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Category: Personal Development

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Belle’s World – Personal Relationships

Original Prompt published on July 16, 2017 on Belle’s World.

Do your personal relationships affect your business success?

If you were to look at the world of business, many successful executives have business coaches. Business coaches focus on helping a leader become more charismatic, lead better, manage people or situations better and even become self-aware of themselves (a small list.)  I’ve had multiple business coaches, in my career and they have supported me in very specific situations. Over time they helped me manage my emotions, the process of dealing with the situation and making me a better business woman.  In all instances, they delved into my personal life, personality and way of thinking based on my experiences.

My first business coach spent more time on my personal life than on the business situation. I only had three sessions with my first business coach (Brandon) but our conversation Day 1 became a turning point for where I am today. Brandon was a year ahead of me in B-School and came back after he graduated to coach students still in the MBA program.  I started talking about my aspirations of becoming a Fortune 100 CMO one day.  On paper – I was on track – I had 4 years of marketing and branding experience at a Fortune 200 company and additionally, had 1.5 years with a top 10 global advertising agency.  However, within 10 minutes he started asking me about my life – my personal life. At the time, I was living with my, to be second husband and dealing with hiding it from my parents.  I was struggling with opening myself up to my parents about a large piece of my life and yet was living as the dutiful daughter completing her MBA and going on to bigger and better things.  Emotionally I was all over the place and my coach could see that in the first 10 minutes.  He started taking me down a path of helping me understand, that I was shouldering a lot of emotional responsibility for multiple people.  He described it to me as a 2 story burning house. I could only save one person at a time including myself.   My decision on who I saved wasn’t based on the fact that I did love or didn’t love the people in my life.  However, he was trying to show me that burning house was my constant, in my everyday life and at some point would burn me.  He gave me the example because my emotional dial was always burning and I wasn’t putting any emotional effort into what I wanted. If I wanted to be successful at business, I was going to have to learn to be honest, with those around me that I loved and additionally, with myself.  Over the next two sessions, I started making progress on mentally understanding the path I needed to take to get myself in a good place to be the business woman I wanted to be.  The self-awareness process took about 5 years including a second divorce, multiple promotions and eventually leaving the corporate world 3 years ago.  The business success of multiple promotions happened when I truly remember starting to own my personal emotional health and it opened myself to becoming a better employee and leader.  If you get a chance check out Brandon Smith who was my first business coach and made the biggest business impact on my life by focusing on my personal side.

My second business coach was given to me as a reward for dealing with a very intense personnel issue at work.  I was leading a project to get data and evidence that a leader in our organization had committed fraud with the company and additionally was not doing any work.  The individual and I had a good relationship because they didn’t like conflict.  However, I had to change my personality to be strong about the situation and collect the information and yet keep a civil attitude in the situation.  After the situation was taken care of, the company provided me a business coach, to groom me for the next level in my career. About halfway through our first meeting, my coach had somehow come to the topic of my second divorce, which had just happened, in the 6 months prior to this incident.  She realized there were still some lingering emotions and conflicts that I was dealing with personally that were not allowing me to take my current job to the next level.  Over the next six months we spent 50% of our time talking through and giving me homework on managing my emotional baggage and 50% of the time setting a specific goal for my role.  To be honest, I spent more time on working through my personal stuff which in turn helped me exceed my professional goal we had set.

Over the years, I have met very successful business people and when we meet, we don’t talk about business.  We talk about life – their families, their travels, their fears and other vulnerabilities that they don’t want to talk to others about.  With me, I show them that I value my personal world as much if not much more than my business world even though I am an ambitious business woman.  However, I give them stories on how each time I dealt with personal issues (whether relationships, money, love, family, health etc) that allowed me to take my business career up one level because of the lessons I learned from dealing with the issue, having honest conversations and processing the emotions that came out of it. The stories are based on a current issue that they are facing. Every time life throws a lemon, I try to make a stiff lemonade that will take me through an array of emotions and may not be the easiest thing to deal with (hence a stiff lemonade.)

