have witnessed much debate in meetings over what is most important to do first. It isn’t common sense that determines the answer. It is understanding the various views around risks and explicit goals that produces a successful result.




3. Personal motivators. Fear, fame, control, stress avoidance, need for security, craving for progress, are just a few of the forces that impact behavior. As leaders we think we want nothing but high achieving employees with little fear. Yet along with those employee traits come a lower tolerance for bureaucracy, a desire to speak their minds and tell leaders they’re wrong, and an expectation of full resources to ensure success. There are rarely employees that completely match our expectations. The variation is not their lack of common sense; it is the reality of employees trying to cope with conditions that don’t match who they naturally are.




4. The mystery in the mix. Even if we are fortunate enough to find employees who match our high expectations, they are not identical people. They are different people. Bringing them together for eight hours a day to interact with ease and success uncovers the challenges and mysteries of rapport. Leaders who think team building is a waste of time discover the mysteries the hard way during high pressure and stress — when it is time to produce not build rapport.
   
   

5. Our blind spots. If we want to minimize the variation from successful behaviors, we must start with ourselves. When we are highly self-aware, have our behaviors aligned with the goals, and work on our own demons, employees work in clarity not confusion. They spend less time managing up, second guessing our reactions, and tap dancing around success. They don’t have to guess our definition of common sense; they can engage with clear vision for maximum success.

Leaders, have you fallen prey to unstated expectations, a hope for things to naturally work, and denial of the steps needed to create teams of high performing engaged employees? One simple step to remedy this: Each time you say to yourself it’s just common sense, stop and write down your expectations. Then ask yourself if you communicated those expectations to everyone involved.

It takes clearly defined expectations and discussions to get everyone on the same page. It takes behavioral training to adapt to diverse customers and team building with colleagues to achieve what is often labelled as common sense.


I am your resource and coach and look forward to your ideas on this subject here or in private emails to me — whichever works best for you.

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

Related Post:
Leaders, Leading Change Within Yourself Changes Everything
Drive Type Leaders, Remove These 3 Threats to Success

©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 a previous post on people skills for social media greatness, I warned against certain well-intentioned behaviors that can nonetheless offend and block success.

One reader commented that anyone can get offended — so it’s a wash. Turnabout is fair play, right? No, not really.

There are serious business consequences to employees seeking revenge instead of results. Perhaps the biggest consequence is missing out on what teams can achieve when they seek results not revenge.

Workplace Personality Conflicts: Seek Results Not Revenge

The evil of isolation from distance or differences undermines the true potential of a team. Tugs-of-war over personality styles stifle the very instrument of success — communication. Leaders who realize the power of inspiring and coaching employees through personality conflicts, also realize great results and organizational success.

They untie this knot and replace the battles and tugs-of-war with a professional people-skills approach. These keaders address:

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1. Who does the adapting? Everyone. When employees approach you with issues of communication style differences, coach all to adapt to reach great results.




2. Which personality type produces the best results in business? None of them. Business is complex involving people with different occupational views. These people have different personality and communication styles. It is the successful fusion of natural talents that delivers results.




3. What is the difference between a tug-of-war and a lively disagreement of ideas? Tugs-of-war are not productive. Active discussions of differing views are. Tugs-of-war strive to maintain position to win. Active discussions explore and adapt to achieve a shared success. Teams and organizations succeed when employees adapt to and work with different communication styles not battle over which communication style is right! Strive to be excellent, not right.

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The Questions That Transform
When communication style differences emerge, imagine the success possible with these questions:

• What can I learn from this person?
• How will I grow from working with this different style?
• What results can we achieve through this diversity that we can’t without it?
• How can I influence a slight change in the communication style that offends me while still respecting the person and advancing end results?
• How can I best ask for respect of my style while still contributing to the end results?
• What common ground do we have that we can celebrate and elevate for success?
• How well does the leader model communication that captures the value of diversity?

High performing teams share an incredible desire for winning results. Revenge toward each other is not a motivator. They contribute their skills, knowledge and talent AND their flexibility and ability to turn diversity into the golden nugget of success.

How well are your teams doing? Are they stuck in silent tugs-of-war over personality differences or easily tapping diversity to produce tremendous results?

