Monthly Archives: July 2020

How to Learn by Listening

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One of the things many growing organizations have trouble with is alignment and communication – from both a cultural and “business” standpoint. This may be the result of physically distributed teams or simply rapid growth. The larger an organization grows and the more distributed it becomes, the harder it is to make sure that there is a healthy relational dimension in our communication across the organization. Even in a small organization, understanding the importance of relational connection takes communication to the next level.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Leading Loyalty by Sandy Rogers, Leena Rinne, and Shawn Moon

In business, if people merely like you, you’re in trouble. They need to love you! Learn how building loyalty and modeling great customer service behavior to develop frontline teams is the key to building raving fans.

To thrive in today’s economy, it’s not enough for customers to merely like you. They have to love you. Win their hearts and they will not only purchase more—they’ll talk you up to everyone they know.

But what turns casual customers into passionate promoters? What makes people stick with you for the long haul?

The industry experts at Franklin Covey set out to unlock the mysteries of gaining the customer’s loyalty. In an extensive study that involved 1,100 stores and thousands of people, they isolated examples that stood out in terms of revenues and profitability. They found that these “campfire stores” burned brighter than the rest thanks to fiercely loyal customers and the employees who delight in making their customers’ lives easier.

Now Leading Loyalty reveals the principles and practices of these everyday service heroes—the customer-facing employees who cultivate bonds and lift revenues through the roof. Full of eye-opening examples and practical tools, Leading Loyalty helps you infuse empathy, responsibility, and generosity into every interaction and:

  • Make warm, authentic connections
  • Ask the right questions
  • Listen to learn
  • Discover the real job to be done
  • Take ownership of the customer’s issue
  • Follow up and strengthen the relationship
  • Share insights openly and kindly
  • Surprise people with unexpected extras
  • Model, teach, and reinforce these essential behaviors through weekly team huddles

It’s time to invest in building loyalty. Even small improvements mean a big boost to your bottom line…and improves your business overall.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

You would think listening would be easy. After all, we spend a good chunk of our lives doing it. We listened to our parents when we were children. We listened to our teachers in school. We listen to the radio in the car, and we listen to the TV while we are watching it.

But even though we have done it for so long, and even though we do it now, many of us don’t. Not really.

We hear sounds, but there is a difference between hearing things that happen to be around us at a given moment and actively, intentionally listening. The first happens without effort; the second comes through discipline and practice, and this is where we often fail. We find ourselves, especially when we are hearing something or someone we don’t agree with, not really listening but instead tolerating sound, just waiting for our own chance to talk.

There is a downside to efficiency when we’re working with human beings – we may neglect to take time to empathize and really listen.

The skill we are focused on here is not only listening to hear, but also listening to learn.

On a personal level, when we fail to listen, we not only miss the opportunity to show empathy and earn loyalty by connecting and learning from someone’s story, but we also fail to fulfill the greatest human need: to feel understood.

By making a genuine human connection with people and listening to learn, we uncover their story, which then allows us to feel and convey empathy.

By using the skill of listening to learn, you learn more about the other person’s story, and doing so enables you to show empathy. Listening to learn is not just a mechanical skill. It’s the result of really wanting to learn, of caring enough about another person to connect and listen for a moment.

Listening to learn comes from a heartfelt desire to truly understand other people. The more we understand, the more we can help them, the more loyal they become. The listening-to-learn behavior is rooted in the principle of empathy because it is about fully understanding and empathizing with the story of another.

Sandy Rogers, Leena Rinne, and Shawn Moon, Leading Loyalty

A NEXT STEP

Listening is important. It’s more than just a skill. In fact, it might well be worth considering, if we have trouble listening, the real reason why it’s so difficult.

A starting point? Listen to understand people without worrying or thinking about how to answer.

Who is someone on your team who excels at making genuine connection with others through listening? Ask them to share their “secrets” for listening with your whole team.