So today, I work with business executives to understand their personal lives – the trials and tribulations they are going through.  Understanding what are the hidden fear or issues they are dealing with that they don’t want to speak to others about, for fear of looking like they don’t have it together.  I give them a safe space to unleash what’s in their mind by using me as a sounding board that gives no judgment but helps them become accountable for their thoughts and actions.  I take them out of their comfort zone for a while so they can dig deep into what they truly want and how they want to move forward in their lives.  All the self reflection and hyper awareness makes them cognizant of their actions and behavior in the business world allowing them to take themselves up a notch so they are not dealing with a burning house in the background but instead hearing the birds sing as they move forward.

So why do many executives roll their eyes when a life guide / coach comes to them to prioritize their personal life which in turn will make them better leaders / business person? 

 

Welcome to Belle’s world. Everything in this world is based on a bell curve. Our media concentrates on giving advice to make everyone be a part of the masses.

This is a weekly series of Urvi’s insights on her perception of the world. They say perception is reality and she lives in her own fantasy world. This allows her to delve into the human element of our lives, helping individuals decipher their own souls, to understand, who they are and what they want, in the journey of life.

Belle’s world explores the extremes and goes beyond the surface. Ready to read about some of the “elephants in the room?”

Contact urvi, for a free, 30 minute consultation, if you want to build your emotional wealth and enhance your life based on your inner core. #thehumanelement

Categories
Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Your Company May Be Next

The Story of Two Businesses

After being forced to change the design of their businesses, the companies reported dramatic loss of sales and even bankruptcy. Though they did everything right, they still were unable to survive. They had a plan based on a target customer, had the funding and the location they needed. Yet an insignificant population prevented them from succeeding.

Story #1

We can determine who will be in a movie theater by what the movie is rated. If it is rated G there will be kids present. Rated R and we don’t anticipate kids there.

There are PG movies that adults would be interested in like Shrek, Despicable Me, and Beauty & the Beast. Grownups might not go to these movies since they don’t want to deal with kids in attendance. However, they would show up if there was an adult only audience. The result would be increased ticket sales for the movie makers and the theaters, extra exposure for the film since a higher amount of people will be viewing it and a pleasant experience for the adults. A win-win for everyone.

Wouldn’t it be great if adults could go see movies and not be surrounded by kids. I’m not talking about denying families from seeing the movies. Instead having movie times for adults only. Something like adult swim in public pools where the kids must stay out of the pool for 10 minutes while the adults swim.

When the topic of adult only movie screenings is mentioned parents complain they want to bring their children. Despite there being numerous movie times for everyone and only a few that are adult only, people will object. If the adult movie time is only once a day or starts at 11pm people will complain, ‘My kids should be able to attend.’ Even though the parents have a multitude of screenings to pick from, they want what they are told they can’t have.

So the adult only screenings are dropped. We let the meager amount of voices prevail. When did this become the norm? The bellyachers say their kids have a right to attend. What happened to the rights of the adults?

Story #2

There was a bar/restaurant by me that had sand courts so the customers could play volleyball and consume beverages. Parents would bring their kids, who of course used the volleyball courts as a sandbox. When asked for the kids to move so a game could be played, the parents would complain stating their kids had a right to be there.

Remember, this is a bar/restaurant. Even at 11pm the adults couldn’t play because children would be in the sand. I’m talking about little kids. What are they doing at a bar at 11pm? The company created a venue where people could play volleyball yet the courts sat empty. Finally, it drove the adults away and the bar was unable to keep afloat. It closed. It could not survive when its target customer had been chased away. Instead, it was taken over by parents who in essence needed a place that could babysit their kids.

What makes it right for the complainers to get their way? The restaurant had an adult venue. It welcomed everyone, including kids. Yet when the children were asked to move the adults were being chastised by parents for wanting to play volleyball. The owners lost their business because a meager amount of people, who were not the target customer, were too selfish to let the owner run his business the way it was designed.

I enjoyed family time and wanted to do as much with my children as I could. I wouldn’t take my children to places that weren’t designed for them. It was fine. I just went somewhere else. There were so many places that were family friendly I didn’t need to be at any of the very few that weren’t.

Yet somehow we allow a small number of people determine what should be. The business owner created a place made for adults. Why can’t he do that? It’s his business and his vision. I don’t go to a barber shop to get my hair done and complain they don’t have stylists for women. I go to a salon.

We have been submitting to a small, overly verbal group too long. No one gets to determine how things will be in our business. We create our company to run the way we want. No one has the right to change a company’s DNA. A business can’t satisfy everyone so let the owner decide who its customers are.