I welcome your questions, comments and suggestions. Join the conversation! I am your resource and coach for turning interaction obstacles into business success.

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

Related Posts:
People-Skills Secret Revealed for Introverts & Extroverts
Teamwork: Make an Apology Worthy of Acceptance

©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 business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Once again from my work with IT (information technology) organizations, I am compelled to write about leaders trending toward a risky move. In search for IT customer service quality, leaders are risking partnership with customers to achieve more control.

One seasoned IT leader who claims to have a strong focus on the customer asserts that the best way to drive IT customer service quality is to require reps use written communication only — e.g. email. His thinking is that email minimizes tone of voice, requires reps to think before they speak, and is easier to audit.

Yikes! Stop and u-turn this thinking. This is not a path to quality. It is a false sense of control. Quality in customer service is about two-way connections for optimal problem solving.

Image by: Mag3737 via Creative Commons License.

IT Customer Service Requires Partnership Not Just Control

Blocking conversation does not drive quality. Moreover, auditing and metrics do not create great IT customer service. They measure great service that you create.

1. Customers define quality through the connections they prefer.

   When a customer service organization declares they will only deliver service via email, the customers’ view of quality will go down. Customers have diverse needs based on the pace of their business unit and their expectations follow that. Don’t assume customers will prefer email-only service to prevent communication errors; teach IT reps to deliver quality service through outstanding communication. I’ve been teaching it for years and can assure you that tech support reps are very capable of great person-to-person communication and outstanding connections.




2. Roadblocks to connection reinforce IT’s old non-business image.

   For years, IT departments were seen as ancillary to the real business and as a result their funding suffered. Part of this image came from IT’s tendency to first speak technically instead of discussing the business need from the start. IT has changed that image over the years. Blocking conversation between reps and customers would be a terrible reversal. IT customer service quality requires partnership not just control and allocation of resources.




3. Written communication is often less clear.

   You have to be a far better writer to communicate clearly the first time because there is no immediate feedback that helps you dynamically rephrase. This delay means a delay in service and solution. Moreover, when a customer needing help receives an email they don’t understand, it stokes their fear and discontent. This is hardly the picture of quality customer service.

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If you still believe it’s best to limit IT direct connection to customers, ask your customers this question: “Would you like to be blocked from speaking with us? Would it effectively fuel your business success?”

Blocking connections between IT staff and customers is unnecessary, damaging, and pure folly. It is the need for control — gone mad. And if a consultant is telling you to do this, run!

IT teams are intelligent, capable, and yes, caring. They have a wonderful capacity to work directly with the business teams to develop, deliver, and support the critical technologies that sustain success.

I am your resource to sharpen this capacity and I welcome your questions — through any mechanism that works for you, my customers!


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

Related Posts:
CIOs, Are Your IT Teams Truly Customer Focused
CIOs, Resolve IT Customer Service Threat


©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.

High level leaders, do you lead your direct reports with integrity of purpose or ambush them in the face of strong resistance from the employees they lead?

Scapegoating your direct reports is a trust crushing ambush that backfires on you, them, and on bottom line results. If you have second thoughts on any issue, take ownership at your level to reposition all toward a new view and path to success.

Image by: Kevin Moller via Creative Commons License.

A True Story of a Leader Ambushing a Direct Report Leader

Picture an organization where productivity and financial results mean everything. Pat is the high level leader, Lee is a manager who reports to Pat, and Chris reports to Lee. Pat is aware from Lee that Chris is engaging in truly unprofessional behavior, is not focused on work, and is unproductive. Chris spends excessive amounts of time texting friends, fielding personal phone calls, and watching YouTube.

Lee discusses the issues with Chris, clarifies what behaviors are needed, and encourages Chris to ask for any help needed in becoming more focused. Chris continues with the same unacceptable behaviors and even shows great public disrespect for Lee in meetings. Chris also dismisses verbal warnings and written indicators.

At performance review time, Lee shows Pat Chris’ review before sharing it with Chris. Pat comments that the review is accurate and well written and even praises Lee for noting the issues in a professional objective manner.

After Lee gives Chris the performance review, Chris, very upset, goes to Pat and makes accusations against Lee.