Following that, discuss the following questions:

  • What are we really trying to learn by listening?
  • Which of the following “Listen to Learn” guidelines do you need to improve on?
    • Stay silent until the person has finished talking.
    • Listen with your ears, eyes, and heart.
    • Don’t worry about how to answer – focus on understanding.
    • Rephrase what was said and check for understanding.
  • What does it mean to “listen with our ears, eyes, and heart”?
  • How do we check for understanding without solving the problem?

For a leader, listening is perhaps the most important skill of all. As a leader, we must learn to listen while navigating along with the person speaking toward a common destination – mutual understanding.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 121-2, released June 2019.

Part of a weekly series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader

Regular daily reading of books is an important part of my life. It even extends to my vocation, where as Vision Room Curator for Auxano I am responsible for publishing SUMS Remix, a biweekly book “excerpt” for church leaders. Each Wednesday on 27gen I will be taking a look back at previous issues of SUMS Remix and publishing an excerpt.

>>Purchase SUMS Remix here<<

>> Purchase prior issues of SUMS Remix here<<

Seven Trends of the New Retirement Mindset

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Many leaders view retirement – whether a few years or a few decades away – as a finish line.

But increasingly these leaders, especially for those who are closer to retirement, are finding that being too young to retire but too old to find a job has become a critical issue.

Will Heath, Succession Specialist, writes in his upcoming book, “There comes a point in every ministry leader’s life when their greatest contribution and source of influence shifts from the performance of tasks to protection and mentoring.”

In other words, retirement isn’t the last great thing a leader does. It is the gateway to a leader’s greatest season of influence.

We may live ten years longer than our parents and may even work twenty years longer, yet power is moving to those ten years younger.

Are leaders in this age group facing a decades long “irrelevancy gap”?

THE QUICK SUMMARY – I’m Not Done, by Patti Temple Rocks

When it comes to discrimination in the workplace, we’ve come a long way as a society. But there’s still one systemically ignored form of discrimination that happens all the time, and it affects everyone: ageism. 

Ageism is real. It’s widespread, insidious, and up until now, it’s been largely hidden, due to the low rate of reporting from those who are pushed out of their jobs when they reach a certain age. With the largest demographic America has ever seen–baby boomers–now experiencing age discrimination at work, it’s time to talk about this deeply hurtful and bad-for-business practice.

In I’m Not Done, Patti Temple Rocks takes a deep dive into ageism in the workplace–what it looks like, how it harms people and businesses alike, and how business leaders can get on the right side of the issue. Patti’s story, and the stories of those like her, creates a powerful declaration and a movement to stop this last remnant of workplace discrimination in its tracks: #I’mNotDone!

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Imagine a world where there is no longer a preconceived notion about what age someone becomes irrelevant or undervalued. What if, like every other form of inclusion, you were valued just because you were valuable?

Imagine a world where nobody feels the pressure to leave an organization before they are ready to leave, and age is taken off the table as a marker for retirement.

Older employees offer a wealth of value. They are, quite literally, a treasure to any organization. They have life experiences and work experiences that can absolutely meld with youth and new ideas and technologies. Imagine an organization that leveraged this experience and wisdom, that blended its workforce into a truly diverse, agile, intelligent, cohesive and kind organization.

What if you put as much thought into the end of your career as you did in the beginning, and it didn’t have to be kept a secret until the day you gave notice?

There are more older Americans in the workplace than ever before. And they’re accomplishing more than any generation before them. Because older workers are staying in their careers longer, a new paradigm is emerging. Here are seven key trends I see in the new Baby Boomer mindset.

The Wise Boomer

Boomers don’t see themselves as old, in either mind or body. They want to be appreciated for the knowledge and skills they’ve gained over a lifetime, and want to contribute in meaningful ways, including the ability to pass along their wisdom and life experience.

Sixty is (Really) the New Fifty

Boomers are intent on re-inventing aging in their own fun-loving image, going back to school, launching businesses, and running marathons. They don’t know the concept of “age-appropriate,” and they still feel great.

