Management

Introverted Leaders: Revelations on Communication

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

Today leadership communication has moved well beyond telling people what to do. Great leaders process diverse opinions and engage all to understand the vision and hit the target.

Regardless of the leader, each must address three components and remember:

Vision sets the target.

Strategy maps the route.

Communication gets everyone there.

Introverted leaders, who struggle with the need for so much communication, succeed when they understand the underlying need and the benefits.

Leadership Communication: Revelations for Introvert Leaders Image by:kenfagerdotcom

Revelations for Introverted Leaders

Think of those you lead as the feet that bear the full weight of the body during the journey. Without communication, they get lost, take unnecessary detours, walk further than necessary, and possibly miss the destination altogether.

It’s not a matter of introversion or extroversion. It’s not a competition of personality types and definitely not an exercise in being accepted for who you are.

For all leaders, it’s about stepping outside of your own view to engage your teams and lighten their load.

Communication is an essential nutrient needed for daily performance especially for those who are not making the decisions. How else will they understand the strategy, implement it through all the obstacles, and hit the target?

Communication delivers energy that fuels their journey. Your silence fuels your thinking yet it leaves those you lead stranded in neutral. Neutral isn’t painless. When the struggle mounts, neutral can inject more pain to the struggle.

Communication clarifies details, corrects the course, and prevents problems. Your silence gives you clarity of thought yet it allows confusion to swirl for all others. Relieve the stress of confusion — communicate.

Communication settles and calms the struggle. Your silence is calming to you; it is unsettling to those who need the leader’s insight. Being in the dark is demotivating. A tomb is a very calm settled place but hardly productive or happy.

Communication engages and inspires maximum contribution. Your silence inspires you; it doesn’t inspire your teams. It leaves them wondering. It disconnects them from you and disengages their spirit of contribution. Why should they give their all if they see you staying in your comfort zone?

Communication shows them you care about them. Your silence can unintentionally come across as detached and uncaring. Even driver leaders who aren’t introverts run this risk as they focus purely on end results.
Take time to tell the teams how much you respect them, value their commitment and contributions, and care about their well being. Acknowledgement and recognition repeatedly show up in the top results of employee satisfaction surveys.

The one word mantra I recommend to introverted leaders is “sooner”. (For extroverted leaders, it’s “later”.) If you need time to think things through before making a decision, at least tell your teams that right away before retreating to think and decide. It keeps them engaged while you ponder strategy.

Your competence in setting vision and developing strategy builds their confidence in you; your rapport and care build their trust.

As introvert Ron Edmondson professes in this post, 5 Ways to Step Up & Communicate, you build their trust when they see that you care more about them and their success than you do your own comfort zone.

So I ask all leaders regardless of personality type and preferences, how much do you care about your teams? Enough to communicate outside of your comfort zone in ways that inspire, engage, and light the way?

The choice is yours. The rewards are many.

I am here to help. Please offer your questions and perspectives in the comments field below.

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

Update: I found Dan Oestreich’s comment so pertinent to this post, I feature it here for all to read. Thank you Dan. It’s a great addition.
["Instead of making this an issue of "not changing" ... the other way is to see how we all (introvert or extrovert) are naturally moving over the course of a career and a lifetime toward greater and greater versatility and personal fulfillment. In that, all styles and temperaments are incomplete; our job engages their transcendence."]

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.

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Leaders: Do You Treat Your Customer Service Reps Like Adults?

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

In customer service organizations and technical IT (information technology) customer service teams, I see a lingering trend of leaders treating front line customer service reps, global service desk agents, and technical support analysts like children.

Selfless, professional caring is an adult emotion and behavior yet managers treat reps as children who need to be monitored, controlled, scored, and highly directed.

Leaders, Treat & Engage Customer Service Reps Like Adults Image by: BetterWorks

Key Question on Engaging Customer Service Reps:

Do you score your reps performance or do they first review their customer interactions and note the improvements they will make?