Build your enterprise the way you want and stick to it when the pressure is on. You’ve created this entity and know it better than anyone. You have set a goal and are shooting for it. Only you have the best interest for your company, so stay on track.

We have to stop allowing the self-absorbed, the nut jobs, the complainers, (whatever you want to call them) determine what we do with our business. Their voices may be loud, but their numbers are few. Explain to them why you have set up your organization this way. Those who do not like the way things are need to do business elsewhere. You don’t care; they weren’t who you were shooting for.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Skills Women In Business

Turning a Faux Pas into a Win

The other day I was doing a training on leadership communication for a large client in the communication technology industry. Among their many products and services are video and teleconferencing tools. In the course of my program, we got to the part about facilitating virtual meetings, and as I clicked to the next slide, I suddenly heard a couple of boos from the crowd. I look up and realized my gaffe: my default visual was an image of people chatting on Skype – a direct competitor.

Now I had a choice to make: I could flush beet-red, babble a string of mortified apologies, and run out of the room in humiliation, or I could turn it around and make it a “teachable moment.” I opted for the latter, and explicitly shared this very choice with the group.

“Actually, I’m glad this happened, because it allows me to demonstrate some additional strategies in leadership communication, rather than just talking about them.”

From there, I walked them through a sequence of steps, both in addressing my personal mistake, and narrating the conscious strategy behind each step I was taking in the process. I share it with you here, so that you can also learn from my mistake, and use the experience to your advantage, as I did.

First, I apologized. I had made an undeniable, objective mistake, and it was my responsibility to own it. My voice stayed even in speed and volume to indicate composure, and model the degree of drama that I believed was warranted by the situation, so they could follow suit.

Second, I briefly explained my original intention behind the mistake, providing just enough information to help them understand what happened and increase empathy. In this case, at the time I selected these images, my focus and biggest challenge was finding appropriate pictures with sufficiently high resolution so I could zoom it on the slide and still have the picture be in sharp focus for the best visual experience, which limited my options based on the images I found on-line.

Third, I offered a solution to the problem, and engaged the audience in helping me to solve it. “Let me offer this to you in return: From here on out, I will replace these two images with your products instead, and have them be the standard images when I present to other companies in the future. How does that sound?” I saw lots of head nods in the audience. Free advertising for them; who wouldn’t appreciate that?

Then I followed up with, “But I’m going to need a little assistance. Since I wasn’t able to find good, high-resolution images of (Product X) online, I need one of you to send me some. Who here will volunteer to send them to me?” Half a dozen hands shot up in the air. Now, not only had I offered an agreeable solution, but I had enrolled the client’s enthusiastic participation in helping me execute the decision. Now we were partners, sharing in the responsibility to achieve the desired outcome.

At the end of the day, one woman said, “I really wanted to see where you were going to go with it once that (competitor) image popped up, but you handled the whole situation perfectly! I’m so glad we got to go through the process with you.”

In the end, what matters most is how you respond in the moment. Keep your composure, acknowledge the error, apologize appropriately, give only as much explanation as is necessary (sometimes none), then offer a remedy and see it through. This enables you to maintain control of the situation and lead by example, which helps you to build (or rebuild) trust, reinforcing your image and reputation as a leader.

********

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 schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss them with me personally!

Categories
Growth Personal Development Women In Business

Women Executives, Leaping from C-Suite Executive to Entrepreneur

Have you been thinking about making a leap from C-suite executive to entrepreneur? There are many women executives that are working hard to help make someone else’s dreams a reality. Although many people want to make the change from C-suite to entrepreneur, it’s sometimes a lot easier said than done. Yes, you already have a good, steady job, and feel as though it’s not worth the risk. However, you should ask yourself one question. “Does this feel like the reward I have been longing for?”

Unfortunately, the professional road for women isn’t always easy. Most women have to put in twice the effort. This is especially true for women that are looking to start their own business. As a matter of fact, you may find yourself worrying about that hour of sleep you’ll be losing reading this. Although our road to success is often littered with potholes, that doesn’t mean we can’t switch lanes to avoid them, and be unstoppable together. There are many women that have traveled down this road before you, and there are many women that are willing to give you some much needed advice.

