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A recent Twitter chat called leadfromwithin raised a question in my mind that affects every leader and manager especially in times of change. When you attempt to inspire teams with your passion, do you scar them or ignite their greatness? 

Passion that burns others undermines the goal.

Passion that ignites others fuels success.

 

10 Ways to Ignite Greatness Without Leaving Scars

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1. Keep Your Mind Open. When your mind is open to different ways of reaching the end goal, your passion ignites the team’s ideas and greatness. If you close your mind to ideas, it scars the team’s spirit and douses their passion.




2. Establish the limits of freedom. That might seem like an oxymoron yet it is true. If there are boundaries, state them and then let innovation, creativity, and great talent surface and develop. If you pretend there are no boundaries and inflict them later, it scars the team’s work rhythm and their trust. When boundaries legitimately change, communicate them clearly.




3. Become a geyser of goodwill. The more times you communicate the positives (when they are true), the more trust and goodwill you build with the team. This goodwil builds the team’s strength to then hear the negatives with objectivity. The sum ignites greatness.




4. Be honest not blunt. Honesty that doesn’t insult catapults all to greatness. Bluntness leaves emotional scars that toughen future interactions. Classic wisdom says: Attack the idea not the I. That’s a good start. I add, “Disagree without being disagreeable.”




5. Question before feedback. Your passion for the vision or goal, will scar others if you give negative feedback before understanding their actions. You also scar your credibility and their trust in you.




6. Refine your message to critical points. Passion has the power to confuse. It causes you to leave out critical information that can ignite the team’s greatness. Exercise: Write your message as a headline and then the bullet points to support it. It is annoying when you first start. Once you know how, your communication will ignite the team’s greatness.




7. Show You Are Listening. Ever work for leaders who are so passionate that they keep blazing new trails without showing you they heard your concerns? Don’t be a listening leader who appears deaf. Dialogues ignite actionable greatness.
   
   

8. See Talent in Mistakes. A team’s greatness is harnessed through individual contributions to the same goal. Differences in talent and perspective often produce outcomes that you might see as mistakes in light of the end goal. You can also see the talent that produces those unexpected outcomes to ignite future greatness.




9. Recognize Initiative and Celebrate Learning. One uncomfortable truth about igniting greatness is that not all team members will want to be great or rise to greatness. Leaders and managers, with heart, mistakenly minimize greatness in the quest for team harmony. The good news is there’s a better way. If you recognize those who are showing more initiative and achieving greatness and also celebrate all that are learning, you preserve team harmony without sacrificing greatness.




10. What is #10? How do you make sure your passion ignites greatness without scarring others?

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

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

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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.

Today everyone is asking business leaders to engage employees. Fuel the passion! Business innovation requires it and long term success hinges on it. I agree that this is half the formula.

It takes two traits to be successful — passion and discipline.

Why has discipline fallen out of favor? Perhaps we are mistaking it for rigidity, dogmatism, and resistance to change. It is none of these things. It does not limit or constrain. It develops and guides.

It’s time for all leaders to fuel the passion discipline duo.

The Passion Discipline Duo

1. Passion starts the journey and discipline guides around the curves.
2. Passion generates new ideas and discipline vets the possibility against tangible reality.
3. Passion creates bonds with teammates and customers and discipline delivers the strength to bond even in tough times.
4. Passion breaks through resistance and overcomes obstacles. Discipline sustains when passion wanes.

The Passion Discipline Duo is in Jeopardy When Leaders

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Are strong in passion or in discipline and don’t honor the other — in others.

Use stressful times or times of decline as a reason to harp only on discipline.

Demand evidence too early in a new venture or ignore evidence to avoid admitting mistakes.

Allow any team member without the passion discipline duo to bully or sway the team to one trait.

Give in to the fear of either trait.

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High achievers of all types — from athletes to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders — fuel the passion discipline duo in themselves and their teams.

What actions do they take?
- Define passion and discipline with their teams

- Brainstorm and use a system to follow-through

- Give passion and discipline equal weight; celebrate both

- Keep the vision/goal always in sight of both

- Honor diverse team members and mentor their duo development


What would you add to this discussion about passion and discipline? What gets in the way of the duo? What fuels it?


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

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

Related Post: The Weakness of Extreme Strength

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With inspiration to action, Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, turns obstacles to change into your professional success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote features, footage to view, and customer testimonials.

Business leaders always seek ways to ignite customer passion about their products and services.