The “I Got This” Attitude

Long defined by their independent, trailblazing approach to life, Boomers are resistant to receiving support that threatens their autonomy. Their Millennial children don’t always understand this.

What Retirement?

Boomers look at retirement completely differently from previous generations. Boomers like having an impact in every way they can, and will be as creative as they need to be in finding opportunities.

No Moving Truck Required

Many Boomers are choosing to stay closer to home to remain connected to others – particularly their children and grandchildren, so they can stay active in their lives. They are also totally comfortable jumping on a plane and finding an Airbnb when they crave a little sunshine.

Constantly Connected

Boomers are readily adapting technology and using social media just as much as younger generations do. In fact, they are much more likely to share, advocate, and influence others online.

Proud…Just Not Always Out Loud

While Boomers are often justifiably proud of how young they look, feel, and act, sometimes that results in an effort, conscious or otherwise, to disguise their actual age.

Patti Temple Rocks, I’m Not Done

A NEXT STEP

Almost all ambitious young people spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the early stages of their career. Most don’t give a single thought to managing the tail end of their career. That’s a shame, because navigating the last ten years of a career can be even more difficult than the first ten.

It doesn’t matter what your age is now – the fact is, at some point you will “retire” from working. The seven trends above are both instructive for Baby Boomers rapidly approaching retirement – and younger leaders whose retirement may be years away.

Real magic happens when organizations make a concerted effort to incorporate age into their diversity initiatives. When a team is made up of younger “digital natives” who grew up on the Internet and social media, along with more senior employees who have decades of industry experience, there is a synergy of talents and abilities. Everyone learns from one another. That combination of wisdom, experience, and youth is powerful.

If you are lucky to serve on an age-diverse team, set aside some time in a future team meeting to discuss the seven trends listed above, both as a present reality and a future event.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 122-1, released July 2019

 

Part of a weekly series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader

Regular daily reading of books is an important part of my life. It even extends to my vocation, where as Vision Room Curator for Auxano I am responsible for publishing SUMS Remix, a biweekly book “excerpt” for church leaders. Each Wednesday on 27gen I will be taking a look back at previous issues of SUMS Remix and publishing an excerpt.

>>Purchase SUMS Remix here<<

>> Purchase prior issues of SUMS Remix here<<

Become a Better Leader Through Balancing Differences

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Leadership training and development in our military takes place on two fronts. First, officers identify, build, and utilize the skills that will allow individuals and teams to effectively and efficiently achieve their goal. Second, officers focus on training methods and techniques that will allow those same individuals and teams to practice effective combat and leadership skills in the fields.

The same types of leadership training and development can also serve leaders in your organization – beginning with you.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

With their first book, Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin set a new standard for leadership, challenging readers to become better leaders, better followers, and better people, in both their professional and personal lives.

Now, in The Dichotomy of Leadership, Jocko and Leif dive even deeper into the unchartered and complex waters of a concept first introduced in Extreme Ownership: finding balance between the opposing forces that pull every leader in different directions. Here, Willink and Babin get granular into the nuances that every successful leader must navigate.

Mastering the Dichotomy of Leadership requires understanding when to lead and when to follow; when to aggressively maneuver and when to pause and let things develop; when to detach and let the team run and when to dive into the details and micromanage. In addition, every leader must:

  • Take Extreme Ownership of everything that impacts their mission; yet utilize Decentralize Command by giving ownership to their team. 
  • Care deeply about their people and their individual success and livelihoods, yet look out for the good of the overall team and above all accomplish the strategic mission. 
  • Exhibit the most important quality in a leader―humility, but also be willing to speak up and push back against questionable decisions that could hurt the team and the mission.

With examples from the authors’ combat and training experiences in the SEAL teams, and then a demonstration of how each lesson applies to the business world, Willink and Babin clearly explain THE DICHOTOMY OF LEADERSHIP―skills that are mission-critical for any leader and any team to achieve their ultimate goal: VICTORY.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The most difficult – and essential – element of leadership requires finding the balance between opposing forces that exist for every leader.