As I mentioned before, making the leap from C-suite to entrepreneur doesn’t always come easy. So any concerns you may have are completely understandable, and normal. However, you have to keep reminding yourself that these fears and hurdles are manageable. Don’t scare yourself out of achieving your goals. There are a lot of excuses that can come between you and your dreams. However, before you overcome your fears, you have to identify them. Some of the most common concerns most aspiring entrepreneurs have include:

  • Fear of losing a steady a paycheck
  • A lack of knowledge and skills
  • The ability to get the job done and succeed
  • And considering all the hard work that women executives put in to be in a high level position, a fear of losing your professional status

Once you have identified your fears, it will be easier for you to push through and overcome them. Yes, it will be a challenge. Yes, there will be hurdles, and no, it won’t always be easy. You will have to work hard and be focused. As women, we’re used to working overtime to reach our goals. Make sure you keep that in mind when you’re having doubts. You are more capable then you think. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to become a women executive, so there is no question that you can do this. Remember when you succeed you help open a door for another woman striving to reach their goals. This five-step formula will help you conquer your fears so that we can be unstoppable together.

  1. Process

There are a lot of people that think a change implies that you’re trying to fix something that wasn’t doing well. However, the reality is that change represents growth and progression. In fact, you can’t run a long lasting business without making a change here and there. Everything is a process when you’re going from C-suite to entrepreneur. First you have to have a vision, because without a vision you have nothing. Learn how to use your competitive nature to your advantage with promotions and proposals. Your ending goal should always be to turn each client into a lifelong business relationship. Every successful business has a process, and over time you will learn how to create your own system.

  1. Position

Women executives that are leaping into entrepreneurship have to position themselves for success. Positioning yourself the right way can be a game changer. If you stay focused on what is most effective for you, you will learn the fundamentals of becoming an unstoppable DIVA. Learn how to research your market effectively, and get to know your clients a little deeper. Use your credibility as leverage with strategic alliances, and become an expert in your field.

  1. Package

Professional, successful businesses always create nice packaging for their clients. You have to learn how to be crafty and unique with your packaging ideas. You can also use this to practice your competitive edge. You’ll obviously have to create a product or service to market before you can package anything. Both your product and your packaging should be desirable, irresistible, and they should have a high value within your market. You can use platforms like YouTube, TV, radio, and social media to learn all you can about packaging.

  1. Promotion

At this point, you’ll have a clear message that you can introduce to the world and start to become the unstoppable DIVA that you were meant to be. You can use social proof of your credibility to help you become newsworthy. Make sales and promotions clear when you present proposals. Engaging with others will help you, and your business achieve more. You will be unstoppable together.

  1. Performance

Always make sure you have good budgeting and financial planning practices. Implement performance reviews in every aspect of your business as it accelerates. Remember, accountability is everything and without it, your business will start to crumble. Your training should always be ongoing. Learn, engage, and you will always achieve more. If you follow these 5 steps you will become the unstoppable DIVA that you’ve always aspired to become.

 

Be Unstoppable Together,

Connie Pheiff,

Unstoppable DIVA

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 Management Personal Development

Motivation and Growth

For the past four weeks I’ve been writing about motivation and your team. This is the fourth and last article in this series. If you have missed the first three you can find them here – In order of their release – How to Motivate Your Team, Motivation and Alignment, and Motivation and the Big Picture.

In this article we look at the third way to tap into intrinsic motivators through growth. I’ve never met anyone successful who said, “I’m good, I don’t want to grow,” and since you are looking to create a highly successful team one of your goals is to fill it with people who crave growth.

You want employees who bring value to your organization, who bring new ideas and innovation to their jobs, and who you want to stay with you for the long haul. That means you want employees who are not satisfied with the status quo.

Because turnover is expensive and losing talent that has tribal knowledge is irreplaceable, you need to tap into motivators that will also create employee loyalty. This means providing your employees educational opportunities and allowing them to step into new roles and take on new responsibilities over time, it’s about growth.

You may think that providing too much growth opportunity will mean that you will lose these employees in the long run and have to deal with the turnover anyway. It’s true that they may not work on your team or directly for you in the long run as their skills and value increases, but it means they stay within your organization, providing continued service that benefits everyone, including you.

