Leadership

Leaders, Pain Free Journey to Engage Employee Accountability

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

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

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

Leaders, Take This Pain Free Journey To Engage Employee Accountability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

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

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

13 Comments »

Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, People-Skills

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

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

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

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

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

12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17 Comments »

New Leaders, 10 Gritty Questions to Define Teamwork

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Teamwork

Leaders, what behavior do you expect among team members? This is not a trivial question especially if you are new to leadership.

How you define teamwork shapes how you will inspire, lead, and facilitate or solve team difficulties.

Beyond the expectation that all work together to produce success is often the unstated hidden set of expectations that can silently unsettle or even destroy teamwork.

If you are a new leader, it’s valuable to sit back and admit to yourself your definition of teamwork. With clarity of your basic beliefs, you and the teams can have a better discussion to define teamwork.

New Leaders: 10 Gritty Questions to Define Teamwork

10 Gritty Questions to Better Define Teamwork

Does teamwork mean blunt frankness, diplomatic honesty, or ultimate polite respect? Team members have diverse styles. One blunt team member can offend others. One ultra polite team member can confuse others and fall short. What do you value and expect of them?

Does teamwork require caring for each other personally? If yes, to what extent? What if a team member has a serious illness in their family and amasses debt? Does teamwork mean that all show empathy and donate money to help out? Can a person be a good team member and not do that?
What if people don’t like each other personally but pull together to achieve success? Does that meet your definition of teamwork?

If one team member has a critical specialized skill or achieves more, does that entitle them to extra respect, special treatment, or more recognition from you? It happens and your view of it impacts teamwork.
Do you expect the team to work out their own interpersonal difficulties? There is much debate about this today. Some say yes and others see the leader as a valuable team facilitator.

What do you expect of existing team members when new members join? Would you expect them to actively welcome team members for quick integration? What if they are a bit skeptical and hold back to see what team members have to offer? Is that teamwork to you?

How will your teams work with other teams? Great teamwork within a team can sometimes stifle cross teamwork. What is your view and how would you address this issue?

Tight team member relationships produce one of the toughest teamwork issues – whistle blowing. What would you want a team member to do if aware of unethical behavior, bullying, or major mistakes by another team member? Is whistle blowing a duty or disloyalty to the team?

Disagreements occur. What place and purpose do they have in teamwork? Do you expect high levels of harmony or do you see value in discord?

How will you assess teamwork? By the interaction and end results or just end results? If you view only the end results, the team may think your expectations of their interaction as inconsistent and illogical.

When a leader asks me to improve team function, I ask the leader to paint their view for me and I speak separately with the team members. The comparison unearths the gaps and sketches a road map to high performance and success.

What is teamwork to you? I look forward to understanding your definition and working with you and your teams!

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

Insights on Handling a Self-Serving High Performing Team Member

Team Whistle Blowing: Duty or Disloyalty?

12 Comments »

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

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Humorous Insights, Leadership

Musings on Effective Meetings from The People-Skills Coach™

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

They also leave most people dreading the next meeting.

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

Leave Meetings! Got a Meeting of the Minds?

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

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

A meeting of the minds,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What say you?

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

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

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

11 Comments »

People-Skills: Be & Perform Like a Ferrari

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, inspiration, People-Skills

In this day of fast paced connections, it’s smart to fine tune our people-skills to perform like a Ferrari.

We must be quickly aware of and adapt to conditions, select the right speed of interaction, and pick the right words to communicate — all with style. Quite a challenge!

So let’s fast track it with quality components (knowledge) and then road test (practice) and maintain it with continued learning.

People-Skills: Be & Perform Like a Ferrari

Image by:Crystal666 via Creative Commons License

Fast Track Knowledge for People-skills Performance

Make brevity effective not rude. Skip the emotionally inflaming phrases and speak with simple honesty.

Be confident in your knowledge and deliver it humbly. It’s easier to appreciate the knowledge and respect the person when arrogance is not fogging the view.

Influence don’t manipulate. Abandon questions like don’t you think and replace them with open-ended questions that produce true understanding.

