Author Archives: Bob Adams

The Basic Four of Leadership: # 2 – Communicate

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A senior leader’s job isn’t to have all the ideas or even most of them. Her job is to communicate corporate goals to employees and motivate them to achieve them. – Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

A 200,000-person study by the Jackson Organization confirmed that managers who achieve enhanced business results are significantly more likely to be seen by their employees as strong in the Basic Four areas of leadership:

  • Goal Setting
  • Communication
  • Trust
  • Accountability

Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton used that study as a foundation in their book The Carrot Principle, adding on the accelerator of frequent and effective recognition to illustrate that the relationship between recognition and improved business results is both highly predictable and proven to work.

As in all good things, you must start with the basics.

Communicating Openly

When you stop to think about it, communication within an organization is going to happen without a leader’s active participation. Communication is happening every day among employees. If a thing or a person or an event exists in an organization, someone, somewhere, is talking about it. So when a leader fails to constantly and openly communicate “who we are and what’s important,” the conversation doesn’t stop. The dialogue among employees just goes in a different direction, and the organization’s culture develops away from the leader’s influence, goals and priorities.

So what do leaders who openly communicate do? For starters:

  • Set clear guiding values and goals
  • Discuss issues facing the organization and the team – not just the big decisions and announcements
  • Pass on all useful bits of information to employees, especially those that involve change initiatives or that personally affect employees
  • Make time for employees and listen intently when they express opinions and concerns
  • Welcome open discussion from team members about rumors they hear
  • Respond promptly to team member requests for more information
  • Go up their own chain of command to fill in the details they don’t know
  • Introduce employees to other key individuals in the organization, sparking dialogue
  • Give employees online access to relevant databases

Leaders communicate on many other levels as well. They communicate by example, gesture, their decisions, what they value, and what they celebrate, what they reward and what they don’t reward, and their actions.

The one thing they can’t do is communicate from their office.

While meetings, conference calls, and reports are all important, the things that keep leaders in their offices are nowhere near as important as open communications with their team.

It’s impossible to lead people without open communication.

And that requires you to open your door and take a walk…

Adapted from The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

Part 3 of a series

Part 1

Part 2

The Basic Four of Leadership: # 1 – Goal Setting

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A 200,000-person study by the Jackson Organization confirmed that managers who achieve enhanced business results are significantly more likely to be seen by their employees as strong in the Basic Four areas of leadership:

  • Goal Setting

  • Communication

  • Trust

  • Accountability

Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton used that study as a foundation in their book The Carrot Principle, adding on the accelerator of frequent and effective recognition to illustrate that the relationship between recognition and improved business results is both highly predictable and proven to work.

As in all good things, you must start with the basics.

Setting Clear Goals

The work life of many employees today is seen as a meaningless task with no end in sight. Too many organizations are operating in a vacuum where team members and even their leaders have no idea what is valued. Deprived of direction, team members coast along, getting nowhere fast.

Whoa – did those words just describe the organization that you are a part of? GASP – even your church?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

While leaders cannot often change the tasks in their organizations, they can change team members’ attitudes toward those tasks by setting clear team goals. Be defining the purpose of a task and tying it to a desirable end result, effective leaders infuse work with meaning and purpose. The task remains the same, but its significance in team members’ minds skyrockets.

Great leaders infuse their team with a clear sense of purpose. They not only explain the mission to the organization in terms of serving others, acting with integrity, being the best in their category, and so on, but how that grand, overarching mission applies to specific goals for their team and each individual’s daily work.

Teams need clarity from their leaders: clarity of goals, clarity of progress, and clarity of success. Leaders who provide clarity set an optimistic tone for the future.

A leader has to focus every day on gaining alignment with what matters most to the organization. Achieving goals should be noticed and rewarded while variances from the mission and values should necessitate quick action.

Goal setting may seem to be a basic management skill, but it is rare to find a manager who does this effectively. If you were to think back to an effective manager or leader you’ve had in the past, chances are they not only helped you understand the direction of the team, but how you as an individual contribute to that direction.