Pat meets with Lee and criticizes Lee’s management style and suggests that they all meet with HR to arbitrate between Lee and Chris! Pat openly criticizes Lee in front of Chris and the problems drag on.

Eventually Chris takes a position in another part of the organization. Pat then gives Lee a very low scoring performance review because of what happened and because Chris left.

Pat used Lee as a scapegoat when Chris kicked and screamed about the review. Pat gave Lee every indication of full backing when in truth it was conditional upon Chris’ reaction. In effect, Pat ambushed Lee with a pretense of full support.

Lee learned from that event and in hindsight of another moment that Pat is very averse to conflict. To that end, Pat weakens even in moments where performance, productivity, and financial results are at stake.

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Leadership: The Backfire of the Ambush

1. The ambush is a neon sign advertising the leader’s weakness of character.

   Everyone, even leaders, make mistakes. Yet leaders can recover from mistakes by taking ownership, explaining what they’ve learned, and what they will do to change going forward. Often this builds trust in the leader for its honesty, accountability, and human connection.

   Conversely, the sly nature of an ambush taints any apology the leader makes afterward. Disrespect hovers and affects all those it touches.




2. The ambush crushes trust.

   High performance organizations need leaders who build and maintain trust. Trust is not necessarily built through happiness. It is built through integrity and honesty about expectations and performance while showing respect for the person.

   Managers who trust that their leader is authentic focus their time and talents on results — not on looking over their shoulders to see if the leader is retreating. Broken trust lingers and effects the bottom line results for a very long time.




3. The ambush reduces good managers to confused managers.

   No manager is perfect. Yet ambushing very capable, committed, hard working managers confuses their vision and may even kindle self-doubt in their own abilities. There is no value in this. It suffocates talent instead of nurturing it. It impacts current and future organizational success.




4. The ambush teaches a dangerous principle.

   It says to managers: employees’ happiness is your ultimate responsibility. Certainly managers can play a big role in creating a positive work environment. Yet happiness is something an individual chooses. Sometimes individual employees, like Chris in the example above, create their own happiness at work by simultaneously not producing.

   Does the organization exist to make people happy or to fulfill the financial mission in hopefully a positive work environment? The consequences of the happiness mission on the financial success of an organization can be quite grave.




5. The ambush punishes instead of teaches.

   There are still leaders who live by the maxim, if my direct reports’ staff come to me instead of going to them, those managers have failed. I hear this mostly from leaders who view their direct reports as buffers. Great leaders in high performing organizations don’t set up roadblocks for personal comfort. They mentor their direct reports in leadership and people-skills to improve the dynamics of the entire organization.

   Certainly if a leader sees a pattern where most staff are coming to complain about one manager, it may indicate a leadership and management style problem. Yet there is no way to stop any one employee from jumping past their manager to speak to a higher level. Labeling that as a manager’s failure is short-sided, premature, and quite risky.




6. The ambush gives high performance managers reason to leave.

   True high achievers have a low tolerance for misinformation, confusing messages, and negative surprises in their performance reviews. What makes them so valuable is their inner drive to contribute greatness to the organization and to succeed in their careers. They can handle and welcome honest feedback because it is the very fuel that keeps their chances for success alive.

   An ambush represents a betrayal that thwarts their identity and success. Leaders who betray them with an ambush can trust that these high performers will eventually leave. Lose enough of them and the bottom line results suffer.

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Leaders, remove the chance of backfire of an ambush. Spend time becoming very self-aware. What motivates you? What frightens you? How good are you as a mentor for your direct reports? How good are you at communicating clearly and giving honest feedback with respect? What is your philosophy about hierarchy, management, and staff interaction? How do you want people to communicate their disagreement with you?


There is much focus today on leaders listening and yes, that is critical. Yet leaders must also speak about their vision and their expectations of all managers and team members. Will you be coaching for high performance and expect your managers to do the same? Will you inspire the entire organization to that vision? Will you be willing to hold a firm but fair line with employees who choose not to perform? Or will you crumble and tolerate apathy — ambushing the managers into mistrust?


Replace the ambush with honesty, integrity, and accountability. Trust soars. Your vision comes to life. Results are amazing! I am your resource and your coach.