Growth does not have to cost a lot either; it can be as small as having someone take a new leadership role in a meeting or having the opportunity to present to a more senior group. Of course, it can also be more involved such as including tuition reimbursement for college classes.  You can also provide coaching and mentoring that often can be done by someone else in your organization or by a third party on a more limited basis. It is about providing the opportunities they need to be set up for success.

Even providing a small budget for your employees to take a class that helps them grow personally will create loyalty. They may be interested in writing, cooking, gardening, computers, or public speaking. People want to be supported and often don’t have the support they need at home to improve themselves. When you are the one to provide that, they will in turn do more for you.

One of my favorite and inexpensive resources that you can provide is to pay for your employee’s membership in Toastmasters. My experience with this organization includes being a member, a club officer, and a district leader. In my time I have seen so many people grow in their confidence, leadership, and speaking skills, which will certainly provide benefit to you and your company in return.

Figure out your budget and sit down with your employees to find out how you can best help them grow. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution and some people may need more than others. I can tell you from personal experience some of my most de-motivational times at work were the years that my employer told me there was no budget for training and I had to figure out free ways (or pay for it myself) to get the continuing education credits I needed for the required certifications I had to maintain.

If you have implemented this type of program and still have challenges with employee motivation, timely or high quality deliverables, or other unfavorable situations it could be the alignment issue that I discuss in the second article. When your employees are not aligned personally with the work they do it does not matter how much growth opportunities they have, they will most likely never be an A player. That can be easily fixed and I’m happy to discuss it with you just like I am happy to discuss any challenge you are having with motivation. Just send me an email to sharon@c-suiteresults.com.

Categories
Management Marketing Personal Development

Are Clever Marketing Methods Killing Your Brand?

 

Marketing budgets are increasing as more pressure builds on organizations to raise awareness of their brands and stand out from their competitors with clever advertising, sponsorship and digital media. This is happening at a time when customers and clients are demanding a higher level of customer experience, trust, respect and a touch of ‘personality’ to the brands they deal with and buy into. However, on the other hand, our research at Walking TALL has found that there is a general increase in corporate bad manners within organizations and a slide towards the other extreme to that of apathy and often scripted, unauthentic & insincere communication.

In addition, communication turn-around and response times are getting longer, and call waiting times extended in the ever-increasing call centre systems we all so frequently have to endure.  In turn this can create a significant roadblock between your customers and your brand, and the business success you strive for, need and indeed work hard to achieve.

It’s not difficult to see the obvious and dangerous void opening up here.

In fact this phenomenon is creating a sinkhole that is devouring client loyalty and great customer experience, potentially losing your company $millions in brand investment. The level of loss cannot easily be measured however it’s not difficult to visualize the impact to the brand when you consider as a customer how you feel and how you subsequently talk about that brand to your friends and colleagues when the experience you have with an employee of that company is negative.

Let me explain further – with the sophisticated marketing methods that are available to us as businesses today and the trend of brand focus on values and themes such as integrity, trust, caring, green, social responsibility, innovation and family-orientated to name but a few, teamed with the increasing brand reach, customers and all stakeholders have forgivably high expectations of the experience they will get from their interactions with your company. They expect to receive that level of care and interest in them that is so heavily advertised, therefore when it’s not there, there is a very high height to fall from, that in turn damages your brand.

This sinkhole is going to expand if organizations don’t wake up to the critical need to provide the employees with the behavioral training required to ensure that they interpret and internalize for themselves the meaning behind the values you have created. There is a need for a deeper appreciation of your corporate messaging on a level that employees can relate to, than perhaps you have undertaken already. Unless your people can understand the values, and live and breathe them every day, authentically, then you are wasting your corporate brand investment. Ultimately therefore, your increasing marketing budgets will kill your brand, due to the apparent falseness of your brand claims when a customer experiences your brand for themselves.

This goes for the leadership team also – the true personality of the corporate brand can be heavily influenced by the culture in part created by your senior team and executive. This includes their behaviors, external brand image and visibility & profile.

Typically Marketing and Brand Directors are not as focussed on people behaviors and the impact they have on the brand as they should be. This tends to be the responsibility of the HR and/or Learning & Development departments with little interaction with marketing. However, in order to reach the true marketing and brand objectives, would it not make sense to integrate people behaviors into any brand strategy at an early stage?

