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By Thomas White, CEO of C-Suite Network
In my work, I meet business leaders from all over the world who have advice, stories and personal tips to provide. I sit down with these leaders to give them the opportunity to provide current business advice and give a glimpse to their personal stories as a business leader.
I recently interviewed Diedre Koppelman, Founder and CEO of PEAR Core Solutions. Since founding PEAR in 2003, Deidre has worked closely with senior level executives, business owners and organizational teams, providing strategic management counsel and solutions across a variety of industries. Deidre puts her focus into organizational development, leadership development and behavioral analytics for her clients.
Drama has been with us a long time. Drama has been depicted in the arts, movies plots etc. How does a psychiatrist by the name of Steven Karpman illustration depicting drama explain the Drama Triangle?
The Drama Triangle is an inverted triangle with the three corners illustrating the dynamics of drama. Once we can understand what role we play on the triangle, the triangle can provide us with a map on how to get out of the triangle, and basically end the drama. Here is a breakdown of each of the roles:
We often might see ourselves playing these different roles in different situations. Does this mean these roles are interchangeable?
Yes, these roles are interchangeable. Here is an example of how we go through and interchange these roles. You may be a victim of someone or something so you go to a Rescuer and ask “Please help me, I can’t get this done.” If the Rescuer cannot help the Victim, The Victim will move into the Persecutor or Bully role and will start to bully the Rescuer, who now moves down to being the Victim. The movement on the triangle can happen in minutes. As we keep going around and around, the drama escalates.
Drama is all around us, every day, is there anything we can do to eliminate drama?
There is definitely an antidote to drama — the power of TED. TED is the acronym for “The Empowerment Dynamic” which was formulated by David Emerald. The basic concept is that you are going from an anxiety-based and problem-focused situation, which is drama, to a more passion-based and outcome-focused dynamic, which is the empowerment dynamic.
It is important to know, for those who have control in their organizations, that establishing a zero drama tolerance is really important and that you will not accept drama. To remove drama from the workplace it involves removing one role from the drama triangle. By eliminating the victim, the drama is gone. Here is where “The Empowerment Dynamic” can come into play. The victim can become the creator. They become accountable, confident, and they know that they have choices in any situation and can envision different outcomes. This also applies to the rescuer. When a rescuer is approached by a victim, the rescuer will assume the role of coach, they do not see the victim as a victim, but as someone who is capable and resourceful. They empower the victim to make choices, to come up with solutions, to take action. The antidote for the persecutor is to really spark growth and challenge the victim with the intent to help them grow. By changing every single role, you are ultimately empowering the victim into the role of creator.
Is there an assessment you can use to help identify which role you or your employees are playing?
A good place to start is to set up a workshop on the drama triangle. This will allow for everyone to understand the different roles and to help identify, through self-awareness, when they are in one of these roles. Once you can identify if you are in the triangle, you can identify at any time who is in what role.
If someone comes to you, and they are helpless, they feel powerless, they have no control over a situation, they would be identifying someone who is in the victim role. When this happens, you can understand that they are looking for help, you can then jump into a creator, or coach role and ask them “What do you think we should do?” or “Why don’t you think about it, come back, and let’s discuss it.” You always want to empower someone to be resourceful and to look for the answers, to give them control and the power to get over their situation.
How do you be a good, empathetic listener but also try to be encouraging at the same time?
Once you identify when you are switching from a coach to a rescuer, you will want to be empathetic, want to help, want to listen to the victim. This is where you’ll want to set limits to your listening. If it is something that the victim is complaining about over and over again, then you are just enabling them, and that is not what you want to do. But if the victim comes to you and they have an issue, listen and then automatically switch to the coach role. There is always the balance of listening to what challenges someone is having, and being careful that you are not going to solve that person’s problems. You want to enable them and empower them to come up with solutions and support them.
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By Jennifer Fleming, President, TallGrass Public Relations
Whether you’re a newly formed start-up or a well-established brand or thought leader, you’ve probably thought about or dabbled in public relations.
No matter how great your marketing strategies are, there is nothing more credible than an effective PR campaign. So if you’re at the stage where you really want to build your business brand, then it’s time to start seriously considering hiring professional assistance.
The TallGrass team consults with hundreds of clients each year in various phases of their marketing and PR strategy and programs. Some are at square one; others have worked with firms in their past or current companies.
But in order to make PR work, it boils down to three things: definitive goals, managed expectations and the right experts.