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

Related Post:
Leadership: Fairness is Not Neutrality
Leading Change Within Yourself Changes Everything
Workplace Disharmony vs. Diversity

©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.

Leaders who have moved passed the autocratic style of leadership and embrace employee engagement, collaboration, and empowerment sometimes face a new challenge — what to do when people disagree.

Both new and experienced leaders struggle with this. They feel compelled to be fair to all who disagree and they get trapped in defining what is fair. In their confusion, they mistakenly settle into neutrality with grave consequences.

In leadership, fairness is not neutrality.

Image by: Gwen via Creative Commons License.


The Clearer View of Fairness and Neutrality

• Great leaders don’t settle; they choose. There may be moments when leaders temporarily choose neutrality to understand what will come of divergent views and ponder the big picture. They may wait before weighing in yet they don’t hide in neutrality.




• Great leaders are impartial not neutral. Impartiality keeps bias at bay. Long term neutrality keeps success at bay. It abandons, isolates, demotivates, and disengages. Great leaders are engaged and personally engage others with care and inspiration.




• Great leaders navigate divergent views by keeping their eye on the business goal. Divergent views are the team’s raw materials of success. Great leaders use their experience, intuition, perspective, and private access to information to help craft those raw materials into a positive result. There is no fairness in leaders withholding their value and letting the teams struggle endlessly through neutrality.




• Great leaders mentor through the rich mix of views. As they see disagreements surface and then begin to swirl, they seize the opportunity to develop the team’s critical thinking skills. Through leaders’ excellent questions, team members learn how to assess the better pathway and reach the goal. In these moments, great leaders are facilitating current success and developing future leaders. Neutrality does not accomplish this.




• Great leaders practice humility not neutrality. The know-it-all leader is not a great leader. The neutral leader is not a great leader. The leader who practices humility becomes the model of how to disagree without being disagreeable. Neutrality doesn’t model this.

  Humility respects all. It removes resistance and speeds conflict resolution. Conversely, neutrality often drags conflict out during which time it erupts again and again.

  Humility speaks. It is not silent. It calmly sends a powerful message that neutrality never even whispers.

Fairness Is Found in Facilitating Greatness

New leaders, leading their former peers, bring greatness to the team by uniting all around the business goal. They are being fair to the whole team when they don’t let pleas for “fairness to your old buddies” paralyze them into neutrality.

Leaders who don’t like conflict bring greatness to the team when they teach their natural sense of collaboration rather than hiding in neutrality. Fairness lies in accountability to the team’s success.

Leaders with less occupational knowledge than those they lead bring greatness to the team when they use their impartial objectivity to help teams work through divergent views. They lose the team’s respect when their neutrality says “I’m not worthy”. Fairness to the team lies in overcoming self-doubt to ignite that team’s success, no matter what.

Leaders who want to build empowerment bring greatness to the team by not confusing empowerment with democracy. Empowerment tracks toward a common goal. Democracy tracks toward individual choice. Great leaders foster empowerment in teams (not democracy) to engage all to reach a shared success. Fairness to the team lives in resisting the temptation to be neutral and preventing empowerment from morphing into democracy.

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In truth, great leaders don’t confuse neutrality for fairness. They aren’t conflicted over choosing between people or success. They model and coach diverse team members to use the raw materials of divergent views to kindle success. They inspire and engage people so all can both reach for the stars and yes, actually reach the stars.



I welcome your discussion on this topic:
- What else challenges and confuses leaders when dealing with divergent views?
- What are the effects of leaders’ confusion on the teams and the organization?
- What else drives leaders into neutrality?

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.

The basis of teamwork is respect. When diverse people come together on a team, respect weaves the thread of positive interaction in good times and bad.

Sounds obvious and simple? It can be if all teammates act in ways before and during the bad times that will make apologies worthy of acceptance.

Here’s a professional workplace relationship checklist for self-improvement and team development.

Image licensed from: Istock.com


Respect. The sooner and more completely all embrace diversity by showing true respect for differences, the greater the chance that teammates can accept apologies when a problem between them occurs.

Any sense of disrespect, disregard, one-upmanship, verbal bullying, sarcastic digs, or passive aggressive manipulation will always be the context within which your words of apology will be viewed. Even after teammates have known each other awhile, never forget the daily dose of respect to keep the threads of teamwork strong.

