Coaches Corner v.03.09.2023
In Coaches Corner v.03.09.2023, Coach Floyd Jerkins talks about management and leadership behaviors.
The New Everyday Coaching Behaviors
There is a lot of buzz about management and leadership styles today. While we’ve experienced changes in the workplace, people have always wanted to be treated as human beings. Respect, truly listening, and general compassion for our fellow humans win the day.
Employees across the board are more vocal today about how they are treated, so be careful about following shiny objects. There are different leadership styles that work well. There is unmistakable evidence that when all the decisions are made by a given few or when employees are told exactly what to do all the time, it’s demotivating. When they don’t have input about the culture of their work environment, it’s demotivating. They quickly become disengaged because they have no say or are given an opportunity to contribute to their work tasks. None of us want to be told what to do, and neither do our employees.
Coaching is a Participative and Situational Influencing Style
The coaching profession has exploded in recent years, and it is diversified across many different fields and industries. Some old practices are now relabeled to new and what’s called exciting terms. Everyone is a coach, and coaching is the new thing to discuss.
It is a noble profession and a management method that some of us have successfully taught and practiced for decades. To be good at it requires education, experience and some school of hard knocks. Just because you’ve attended a few classes and got the plaque on the wall, it takes more to walk the talk.
Coaching Description
Coaching is a participative and situational management style that requires managers to help others enhance their own performance. They help the individual or team unlock their potential by supporting them to learn vs. telling them what the answers are. Fostering an environment to learn and think independently contributes to developing the individual or team to reach their fullest potential. The coach is a facilitator, helping the team members to achieve their results.
Building Trust in Teams to Reach High Performance
Building trust in a team requires the leader to foster trust-building actions and decisions. When the leader stops thinking that people are there to be controlled or managed, this starts to open the culture to people not fearing a reprisal from the leader when they question something or take actions that turn out to be wrong.
If you can’t trust people to do their jobs well, then one of the following situations needs to be addressed:
- You hired the wrong person to fit your organization’s culture and style of business
- You have the wrong person in the wrong position
- You haven’t sufficiently trained them.
- You have a manager who can’t let go of power and control
Progressive Coaching Focuses on Employees Strength
When you trust people to do the job, and it doesn’t come out right, that’s a coachable moment. If you have good people in the wrong positions, you need to go back to the job description and ensure you have it correct. If your people are properly trained for the position, look closely at the manager. Maybe they just can’t let go of power and control. There are different leadership styles that work well.
When there are emotional or unhappy employees in your business, at some time they’ve tried to tell you about it. Maybe your ears turned off, or your reaction signaled them to think twice about bringing it up again. Spirited people may request more than once to change a system or process but eventually become frustrated and shut down because they don’t feel heard. Jumpstarting them again can be tough to do.
A coach wants to know what is behind the conversation. What is behind the emotions? A coach is genuinely an interested listener. They make it easy for people to talk to them about almost anything. Effective listening is a learned skill set. Also, learning to listen isn’t always about what’s said. Watch what people do; that’s always revealing.
When your employees are improving, and the culture of the business supports learning and teaching, their enthusiasm and abilities to be effective are greater. They become more connected to the business and its mission and purpose.
A coach creates a focused approach to developing their people. Sure, we want to get business results, but that only happens after your people do what they do. As I’ve said before, good people can do extraordinary things when given a chance to succeed. Focus on each employee’s strengths and help them unleash their natural talents.
Answer Man to the Rescue: Stop Giving All the Answers
Managers are often promoted because they were problem solvers in their previous position. They had the ability to fix things when they were broken. The mindset is that it’s typically much faster to do the work themselves or faster to tell someone what to do vs. showing them how to do it. This management approach is a real challenge in an organization striving to move forward with new leadership styles.
Nothing is worse than training a staff that you have all the answers all the time. It’s debilitating to the team and a significant factor in staff turnover. In my article, Answer Man to the Rescue I point out that you are not superman or superwoman who has all the answers all the time.