If they first assess their performance, you are treating your customer service reps and IT global service desk analysts like adults. You engage in dialogue with them and brainstorm interaction improvements. You are treating them as valued employees entrusted with the weighty responsibility of customer service.

Bravo! They own both the concept and the delivery of customer care. When you engage them in self-assessment, they will engage the customers with spirit and skill.

The result will far exceed that of the directive parental approach in other call centers, BPO contact centers, and IT front line service desks. Businesses with highly engaged employees experience five times the success of other organizations for the employees have a voice in their responsibilities and a personal stake in the results of their performance.

Engage front line reps like trusted adults:

Give them access to professional customer service training so that their self-assessments will be based on high quality standards. If their assessments miss the mark completely, you will have both your experience and professional standards to teach and coach them.
Allow them to give feedback to each other as team members working toward the shared goal of outstanding customer service.
Engage them to increase the standards they will reach. You will be amazed at how high they will set the bar.
Tap them for front line service improvement ideas while you as leader take on the bigger challenges of breaking down silos and process barriers to outstanding customer service. The reps and front line team leaders are rich with insights from working with the customers.

Interestingly, initial self-assessment in performance reviews has been the standard for over 20 years with professional jobs in organizations. Yet on the front line of customer service, the model is parent/child.

The very traditional “leaders judging the reps” approach is a non-starter for today’s customer care.

To ask employees to suggest customer service improvements requires that leaders first ask the reps to assess their current performance and valuable improvements. Excellence is achieved through mutual assessment, dialogue, and shared ownership based on respect and trust.

Employee engagement in customer service is overdue yet never too late. I’ve worked with thousands and would be pleased to work with all of you to engage their talents with ownership and a true stake in the outcome.

What winning customer service employee engagement steps have you taken that you will share with us in the comments section below?

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

The Performance Appraisal Treadmill

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Leaders, See & Communicate Clearly on Confidence

Posted in Employee Engagement, Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

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

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

Leaders, See More Deeply to Communicate Clearly on Confidence Image by: mkrigsman

The overlooked element of confidence is performance goal.

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

A True Short Story of Blurred Vision

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

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

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

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

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

Leaders, See & Communicate Clearly on Confidence

Leaders, See Confidence More Clearly Image by:JennuineCaptures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaders, For Employee Engagement Learning is Better Than Proving

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Leaders, Are You Confusing Change Fatigue & Change Resistance?

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

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

Do you see change fatigue?

Think it’s all change resistance?

Leaders, Are You Confusing Change Fatigue & Change Resistance? Image by:Cayusa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change Loving Leaders — Prevent Change Fatigue!

Build the culture that goes with your vision. If you as a leader crave high innovation and change, then inspire a fun, creative, learn-from-mistakes type culture.
Do you encourage all the employees to noodle new ideas? Participating in creativity breeds a more positive feeling about change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 Keys to Succeeding with Leaders Who Crave Change

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5 Keys to Succeeding With Leaders Who Crave Change

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Thriving in Change

Time after time we read how people hate change. Yet there is a small percentage who love change to the point of craving it. Have you ever met one? What is it like being around them?

If you work for leaders who are natural change agents and you are not one, you are probably very aware of how it makes you feel. Some compare it to being on a runaway roller coaster or constantly playing musical chairs. But do you know what feelings drive these natural change agents?

Succeeding with leaders who crave change is easier when you can see inside their mind.

5 Keys to Succeeding w/Leaders Who Crave Change. Image by:dougww

The Feelings of Leaders Who Crave Change

The Better Unknown. While contentment comforts you in the status quo, discontent churns inside someone who craves change. They have an inner sense that the present could be better so why keep it the same?

Status Quo Doesn’t Really Exist. Natural change agents keenly see everything changing around them and believe that there is no such phenomenon as standing still. They feel they are awake and living in the natural order of change and see your inaction as risky.

