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Month: June 2017

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Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

Wonder Woman Seven Super Powers of Leadership

Diana Prince: I used to want to save the world, this beautiful place. But the closer you get, the more you see the great darkness within. I learned this the hard way, a long, long time ago.

Some things never change. At a time where the world is dealing with so much violence and senseless killing, a movie about a super hero reminds us all of what matters. In this case, a female hero who stands in her truth, her courage and conviction – Wonder Woman. Gal Gadot who was a combat instructor in the Israeli Defense Force, (IDF), is a perfect fit to play the role of Diana, the Amazonian Princess.

From her very first words in the opening scene, she drew me in. Perhaps it was my own service the IDF had given me a personal connection to Israeli actress and to the ideas she shared in her character.

At 5’10” she stood out in the crowd, her stature and her presence she embodied physical power and strength of the Iconic DC Comic character, Wonder woman. Yet, that wasn’t the only way she captured the hearts of the people around her. She managed to embody the essence of Diana’s character, captivating and inviting to all those around her.

As a natural born leader she stepped into her role and left all she knew to fight for justice. She is fueled by her courage and driven by a passion that is visible in her Seven Super Powers.

Her Powers serve as fundamental lessons for all leaders

Wonder Woman’s Seven Powers of Leadership

The Power of Self Awareness – Diana knew who she is, knew her purpose and stated it with absolute certainty.
Diana Prince: I am Diana of Themyscira, daughter of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. In the name of all that is good, your wrath upon this world is over.

The Power of Purpose – Diana followed her destiny, embracing the role she was meant to fill.
Diana Prince: It is our sacred duty to defend the world and it is what I am going to do.
The Power of Conviction – Diana Stood up for what she believed was right and was willing to risk everything for her cause.
Queen Hippolyta: If you choose to leave, you may never return.
Diana Prince: Who will I be if I stay?

The Power of Justice – Diana could not stand by idly to watch the injustice and pain that was inflicted on innocent people during the war.
Diana Prince: I cannot stand by while innocent lives are lost!

The Power of Love – Diana lived from a place of love and compassion for people and looked for the best in all humans
Diana Prince: It’s about what you believe. And I believe in love. Only love will truly save the world.

The Power of Humor – Diana is pure and innocent with a refreshing honesty which makes her authentic and brings levity into situations making her likable, mostly seen in her interaction with Steve Trevor.
“Diana Prince: What is that?
Steve Trevor: That is a watch.
Diana Prince: What does it do?
Steve Trevor: It tells the time. It tells you when to sleep, to eat…
Diana Prince: That tiny thing tells you what to do?”

Are you ready to step up to the plate? Perhaps, ask yourself the following:
Who are you? What do you stand for? What do you believe? Do you know your purpose? What would you be willing to risk to follow your cause?

Whether fictional or real, powerful leaders are self-aware. They follow their purpose with conviction, standing up for others, protecting the weak and fighting for justice. Their ability to come from love and be playful shows their authenticity and allows people to connect to them.
Like Wonder Woman, great leaders share great wisdom. When mixed with wit and humor will send a message of hope that stands the signs of times.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development

Think Your Voice Sounds Weird? Here’s Why.

If you’re like most people, when you hear yourself on a recording, your first thought is, “Oh my gosh, that’s not really what I sound like, is it?” The short answer is: yup, that’s you! Here’s a bit of insight as to why, and a few tips to make sure you sound your best, no matter what kind of voice you have.

When you are listening to someone else, the “input” goes in your ear, hits the ear drum, and sends vibrations through the inner ear canal, which the auditory nerve takes up to the brain for interpretation. This is also how it works when you’re listening to yourself on a recording, which is like listening to another person.

On the flip side, when you speak, of course your own words come out your mouth and the sound goes into your ear for the same process we just discussed, but that’s only half of the input.

The other half is that when you speak, air comes up from your lungs through your throat and vibrates through your vocal cords, the “source” of your voice. But then those vibrations also ricochet off the muscles in your throat and mouth, in your nasal cavity, and create residual vibrations that hit the bones in your neck and head as well, sending their own pulses to the brain.

In essence, when you listen to someone else or a recording of yourself, you’re listening in “mono-sound,” or single track. But when you listen to yourself while you’re speaking, you’re listening in “stereo” or “surround-sound,” with a much fuller, richer sound.

So how can you ensure that everyone hears your best, most melodic voice? Here’s three quick tips that will help them hear your ideal sound.

First, hydrate. Make sure you drink enough water, because a dry throat, dry mouth and tired throat muscles don’t allow sound to flow easily. The “fine print” to this is that it also means you should limit caffeine (*gasp!*) prior to an important speaking opportunity, because caffeine is a diuretic that makes the problem worse.