Learning to let go of power and control requires the leader to delegate. You want team members to own the solutions. Being a good coach means helping them develop the best possible solutions that are good for the customer and good for the business.
The more you can engage your employees to contribute to the decision-making process and encourage them to speak up in a safe environment, the more they feel connected and empowered.
I know some of you are thinking, wait a minute, it’s much easier and faster if I just give them the answer and then move on to other issues. The real challenge is that you are not creating problem solvers who then solve them without ever asking you. You are robbing your employees of the opportunity to figure it out, and that’s such a waste of human talent and energy. You, then, are the problem, not the solution.
Psychological Management Practices That Foster Business Development
In my article, “Improving Your Employees Psychological Income,” I address pieces to the puzzle of delegation and accountability through empowerment. This is an important step to learn how to help teams perform at a high level. The magic of dimes exercise is a useful tool to help your leaders transfer from “what’s going wrong” to what’s going right” and develop some focus on the things that matter the most.
Intentionally becoming positive is a practice all by itself and tough to master for many. Instead of always pointing out what’s wrong, the coach accepts these instances as coachable moments and learning opportunities. The discussion centers on the mistake, how it happened, and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. We fix the source of the problem, so it doesn’t happen again and stays out of the emotional upheaval.
Open and Direct Communications Style
In today’s world of people management, there are new rules and new paradigms of people being sensitive to certain words and phrases. To say you should not patronize or be critical of others is an understatement. It all boils down to what Dale Carnegie wrote in his 1936 book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Treat others like you want to be treated. Empowering and coaching others is not a new concept.
Whether you are a small business owner, a leader in a business, or possibly a company preparing to scale your model to reach larger goals, mobilizing and cultivating your human assets is key to your success.
There are duplicatable steps to implement empowerment. You can read more about it in this article. “Conditions of Empowerment.” This provides a general guideline for the information. Make it clear what teams are responsible for by following:
- Specify the Desired Results
- Set Some Guidelines
- Identify Available Resources
- Define Accountability
- Determine the Consequences
By using an open and direct communication style, you can make it clear what your people are responsible for. Give them the room to go about it their own way.
Implementation isn’t always easy and there usually isn’t a clear road map. Habits can be hard to break, so recognize if you always see the negative in a situation. You’ll have to catch yourself if you start making negative remarks. You can relearn how to make a better and positive style of reply under nearly all circumstances through conditioning. Just do what an athlete does to get better, they perform the same moves every time under certain conditions, then tweak the responses to gain the maximum results they’re seeking. It is possible to phrase everything in constructive terms – even a negative sentiment. Practice makes perfect!
In Closing…
It just makes common sense that people are better motivated when they are happy and focused. It’s also a lot more fun to work around teams of people who are excited to come to work every day and who share a common goal.
The real success of a leader today is easily measured by the success of the people that work for them.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Friday Filosophy v.03.24.2023
Friday Filosophy v.03.24.2023
Friday Filosophy v.03.24.2023 offers thoughts and quotes from Joan Rivers.
Joan Sandra Molinsky (June 8, 1933 – September 4, 2014), known professionally as Joan Rivers, was an American comedian, actress, producer, writer and television host. She was noted for her blunt, often controversial comedic persona—heavily self-deprecating and acerbic, especially towards celebrities and politicians, delivered in her signature New York accent. She is considered a pioneer of women in comedy by many critics.
Rivers started her career in comedy clubs in Greenwich Village alongside her peers George Carlin, Woody Allen, and Richard Pryor. She then rose to prominence in 1965 as a guest on The Tonight Show. Hosted by her mentor, Johnny Carson, the show established River’s comedic style. In 1986, with her own rival program, The Late Show with Joan Rivers, Rivers became the first woman to host a late night network television talk show. She subsequently hosted The Joan Rivers Show (1989–1993), winning a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host. From the mid-1990s, she became known for her comedic red carpet awards show celebrity interviews.[3][4] Rivers co-hosted the E! celebrity fashion show Fashion Police from 2010 to 2014 and starred in the reality series Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? (2011–2014) with daughter Melissa Rivers.