Change Is Exciting. Change lovers believe that everything is exciting in the beginning and then the glow of energy fades. They don’t understand why anyone would stand in the fading shadows when they could use their energy to find the light in future excitement.

Find The Treasure. Many who crave change wonder what gems are hidden in the future rather than what trouble lies ahead. They are conceptual treasure hunters who don’t see the present as a present — the way that others do.

Dig Out of the Rut. Change agents see the status quo as a breeding ground for apathy. What feels like comfort to you seems like malaise to them. They want to dig out of the rut and feel frustrated with others who don’t. One leader said about his organization, “I feel like I am pushing a truck out of a rut without a motor.”

When emotions of change leaders are opposite to those they lead, the stress of change emerges from the gap. Communicating about the opposing emotions brings everyone to a tangible plan on how to manage the pace of change.

It won’t stop the changes (as you may be hoping) but it will allow you and the leaders to discuss a balance of needs without sacrificing the success of the organization.

In my next post on thriving in change, I will cover this topic in more detail. In the meantime …

What is change to you?
An exciting treasure hunt?
A valuable nuisance?
The beginning of the end?

The diverse answers to this question paint a canvas of the struggles of organizational change.

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

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Super Customer Experience: Leaders, Are You Attitude Ready?

Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits

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

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

Super Customer Experience: Leaders, Are We Atttitude Ready? Image by: afagen

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

The challenge of excellence is consistency — not repetition.

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

Leaders, Are You All Attitude Ready?

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

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

What is the team’s picture of displaying excellent attitudes? The definition of a great attitude including words like helpful, caring, respectful, warm, friendly, assuring, appreciative, going the extra mile … doesn’t completely drive behavior. Many reps display neutral attitudes and believe they are doing a great job because they are not insulting customers. The customers take this neutrality as lack of caring. It doesn’t produce bonds and loyalty.
Spot displays of positive attitudes during interview role plays and hire them. Else train with role plays and behavioral displays of positive attitudes to create excellence.
Zero Tolerance of Bad Attitude. After hiring, training, and inspiring excellence, the zero tolerance of reps’ bad attitudes is critical.
Many leaders today have mistaken the new leadership style of understanding and engagement to be tolerance of bad attitudes and behavior. This is a red herring. Bad employee attitudes and behavior are unacceptable in customer service.

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

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

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

No shame in leaving policy. Many customer service leaders strive for low employee turnover. It’s understandable from a cost and image perspective. Yet taken too far, this goal can infect morale, performance and results.
Managers have come to believe that high turnover on their team is an automatic black mark against them. They work to keep everyone there — including poor performers and those ill suited for the positions. Yikes!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Challenge of Excellence is Consistency Short video.

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

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Leaders, Are We Learning or Proving?

Posted in Employee Engagement, Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

The world of science has shown us the value of proving over assuming especially where it impacts human life. Scientific discovery has also shown that learning leads to proving. Consider the accidental discoveries from penicillin to microwaves.

So what does this have to do with leadership? A great deal. How much do we as leaders miss when we are out to prove rather than out to discover and learn?

Leaders, Find the Balance between Learning & Proving Image: OrangeBrompton

Learning

Opens doors to possibilities we couldn’t possibly foresee
Engages employees with their learning and for their contribution
Develops the next generation of leaders by combining their talent and our experience for the unknown demands of future business

Proving

Protects and ensures. Think of child-proof caps, tamper-proof locks, proofing before publishing.
Sets high standards. Proving grounds are where ideas are tested for accuracy, impact, and strength.
Gives others a safe zone to accept new ideas. Investors often want a proof of concept before investing in a new idea.

There is value in both if we find the balance.

Lose the Balance When

Previous experience creates insecurity. Did a bad mentor or previous boss tell you that success was all about proving yourself every day? Balance is lost.
Switching work cultures. For example, if you worked in a clinical environment where lack of proof can kill people you might misapply that standard to a non-clinical environment where lack of learning kills innovation. Learn to balance!
Fear and perfectionism rule. When either of these are in control of a culture or a leader’s actions, employee engagement and innovation will suffer. Proving may feel safe yet it is actually eroding the foundation of success.