Second, limit dairy. Dairy produces mucous, and mucous gives you that sensation of perpetually needing to clear your throat as well, which is an annoying habit to hear time and again in any speech, presentation or conversation.

Lastly, breathe! The way you breathe will directly affect the quality of your voice. Start with your posture. If you’re slouched in your chair, you limit the amount of air you can take in, which is the fuel for your voice. And as you run out of air, it “fries out,” with a frog-like, croaky sound. Some people also ramble on and on without taking a breath for fear that if they do, someone will jump in during that split second and cut them off. Once the air is mostly gone, if you keep on talking, that same vocal “fry” will creep in again.

Why does this matter? Because not only is it unpleasant and even annoying to listen to, but it sounds insecure, timid, and hesitant, which is a combo that connotes anything but leadership.

So remember: Drink water, limit caffeine and dairy before speaking, and remember to take enough breaths while you’re speaking. This allows you to maximize the fullness of your tone, so the voice you hear in your head more accurately reflects the voice that everyone else hears when they listen to you… and that’s a voice the projects confidence, control, poise and power.

Who doesn’t like the sound of that?

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Do you have questions or comments about the issues in today’s post, want to know how to apply them, or how to help others with them? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to instantly schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss it with me personally!

Categories
Leadership Marketing Personal Development

We could all take marketing lessons from Coca Cola

The name Coca-Cola is universal, one of the most famous brands ever. Even People all over the world over recognize the name and the logo. It’s a name like Kleenex or Xerox, so pervasive that the brand name becomes the generic description of a variety of items. Yet, Coke still spends millions of dollars each year marketing their soft drink. You would think for most of us wouldn’t even need to be marketed TO? When I go out to dinner and order a soft drink, I always say, “I’d like a Diet Coke.” What more can the company do to make us stop and pay attention?

The Share a Coke campaign is catching a lot of people’s eyes this summer. I first noticed the change on the cans about a few weeks ago. I’m not a coke drinker then I grabbed from a friend’s fridge said “Family” and the next one said “BFF.” I was curious what the new cans were all about so I actually went to the Coca-Cola website. Darn you, delicious soft drink company! I fell for your incredibly clever marketing ploy!

I thought the cans were cute, but then learned that the 20 oz. bottles have been replaced by names. With that knowledge, I revert back to the 7-year-old me who used to go through the bike license plate displays at the beach, desperately searching for my name. Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find my name on a Coke bottle this summer because the names on the bottles are the 250 most popular names of teens and millenials in the United States. How do I know this? I learned this fact because I wanted to learn more about the intriguing marketing campaign and researched articles about the campaign on the Internet.

The campaign was a huge success in the U.K. last summer so Coca-Cola decided to expand it this year. When you find your name, you can take a “selfie” with your bottle and share it online (the hashtag is #shareacoke, of course), or see who else out there has found your name for you? Not a teen or millennial? You can order a bottle with your name from the online store or get a customized bottle from the Share a Coke tour when your hometown is one of the 500 stops.
So, even though Coke is one of the most famous brands in the world, they have some how captured my attention enough to

  • Look at each individual can I take from the fridge
  • Go to their website
  • Desperately search for name on a bottle
  • Look up articles about the marketing campaign to learn more

What can we learn from this? The greats never rest on their laurels. Even the most famous brands in the world can get customers to examine their product more closely. We can #beunstoppabletogether.

Do you have questions or comments about the issues in today’s post, want to know how to apply them, or how to help others with them? If so, contact me at connie@pheiffgroup.com or CLICK HERE to schedule a 20-minute discovery call to discuss with you personally.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Leadership Personal Development

Old Habits Die Hard: Management Ideas and Employee Engagement

They say old habits die hard. It’s true. Some scientists explain this by explaining how 90-95% of our brain activity is unconscious. Therefore, most of our decisions are already made before we even think about them (Shahram Heshmat, 2016). We tend to act on previous information and/or patterns 90-95% of the time.

What does this have to do with employee engagement? Engagement has been, and remains, a major issue for today’s C-Suite occupants. In Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends, culture and engagement emerged as the most prominent issue overall (Singh, 2015). Furthermore, the gap between the importance the C-Suite executives place on improving engagement and their organizations’ readiness to act, remains significant. Other data confirms this. In 2015, the average percentage of employees engaged in the U.S. stood at 32%. This number has barely fluctuated for 20 years (Employee Engagement is U.S. Stagnant in 2015, 2016).

Which old habits are contributing to this stagnation in engagement improvement? There is never one answer. One factor is the language we continually use to describe people and situations. Because, it is a habit. The language remains the same because it is very often unconscious. If we change our language we can begin to change thinking. Our thinking can influence our actions which will change the stagnant engagement results.