In addition to marketing a line of jewelry and apparel on the QVC shopping channel, Rivers authored 12 best-selling books and three LP comedy albums under her own name: Mr. Phyllis and Other Funny Stories (Warner Bros 1965), The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album (Buddah 1969), and What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? (Geffen 1983). She was nominated in 1984 for a Grammy Award for her album What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most? and was nominated in 1994 for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance of the title role in Sally Marr … and Her Escorts. In 2009, Rivers competed alongside her daughter Melissa on the second season of The Celebrity Apprentice, ultimately winning the season. In 2015, Rivers posthumously received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for her book, Diary of a Mad Diva.
In 1968, The New York Times television critic Jack Gould called Rivers “quite possibly the most intuitively funny woman alive”. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked her sixth on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time, and in October the same year, she was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. She is the subject of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010).
The Time is Now
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Parts Department Efficiency Gains through Repair Options
Parts Department Efficiency Gains through Repair Options
Guest writer Ron Wilson talks about how the use of parts kits can benefit your business in, “Part Department Efficiency Gains Through Repair Options.”
Four-part series relating to Repair Options offerings:
This is the second in a four-part series relating to Expand Product Support Offerings with Repair Options.
In the first article we outlined the overall advantages Repair Options provides the customer and the dealership. Let’s talk a little more specifically about how Repair Options are a benefit to the Parts Department of a dealership.
There are two common types of lists used for component rebuilds:
The paper kit is utilized to process the part orders and delivered to the shop bay as needed. By entering one part number the kit number breaks down into the consist list of individual parts.
One of the key advantages of utilizing parts kits is the reduction of parts being returned from the Service Department. The kit only contains 100% utilized parts that have been predetermined based on the level and type of Repair Option that is being completed. Very often in the traditional rebuild it is not uncommon for there to be 10-15% return percentage and several last-minute parts orders due not knowing what will be replaced until the component is disassembled and being re-assembled.
A few other points relating to Parts kits:
The Parts and Service Departments working together to build Parts Kits can provide improved efficiencies in the warehouse operations and in the component rebuild bay. All of this contributes to adding value back to the customer in quicker turn times, higher quality of work, and turn time expectation being met or exceeded.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
How you can ensure your continuous improvement efforts succeed
How you can ensure your continuous improvement efforts succeed
Guest writer Mark Fitzsimmons offers readers a detailed guide on how you can ensure your continuous improvement efforts succeed in this week’s blog post.
Continuous improvement is a key factor in any organization’s success. It involves constantly identifying areas for improvement, implementing changes, and measuring the effectiveness of those changes. However, continuous improvement efforts can be challenging, and many organizations struggle to see results. In this blog post, we will explore what organizations need to do to ensure successful continuous improvement efforts.
Develop a culture of continuous improvement.
The first step to successful continuous improvement is developing a culture that embraces it. This means creating an environment where employees feel comfortable identifying areas for improvement and suggesting changes. It also means encouraging employees to take ownership of their work and providing them with the tools and resources they need to make improvements.
To develop a culture of continuous improvement, organizations need to communicate the importance of it regularly. They can do this by holding training sessions, providing resources such as books or articles, and highlighting success stories. Organizations can also incentivize employees to participate in continuous improvement efforts by offering rewards for suggestions or improvements that lead to significant results.
Establish a clear process for continuous improvement.
Establishing a clear process for continuous improvement is critical to success. This process should include the steps for identifying areas for improvement, collecting data, analyzing the data, developing and implementing solutions, and measuring the effectiveness of those solutions.
The process should be well-defined and communicated to all employees. It should also be flexible enough to allow for changes as needed. By having a clear process in place, organizations can ensure that everyone is on the same page and that improvements are made consistently and efficiently.
Set measurable goals.