Finding the Balance

Self-awareness. Ask ourselves which side do I naturally embrace — learning or proving?
Understanding. List out why that’s the preference.
Feedback. Get examples from those we lead on the negative impact of our preference. Where has too much proving caused trouble? When has learning and not enough proving created trouble? Examples provide help facts triumph over emotion.
New pathway. In collaboration with those you lead, chart a new path to balance learning and proving.

Demanding proof too early slams the door of discovery shut. Refusing to prove can discredit innovation with the legacy of a just another dumb idea.

Learning opens the door. Proving ensures that what comes through it is not harmful. When we find the balance between learning and proving, we chart a path to success.

- When is a proving approach most harmful?
-When does the learning approach create the most risk?

I welcome your comments below.

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

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Leaders, Are We Accomplices to Passive Aggressive Team Members?

Posted in Employee Engagement, Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

Leaders, unchecked passive aggressive behavior in the workplace impacts the dynamics and potential success of teams. Those affected feel used, manipulated, and disrespected.

Passive aggressive is less direct not less aggressive.

It is just as hostile as straight out aggression and can obstruct both morale and results. It erodes a key component of teamwork and engagement — trust.

It can disengage employees from each other IF we allow it. How do we become accomplices to passive aggressive team members?

Leaders, Are You an Accomplice To Passive Aggressive Team Members Image by:korafotomorgana

The Pattern

Spot the pattern of passive aggressive behavior in order to eliminate its ruinous effect on your team’s success.

Passive aggressive team members will:

Interrupt another team member who is speaking to us with a quick “sorry” yet no real acknowledgment of the other person’s presence. Or they will smile and say to the other person “You don’t mind do you?” They cover lack of manners with fake manners.
Restate exactly what another team member just said as if it’s their own idea.
Use subtle sarcasm against another team member and call it humor.
Intellectualize instead of apologize. When faced with evidence of their bad behavior, they are known to say “I wonder why I did that?” instead of “I am terribly sorry.” Or they repeat their bad behavior even with apologies.
Use neutral statements instead of true empathy. Effective team members support each other. Passive aggressive team members appear to support others. Facing a distraught team member, a passive aggressive would say something like “Yes, it is difficult, isn’t it?” A supportive team member would more likely say, “How can I help? Let’s look at it and find a solution.”
Hold others to a very high standard of behavior and call them on it publicly. “Well you wouldn’t want to be known as the one who didn’t help out, would you?”
Use apparently logical reasons to undermine others’ success — and then ask them if they mind. Example: As requested, a team member prepared a presentation for the next team meeting on a technology they were developing for all to use. The passive aggressive team member monopolized the meeting with discussion and at the end of the meeting said: Oh we won’t have time for your presentation today. Does it bother you?”

The Impact

Mistrust, anger, resentment, and disengagement are the most damaging impacts of passive aggressive behavior on the organization and its results. If we as leaders do nothing to prevent it or cure it, team members begin to mistrust us as well.

Strong driver type leaders become an accomplice to this behavior with their sole focus on results. They dismiss outcries of passive aggressive behavior with: “Just focus on the work.”

High amiable type leaders, who love harmony in relationships, often dismiss passive aggressive “Oh they didn’t mean anything by it.” They are now accomplice to this damaging behavior.

Strong analytic leaders may overlook the passive aggressive behavior claiming they don’t have enough data to prove it’s happening. They become accomplices through the misnomer that if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. A ridiculous tenet.

High expressive leaders are so connected into the exchange of information they become accomplices by not seeing the manner of expression.