We are at a point in our business environment, where we need to re-align the corporate culture with that demanded by our clients and customers, if we are to stand out, create loyalty and get widely talked about for the right reasons.

It’s time to align people brand and behaviors with your corporate brand in a way that sticks.

Read more on this topic in Corporate Brand Personality by Lesley Everett, published Feb 2016

 

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Three Reasons Why Feedback Can Be Fearful

Have you ever had to tell someone something but you hesitated?  Perhaps they said something hurtful.  Perhaps they disappointed you in some way.  Instead of speaking up, you avoided the confrontation.  You second guessed your position.  You may have even made up excuses for the offender’s poor behavior.  Giving effective feedback can be quite difficult and if it’s avoided can cause even more damage.

For years I personally found it very difficult to give effective feedback to others.  In my first business partnership I experienced difficult situations.  My partner would often embarrass me in front of clients.  Or perhaps he would omit important information for me to do my job.  I was often caught being either confused or ineffective in front of clients.  I always found excuses not to give him feedback about these difficult situations because I was afraid.

Eventually the partnership had to be dissolved.  Over time, I came to realize that I contributed to the demise of our company because I lacked the ability and willingness to tell him the truth.  It was at that moment I decided to commit myself to giving necessary feedback without fear.  I created the process called Fearless Feedback.

There are three major reasons why feedback can be difficult in organizations.  First, our definitions are confusing.  Feedback can be misinterpreted as criticism.  People do not like to be criticized and most people are fearful of delivering criticism because it won’t be easily accepted.  It is interesting how 96% of people want feedback if they know it can improve their performance. (Folkman, 2014)  Furthermore, 92% agreed that negative information is effective if delivered properly. (Jack Zenger, 2014)

A useful distinction is needed.  Feedback is data for the purpose of learning and criticism is an opinion or judgment.  Unless we make this clear distinction confusion and resistance will be the result.

Second, many managers will avoid being seen as a judge of behavior out of fear of making things worse.  This explains why many of us hesitate to say anything. We don’t want to make things worse than they already are.  We fear damaging trust and relationships by speaking our truth and so we remain silent.  Many fear they will be seen as biased and their insights will be rejected.  This rejection can cause hurt to the giver not just the receiver.

Third, many managers were never taught how to give effective feedback.  This lack of knowledge damages confidence.  A lack of confidence not only damages the credibility of the information but it can also create fear of loss of credibility by the giver.  A loss of credibility is the greatest fear in the workplace. (Kathleen D. Ryan, 1998)

What if there was a way to change our mindset about feedback such that we welcomed it with open arms?  What if there was a way to deliver it without fear?  What if people expected it and felt obligated to both give it and receive it? The next two blogs will explain the details of the Fearless Feedback process including what it is and how to use it. Stay tuned.

 

 

Folkman, J. Z. (2014). Feedback-The-Powerful-Paradox. Retrieved December 26, 2016, from http://zengerfolkman.com/: http://zengerfolkman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ZF-Feedback-The-Powerful-Paradox.pdf

Jack Zenger, J. F. (2014, January 25). Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give. Retrieved December 26, 2016, from https://hbr.org: https://hbr.org/2014/01/your-employees-want-the-negative-feedback-you-hate-to-give

Kathleen D. Ryan, D. K. (1998). Driving Fear Out of the Workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  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.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

Why Feedback can be Fearful

How to Know When to Give Feedback

Categories
Best Practices Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

You May Not Be As Influential As You Think Are

Click here to watch You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are

Today’s fast-paced business environment requires leaders who can create influence others with sound communication practices.  In today’s world of emails and text messages, it’s easy to overlook the importance of face-to-face communication and the discipline required to be influential Monday to Monday®.

How you deliver determines whether or not others see you as credible, knowledgeable and trustworthy. Without doing this effectively, you inhibit your potential to: influence, increase profits and build a reputation you’re proud of Monday to Monday®.

Message take-aways

  • What influence is and what it is not.
  • What it means and takes to be influential Monday to Monday®
  • Sabotaging your influence without knowing it
  • What are the misperceptions of influence?

Categories
Industries Leadership Marketing Personal Development

Good Tipper or Scrooge – What Are You?

 

Some people love to tip and others don’t. However, it appears that, nowadays, everyone is expecting a tip even if they are just serving you at the checkout!