Continuous improvement efforts should be guided by measurable goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). They should also align with the organization’s overall objectives.
Setting measurable goals allows organizations to track their progress and identify areas where improvements are needed. It also provides motivation for employees and helps keep everyone focused on the same objectives.
Use data to inform decisions.
Data are essential for identifying areas for improvement and measuring the effectiveness of changes. Organizations should collect data regularly to inform their decisions.
Data can be collected in many ways, such as through surveys, customer feedback, or process monitoring. Once data are collected, they should be analyzed and used to identify areas for improvement. Organizations can then develop solutions and measure the effectiveness of those solutions by collecting more data.
Involve employees in the process.
Employees are an essential part of continuous improvement efforts. They are the ones who do the work and have first-hand knowledge of the processes and procedures that need improvement.
Organizations should involve employees in the process by encouraging them to identify areas for improvement and providing them with opportunities to contribute to the development of solutions. This can be done through brainstorming sessions, focus groups, or suggestion boxes.
Involving employees in the process also helps build buy-in and ownership of the changes. When employees feel like they have a stake in the process, they are more likely to support the changes and contribute to their success.
Provide resources and support.
Continuous improvement efforts require resources and support. Organizations should provide employees with the tools and resources they need to make improvements. This may include training, access to data and information, or support from management.
Organizations should also provide support for continuous improvement efforts by assigning a dedicated team or individual to oversee the process. This team or individual should be responsible for facilitating the process, providing guidance and support, and ensuring that the process is followed consistently.
Celebrate successes.
Finally, organizations should celebrate successes. Continuous improvement efforts can be challenging and time-consuming, so it is essential to recognize and celebrate the progress made along the way. Celebrating successes helps build momentum and motivates employees to continue making improvements.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
The Trends in Workforce Development for 2023
The Trends in Workforce Development for 2023
For this week’s blog on Lifelong Learning, Founder Ron Slee writes about the trends he sees in workforce development for 2023.
At Learning Without Scars we believe that the leadership of business plays an essential role in helping their employees reach their personal and professional potential. In fact, we believe that it’s CRITICAL. To go further, employee development has been one of those “discretionary” expense areas in many companies. We completely DISAGREE with that.
It is the employees of a business that create the relationships with the customers on whom we depend for our success. Without talented employees who care about what they are doing it would be extremely difficult for any company to remain in business let alone succeed.
The first thing on our minds in 2023 is the rapid change of technology. This is true in many directions:
According to a Price Waterhouse Workforce Hopes and Fears in 2022 one in five workers was likely to change their jobs from one employer to another.
In 2023 it becomes even more important that learning programs are critical to success. This involves the new skills that are required for the work. It also requires that we “upskill” many of the current workers to enable them to continue to be valuable contributing employees. Process improvement through business systems and the use of new equipment requires further training and learning opportunities. In this time of rapid change we need to be able to provide “stability” for the employees. They need to feel wanted and that their opinions are listened to by their team leaders. It directly relates to the culture of the business.
Melissa Daimler, the chief learning officer at Udemy says: “Learning is an ongoing process of building skills, experiences and knowledge through our work, NOT around or on top of it. A company is not automatically a learning Organization when it offers training programs. It may even be the opposite. True Learning Organizations are clear on their purpose, strategy and culture. They ensure the connection between those and the skills they are building.”
That is a tough statement to think through. It is a comprehensive and complicated issue. This is clearly something that must be created and implemented that is specific to a department within a company. Yet it needs to be in alignment with the company strategy and purpose.
Udemy Business learner data shows that many employees are seeking to learn personal skills that better enable them to be more effective in their jobs and drive business results.
That statement takes me back to the time when the “boss” used to tell me that they did not want to spend any money on their employees to make them better. All that would happen is that the talented people would leave and get a better job with someone else. My response was “So you want to keep the people that don’t know how to do their jobs then?”