Checklist step: What thoughts and feelings inside of you bring you to show even the littlest bit of disrespect for others? Need to control, insecurity, discomfort with ambiguity, self-deception, fear of the new, extreme individual views, ignorance of cultural, gender, educational or personality differences?



Appreciation. While respect keeps the threads of interaction strong, appreciation turns those threads into a vivid painting of warm positive context. Every time you express sincere appreciation for a teammate’s talents, strengths, behaviors, and uniqueness, you increase the chance that your apology in bad times will be accepted by the others.

Checklist step: In a quiet moment, list out the names of all your teammates. If possible, put his/her picture next to each name. Write down 2 positive traits and 1 unique trait for each. Share this information in natural conversation when you witness these traits. When people are both respected and appreciated for who they are, they can also hear your sincere apologies in tough times.



Ownership. The ultimate challenge for accepting an apology is to hear the sincerity over the pain. At the very early stages of pain, clear words of ownership of the mistake shout out the immediate pain and prevent additional pain. Respect and appreciation can then filter in as teammates realize you own the impact of your behavior.

Checklist step: Which of these phrases have you slipped and used?

• I’m sorry IF I hurt you or IF you perceived my words that way.
• I was trying to help you; you should be grateful I cared.
• I’m sorry I used that phrase BUT I was … busy, overtired, etc…
• I didn’t mean to hurt you.
• You are not an easy person to deal with but I shouldn’t have lost my temper.

Replace all these sidestepping self-protecting detours with a simple straightforward apology. Related post: The Perfect Apology and the One Word that Destroys It.


Caring. When you show respect for diversity, express appreciation for individual uniqueness, offer ownership of your gaffes and mistakes, and share empathy for others’ pain, your apologies ooze caring and have the highest chance for acceptance.

You read over and over that apologies must be sincere else they will fail. When you defend or offer an apology only when cornered, it screams insincerity. However, when you consistently show respect, appreciation, ownership, and care, people can see any one moment as a human slip.

Checklist step: Start each day with a self-declaration of accountability and integrity. Build your own reputation of being full of class and the “real thing”. Why? Because accountability and integrity show deep inner strength and inner strength is a heck of a billboard!

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Some struggle with apologizing because they think it publicizes their weakness and faults. They think it is humiliating and diminishes potential success. However it’s important not to confuse humility with humiliation. The straightforward apology and remedy when needed is the perfect chance to build trust in yourself and a reputation of true greatness.


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

Related Post:
Avoid the 7 Common Causes of People-Skills Mistakes
What’s So Hot About Humility Anyway?

©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.

Picture a frustrating situation and wanting it to change. Perhaps it’s something an employee or colleague is doing. Perhaps the teams you are leading are not performing well. It could even be a neighbor or family member who is driving you crazy. A coach advises you to:

Lead change from within yourself and you will change everything.

What is your reaction to this? Do you think you have to give up who you are and become someone else? It isn’t true. Moreover, the idea of changing who you are can often intensify your resistance, even subconsciously, and block success.

Instead consider Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force. Whatever is occurring that frustrates you will continue to occur until you do something different that will change the current course.

Image by: MikeCogh via Creative Commons License

Leaders, Leading Change Within Yourself Changes Everything

Leading change from within shows others your authentic passion for changing the current situation that frustrates you. If you continue on in the same manner, you are telling others with your actions that the current course is OK — regardless of any verbal comments or objections you make.

Change one of your behaviors or reactions and watch the course of motion change. Your behavioral change changes the momentum of others’ actions, their impact, and the course going forward.

• Actions from within yourself speak louder than words. Words don’t impact everyone. Actions do. When words and actions align, the impact is tremendous. This doesn’t mean leveling and carrying out threats against others. It does mean that if you want something to change and you do nothing differently yourself, little will change.




• Help others to see impact of their actions by the actions you take from within yourself. There are many people that become aware of their impact on others only when they see the outcome. I have witnessed many. They are either not intuitive, focus only on the present moment, or have developed a detachment from others for various reasons. They connect into effects and outcomes only when those effects are visible.