The Solution

Check our own behavior. Ensure that you are not passive aggressive. Team members model the leader.
Ask yourself, am I afraid of conflict? That doesn’t mean that you are passive aggressive yet you are at a high risk of not addressing it. Get coaching on overcoming your fear of conflict and you become a far better leader!
Have the entire team develop a list of high performance team member behaviors. Clear expectations of behavior are one way to develop a culture of positive interaction and give everyone a mechanism for discussing negative behaviors.
Provide training on how to disagree without being disagreeable. A team’s diverse opinions are its strength. The way they communicate is its lifeblood.
Illustrate the difference between diplomacy and passive aggressive. Passive aggressives often mislabel their subtle behavior as tact when in truth it’s venom.
Be willing to spot and address the behavior even in a top performer. Singular results only contribute a portion of success. Behavior impacts morale with accounts for much of success.
Teach and use engaging meeting management techniques. Stop bad behavior in it’s tracks so all will fully engage as they feel valued and respected.
Watch for and dismantle cliques. Not all cliques are passive aggressive. Yet many of them are and in any case are harmful to a positive team culture.

As leaders we have an organizational responsibility to engage team members for positive morale and highest quality results.

We also have an ethical responsibility to create a non-hostile environment where all receive basic respect and an opportunity to fully contribute.

Passive aggressive behavior is a virus that can infect the team and kill results. Let’s prevent it or at least be the cure.

Question: What other passive aggressive behaviors have you spotted and how have you handled them?

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

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

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

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Customer Experience: Every Move We Make, Every Vow We Break

Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits

Super customer experience is not a series of learned steps or categorized procedures.
It is continuous improvement and delivery of superior interactions between our customers and — our staff, our products, and our services.

Steps, procedures, and processes are merely the ways that large companies organize their work, train their workers, and lower their risk. They are only tools to handle on a large scale what a small enterprise does well without the complex of rules.

Procedures Can Guillotine Customer Experience

Many of the customer experience horror stories are born of procedures gone mad. They erupt from processes that have conquered thought/reason, empathy, and unfortunately guillotined the customer experience.

Management mistakenly puts so much focus on procedures and adherence to them that the employees delivering service focus on procedures instead of the customer.

The customers are aware of this. They experience procedural focus as uncaring, disrespectful, and dehumanizing.

Conversely when we, as caring intelligent life forms first unearth the input to the experience (the customer’s perspective), we can easily deliver a superior customer experience with personalized care using whatever procedure is needed.

What super customer experience truly requires is awareness before action!

The customer is constantly aware of what they want and aware of us when they want it. Are we aware of them and what they want or just aware of our procedures?

Interaction Before ACTION!

Super customer experience comes from us being aware of the customers’ wants, needs, and expectations before we deliver. Interaction is the time to become aware.

Interaction before action. Whether it’s face-to-face, on the phone, on Live Chat, or even the e-commerce site, awareness must precede action.

Have you ever heard customers rave about an experience by saying: “Your employees executed the internal company procedure so well”?

The early interaction with the customers foretells the outcome. Will it be the beginning of a wonderful movie with a happy ending?

Or will it end with the customer feeling thwarted, silenced, and metaphorically beheaded by our internal procedural focus?

Picture the customers singing Every Breath You Take by Sting.

Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I’ll be watching you

3 Reminders to Be in Harmony With Customers

We don’t do things for the customers. We do things with the customers and with their input and consent.
Interact before we act. Awareness before action.
Every procedural move we make, every caring vow we break, every procedural claim we stake, they’ll be watching us — and looking for more caring effective alternatives.

I have taught thousands in customer service, customer care, technical support, and contact center teams how to deliver the ultimate customer service while working the procedures behind the scenes. Let’s create a superior customer experience for each and every customer!

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, employee engagement, leading change, teamwork. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders: Leading Change Requires Networking Our Inspiration

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

Volumes are written on leaders’ key steps to leading change. When we list out all the steps, one blatant truth emerges from the fray:

Leading Change Requires Networking Our Inspiration

Leaders, Network Our Inspiration to Lead Change

This statement might bring to mind lots of communication about the change, the reasons why, what’s in it for everyone, and the list goes on.