To me what is interesting is that the “pandemic” pushed us forward to some future that happened much more quickly than we were ready to realize. It forced many people and businesses to reevaluate how they did things. Just look at the working from home situation.
In 2021 Deloitte Human Capital Trends identified “the ability of their employees to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles” as their top-ranked requirement to navigate future disruptions successfully. Now many of you will tell me that this does not apply to us. We are a local retailer serving a specific market of people. We just must be good at what we do and not worry about disruptions. They do not happen here. Really? So increasing interest rates don’t affect you? Or your business?
When we take our eye off the ball and just continue to do what we have always done we are at risk. The leadership of a business has a huge responsibility to provide a safe and secure place for talented people to work. Too many of today’s leaders are simply protecting the status quo and waiting for their turn to retire. They are forgetting their most important asset class. Their employees.
I often come back to my friend Alex Schuessler who created the phrase “paper to glass” to describe the changes with business systems. All we have done is replace a paper form with a screen template. We no longer write on a form we type on a keyboard. Things are just processed faster.
Let’s look at what we believe are the most critical elements in employee development in 2023. As many of you know, or will assume, we talk to a lot of people in the education community. The same issues keep coming up.
Similarly operational related skills and tools:
Let me wrap up this paper with some data obtained from Udemy Business. This is also consistent with the schools we are engaged with in the creation of our Centers of Excellence.
The Top Ten Used Business Skills:
In closing, one of the metrics that should be in place with every organization is employee turnover. We are all exposed to this very difficult workforce that is in place today. There continues to be almost two jobs open, companies seeking to hire someone, for every person that is not working in America today.
The primary cause of employee turnover continues to be the “boss.” We persist in resisting conducting performance reviews frequently enough, if at all. How do you stack up here? Have a look at your success in onboarding new employees. What is your turnover rate for employees in the first six months of employment with you?
We have a lot of work to do in the area of employee development. We cannot continue to do what we have always done. That would truly be insanity.
The Time is Now.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023
Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Friday Filosophy v.03.17.2023 shares quotes from Irish comedian Dave Allen.
David Tynan O’Mahony (6 July 1936 – 10 March 2005), known professionally as Dave Allen, was an Irish comedian, satirist, and actor. He was best known for his observational comedy. Allen regularly provoked indignation by highlighting political hypocrisy and showing disdain for religious authority. His technique and style have influenced young British comedians.
Initially becoming known in Australia in 1963 and 1964, Allen made regular television appearances in the United Kingdom from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s. The BBC aired his Dave Allen Show from 1971 to 1986, which was also exported to several other European countries. He had a major resurgence during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His television shows were also broadcast in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Yugoslavia, Australia, and New Zealand.
At the end of each summer season, he did stand-up at strip clubs; for the next four years, he appeared in various night clubs, theatres, and working men’s clubs. Allen’s first television appearance was on the BBC talent show New Faces in 1959. While on tour in Australia in 1963, he accepted an offer to headline a television talk show for Channel 9, Tonight with Dave Allen, which was successful. However, only six months after his television début he was banned from the Australian airwaves when, during a live broadcast, he told his show’s producer—who had been pressing him to go to a commercial break—to “go away and masturbate”, so that he could continue an entertaining interview with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. The ban was quietly dropped as Allen’s popularity continued unabated. In 1967, he hosted his own comedy/chat series, Tonight with Dave Allen, made by ATV, for which he received the Variety Club’s ITV Personality of the Year Award.
He signed with the BBC in 1968 and appeared on The Dave Allen Show, a variety/comedy sketch series. The shows introduced his solo joke-telling-while-sitting-on-a-stool-and-drinking routine. This stand-up routine by Allen led to sketches that continued the themes touched on in the preceding monologues.
As he grew older, Allen brought a rueful awareness of aging to his material, with reflections on the antics of teenagers and the sagging skin and sprouting facial hair of age. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy Awards in 1996.
The Time is Now
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Coaches Corner v.03.16.2023
Coaches Corner v.03.16.2023
Right before St. Patrick’s Day, we have guest writer John Anderson writing Coaches Corner v.03.16.2023: Put Me In, Coach!