• Assess, think, and then act. Assessing the situation and thinking of options are valuable first steps. They lose their value when you don’t act on them. Too much analysis morphs into paralysis and tells others that the current situation is acceptable to you. Even if after considering the options you decide no action is warranted, then at least change your reaction. If it isn’t important, let go of the frustration. Move on to more important matters. If the frustration persists, get active again to change it!




• Think of the risk of not changing. Perhaps the toughest aspect of taking a different action is the comfort of the known. It lures all into an exaggerated view of the unknown. Those who move past this block do it by thinking of the risk of not changing behavior. They then take well founded steps to create the future and uncover the truth about it.




• Take Accountable Steps and Make Your Words Come to Life. A customer support center leader had one agent who was shirking responsibilities for taking calls and instead, did emails. This had a tremendous impact on the call queue, the other agents, and customer satisfaction regarding hold times. After many discussions with this agent and no change, the leader removed the agent’s access to the email queue. The leader was uncomfortable doing it because it wasn’t her natural style yet she proceeded. She took accountable steps that made her previous words come to life.

  She explained to the agent that this action was necessary to improve performance. The impact on the center’s satisfaction ratings was measurable. One small change in the leader’s behavior, created a different course of action for the agent, the center, and the customers. The agent, although not initially happy, eventually admitted that she needed that type of restriction in order to change her behavior and focus on the calls.

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Ask yourself, do you really want to change things or do you just want things to change? Be accountable for your words by changing your actions. Leading change changes everything. Else your message to others actually is, everything’s OK the way it is.

Question: What current situation is stopping you and your teams from moving forward? I welcome your comments below or your emails for a private response.

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.

Professional relationships take time to develop and along the way they go through a few ups and downs. Those with outstanding people-skills smooth the bumpy ride by handling a critical moment with ease.

What is the one moment? The please don’t moment.

The ease and success in handling this moment comes from the courage and confidence to handle it from the heart without fear of looking weak.

Image by: Istock


People-Skills: The Critical Moment to Handle With Ease
When someone asks you to stop doing something that bugs them, what is your response?

Do you …

1. Give a list of reasons why you do it?
2. Snipe something to suggest they are being demanding, irrational, unprofessional, or childish for asking?
3. Take offense and avoid the person when possible?

These answers are quite common. They come from (the ego) interpreting the request as a criticism or from the embarrassment of having troubled someone.

These answers also commonly block productivity and true success. They paint you as someone who doesn’t care about easing someone’s day by accommodating a simple request. They leave a scar that stands between you and them and all that you can achieve together.

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Conversely, those who achieve tremendous success, handle this moment from the heart: “Sure, of course if it makes you happy. Thanks for telling me. I’m grateful.” This is not a sign of weakness. It shows a caring mature insight to give on the issues that help people work well together.

From the heart never fails.

For years I have been doing a special pet peeve exercise with new teams to prevent strife and with existing teams to resolve it. It has been in the top 5 “most valuable” moments in the team development workshops for it gets people used to asking for what they need and comfortable giving what others need.

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There are serious issues that leaders and team members must address together. Success is fueled by clearing up the simple strife with care and creating tremendous success with those caring bonds of respect.

So, what will be your answer the next time someone says, please don’t …. ? In a split second, you can sink into defensiveness or shine by caring for those around you with outstanding people-skills. What choice will speak the truth about you? What choice will give the biggest boost to your career?


Have a question on how to handle a particular pet peeve or moment of strife? Feel free to pose your question in the comment section below or email me for a private reply.

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.

Being a driver personality has many advantages and they are not all selfish advantages. Drivers give strength when others are crumbling. As coaches, they give momentum when others stagnate. As leaders, driver types bring success to organizations through a keen focus on end results.

Driver leaders have a natural inner propulsion system that keeps efforts moving forward to reach the goal. They are undaunted by challenges and rally to surmount them.

So why do driver type leaders have a bad reputation? Well not all do — only the driver leaders who haven’t removed the three threats to success.

3 Threats to Driver Leaders’ Success

1. Assuming All See the Value of Driving. Driver leaders believe that everyone believes you must drive to reach success. This assumption is such a powerful blind spot for drivers, they are dumbfounded when they realize that others do not hold this same fundamental belief. By then, drivers have left a negative impression.

