Communicate The Goal AND The Attitude

Are you interested in training your team for success?

High performance leaders communicate the goal AND the attitude needed to achieve that goal. Teams learn behaviors and those behaviors are impacted by their attitude. Can they learn better attitudes? Of course.

Team members certainly DO bring their attitudes to the mix, and recruiting people with constantly unproductive attitudes will do nothing to help your team. But, we do not need to abandon people who already serve our teams just because we are not 100% satisfied with their attitudes,

But we do need to talk with them about it. We do need to create deeper conversations that explore the skills we are looking for, the habits we expect, and the attitudes that contribute to team and organizational (and by extension career) success,

Communicate the goal you are working on as a team -- and also communicate the kinds of attitude that will best serve that goal.

Your team may be hungry to hear that.

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Would you like to see better communication skills working in your team and in your organization? Contact me today about bringing our one-day workshop Communicating for Results to your location.

doug@frontrangeleadership.com

Comments

Leadership and Process Improvement

As a leader, how much attention do you give to improving processes? Do you watch your team install a process and then simply let it flow on and on -- or do you drive a constant focus to improve that process? Too often I've seen leaders spend their efforts trying to fix people , when the center of their problems is usually broken processes and procedures . Any process can be improved until it's no longer necessary. And then you can shut it down. It's work is done. So keep improving those processes. If you're still doing it, you can still improve it. -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

One Kind of Choice

It is not always the answer, but surprisingly often it is: It's easier to hire a motivated worker than it is to motivate an unmotivated one. That's not the end of the story. It could be great hiring advice though. Whatever the technical skills are for people you are interviewing to hire, be sure to ask some questions about motivation that can't be answered with a yes or no. Questions like: When were you the most motivated in your life? What kinds of work motivate you? What's your approach to a work day when for one reason or another you don't feel very motivated? If you had been here for one week, what would we see that shows us how motivated you are? Start there, and follow-up with more questions. Give each candidate time to convince you whether or not they will bring motivation to your organization. You can teach people almost anything, but it's always easier if they are already motivated. -- doug smith

What to Blame

It's better to blame the product than it is to blame the customer because you cannot fix the customer. -- doug smith

Strong Self-Esteem

How do the people on your team feel about themselves? How about you? How do you feel about yourself? Self-esteem matters. The way we see ourselves influences the work that we do. If you want healthy, vibrant, vital work from your team, why not make sure that the way that they think about themselves is strong? There are few things stronger than healthy self-esteem. To strengthen self-esteem among your team members: Appreciate good performance by providing specific compliments Spend time talking one-on-one with team members just to let them talk about what interests them Smile The list is longer than that of course, but start with those three things and you'll like the results. And that is good for YOUR self-esteem, isn't it? -- doug smith

Win The Game

It would be nice to win the game. But, do you ever feel like you're in a game that keeps shifting the rules and making it easy to make progress but impossible to win? You've probably noticed lots of game elements creeping into service. Points, incentives, expiring coupons followed by new expiring coupons, leader-boards...on an on a relentless attack on service comes from playing a game designed -- you guessed it -- to maximize profit. If the customer is happy, fine, but the point is to make money. Not to put too fine a point on it but that's a lousy point. What if there could be something better? What if customer service excellence became playing a game where the customer always wins and that makes you happy? You don't have to. "give away the store" to achieve a winning game for all of the players. Just stop stacking the rules against customers and watch how much more they will want to do business with you. -- doug smith

Don't Jump!

I do it. You've probably done it, too. It gets us into trouble misinterpreting and reaching false conclusions. Slow down. Ease up from that jump. Stop that jump to conclusions and you'll avoid many big falls. -- doug smith

Side Hustle Blues?

As a leader, do you ever sing the side-hustle blues? That's when your team seems distracted because they're tired from working multiple jobs. When I worked in food service it was all around me: team members who were already wrestling with variable schedules and also juggling multiple jobs. Maybe because they enjoyed their other gigs -- like the musicians, actors, artists, and writers on the team. Or maybe because otherwise they couldn't make ends meet so there were the side-hustles in driving, delivering, retailing, and add-on food service shifts. People are wonderful and their potential is unlimited but their physical selves are not unlimited. Which can bring on the side hustle blues when people are tough to schedule, hard to motivate, and just plain tired. You'll never eliminate the gigs that team members enjoy, nor should you. Those are not the ones really sapping the energy as much as those that they are in only for the money. Employees won't need an only-for-t...

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