Listen don’t label. Labels build barriers; listening builds collaborative success.

Deliver results without running over people. What you ponder, you create. If you think of positive ways to succeed, your communication and people-skills will follow suit.

Express opinions as opinion, not as decrees. There is a time and place for certainty and a time and place to consider other possibilities. You earn great respect for being able to do both.

Opposing views can lead to new discoveries. Opposing each other leads nowhere. Where do you want to go?

Optimism and skepticism are healthy; pessimism is poison. An optimistic outlook and some protective skepticism lift all to tangible success. Pessimism drains the life out of everyone you touch. How do you want to touch others? Choose wisely.

See you on the highway to success as we handle the curves with ease and style!

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

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

17 Comments »

Leaders’ Dilemma: Self-Serving High Performing Team Member

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, Teamwork

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inside the Team Members’ Perspective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People-Skills & Leadership Lessons Learned?

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

Fear can mesmerize and stop a leader from growing.

Awareness and listening are critical leadership skills.

well-known

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

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

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

What Do You Think?

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

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

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

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

7 Comments »

Leaders, Foresee & Reduce The Burden of Needy Customers

Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits, IT

The Customer Experience ViewMaster!

Leaders, if your teams were to read this caption — Leaders, Foresee & Reduce the Burden of Needy Customers — whose burden would they think of? Theirs or the customers?

The answer will show you the state of your current customer experience culture. If they think of the customers’ burden, you are in a good zone. If they think of their own burden first, you have miles to go in building a super customer experience culture.

Foreseeing & Reducing The Burden of Needy Customers

Image by: AndyMiah via Creative Commons License

Customer Experience Culture

Needy customers are the only type of customers!

Un-needy prospects are of little value to our organization.

If they don’t need our products and services, they don’t need us.

It’s time to build your team’s desire to foresee and reduce the customers’ burden.

Help them to see the burden of uncertainty that every customer bears and how they can reduce it!

The 21 Customer Burdens (of Uncertainty)

Can I trust this company with my needs?
Will they fully understand my needs?
Do they care about my needs?
How well do they work together or will I have to run between them to get what I want?
Will I understand them and how to easily use their product/service?
How well will they deliver on my needs?
Will they treat me well — even when it doesn’t serve their profits?
How much will their mistakes cost me? In time, money, reputation, lost revenue?
What positive effect will they have on my life or business?
How easy will it be to use their product or service?
What if we disagree? How will they handle it?
Will the interaction be stressful or positive?
Are they capable of giving me a super customer experience?
What assumptions are they making? What do the expect of me?
What don’t they care about — despite their promises?
How will they treat me after the sale?
Will I regret picking their product or service?
What happens to me if I do regret picking them?
How will a bad decision impact my career, my life, my business, my customers?
Will I like their product, service, and dealing with them?
Should I trust this company?

The customers’ burden of uncertainty takes them away from you.

Take the burden of uncertainty away from them and build your success with their trust in you.

When I go into companies to build a super customer experience culture, I often see that the leaders are aware of these customer burdens – the teams aren’t.

Teach every team in your company to foresee these burdens and reduce them through product and service design, positive selling and trust-based customer service.

It delivers a super customer experience with great success and best results for your business.

Is there a #22 for the list above? What other customer burdens will you reduce?

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

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

4 Comments »

Leaders: 10 Essential Thoughts to Proficient People Skills

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, People-Skills

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

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

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

Hold and Use These 10 Thoughts

An open mind creates phenomenal results.

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

Teams strengthen a leader’s reality.

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

Understanding people leads to influence.

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

Know when your people-skills naturally shine.

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

People-skills deliver in tough times.

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

People-skills are not just for extroverts.

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

Bonds are not bondage.

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

Finding fault stops progress; finding solutions ignites success.

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

If you overlook team problems, success overlooks your teams.

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

Get over being comfortable; get versatile.

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

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

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

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

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

7 Comments »

Are You Too Nice to Lead?

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, People-Skills, Thriving in Change

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

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

Are you too nice to lead?