   Tip From This Driver to All Others: Communicate to connect before driving. Even a simple communication about the goal, what it means to you, and how much you value their efforts turns negative driving into positive inspiration. To you, it may feel like a detour that delays success. The fact is it is part of the main engine that boosts success.




2. Driving Without Engaging Others. When leaders drive without engaging others they rob success of necessary resources — like talents and knowledge — that they don’t have. Moreover, when extroverted driver leaders drive without engaging others, they earn the (often unstated) and infamous reputation of being a slave driver. When introverted driver leaders skip engagement, they earn the unfortunate reputation of not being a leader.

   Tip From This Driver to All Others: Avoiding engagement under the guise of time constraints or personality type is a costly mistake. The only way to reach success through the efforts of others is to engage them. So unless you are a complete one-person show with no need for anyone else, accept the fact that successful leadership means engaging not just directing others.




3. Passion Has Power to Confuse and Even Repulse. Drivers are passionate about success. They can taste it before they get there. Yet passion can isolate when it is not shared. Thus it can leave everyone feeling disconnected from the driver leaders and the journey. Disconnection does not yield results; it breeds confusion and even repulsion as the leaders’ blind passion discounts the value of other people.

   Tip From This Driver to All Others: Cultivate passion — don’t expect it — if you want to reach success with and through others. A singular focus on the end result is the folly of a driver’s comfort zone. This tunnel vision does not deliver success more quickly; it delays it as others wait for the leader’s connection before they contribute.

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Driver leaders who remove these three threats reach success with inspired engaged teams. Those who have done it replaced their singular focus on the end result with a focus on people to reach the end result.

Instead of being driven by the fear of missing the target, these leaders drove to success through engaging others. They came to realize that they weren’t giving up the end result they were ensuring it through engagement. That’s a comfort zone based in reality!


Offer: If you are a driver type and want to make this change like other successful drivers, let me know. I have been through it myself and have coached many to reach success this new way.

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


Related Posts:
Driver Leaders, 6 Positive Replies to Turn Complaints into Action!
Leaders, Avoid These 7 Common Causes of People-Skills Mistakes

©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.

How good are you at turning negative situations into positive career opportunities? People often focus on major career shaping milestones like earning a degree or relocating for a better job yet often don’t convert difficult interactions into defining moments.

Maybe it’s harder to see the psychologically uncomfortable career shaping opportunities yet it is 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 and builds the leaders trust in you.

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

Related Posts:
25 Incredibly Valuable Things to Be in Your Career
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, when you think of success does the word moderation quickly come to mind? Or do you see moderation as mediocrity and a quick path to the sidelines?

Actually, they are quite different — almost opposites. Mediocrity is the ordinary, unremarkable, and unexceptional.

Moderation is exceptional judgment and restraint that guides all to success by avoiding the brink of disaster. It is the insights and critically timed shifts that maintain balance as we push ahead.

What does it matter? Beliefs drive actions and believing success comes only from extremes can drive our success right off the edge.

Image by: DigitalNative via Creative Commons License. Many thanks.

The Wisdom and Power of Moderation

1. Great leaders consider diverse views.

   They firmly believe that open-mindedness is not indecisiveness. They ensure that their singular view doesn’t produce extreme tunnel vision or group think. This moderation engages everyone’s commitment and builds ownership to reach organizational success.




2. Great leaders embrace both optimism and realism.

   This moderation embraces the value of honesty and healthy skepticism while keeping everyone’s can-do attitudes alive and ready for action.




3. Great leaders know when to tell and when to ask.

   Leadership is not about telling or asking. It’s knowing when to do each. This moderation taps employees’ current talents and share the leaders’ experience for the greatest accomplishment. Leaders who live in the extremes of telling blindside the organization from the untapped team knowledge. Those who waffle in constant asking rob the team of growth and scuttle success. These extremes breed mediocre results.




4. Great leaders see both the big picture and the need for the steps to get there.

   Many leaders are big picture thinkers yet they lose patience with the details and challenges. Suddenly, they feel trapped — stuck in the weeds that are stifling progress.

   Yet, great leaders moderate their reaction and respond with insight for they see the difference between needless detail and necessary plans to hit the mark. This moderation honors all the implementation teams and boosts morale and engagement.