Are you inspired? Yeh right. No one else will be either. Admittedly communication is critical to leading change. Yet communication is NOT the same as networking our inspiration.

Networking those we lead includes:

Starting with mutual respect
Earning trust through the heart not just the head
Engaging their talents and their spirit thus
Building their change-ability to prepare for major shifts

Networking inspiration must start early — the day we become leaders.

Highly directive leaders who rarely engage their teams seem fake when suddenly networking inspiration to spur a major change. People don’t like being changed.

Weak leaders who focus mostly on being liked also struggle with leading change. They have built personal connections based on neediness and their fear is palpable. There is little for others to trust in order to overcome the comfort of the status quo.

We can effectively lead change when we have healthy inter-dependent connections to the team members as well as to the mission of the organization. This healthy balance of head and heart is the inspiration!

The strength of a balanced leader absorbs employees’ fear allowing them to travel new roads unfettered by doubt.

Earning Trust With the Heart & Head
Long before major changes inch onto the horizon, team members are looking to see how we handle difficult situations. Some may be very mission related while still others will relate to team dynamics and morale.

Showing them our clear heads in a crisis is a start. Developing their clear heads for change through coaching and empowerment is networking our inspiration!

Reviewing data with them before a decision develops valuable critical thinking. Using our intuition and tapping theirs builds their change-ability!

Consider that change involves dealing with the unknown. Invoking intuition gives everyone practice in grappling with grey areas and moving ahead with less than a full picture. With this practice, we network our inspiration and develop their change-ability long before a major change appears.

When we handle individual performance issues, we act appropriately. When we also address team morale issues resulting from performance problems, we celebrate the value of morale in leading change. “Work it our yourselves” is abdication of our inspirational role. “Let’s work this out and create a model for maintaining great morale”, networks our inspiration!

We lead change with inspiration; we succeed when we network the inspiration and build change-ability along the way.

Question: Why do many leaders avoid the inspirational approach when it is so critical to leading change?

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

This article was inspired by a Leadfromwithin professional development chat on Twitter founded and facilitated by executive coach Lolly Daskal. Thanks Lolly!

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Visionary Experience Leaders, Are You Conquering Customer Loyalty?

Posted in Customer Service, Hot Topics and New Bits

PART I

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

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

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

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

Leaders, Plant Deep for Customer Loyalty - Don't Conquer With a Thin Veneer

Image by: Blockpartypress via creative commons license.

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

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

Hilton Garden Inn in Eagan, MN

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

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

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

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

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

Karen replied, “the cab company requires it”.

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

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

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

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

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

After work I spoke with Jason, the general manager.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Leaders, 6 Positive Replies to Transform Complaints into Action

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, People-Skills

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

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

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

What will engage employees to move from complaints to action?

Leaders, 6 Positive Replies to Turn Employees Complaints to Actions

Image by: saschaaa via Creative Commons License.

6 positive replies to transform employee complaints into action:

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

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

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

Your feelings and view of the problem are important. Your ideas for solving it — critical. What do you propose?
If the next couple of statements from them are still complaints: We move forward with solutions. Here are three statements to get you started:
- We could ________________________________________________.
- I can contribute ___________________________________________.
- I am willing to _____________________________________________.
Take time to think about it and then let’s get started!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:
Leaders, Coach and Perform Like a Ferrari

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

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

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Leaders, Engage Employees Through Entrepreneurial Spirit

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

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

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

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

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

Leaders, Engage Employees More Through the Inner Entrepreneur Image by:sentxd

Engage Employees Through Their Entrepreneurial Spirit

Engage for Results.

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

Don't bury the entrepreneurial spirit.

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

Desire to learn. Entrepreneurs are always learning and they work beyond the normal level to make this happen. Picture the benefits to the organization of engaging this desire! Let this image replace the misguided focus and worry of people leaving after gaining experience.
There is no shortage of entrepreneurial talent who want the security of a paycheck with the opportunity to learn and contribute.