The power of a clearly communicated goal is amazing. Cultures around the world from all time periods have created epic myths about journeys through danger, despair, and ultimately, triumph. What makes the journey and its trials worthwhile is the hero’s noble purpose – his goal. Those stories live on today…

Isn’t it time for you to create an amazing legend of your purpose (goal) that permeates deeply within and through every member of your team?

Next: The Basic Four – Communication

Adapted from The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton

Part 2 of a series

Part 1

Impact – Measure and Increase Your Presentation’s Impact on Your Audience

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We are competing for relevance.    – Brian Solis

Award-winning author and presentation expert Nancy Duarte has a new book out: HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. This is the final part of a series outlining of each of the book’s sections as well as zeroing in on a specific topic.

Section 7: Impact

  • Build relationships through social media – engage with users so they’ll engage fully and fairly with your ideas
  • Spread your ideas with social media – facilitate the online conversation
  • Gauge whether you’ve connected with people – gather feedback in real-time and after your talk
  • Follow up after your talk – make it easier for people to put your ideas into action

As a visual learner, I have images and objects around my office that help me keep things top of mind. One very prominent image is a diagram from Bert Decker’s book You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard. It shows a presenter’s journey from information (focusing on education) to influence (focusing on motivation). If you are not urging your audience to do something, to take action, you should have just sent a memo.

The final section of Duarte’s book challenges you to do just that. All the ideas above are great, but here’s a little more about one that many presenters would run from:

Spread Your Ideas with Social Media

Use social media content the way you use stories, visuals, and sound bites: to reinforce and spread your message.

Social media activity usually spikes during a presentation, with moderate chatter beforehand and afterward. Facilitate the conversation at its peak by:

  • Streaming your presentation – post a live video stream of your talk so people can attend remotely
  • Time-releasing message and slides – use technology to automatically push key messages out at key moments during the presentation
  • Select a moderator – enlist a colleague to keep the social media thread constructive
  • Repeating audience sentiment – use the moderator to repeat and validate what live audience members are saying
  • Post photos of your talk – enlist someone to photograph your presentation and post online
  • Encourage blogging – invite bloggers, journalists, and social media specialists to attend and cover your presentation

If it’s worth speaking about the first time, it’s worth doing all you can to keep people talking about it.

This is the final part of a series looking at Nancy Duarte’s new book HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, highly recommended for all leaders.

When audiences see that you’ve prepared – that you care about their needs and value your time – they’ll want to connect with you and support you. You’ll get people to adopt your ideas, and you’ll win the resources to carry them out.

Leaders speak.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Delivery – Deliver Your Presentation Authentically

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Never deliver a presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through.    – Duarte, Inc. Golden Rule

Award-winning author and presentation expert Nancy Duarte has a new book out: HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. This is a continuation of a series outlining of each of the book’s sections as well as zeroing in on a specific topic.

Section 6: Delivery

  • Rehearse your material well – roll with the unexpected and fully engage with the audience
  • Know the venue and schedule – control them when you can
  • Anticipate technology glitches – odds of malfunction are high
  • Manage your stage fright – exercises to calm your nerves
  • Set the right tone for your talk – you never get a second chance to make a first impression
  • Be yourself – authenticity connects you to others
  • Communicate with your body – physical expression is a powerful tool
  • Communicate with your voice – create contrast and emphasis
  • Make your stories come to life – re-experience them in the telling
  • Get the most out of your Q&A – plan, plan, and plan some more
  • Build trust with a remote audience – get past technology’s barriers
  • Keep remote listeners interested – you’re fighting for the attention of multitaskers
  • Keep your remote presentation running smoothly – use a checklist to minimize annoyances

These are all great ideas, and I honestly couldn’t pull out a favorite – they’re all that good! Suffice it to say that delivery is critical to the success of your presentation. You may have the best content and message in the world, but if you fail at delivery, what good is it?