5. Moderation does not preclude bold strokes and heroic leaps.

   In fact, with moderation as the culture, bold steps have fewer unknown hurdles and big decisions have a more solid base of support.




6. Moderation counterbalances risk.

   Gymnasts, dancers, and sailors know that when forces are hurling them one way they must have something pulling in the opposite direction to maintain balance. Great leaders understand this winning principle instead of believing that it stops forward momentum. This moderating force secures equilibrium and accelerates success.

If we think moderation means mediocrity we mistakenly seek excellence only in extremes – and incur unnecessary risk. Moderation doesn’t mean mediocrity and mediocrity doesn’t produce the greatness moderation can create.

Moderation is the force of balance. It’s the keen perception and discernment of when and where to move without careening out of control. Therein lays its greatness.

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Leaders, what successes have you had from moderating extremes? What impact has this had on your teams, your career, and the success of your organization?

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

Related Posts:
Leadership, Persistence vs. Resistance to Change
Workplace Disharmony vs. Diversity – The Balance

©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.

Have you ever met or worked with leaders who wanted just the facts? They revel in logic and bristle at emotion, intuition, and shades of issues.  Their leadership succeeds to a point.

It works within teams of employees who also love just the facts. It works in some high pressure challenges where a singular focus on the facts eases the pressure quickly.

After that, facts only leadership leaves much unaddressed and undone. It fails at critical decision points when fewer than desired facts exist. It doesn’t engage diverse employees and struggles with issues that are perception based or grey in nature.

Image by f2point8 via Creative Commons License

Leadership Beyond the Facts: The Emotion of Success
Though the word emotion is not traditionally connected to great leadership, it seizes incredible potential when leading diverse people especially during times of change.

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• Inspire Commitment. To lead employees who are not moved by facts and numbers, awaken their spirit of high performance with the bigger picture, the emotion of the possible results, and the story of success. In times of change, when emotions can run high, it is tempting to deny the emotion and promote just the facts. Yet the emotion is there and working against you while you deny it.

  Leaders: Honor the emotion as well as facts and convert that emotion into action.




• Tap the Power of Diversity. Leaders activate creativity, innovation, and teamwork between diverse talent when they stretch out of their own comfort zone in service to the teams, to the organization, and to outstanding results. Leading only from the facts leaves much of this potential financially (and sadly) untapped.

  Leaders: Honor emotion, not just the facts, and you engage employees who otherwise under perform as they feel marginalized and uninspired.




• Build Trust With Your Opposite. When just the facts leaders respect talents they do not have — emotional intelligence and awareness, strong intuition, comfort with ambiguity — the leaders create tremendous trust with the employees who have these strengths. It is this trust that propels employees to actively use these talents in business settings that often view them as weaknesses.

  Leaders: Honor what completes your organization and you fuel contribution.

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If you are a just the facts leader, uncomfortable with emotion, ambiguity, or intuition, ask yourself why.

• Are you confusing emotion with out-of-control emotionalism? Emotionalism is one extreme and definitely not an inevitable result of having emotion.
• Do you believe that emotion automatically blocks good judgment? Perhaps your occupational training has taught you this. For example, the rigor of science focuses heavily on the data and facts to prevent bad science from harming humanity. Yet in leading an organization that has both research scientists and non-technical employees, leaders must consider human emotion in leading everyone.
• Does emotion represent potential conflict and you are conflict averse? You may have convinced yourself that considering just the facts keeps you neutral and that is fair to everyone. Yet as a leader, being neutral isn’t fair to those who seek your guidance. Happily, your comfort with facts can help you resolve conflict if it erupts. Moreover, tapping positive emotion can build bonds throughout the organization which helps employees communicate long before disagreements turn into heated conflict.

You can become comfortable with emotion by honoring what it can achieve. Watch employees come alive with spirit, insights, and collaboration when you tell a story with the facts rather than just reporting the data. Instead of presenting charts, relate what they mean for the organization and for the employees’ success.

You will engage employees to handle fast paced unforeseen obstacles, spark new contribution and commitment in challenging times, and lead the organization through the unsettled times of change to new levels of success.

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

Related Posts:
Leading Change Requires Networking Our Inspiration
Workplace Diversity vs. Disharmony

©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.