Desire to contribute all their talents. Entrepreneurs love the freedom to use any/all of their talents wherever needed and helpful.
Engage this spirit to build cross teamwork, bridge the gaps between departments, and help bring down the organizational silos.

This spirit is contagious and contributes to cohesive results.

Desire to be acknowledged. Yes, entrepreneurs value the recognition of their exhaustive commitment and work. So do employees. Acknowledgement of talents and contributions refreshes the spirit and commitment to your organization.
Acknowledgement of individual contributions to the whole, strengthens (not weakens) organizational results. It isn’t favoritism. It is a celebration of talents that inspires and engages more contribution and commitment.

More on this: 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

Desire to conquer obstacles. Employees who have seen tough times may have the same stamina and persistence to overcome hardship as entrepreneurs generally do. When you spot this trait, engage it with opportunity and acknowledgement.
Their gung ho spirit can be off putting to others in everyday work conditions yet it is invaluable for producing results and reaching organizational success.

Desire to use lessons learned. So many organizations are passing over people who are unemployed due to the economic crisis.
They also pass over people age 50+ claiming they are overqualified for positions. Others believe they will be resistant to change and innovation. What a huge employee engagement mistake!

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

Desire for responsibility. The entrepreneurial spirit is filled with the desire to make things happen. It is a deep reliability that is difficult to teach or coach. When you find it in your employees, tap it. It takes engagement to the ultimate goal — results.
This entrepreneurial drive for results is not a desire to replace you as leader. It is a thirst to fulfill their purpose for working.

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

Who in your organization has exhibited these strong entrepreneurial traits?

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

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

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Leaders, 5 Legacy Attitudes to Replace for Employee Engagement

Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

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

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

Leaders, 5 Legacy Attitudes to Change for Employee Engagement

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

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

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

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

Leaders, Replace These 5 Legacy Attitudes to Engage Employees

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

“If that’s all you can do.” As changes in business require new skills of employees, they often struggle with how to stay competent and feel competent. On more than one occasion, I have heard managers say to these concerned employees, “well if that’s all you can do … ” (meaning their current skill).
This legacy attitude of questioning employees’ competence does not make them work harder. The issue is not effort; it’s skill redevelopment. They are already concerned about their continued competence. Lift them up and engage them with diverse opportunities to learn new skills. Disdain does not engage!

The Assembly Line Approach to Leading People

No news is good news. This not-so-golden legacy nugget is based on the idea that employees should routinely do what they are initially told until further orders arrive. Yikes – the assembly line approach to people! Can’t you just picture the little people widgets rolling along?
Meanwhile, communicating engages employees for best results. It gives them information about focus and purpose, and it inspires commitment to results. Engage with knowledge on how the company makes money. Offer worthy kudos for their specific talents that contributed to the end results.

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

Work things out for yourselves – you’re adults. Leaders who want to focus primarily on end results often side step team issues under the guise of empowerment. One recent article (the URL for which I cannot find at this moment) claims we should “take the bubble wrap off employees” and let them work everything out themselves.
Leaders, aren’t you employees too? Why not share your special insight to help reduce conflict and re-engage the team on the end result?

When you overlook team issues, success overlooks your teams. Abandonment is not a success strategy.
If you don’t see me doing it, don’t do it. Wow — the Simons Says approach to 21st century success. Leaders, will this attract top talent to your team? It might get you obedient followers but that burdens you with creating all the success.

If you want collaborative innovators who use their talent and acumen to produce success — replace Simon Says with something at least at the level of Pictionary! It’s much more engaging. (What game would you suggest?)

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

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

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

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

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

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Leaders: Replace the No Whining Sign

Posted in Coaching Professional, Hot Topics and New Bits, Leadership

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

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

Leaders, Replace the No Whining Sign Image by: DBDuo Photography, Creative Commons License

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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