Next: Impact

This is Part 7 of a series looking at Nancy Duarte’s new book HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, highly recommended for all leaders.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 

Part 5

Part 6

 

Slides – Conceptualize and Simplify the Display of Information

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At our studio we don’t write our stories, we draw them.    – Walt Disney

Award-winning author and presentation expert Nancy Duarte has a new book out: HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. This is a continuation of a series outlining of each of the book’s sections as well as zeroing in on a specific topic.

Section 5: Slides

  • Think like a designer – visuals should convey meaning
  • Create slides people can “get” in 3 seconds – do they pass the glance test
  • Chose the right type of slide – bullets aren’t the only tool
  • Storyboard one idea per slide – plan before you create
  • Avoid visual clichés – make your slides stand out
  • Arrange slide elements with care – make your visuals easier to process
  • Clarify the data – emphasize what’s important, remove the rest
  • Turn words into diagrams – use shapes to show relationships
  • Use the right number of slides – size up your situation before building your deck
  • Know when to animate – and when it’s overkill

Create Slides People Can “Get” in Three Seconds

Audiences can only process one stream of information at a time. They’ll either listen to you speak or read your slides – they won’t do both simultaneously.

Make sure they can quickly comprehend your visuals and then turn their attention back to what you’re saying.

Think of your slides as billboards on the highway: when people are driving by, they only briefly take their eyes off the main focus – the road – to process billboard information. Similarly, your audience should focus on what you’re saying, looking only briefly at your slides when you display them.

To create slides that pass the glance test:

  • Start with a clean surface – start with a blank slide
  • Limit your text – keep it short, easy to skim, and large enough to be visible from the back of the room
  • Coordinate visual elements – Use one typeface for the entire deck, use a consistent color palette, and use photos of a similar style
  • Arrange elements with care – align graphics and text blocks, and size all objects appropriately

Streamlined text and simple visual elements help your audience process the information much more quickly.

Next: Delivery

This is Part 6 of a series looking at Nancy Duarte’s new book HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, highly recommended for all leaders.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

 

 

Media – Identify the Best Modes for Presenting Your Message

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People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint   – Steve Jobs

Award-winning author and presentation expert Nancy Duarte has a new book out: HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. Over the next few days, I will be posting an outline of each of the book’s sections as well as zeroing in on a specific topic.

Section 4: Media

  • Chose the right vehicle for your message – slide decks aren’t always the answer
  • Make the most of slide software – it’s not just for slides
  • Determine the right length for your presentation – keep your audience engaged by budgeting your time
  • Persuade beyond the stage – communicate before, during, and after your presentation
  • Share the stage – mixing in experts and media holds interest

Determining the Right Length for Your Presentation

What do all great presentations have in common?

They’re short.

It’s no secret that people value their time. People in your audience won’t scold you for ending early, but they will for ending late. Out of consideration for them and the day’s agenda, stick to the assigned time slot and treat it as sacred.

Doing that, however, is not so easy. It will cost you time to save the audience time. It’s relatively easy to ramble on for an hour or so; it’s really difficult to craft a tight, succinct 20-minute presentation.

Here are five ways to tighten your talk and keep your audience engaged:

  1. Plan content for 60% of your time slot – that will leave time for Q&A or some other form of discussion
  2. Trim your slide deck – put all the trimmed slides at the end of your presentation where they are available is needed on the fly
  3. Practice with a clock counting up – if you go over, you need to know how much you’re over
  4. Practice with a timer counting down – having set time marks at different places in your presentation gives you a running gauge throughout your talk
  5. Have two natural ending points – if you’re running long, you can drop the second ending and still get your message across

Next: Slides

This is Part 5 of a series looking at Nancy Duarte’s new book HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, highly recommended for all leaders.

Designing Elevation Church’s Volunteer Culture with the Excellence of Nordstrom’s – Team Members

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Reaction and comments from yesterday’s post and the correlation to the Ritz Carlton brings to mind another iconic retail establishment known for its customer service: Nordstrom’s.