The list of dichotomies is infinite. Because for every positive behavior a leader should have, it is possible to take that behavior to the extreme, where it becomes a negative. Often a leader’s greatest strength can also be his or her greatest weakness. But knowing and understanding that these dichotomies exist is the first part of keeping them from becoming a problem.

A good leader builds powerful, strong relationships with his or her subordinates. But while that leader would do anything for those team members, the leader must recognize there is a job to do. And that job might put the very people the leader cares so much about at risk.

The key is balance, maintaining an equilibrium where your team have the guidance to execute but at the same time freedom to make decisions and lead.

There are limitless dichotomies in leadership, and a leader must carefully balance between these opposite forces. But none are as difficult as this: to care deeply for each individual member of the team, while at the same time accepting the risks necessary to accomplish the mission.

This dichotomy reveals itself in the civilian sector as well as the military. This is one of the most difficult dichotomies to balance, and it can be easy to go too far in either direction. If leaders develop overly close relationships with their people, they may not be willing to make those people do what is necessary to compete a project or a task. They may not have the wherewithal to lay off individuals with who they have relationship even if it is the right move for the good of the company. And some leaders get so close to their people that they don’t want to have hard conversations with them – they don’t want to tell them that they need to improve.

On the other hand, if a leader is too detached from the team, he or she may overwork, overexpose, or otherwise harm its members while achieving no significant value from that sacrifice. The leader may be too quick to fire people to save a buck, thereby developing the reputation of not caring about the team beyond its ability to support the strategic goals.

So leaders must find the balance. They must push hard without pushing too hard. They must drive their team to accomplish the mission without driving them off a cliff.

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, The Dichotomy of Leadership

A NEXT STEP

In order for leaders to find the balance described above, authors Jocko Willink and Leif Babin had developed two checklists: one with common symptoms resulting from a leader being too close to a team, and the other which indicates a leader might be too hands-off with his team.

Reproduce each of the two lists below on separate chart tablets, and review them first by yourself. Add to the lists as needed.

Then, bring the sheets into your next team meeting for a general team discussion about this dichotomy of leadership.

Too Close to Your Team

  1. Bold and aggressive action becomes rare.
  2. Creativity grinds to a halt.
  3. Even in an emergency, the team will not mobilize and take action.
  4. The team shows a lack of initiative; members will not take action unless directed.
  5. An overall sense of passivity and failure to react.

Too Far Away from Your Team

  1. Lack of vision in what the team is trying to do and how to do it.
  2. Lack of coordination between individuals on the team and efforts that often compete or interfere with each other.
  3. Initiative oversteps the bounds of authority; individuals and teams carry out actions beyond what they have authorization to do.
  4. The team is focused on the wrong priority mission or pursuit of solutions that are not in keeping with the strategic direction of the team.
  5. There are too many people trying to lead.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 119-2, released May 2019

 

Part of a weekly series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader

Regular daily reading of books is an important part of my life. It even extends to my vocation, where as Vision Room Curator for Auxano I am responsible for publishing SUMS Remix, a biweekly book “excerpt” for church leaders. Each Wednesday on 27gen I will be taking a look back at previous issues of SUMS Remix and publishing an excerpt.

>>Purchase SUMS Remix here<<

>> Purchase prior issues of SUMS Remix here<<

How to Engage Your Team Through Affirmation

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One of the things many growing organizations have trouble with is alignment and communication – from both a cultural and “business” standpoint. This may be the result of physically distributed teams or simply rapid growth. The larger an organization grows and the more distributed it becomes, the harder it is to make sure that there is a healthy relational dimension in our communication across the organization. Even in a small organization, understanding the importance of relational connection takes communication to the next level.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Win the Heart by Mark Miller

Employee engagement is shockingly low–but it’s not an employee problem; it’s a leadership problem. Bestselling author Mark Miller says it’s up to leaders to create a workplace where their employees truly want to be – and he reveals four keys to doing it.