When you see a tip jar by the cash register what do you think? To me, the tip jar says “I deserve a tip”. But it says quite a bit more, too, and none of it good about your Customer Experience.

When ordering at a cash register, we Brits tend to feel a tip is not necessary as we offer gratuity when waited on at a table. However, I also recognize that when I am in the states, tipping rules are different.

The tip jar is there nonetheless. Now, as a customer, I must decide. Tip now, even though it’s not a situation where I would perceive a tip to be necessary, or ignore it and risk appearing rude to the person making my taco/latte/sandwich.

Say I go ahead and tip. How much do I tip? The loose change I get back from the cashier? A couple of dollars?  20% of my entire check? What is customary for the tip jar next to the cash register?

Let’s say I do tip, but then have a terribly long wait getting my taco/latte/sandwich. Or it comes cold. Or wrong. Do I get to fish my tip back out of the jar?

The presence of a tip jar reflects poorly on the Customer Experience. Whether it’s feeling unsure if you should tip, experiencing guilt because you didn’t, wondering how much to tip or wishing you hadn’t tipped at all, these situations do not enhance the Customer Experience.

The Origins and Customs of Tipping

There is some dissension about where tipping originated. One argument is that it originated in 17th Century England taverns where customers would give their server extra money “to insure promptitude” or T.I.P. Wikipedia asserts it began when English houseguests left money for the host’s servants.

Wherever it started, it didn’t make it to the U.S. until after the Civil War. The Washington Post submits tipping began because employers hired freed slaves to serve food but didn’t want to pay them an hourly wage. Over time, tipping became the norm for several industries, from hotel workers, to delivery employees, and your favorite coffee baristas.

Tips and the amount of them is subject to the country and social customs thereof. In the States, tipping is customary, ranging from 10% to 20% in most cases. In the UK, it isn’t, or at least not with same amount of expectation, which is also true in many European countries.

It’s different because of the compensation workers receive in the different countries. Many employees in the U.S. make less than the federal minimum wage because their tips are meant to make up the difference. In many states, these employees might make little more than $2 an hour in employer-paid wages. In the UK, however, employers must pay employees the minimum wage, which ranges from £7.20 to £9.40 ($8.99 to $11.74 currently), depending on the city where the worker lives.

Because UK workers make the “living wage”, there is less tipping. While there are still situations where a tip is given in the UK, there is not the same culture for tipping there that exists in the states. There are numerous situations where tips are neither given nor expected.

What a Tip Jar Says about Your Brand

Entrepreneur detailed all the ways the tip jar hurts your brand. First and foremost, a tip jar says you don’t pay your employees enough. A tip jar also make your establishment look cheap, which is never a goal of a brand. Affordable? Yes. Cheap? No. To my point, Entrepreneur asserts that tip jars are also misplaced because customers are “asked” to tip before they receive the service. Moreover, it confuses people that lack a shared cultural background.

Co-author Professor Ryan Hamilton and I present a related concept in our latest book, The Intuitive Customer: 7 imperatives for moving your Customer Experience to the next level (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). One of our imperatives is to “accept that apparently irrelevant aspects of your Customer Experience are sometimes the most important aspects.” To summarize, this concept addresses the fact that when things get ambiguous or difficult to evaluate, customers might use high-level impressions of a brand to judge their experience. Expectations play a big role in these evaluations, and these expectations are set by your brand promise.

When a tip jar is present, it also creates an expectation. If you don’t live up to the customers’ expectations, your brand suffers for it. For small businesses, these small things can add up to big problems.

They are everywhere these days. They have weaseled their way into the most unlikely of places, quite brazenly if you ask me.

Enough is enough, as they say. Well, I have had enough with the omnipresent tip jar at the register of various establishments. If you have one sitting there now in your business, you should have enough, too, because it’s not doing anything good for your Customer Experience.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy these:

Revolutionary Thinking on Customer Loyalty

Astonishing BIG Gains from Little Changes!

Act Now to Turn Customer Pain Points into Pleasurable Profits

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX

Sources:

Roth, Carol. “Small Businesses That Encourage Tipping Are Killing Their Brand.” www.entrepreneur.com. 16 January 2017 Web. 30 January 2017. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/287793.