Are You Too Nice to Lead, Effectively?

Image by: SeanbJack via Creative Commons License

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

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

Too Nice to Lead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rediscover the balance and you foster success for all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14 Comments »

Leaders: Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

Posted in Hiring Talent, Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, People-Skills

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

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

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

Leaders, Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

Image by: Dee_Gee via Creative Commons License

Behaviors repel talent for any of three reasons:

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

Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 Comments »

People-Skills: The E of Email Does Not Mean Emotion

Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits, People-Skills, Soft Skills

Email is still alive and well. How about the people who received your last email? Was the email clear, concise, and respectful? Or did emotion creep in and rile the issue and people’s sensibilities?

As I teach people skills to corporate teams, they continue to raise one persistent issue – how best to respond to negative emails. Without a doubt, we can diffuse a negative email more effectively through true conversation than through another email.

Beyond that, take steps to ensure that the email we write is not negative — lest we start or feed an e-war!

People-Skills: The E in Email Doesn't Stand for Emotion!

Let us never forget that …

The E of Email Does Not Mean Emotion

Wouldn’t we feel silly saying to a teammate or customer, I will send you an “emotion mail” later today. Yet workplace colleagues write them!

A recent emotion mail sent to me by an online colleague (not a customer) serves up some great lessons. Here’s the original emotion mail and an alternate approach.

Hi Kate,
I find your blog posts to be consistently well-written and valuable. They nicely reflect my own sentiments towards customers too. It’s my hope that by sharing links to them on Twitter and other SM platforms, readers benefit from the insightful material and you benefit from the exposure you clearly deserve.

After reading your most recent post – which I was about to post on Twitter – I noticed this in the footer: “If you want to re-post or republish this post …”. If it were anyone else I would have immediately decided that I don’t have time to address the ambiguity and never post anything from them again.

However, in this case, I’m assuming that I may be misreading your intent. Please clarify: is your statement intended to dissuade people from posting links to your material on Social Media platforms?

The emotion about addressing the amibguity and never posting anything from them again minimizes the compliments of the opening paragraph.

If we were to send this type of email to a teammate or a customer, it could put the relationship at risk.

What if the email were written like this:

Hi Kate,
I noticed the footer on your blog post “If you want to re-post or republish …”. Wasn’t sure what it meant. Is it OK to put the links to your blog posts on Twitter without permission each time? I find your blog posts valuable and love to share them. Let me know! Many thanks…”

Which version of the email would you rather receive — the original or the alternate approach?

4 Tips to Turn Emotion Mails into Positive Emails

Know our purpose for sending the email. In the original emotion mail above, what is the purpose? To clarify the meaning of the footer? or to vent frustration about being confused? If we admit the true purpose to ourselves, we can choose not to send the negative email and send a positive one instead.

Simple and clear beats wordy and emotional. People get scads of emails. We increase the chances that people will read email by keeping it simple and politely getting to the point. The best part of emotion to use in an email is emotional intelligence (EI).

The more emotion we use at someone, the harder it is to effect a change. If we want a teammate to change some behavior, using emotion at them can make it tougher for them to do just that — even if they agree with our requested change! Let them change while saving face. Less is more in this case.

Formal sometimes seems rude. Surprised to read this? When we have something negative to say, couching it in formal language doesn’t make it positive. It sounds like formal negativity and can seem rude to others.
If we have something negative to say to a teammate, best to communicate what we want instead of what we don’t want. State how we want to be treated instead of how we don’t want to be treated. Use I statements instead of you statements. This avoids accusations and still communicates honestly, clearly, and respectfully — in a positive manner.

My advice to corporate teams: “We shine in people-skills when we communicate positively not negatively and forward not back.”

It’s critical in delivering customer service and truly appreciated in teamwork.

What other tips will you offer here to turn emotion mails into positive emails?

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

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

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

6 Comments »

Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits

As more executives and leaders consider customer experience as an economic driver, the one challenge they must overcome is internal company thinking.