Know your goals and your bandwidth
Every new client at TallGrass participates in a strategic planning session – we won’t work with a client unless we do. Your PR firm should spend the time to understand your business. From your product roll-out schedule to growth opportunities, revenue models to target markets, asking the questions and understanding your business is critical to create messaging and stories that resonate. It drives the strategy to achieve your goals.
If you’re unclear about your goals, your mission and your 118/elevator pitch, get clear – fast. Without these guideposts, your PR team can’t begin to understand the parameters of what you’re trying to accomplish (and neither can your company!). A great firm should be able to ask the right questions, form a strategy and guide you in the right direction.
Not only do you need to be clear on your goals, but also your company needs to make PR an organizational commitment. Today, PR professionals outnumber journalists three to one. Requests for contributed content – content originated from your company or a “hired gun” content writer – are more and more common. PR will take time – yours and your firm’s. Are you prepared to drop everything for an interview or draft a thousand-word article?
“Make sure you know what to do with the results,” says Deane Barker, partner at Blend Interactive. “If you get a ton of speaking opportunities, can you fulfill them? How will you vet them? If sales leads come pouring in, do you have a process to manage them? Can you do anything with them? What results from PR is a raw asset that needs to be refined to have business value. Can you do this?”
If you want to be in the NYT, sleep with Paris Hilton
I’m kidding, sort of. Managing the expectations of our clients with the appropriate media outlets and journalists is an important part of what we do. Who wouldn’t love a placement in a major publication? But being everywhere is just as important. Having an arsenal of great coverage provides credibility and establishes you as a thought leader.
“It’s always nice to get a major media hit or article placement in a major national publication like USA Today. However, the real value is all of the smaller placements in industry magazines (print and digital) that focus on a target-specific audience,” says Shep Hyken, customer service expert, author and speaker. “While getting a spot on the ‘Today Show’ was great for my ego, the interviews and article placements in the industry publications were great for my business.”
Equally challenging and important in managing expectations is how to measure your ROI. Having a baseline of coverage from which to measure is great and can be helpful to define “we want X number of placements.” But PR is just part of the overall marketing mix.
“Don’t look at the ROI, it’s hard to measure and nearly impossible to see direct revenue,” says Mitchell Levy, Thought Leader Architect of THiNKaha. “What you are looking for is increased awareness leading to more opportunities for you and your team to engage with your future advocates. Those opportunities, if handled properly, will lead to significantly increased revenue.”
You’re hiring an expert for a reason
Companies can dabble with DIY public relations. But “it’s difficult to be consistent with pitching your business while you’re trying to run your company, too,” says Susan Solovic, small business expert, entrepreneur and author.
Just as you know your business inside and out, a PR professional can find the gems of your value proposition, messaging, product, service and company to tell your story.
But you have to be working with the right people. The ability to have open dialogue and to try a variety of tactics, to be flexible and agile creates a winning strategy.
“What worked in the past may not work in the future, and you want to be working with folks that you like, trust and are willing to try a number of techniques to be able to deliver the results you’re looking for,” Levy says.
A client once said to me, “Great PR is the ability to take chicken shit and make chicken salad.” Well said! You’ve hired an expert for a reason – now let them take the lead and let them do what they do best.
Jennifer Fleming is President of TallGrass PR, a global B2B public relations firm. She’s been known to follow shiny objects. Follow her at @jkfleming.
By Judith Glaser
Why and How of Engaging Customers
Gallup’s State of the American Consumer report states, “Fully engaged customers are more loyal and profitable. Afully engaged customer represents a 23 percent premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth.”
How can you effectively engage with your customers who operate at warp speed? We live in a world of right now, and the demand for instant results is seeping into every corner of our lives. Instant gratification is no longer a desire—it is an expectation.
In what Qualtrics calls the “era of immediacy,” we now operate in real-time and expect everything instantly. To engage with their customers and satisfy their need for speed, businesses must re-engineer their approach. Today, it’s about giving the customer what they want, when they want it and how they want it—or they’ll go someplace else.
Fast data is gathered quickly and shared and acted on quickly, before its shelf life expires. Fast data delivers the information needed to help address specific issues, drive results and propel innovation in the moment. Fast data helps enterprises gather real-time insights into what customer are thinking so they can address issues in the now and keep customers happy. Enterprises need to catch customers and employees when they’re thinking it. Forrester Research predicts: “In the age of the customer, the race will be won or lost based on your firm’s ability to know your customers and react faster and better.”