We continue to use phrases that solicit thinking and behaviors inconsistent with engagement. Manager, manage people, management of people, Human Resource management, performance management all have their derivation in the word “manage.” According to Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith, management of people, as a profession, began with the rise of slavery (Goldsmith, 2002). Cloke and Goldsmith explain how the expansion of agriculture required some of the select slaves be chosen to oversee the growing number of slaves needed to meet the growth demands.

The definition of “manage” always includes the word control. The idea that people must be controlled must naturally follow from this language. I believe our old habit of using the phrases of management elicits feelings of control and those feelings are inconsistent with optimum employee engagement feelings of self-control, volunteerism, freedom, autonomy, creativity, etc.

According to Vocabulary.com, the likely origin of the word manager is from the word manus meaning hand, and that hand guides others. Slavery was needed to sustain the economic performance of the time. Therefore, managers were needed to sustain it. The combination of absent owners and the continued lack of motivation demonstrated by the slaves made the “manager’s” role essential. Managers were encouraged to discipline and control the workforce. The absent owners depended on the skill of the managers to protect their wealth. Without their oversight, no one would remain a slave and submit to the arduous labor required.

Slaves needed to be controlled and this relationship between manager and slave created much dysfunction, in the form of alienation, periodic revolts, and lack of motivation. In his book The End of Racism, Dinesh D’Souza explains how slavery as a system can be blamed for cultural norms such as self-defeating and irresponsible attitudes (D’Souza, 1995). These behaviors clearly match those of the disengaged and actively disengaged workers.

So, what can we do to shift these habits and begin to pave the way for improved employee engagement? One excellent option is to use different language to describe people and their roles. Can we use facilitator or process facilitator in place of manager or department manager? A facilitator is one who makes things easier for others. He/she facilitates the achievement of outcomes. It’s not about control. It is about making things easier to achieve aligned goals. Can we begin to replace the word manager with phrases such as sales department facilitator, finance department facilitator? Perhaps we need to be creative.

Can we begin to think of employees as volunteers? Can we use the phrase, “paid volunteer?” When one is a volunteer they do something out of volition or heart. They do it because they are willing and committed, not controlled. Can we replace Human Resources Manager with “Paid Volunteer Facilitator”?

The use of facilitator in place of manager and volunteer in place of employee changes the relationships. It requires a higher level of trust and rejects the need for control. This idea of control damages engagement. I suggest we start using these innovative words as titles for replacing the “manager” phrases and employee phrases to begin to shift the unconscious choices we are making with the old outdated language. This will begin to break up the old habits and old ways of thinking which as unconscious and not working.

Dr. Wally Hauck, CSP helps leaders boost profit by unleashing the genius of every employee. By showing leaders how to get the best from their teams, with proven methods and by avoiding morale-busting mistakes, leaders can achieve their strategic goals more quickly and with less waste.

For more than 20 years Wally has worked with nearly 200 organizations, hundreds of leaders, and thousands of employees to optimize engagement and customer experience. Many have achieved significant transformational improvements.

Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. As a professor of Organizational Change and Development at the University of New Haven in Connecticut Wally received the highest ratings of all professors in 2012.

Wally is a proud member of the C-Suite Advisors Network

D’Souza, D. (1995). The End of Racism Principles for a Multiracial Society. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Employee Engagement is U.S. Stagnant in 2015. (2016, January 13). Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com: http://www.gallup.com/poll/188144/employee-engagement-stagnant-2015.aspx
Goldsmith, K. C. (2002). The End of Management And the Rise of Organizational Democracy. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Shahram Heshmat, P. (2016, February 1). Why Old Habits Die Hard? Retrieved from www.psychologytoday.com: https://www.relationshipscoach.co.uk/blog/research-shows-our-subconscious-mind-makes-our-decisions-for-us/

Singh, S. V. (2015). Global Human Capital Trends. Deloitte.

Categories
Growth Personal Development Technology

Is Your Business Changing as Your Customers Change?

Some e-newsletters are sent weekly. Some are even sent daily, like an email I get from RetailWire.com, a publication that is read each day by thousands of people in the retail industry. This is the number one forum for discussions about issues that are important to their industry. Even though RetailWire.com focuses on the retail industry, many articles are relevant to virtually every business in every industry.