If you look throughout the organization, ask “have we accustomed and trained the employees to think about the company, about the customer, or both?” Do our operations and processes account for both?

In my consulting work to these many of these executives, the void we are trying to fill to improve customer experience is harmonic thinking. Internal thinking misses the mark. Thinking only of the customer and not the company business goals has its risks. Addressing both breeds success.

Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony Image: Istock

From the top to the front line teams, there is one message all must live, think, and deliver on every day:

Customers & Us in Harmony!

Harmonizing company and customer interests continues to be the one constant in business success. It may sound old and hackneyed yet it’s now at the forefront as a competitive advantage in this new customer experience economy.

5 Most Telling Moments to Build Harmony With Customers

At the First Meeting. Listening and collaborating during the first meeting lays a base for harmony with customers. This is your chance to show them you believe that customer focus makes good business sense.

During the First Impression of Your Products/Services. This may not be during the first meeting and it deserves a special focus. During this moment, you are at risk of trying to impress customers with the worthiness of the products and services. It often comes across as one-sided and non-harmonic. When the customers expect you to listen and collaborate, build harmony rather than prowess.

When They Give Feedback. Customers give feedback to be heard, to achieve different results, and/or to help you create a different customer experience going forward. Avoid responding to each feedback point with reasons why the current state exists. Instead, listen to their points, clarify if necessary, and then ask yourself, “how can we make this happen?”

How each of your employees reacts when hearing customer feedback is a telling moment for the company. It tells the customer what you truly care about — your company or them.

When They Have Changes in Leadership. With business to business (B2B) activity, a change in customer leadership is a key moment to build harmony. Not only does it set you on a positive path with new leadership, it shows the company your true flexibility in handling changes. This speaks volumes about your long term value and reliability.
Related Post: The Customer Experience Blooms When We Flex

When They Have a Crisis. There may be no greater bonding moment with a customer, than to deliver in harmony during a crisis. Can you work with them when they are very upset? Can you pull your diverse company teams together — in harmoony — to solve the customer’s crisis? In B2B, can you rally various teams in their company to find a solution to the crisis?

Solve a crisis and you become known as the go-to company because you eliminate risk in their minds. Gratitude, loyalty, and profits are your bonus!

What gets in the way of harmony between customers and us?

A strong focus on operations instead of meeting the customer’s needs. There’s a difference!
The need to be “right”. It stops collaboration. Strive to be excellent, not right.
Fear that harmony delivers less than singular thinking. It’s a feeling not a fact. Collaborate.
Customers who don’t believe that providers will work in harmony with them. Show them!

What else blocks harmony and great customer experience? What would you add to this list?

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

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

11 Comments »

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

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, Thriving in Change

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

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

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

5 signs that your leaders are a wart on progress:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 Comments »

Leaders, Let’s Not Lead Back to the Future

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, People-Skills

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

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

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

Phrases like:

“I would have thought we would have …”

or “we should have …”

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

Let’s Not Lead Back to the Future

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

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

To do this, it helps to …

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think? Do words make a difference?

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

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

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

19 Comments »

Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership, Personality Types, Teamwork, Thriving in Change

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

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

The Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

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

Secrets of Personality Types:

Employee Engagement

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

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

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

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

During Times of Great Organizational Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7 Comments »

Older Posts »

KateNasser.com

Smart SenseAbilities™ Blog

Leadership

Leaders, Pain Free Journey to Engage Employee Accountability

Leaders, 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

New Leaders, 10 Gritty Questions to Define Teamwork

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

People-Skills: Be & Perform Like a Ferrari

Leaders’ Dilemma: Self-Serving High Performing Team Member

Leaders, Foresee & Reduce The Burden of Needy Customers

The Customer Experience ViewMaster!

Leaders: 10 Essential Thoughts to Proficient People Skills

Are You Too Nice to Lead?

Leaders: Replace These 5 Behaviors to Attract Top Talent

People-Skills: The E of Email Does Not Mean Emotion

Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

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

Leaders, Let’s Not Lead Back to the Future

Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

Categories

Recent Posts

Links