Last fall, I was privileged to speak at the Worship Facility Conference and Expo on the topic of “Servant Leadership.” I had been doing research on Nordstrom’s customer service principles for several months, and found that they were easy to translate into the volunteer culture of churches. As a Guest Services Coordinator at Elevation Church’s Uptown Campus, it was easy for me to make some applications.

Taking the same 3-tier approach at Nordstrom’s, here’s a quick outline summary of the first tier and the second tier. Here’s a brief outline of Tier Three.

Part Three: What eTeams Can Do to Create a Culture of Servants

Create the Relationship: How Frontline Team Members Create Return Guests

  1. Listen to the Guest
  2. Understand the Guest’s needs
  3. Be honest and sincere
  4. Know the Elevation WE from top to bottom
  5. Understand the foundation of the “One Day” principle
  6. Take responsibility

The Experience Never Ends: There are 168 Hours in Your Week

  1. Be a team player
  2. GS excellence comes from practice, experience, observation, and personal commitment
  3. Positive thinking comes from following simple steps that produce a WOW! environment for our Guests
  4. Listen to the Guest

Play to Win: Encourage Teamwork at Every Level of Your Organization

  1. Find ways to balance individual achievement and teamwork
  2. Honor team achievements
  3. Demonstrate the importance of the whole team
  4. Encourage the team to take ownership of GS issues
  5. Encourage the team to cite the teamwork examples of others
  6. Publicize “heroic” stories of teamwork throughout the organization

Team members must buy into the culture and understand their role in maintaining and supporting the culture through their actions.

Team members are the ones who come closest into contact with your Guests, and therefore are crucial to your organization’s ability to serve them well. Team members must be empowered to establish relationships with Guests and find ways to take care of them. They must listen, understand the Guest’s needs, and follow-through with whatever needs to be done.

The front line is where the action’s at!

Designing Elevation Church’s Volunteer Culture with the Excellence of Nordstrom’s – Team Leaders

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Reaction and comments from yesterday’s post and the correlation to the Ritz Carlton brings to mind another iconic retail establishment known for its customer service: Nordstrom’s.

Last fall, I was privileged to speak at the Worship Facility Conference and Expo on the topic of “Servant Leadership.” I had been doing research on Nordstrom’s customer service principles, and found that they were easy to translate into the volunteer culture at my church, Elevation Church in Charlotte NC.

Taking the same 3-tier approach at Nordstrom’s, you can read a quick summary of the first tier here. Here’s a quick summary of the second tier:

Part Two: What eLeaders Can Do to Create a Culture of Servants

#1 Strategy: Recruit the Smile

  1. It’s not the role for everyone
  2. 4 reasons volunteers choose your eTeam
  3. Recruit the smile, train the skill
  4. Invest in your team

That’s My Job: Empower Teams to Act Like Entrepreneurs

  1. Trust your team
  2. Give them freedom to make decisions on the spot
  3. Push decision-making responsibility and authority down to the lowest level possible
  4. Encourage your team every step of the way
  5. Use mistakes as tools for learning

Dump the Rules: Tear Down the Barriers to Exceptional Volunteer Service

  1. Trust your team’s judgment
  2. Simplify the process
  3. Do what’s right
  4. Promote one rule: The Golden Rule

This is How We Do It: Manage, Mentor, and Maintain Great Teams

  1. Find ways to motivate your team
  2. Treat the team with dignity and respect
  3. Encourage new team members to find mentors
  4. Promote a culture where team members mentor unselfishly
  5. Provide coaching tools
  6. Promote a culture of loyalty and ownership

Recognition, Competition, & Praise: Create a Sustainable, Emotional Bond with Your Team

  1. Always find ways to praise team members for great acts of GS
  2. Recognize and reward
  3. Provide team members with information on how they are doing
  4. Send notes, emails, phone calls to team members regularly

Staff and coordinators may create the atmosphere and culture, but it is up to the people on the front lines to put it into practice. Team Leaders at Elevation have experienced the front lines – that’s where they came from! Because of this, they know what to look for in a new volunteer, how to empower people, mentor them, train them, and praise them for a job well done.