Here is an example: a recent article in RetailWire asked, “Will virtual reality make brick-and-mortar stores less relevant?” Just in case you haven’t experienced virtual reality, allow me to describe the process and the incredible results. After you put on a goggles-like device, you can see the most amazing three dimensional images and videos. Okay, let’s get back to the question. My response is that virtual reality and augmented reality are just enhanced ways of viewing and experiencing products online. That’s all. Sure, they will change the way people shop online, but that’s still “virtual” shopping. It’s not real! For example, you can’t actually touch the material to determine the quality of the suit or dress you’re looking at through a virtual reality headset. You can’t try it on either. So, how could this technology make physical stores less relevant?

Actually, the discussion of physical stores becoming irrelevant is not new but has been a topic of conversation for years. Do you know when the first online purchase was made? Nearly 23 years ago! According to a video produced by Shopify, an online shopping software program, the first online transaction was on August 11, 1994. On that date, a friend bought a Sting CD over the internet through Dan Kohn’s online startup company. Many people claimed though this radical way of doing business would never work. People would never buy online. Well, never say never. Shortly after that CD purchase, Amazon came into being.

How far have we come from there? Research from Adobe claims that last year’s Black Friday’s online sales were over $3 billion. And Cyber Monday’s sales, just three days later, were also over $3 billion. In fact, Forrester predicts that by the year 2020, just three years from now, online sales will exceed $523 billion!

So, should brick-and-mortar retailers be scared? Maybe … if they aren’t willing to change. There have always been companies in virtually every industry that haven’t been willing to change that have found a path to extinction. So, here is the lesson:

Business – in all industries – is changing. The old saying is true: The only thing that is constant is change. So, get used to it.

Will online stores kill physical stores?
Did ATM’s eliminate bank tellers?
Did “Video Kill the Radio Star” when MTV went live back in 1981?

The answers are no, no and no!

Yes, the consumer is migrating to do more shopping online. The result may make a physical store a little less “relevant” – but it certainly won’t make the retailer less relevant! A retailer, as anyone or any company in business, must adjust and change. A retailer won’t become less relevant simply because sales are moving from in-store to online. It will be because the retailer doesn’t adapt to the way their customers want to buy.

It’s the same for every business. Your customers buying habits are changing. Adapt or watch your business die a slow and painful death. To ensure future existence and profitability, you must be willing to change – as your customers change.

Categories
Biography and History Growth Personal Development

They Think You Are Saying Something Else

Since Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of words has changed. We expect that to happen as we invent new things, as slang words are created, and to keep up with the times. Consequently, new words are needed to name them.

Adding words for those reasons is understandable. Changing definitions of words is difficult to grasp. In Webster’s first dictionary the word “definition” is described as “a brief description of a thing by its properties; the explication of the essence of a thing by its kind and difference.” The definition represents the core of what a word is. To create his dictionary, Webster looked at 26 dictionaries in different languages to determine the origin of each word. He goal was to capture the essence of the word.

Yet definitions are changing from what we thought a word meant. “Truth” went from an “indisputable fact” to an “accepted fact.” What was once the real state of things is now whatever people will allow. “Reality” used to mean “fact” and now means “a resemblance to being real.” No longer does it mean what actually happened. Reality is what anyone wants it to be. The word “Lie” means “to make an untrue statement.” If what is true is what we allow and what happened is somewhat similar to what actually happened, isn’t that a lie? [I use the word lie, since the words fake and phony aren’t in Webster’s dictionary.]

How can anyone understand what a person is saying if we don’t have a common language. Lack of communication is a major source of conflict. We fill in our own ideas and get different messages.

So often we hear that a politician or celebrity has to apologize for something they said. A listener puts in their own interpretation which may not be what the speaker meant. When someone speaks we need to figure out what their message is not what we think it could be. If not we are missing their message. Moreover, we are listening to ourselves. What is the point of listening to someone if you are not going to figure out what they are saying.

When someone does cry out injustice many people fall in behind them, asking for an apology. Immediately others jump on board with the protester. Why would anyone want to agree with someone who is wrong?

Don’t apologize about something a person thought you meant. They didn’t make an effort to hear you. If you have been misinterpreted you don’t need to respond or retract your words. The person who took offense should look at themselves to determine in them what brought about that feeling. That is their issue they need to reflect on.

That is a reason why there is so much conflict about gender, race, and sexual preference. Someone will take what was spoken and twist around the speaker’s words. This causes problems and consequently, creates tension between groups of people.

The media loves to do this. We hear more stories about what black people do wrong and less on what white people do wrong. Why? It fuels the flames of racism. We only see stories about how defenseless homosexuals are and how horrible the people are who oppose homosexuality. Why? It entices the groups to battle. This makes great storytelling. For the media, it’s about ratings, not the real news.

That is why Noah Webster fought for and helped create a universal language. A language that changes as a result of trivial or brief trends will not work. We must have a vocabulary that stands firm in its word definitions.