For example, the Viceroy Hotel Group used fast data to uncover valuable insights about potential customers that boosted the hotel’s bottom line. Using Qualtrics Site Intercept product, the VHG experienced a sudden surge in local web traffic. Managers scratched their heads. The locals weren’t planning to stay there, so what was up with all the traffic? In less than an hour, the LA-based hotel set up an online survey using Site Intercept that asked local visitors what they were looking for. It turned out they wanted a happy hour menu. A quick fix allowed the hotel to make the happy hour menu available to anyone from the LA area who visited the website. With fast data, the VHG delivered potential customers exactly what they wanted, which boosted the hotel’s bottom line.
Meet the Voice of the Customer
Enterprises struggle with having access to the right information at the right time and place in order to interact with customers, build new products, and improve service. This is why most leaders are investing resources to strengthen their customer engagement programs. This renewed commitment to customer engagement impacts how enterprises approach their Voice of Customer (VoC) initiatives. VoC is now a strategic initiative for better understanding customers and responding to their specific needs.
For example, JetBlue, another Qualtrics’ customer, noticed that their NPS score at a Philadelphia airport was very low for an early morning flight. By focusing on this insight, JetBlue could trace customer dissatisfaction to the fact that the shops and amenities in the terminal were not open when customers were looking for coffee and refreshments before their flight, making them grumpy. With this insight, JetBlue responded quickly by passing out water, juice and coffee at the gate in the morning to boost customer morale. This made a tremendous change in JetBlue’s satisfaction scores.
Customers now expect to give feedback, and to have that feedback acted on. This expectation is driving the demand for VoC. Organizations are looking to technology to address the new rules of customer engagement.
Today, anybody can gather data on nearly anything. The challenge isn’t in finding the right solution to help you gather data—it is in finding the right solution to allow you to access, and act upon those insights quickly and effectively. Otherwise, customers will go someplace else. Adapt or vanish, the old adage goes.
We can now collect insights faster than ever before, enabling us to make timelier and better business decisions, improve business results and create happier, engaged customers. This means more revenue and profits. In the era of immediacy,” actionable data enables us to give our customer what they want, when and how they want it.
Judith E. Glaser is CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc., Chairman of The Creating WE Institute, an Organizational Anthropologist, consultant to Fortune 500 Companies, and author of four best selling business books, includingConversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results (Bibliomotion, 2013) Visit www.creatingwe.com orwww.conversationalingelligence.com; email jeglaser@creatingwe.com or call 212-307-4386.
“The opposite of an impulse buy, a considered purchase is a complex buying decision with a high degree of financial and emotional risk and reward, requiring meaningful deliberation prior to purchase. Considered purchase marketing is a focused strategy that involves intimate understanding of the mindset of your customer, throughout the decision-making process.”
TODAY’S BUYER IS IN CONTROL.
Changing market dynamics, new channels, information and technology requires marketers to redefine how we reach and influence the brand choice of customers. Labeling buyers either as business-to-business or business-to-consumer is no longer a relevant starting point.
The now-outdated ways of marketing communications forced buyers through the traditional sales funnel. But today’s buyer is in control of the information they consume, and can therefore create their own journey. As marketers are ever more challenged to be effective and efficient with our investment, we need new thinking and approaches to intersect with our customer’s purchase journey.
A BETTER WAY — CONSIDERED PURCHASE MARKETING.
Instead of business-to-business and business-to-consumer, we must focus on the end-customer journey and understand where, as marketers, we can directly and indirectly influence their purchase decision through every available channel.
By Scott Yancey
A company’s success overseas is directly related to the number of languages the company ‘speaks,’ and how well its marketing team is able to localize and deliver content to target markets and regional sales teams. In order to reach 80% of the world’s economically active online audience, a company needs to deliver content in 14 different languages. That’s a lot of languages to reach a significant percentage of the buying audience. How will you maximize your product development, marketing and staffing dollars to effectively engage and sell overseas?
That’s where the Chief Localization Office comes in. To be clear, I’m not necessarily suggesting this as an actual C-Suite role; however, the need for a new kind of ‘lightning-rod’ leader or group that is able to influence the C-suite and advise them on the importance of an enterprise wide global roll out strategy is critical in today’s economy. Companies are spending more on translation and localization than ever before, and the numbers continue to grow – the global market for outsourced language services and supporting technology is expected to grow to $49.8 billion by 2019. Global organizations need a high-level authority responsible for global execution that includes localization as a strategic, revenue-generating process that affects:
In order to up-level the importance and impact content localization has on audience reach and revenue, the Chief Localization Officer will ensure it is not only on the C-Suite’s radar, but a key revenue driving performance indicator (KPI) used to measure the success of the company’s go-to-market efforts.