Here are 12 ways to light the fire by investing in the customer relationship using today’s technology and resources:

1. Give customers valuable information and simple ways to organize it. The Internet and social media are overwhelming individuals and companies. It is no surprise to find so many applications to organize info on mobile devices and for social media like Twitter. Deliver info that is valuable to your mutual industry and offer ways to organize it. Does your website feature the latest tweets about a hot issue in your industry? Do you have a daily summary of an industry conference? If not, why would the customers connect with you?




2. Make your information quick and easy to read. Is your website an easy read? Does it speak to them or just about you? In this economy, your customers are truly doing more with less and are pressed for time and solutions. Your conversations, your texts, your tweets, your website — must clearly speak to them.




3. Energize with learning.  Customers can feel the energy in a company. They are attracted to the energy. Establish a free-wheeling fun learning culture to ignite this energy and don’t crush it with corporate structure and SMART goals. Pick hot industry topics and get employees talking over lunch. Tap into podcasts and webinars on professional development topics. Transform staff meetings from in-person status reports into learning exchanges!




4. Fire them up with fun.  Fun is always memorable and memorable brings customers back. Advertising execs have known this for years. How are you using fun to engage your customers? How are you using fun to engage employees who engage customers? Example: Customers are more connected to you when they hear you smiling on the phone. TRUE. So for years the chosen solution was a mirror on each customer service agent’s desk as a clue to smile. BORING. Instead have something fun on the desk to inspire a smile.




5. Flex when communicating.  People do business with those they like and trust. They tend to be most comfortable with those of a similar personality type. Communicate to the customer’s personality type not from yours. Honest messages are more accepted when delivered with personality type in mind. Know your own type, spot  your customer’s type, and flex to it. Sales reps. have done this for years. It’s time for all to do it.




6. Use your uniqueness.  You must also use your special talents to create bonds with customers. One of my strengths is seeing the big picture quickly while others are stuck in details.  My customers bring me in for that purpose and welcome my dissent. Many of them are detail-oriented and, to use their words, get stuck in the weeds.




7. Care.  We often think of caring as something done in the customer service department.  Care is not a department. Care is a mindset that leads to behavior. It should be visible in every person and in every aspect of your company including your website, your phone menus, your service recovery, your ethics, and your products and service. When you care about customers it ignites their passion for your company.




8. Pump up your heart rate.  Customers are attracted to companies whose heart is beating loud and strong. It gives them hope. Show the customer the vibrancy and energy  of your company — perhaps through contributions to the community. Offer them a freebie on something that matters to them that doesn’t cost you loads of money.  After the attacks on 9/11, Broadway theater banded together to perform shows even though far fewer people were buying tickets.  The message: We will survive and we want you back in our theaters.  I delivered six months of free job coaching to job hunters.  My message: We will survive this downturn and here’s my contribution!




9. Be ready for your customer’s rainy day.  When it rains in New York City many store owners push carts onto the streets to sell umbrellas to unprepared tourists.  Customers will bond with you if you can provide what they need at a moment’s notice — either through your company or another source.  How can you foresee this?  Ask your customer service agents to keep a running list for one week of all the requests they get to which they currently say no. Go through this list and identify a solution for each request to prepare for your customer’s rainy day.




10. Give each employee a crystal ball.  Customers are attracted to companies that are forward thinking. What image do you and your employees project to customers? Often the official publications of a company sound forward focused yet the employees don’t. Do all your employees sound focused on the future or just the sales/mktg departments? Do they ask the customers interesting questions to unearth future needs? Are you asking your employees interesting questions about the future to instill this thinking in them? Think about it.




11. Revel in diversity.  Cultural norms impact customer’s expectations and buying choices.  In many countries, including the USA, your customers are from different countries and cultures. In every aspect of your business, embrace and use cultural diversity to bond with the customers. In your presentations, use stories and references that make sense to that culture. When designing a product or delivering customer service, make sure it makes sense to that culture.  Ask  your customers to teach you about their cultures through Social CRM.  Look for an unfilled niche based on cultural norms and fill it!




12. Develop an uncommon talent to build common bonds.  How good are you and your employees at building common bonds with  your customers and your suppliers?  How good are you at connecting with leaders in your customer’s industry through conferences, social media, and the press?  Across generations, cultures, and industries, the ability to form common bonds ignites passion for your services.  Continue to develop your communication, listening, social networking, creativity, and innovation skills.  If your reaction to this  is “I don’t have time”, then learn from those around you as you work.  They may ignite your passion in developing an uncommon talent for common bonds. 

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

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

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers customer service and teamwork training for delivering the guts of great service to every customer. Preview and purchase her new DVD Customer Service USA – Regional Differences That Matter.