“Service 101: A Brief History of Tipping.” www.foodwoolf.com. Web. 30 January 2017. < http://www.foodwoolf.com/2010/08/history-of-tipping.html>.

Ferdman, Roberto A. “I dare you to read this and still feel good about tipping.” www.washingtonpost.com. 18 February 2016.

Web. 30 January 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/i-dare-you-to-read-this-and-still-feel-ok-about-tipping-in-the-united-states/?utm_term=.c4cc5b94ac1c

“Gratuity.” www.wikipedia.org. Web. 30 January 2017. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity>.

“United Kingdom: Tipping & Etiquette.” www.tripadvisor.co.uk. Web. 30 January 2017. https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Travel-g186216-s606/United-Kingdom:Tipping.And.Etiquette.html. 

Categories
Growth Human Resources Leadership Skills

Belle’s World – Age

Original Prompt published on July 15, 2017 on Belle’s World.

Age is something we don’t really talk about. So my question is why?

As our cultural paradigms are shifting, individuals are redefining what age really means.  When people tell me, I look young or they mention an age much younger than my age, I used to feel frustrated. Today, I take it as a compliment and very proudly announce I am 40 years old and at the tail end of the X-Generation.

Why is it important for me to let someone know my age?  It’s important because if someone assumes I am much younger they are not giving me credit for the experience (professional and life) that I bring to the table.  I appreciate the world giving me the compliment of being youthful but I also want to be known for my knowledge and the impact I can make.

Each age brings something to the table and we should appreciate the individual, for their life journey and what they offer rather than having a bias on age.  It’s important for us to engage the benefits of being in a certain generation based on age.

Millennials were brought up with technology and are adept at learning to use them and make things efficient or easier through it.  They spend much of their time interacting with each other through their devices and have always had information overload since they were children.  Millennials worry about the generation coming after them, that have had technology in their hands since they were born.  Let’s utilize the Millennials ability to be comfortable with technology to teach other generations especially boomers how to make it useful in their lives.  They may not have as much life experience but they are the driving force of how we interact with technology going forward and how most businesses are transforming to engage with them as consumers.

The X – Generation created many of the technologies that were the forefront of our technology acceleration today.  They are the conduit between technology and the human element of still interacting with people to build relationships.  They have 20 – 30 years of business experience and are able to translate much of the technology paradigm shifts along with cultural paradigm shifts.  They are going through an awakening of understanding they have a much longer life span and are still not in the prime of their lives like they expected to be.  They are sandwiched between the Millennials and Boomers and are quietly trying to transform how we live, work and play while the media focuses on the outer generations.

Boomers have experience and have built relationships over many years.  They also are living longer and healthier lives.  Retirement as it once stood has been turned on its head and many boomers are continuing to work because they enjoy it and not necessarily because they need to.  They have been doing it for so many years that it’s become a part of who they are and it continues to motivate them to enjoy their life journey.  The Boomer generation didn’t grow up with the technology, but many of them are very open to learning it and have adopted it as part of their life.  It’s key to remember that adopting technology takes a mental shift and those Boomers who are adapting are critical to our changing lifestyles.  If we have an open mind that they are more than just “old” people we could be utilizing their experience and loyalty to help move us forward.

Lastly, the silent generation, who aren’t around much but those that are live their life and are proud of how far they have come and truly appreciate the people in their life.  If we all have something to learn, it is to understand what really matters in the long run. The one main idea they all resonate with are the experiences and people in their life matter today.  The work, the money, the success are all part of the journey but they are not what brings them to happiness today.

Be proud of your age / generation and what you bring to the table.  There are no rules anymore of what you should be doing or how you should look at your age.  Own this valuable piece of your life journey and let others know what you can do to make an impact on their organization or in life.

 

Welcome to Belle’s world. Everything in this world is based on a bell curve. Our media concentrates on giving advice to make everyone be a part of the masses.

This is a weekly series of Urvi’s insights on her perception of the world. They say perception is reality and she lives in her own fantasy world. This allows her to delve into the human element of our lives, helping individuals decipher their own souls, to understand, who they are and what they want, in the journey of life.

Belle’s world explores the extremes and goes beyond the surface. Ready to read about some of the “elephants in the room?”

 

Contact urvi, for a free, 30 minute consultation, if you want to build your emotional wealth and enhance your life based on your inner core. #thehumanelement