Next: Team Members

Designing Elevation’s Volunteer Culture with the Excellence of Nordstrom’s – Coordinators

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Reaction and comments from yesterday’s post and the correlation to the Ritz Carlton brings to mind another iconic retail establishment known for its customer service: Nordstrom’s.

Last fall, I was privileged to speak at the Worship Facility Conference and Expo on the topic of “Servant Leadership.” I had been doing research on Nordstrom’s customer service principles for several months, and found that they were easy to translate into the volunteer culture of churches. As a Guest Services Coordinator at Elevation Church’s Uptown Campus, it was easy for me to make some applications.

Taking the same 3-tier approach at Nordstrom’s, here’s a quick outline summary of the first tier:

What eCoordinators Can Do to Create a Culture of Servants

The Elevation Story

  1. An appreciation of what Elevation is all about cannot be fully grasped without an understanding of our culture
  2. Know the history (past); live out the history (present); know where you’re going (future)
  3. Vision

Spreading the Servant’s Culture: Publicly Celebrate Your Heroes; Promote from Within the Team

  1. Storytelling and folklore of individual and team success
  2. Stories of heroics are regularly shared – a standard to aspire to and even surpass
  3. eCoordinators with a deep understanding of the Elevation culture and who really value it

Line Up and Cheer for Your Team: Create an Inviting Place to Serve

  1. If leaders and team members are excited about the experience of serving at Elevation, they will exceed your expectations
  2. Create something extra every week

How Can I Help You? Provide Lots of Choices

  1. Make sure you have all the choices you need in order to give potential leaders and team members options to serve
  2. Emulating the Nordstrom way
    1. Cross-Training all area teams
    2. Identify leader and team needs before they are expressed

While all team members need to have an appreciation and awareness of the organization’s history and culture, the eCoordinators are critical. They create, maintain, and support the servant culture.

Next: eLeaders

The Lineup at Elevation Uptown

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It’s one thing to have a Credo, Three Steps of Service, and 12 Service Values like the Ritz-Carlton (see the post here for more details). Many businesses go through the exercise of defining key values or composing mission statements. They might even display them in their literature, or in imposing art displays on the corporate walls.

How many organizational leaders understand the importance of regular and repetitive presentation of the core aspects of their business – not only to management, but to their front-line staff?

Enter the “lineup” at Ritz-Carlton.

To truly appreciate the Ritz-Carlton leadership approach to repeated dissemination of the “Gold Standard” mentioned here, you would have to drop in on a section of the housekeeping staff as they prepare for their days work – or at the corporate headquarters – or in the kitchen of the fine restaurants that serve the hotel chain – or anywhere, and everywhere, throughout the entire organization.

You would observe that a meeting is taking place at the beginning of each shift. Not just any meeting, though: the leader in each group starts by sharing the Credo and talking about the importance of creating a unique guest experience. Another team member might share a guest story from a Ritz-Carlton hotel in another country. Another team member shares how what they do in their department helps create memorable guest experiences. Then a few quick announcements, special recognitions are given, and the meeting is closed with a motivational quote by another team member.

All in about 20 minutes.

Every day.

On every shift.

In every Ritz-Carlton hotel and office around the world.

The magic of the lineup involves the following:

  • Repetition of values – the core belief that values need to be discussed daily, and that values can’t be discussed enough
  • Common language – shared phrases across all tasks binds the team together
  • Visual symbols – The Credo is printed on a card that all team members carry at all times
  • Oral traditions – Personal, direct, and face-to-face communication makes a huge impact in a world increasingly dominated by e-mail, text, and voice messages
  • Positive storytelling – stories communicate life in a powerful and memorable way
  • Modeling by leaders – the active, daily presence of the leaders communicates the importance of the time together

What would “lineup” for each of your teams do to preserve the core values, communicate the importance of everyone on the team, and provide momentum for the day’s activities?

At Elevation Uptown, here’s what our ‘lineup’ looks like on Sunday mornings at 7:45 AM:

 Elevation Uptown 012013
Or how about this word for the process? Alignment.

That’s how we roll Uptown!