Every great company has an engaged workforce, and nurturing a culture of engagement is at the heart of great leadership – employees who really care about their work, their coworkers, and the organization can supercharge a company’s success. But for many years, engagement has been suffering. Gallop reports that 70 percent of employees are not fully engaged on the job. Mark Miller draws on more than forty years of leadership experience to show leaders at all levels how to change the conversation and create real competitive advantage in the process.

In the fourth book in Miller’s High Performance Series, CEO Blake Brown sets out to discover how to create the kind of workplace where everyone feels excited to come to work, passionate about what he or she brings to the company, and energized at the end of the day. It’s a journey that takes him literally all over the world–from Italy to Greece to Green Bay and more. What he discovers from the pages of history is as relevant as the evening news. 

Engagement unleashes untapped potential buried deep within the hearts of your people. An engaged workforce is more creative, more driven, and more enthusiastic about reaching company goals. If you put the lessons in this book to work, your people will never look at work, or their leaders, the same way again.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

When your team members are made to feel that they matter, they develop self-confidence and self-esteem, and that translates to positive results. Team members who are not treated as if they mattered perform as if their jobs don’t matter either.

When you recognize, appreciate, and encourage your team members, they will in turn share those affirmations with others, resulting in a better team and organization culture.

Genuine affirmation, from the heart, tends to connect with the heart.

We actually do a lot of things behind the scenes so you can have a consistently amazing experience.

  • It starts with leadership – no organization drifts to greatness.
  • We have to select the right people and be sure they are aligned on what matters most – this is a never-ending challenge, but without it, everything is so much harder. Some things even become impossible without everyone pulling in the same direction.
  • We have to be sure people are fully engaged and focused on execution. If they aren’t engaged, there’s no way we’ll deliver consistently. We want excellence to be the norm, not a random occurrence.

The two-word secret to engagement: “Thank you.” We want every employee to know how much we value his or her energy and effort, so we thank you a lot.

We say thank you when we see an employee doing their work with excellence; we say thank you when we observe someone going above and beyond our already high standards; we say thank you when we see our people living out our core values; we even say thank you for a team member’s contributions at the end of every shift.

Mark Miller, Win the Heart

A NEXT STEP

Do you say “thank you” to your team members often enough – or at all?

Here’s a starter list of 10 ideas to say “thank you” to team members. Use this list as a starter to complete a chart tablet of at least 30 ways to say thank you – and use at least one every day for the next month.

Wall of fame – Create a wall of fame featuring images of team members; be sure to include what they did that you are recognizing them for.

Praise often – Praise your team members quickly – as soon as you notice an action that is praiseworthy.

Give the gift of wellness – Give out passes to a yoga studio or gym. Healthy team members feel better about themselves and add value to the team.

Have fun – Reward your team after the conclusion of a special season or event with a fun outing. It not only says thanks but encourages team participation and bonding.

Sticky notes – The adult version of the affirming lunch note to your child! Leave notes on their desks or work areas, saying thanks and explaining why.

Random gifts – Who doesn’t like surprises? Give team members small gifts with a note saying thanks.

Acknowledge team members in meetings – When team members have a great idea, perform above and beyond the expectations, or something worthy of mentioning – be sure to acknowledge them in front of their peers.

Appreciate personal wins – When a team member achieves a personal milestone in their lives, celebrate with them in your work environment.

Celebrate birthdays – Make their birthday a special day in some way.

Write a note – A personal, handwritten note is always a special gesture. Mail it to your team member’s home, so their family can see it and celebrate too.

It’s your turn!

 

Part of a weekly series on 27gen, entitled Wednesday Weekly Reader

Regular daily reading of books is an important part of my life. It even extends to my vocation, where as Vision Room Curator for Auxano I am responsible for publishing SUMS Remix, a biweekly book “excerpt” for church leaders. Each Wednesday on 27gen I will be taking a look back at previous issues of SUMS Remix and publishing an excerpt.

>>Purchase SUMS Remix here<<

>> Purchase prior issues of SUMS Remix here<<