The Chief Localization Officer’s responsibilities might include:
Managing multilingual communications on a global scale is increasingly challenging, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every company, but a well managed, efficient localization process is critical to the success of any global launch process, day-to-day marketing, and training or support effort. It now deserves to be recognized as a business process in need of optimization with an elevated level of oversight and strategic intent. Typically, second and third tier target markets receive localized product and content many months after the English ‘launch’, and every day you can’t launch in those markets because localization wasn’t finished, inevitably leads to lost revenue and market share.
Does your company have a Chief Localization Officer? You might consider whether your competition already does.
Scott Yancey
Success comes from meeting change before it overtakes you. Change comes from social, political, economic and technological sources. Change is sometimes hard to spot so successful leaders learn from top thought leaders and the most successful executives. Harvey MacKay, one of the greatest writers and teachers of business success, has gathered some of the top business leaders together to share their wisdom on success in times of change. These leaders formed a business roundtable to learn, inspire and support each other’s success. Harvey has captured this learning, that many paid $150,000 for, in Harvey MacKay University. He is offering this program exclusively to you for just $100. (This is a special price of C-Suite Leaders). Jeffrey Hayzlett, C-Suite Chairman and former CMO of Kodak offers these insight into the Harvey MacKay University here. Ready to ramp up your success? Click below and immediately gain access to this wealth of knowledge that will keep your success rolling. When you click on the BUY NOW button and enter then the code CSUITE, the price of $990 is immediately reduced to $100. |
C-Suite Network Announces Winners of C-Suite Social Media Legends Awards
The honorees were announced at the C-Suite Conference on November 2nd at the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco
NEW YORK, NY – December 10, 2015 – The C-Suite Network, the world’s most trusted network of C-Suite leaders, announces the winners of the C-Suite Social Media Legends Awards. The awards acknowledge business leaders who show outstanding success in social media engagement and thought leadership.
“Social media has a massive impact on business and using it effectively has the power to exponentially grow your bottom line,” said Jeffrey Hayzlett, C-Suite Network Co-founder and Chairman. “These winners know first hand the importance of using social media in an innovated and engaging way. They are truly their brand’s greatest ambassadors.”
The top ten winners were announced on November 2 at the C-Suite Conference in San Francisco:
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce
Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot
David Bray, CIO of FCC
Elisa Camahort Page, Chief Community Officer of SheKnows Media
Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn
Sandy Carter, General Manager, Ecosystems and Social Business Evangelism of IBM
Christopher Penn, VP Marketing Tech of Shiftcomm
Dharmesh Shah, CTO of Hubspot
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter/Square
Jonathan Becher, Head of SAP Digital
“I am honored to receive this award and be recognized amongst such an esteemed list of social media thought leaders,” said Sandy Carter, General Manager, Cloud Ecosystem and Developers, IBM. “Social media has the ability to transform a business, and I accept this award in hopes of further educating business leaders on the importance of social media practices.”
“These awards acknowledge a prestigious group of winners impacting the way businesses successfully use social media. I am fortunate and grateful to be recognized amongst them,” said Elisa Camahort Page, Chief Community Officer, SheKnows Media.
The C-Suite Network partnered with OneQube, a company that provides real-time social media tools, to develop a unique social media methodology that identifies leaders who are most engaged with their communities. Accenture Digital, a leading global professional services company, was the marque partner for the awards.
“We are proud to support the C-Suite Social Media Legends Awards. It’s a great way to recognize leaders who are making major strides in brand engagement,” said Rob Harles Global Lead for Accenture Digital’s Social and Collaboration Practice, “As a leader in helping organizations drive digital transformation, we encourage C-level executives to become more involved and display their company vision and thought leadership through social media.”
To learn more about the C-Suite Social Media Legends Awards, visit: https://conference.csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/social-media-awards/
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About C-Suite Network
C-Suite Network is the world’s most powerful network of C-Suite leaders, with a focus on providing growth, development and networking opportunities for business executives with titles of vice president and above.
C-Suite Network brings leaders together through C-Suite Collective, a private online community for executives. C-Suite Network also offers invitation-only conferences held three times per year, custom-tailored content on the C-Suite Network blog, C-Suite TV, C-Suite Radio, C-Suite Book Club, and educational programs from C-Suite Academy. Learn more at www.csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com, join the LinkedIn Group and follow @csuitenetwork and facebook.com/thecsuitenetwork
CONTACT INFORMATION
Ashley Knapp
TallGrass Public Relations
605-275-4075
ashley.knapp@tallgrasspr.com