Great players and great teams all have one thing in common: they have a coach. It doesn’t matter if it’s a team sport or an individual sport, both are comprised of people who are driven, motivated, and among the very best in their sport or field. They have an energy and skill set that enables them to rise to the top. They also have a self-awareness that leads to continuous improvement. Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, Venus Williams, and Michael Jordan each had a coach despite being the best in their respective disciplines. Their coaches were able to see, analyze, and offer a perspective based on expertise, experience, outside knowledge, and without being influenced by being in the game.
The same thing happens in business. Having an experienced and knowledgeable coach will elevate a business to a next-level enterprise. It’s easy to look at your own company and say you’re successful, but it’s more important to look at your business and say, “How do we become the best, or remain the best?” Often judgment and decisions are clouded by ego, job security, or just lack of experience. The complexity of operations is compounded by growth and even simple family dynamics.
Thankfully, finding a good coach today is easy. Between 2010 and 2020, a significant part of the workforce retired either by choice or economics. The very best and brightest were offered packages leading to early departure. Often these high performers were also some of the highest paid executives, and cost-cutting won out over logic. So why the exodus? Most were in their 40s and 50s and looking forward to retirement. They were driven for so many years to the top of the food chain that a chance at regaining a work-life balance had real appeal over their $200K + bonus job. Suddenly we had senior executives, innovators, leaders, true entrepreneurs who were pulled from their respective games and left the field of play. We were left with a void in the one area you can’t just fix: experience.
Fast forward to a post-pandemic model where many companies are preparing for the next wave of challenges, be they economic growth or recession-related. Companies are operating without business and spiritual coaches. Teams are being reassembled under a new dynamic but without the experience factor. Middle managers are now expected to be the leaders. Without coaches, they are destined to make big mistakes, micro-manage the less dedicated workforce, stifle creativity, and curb innovation. Why not bring in the experience at a fraction of the cost, as a resource to help navigate without the commitment of a $300K hired gun.
Today you can find a coach who has walked in your shoes for 20 years. They have led multimillion or even billion-dollar businesses. They have connections and wisdom learned from mistakes that you don’t have to make. They do not want your job. They only want to help you succeed. A good coach can offer a completely different viewpoint without the fear of losing a job or political influence. A coach isn’t in the game, so don’t expect them to be calling plays or making shots. Their role is to coach people, situations, and decisions to improve your organization. Imagine having a successful entrepreneur with 30 years of experience sitting beside you during your business planning sessions or having a superstar sales exec sitting in on your weekly sales team meetings. What about navigating an acquisition or going public? These are potentially life-changing events that you would never do without counsel or coaches.
Finding a coach is easy these days. People who left the workforce early have played enough golf, traveled when they wanted, caught up on familial responsibilities, and are just waiting for the phone to ring. They relish the idea of working and contributing more than getting a big paycheck. Often times, the cost of a coach is less than an entry-level employee, but having access to that knowledge is priceless. They look forward to working a few days a week or even a few hours every day. Getting a coach is easy. Accepting coaching is harder and what will elevate you to a champion.
In conclusion, having a business coach can be a game-changer for your organization. Great players and teams all have coaches for a reason, and the same applies to businesses. Having an experienced and knowledgeable coach will elevate your business to a next-level enterprise. With the abundance of highly skilled coaches available today, finding one that fits your needs and budget is easier than ever. A coach can provide a fresh perspective, offer guidance and advice, and help navigate challenging situations. Don’t let ego, job security, or lack of experience cloud your judgement and decision-making. Embrace coaching and take your business to new heights.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Inflation, Jobs, and Interest Rates
Inflation, Jobs, and Interest Rates
Today, guest writer Edward E. Gordon takes on a topic that has been in the news for quite some time: Inflation, Jobs, and Interest Rates.
Latest news headlines report that stocks are crashing. The markets are focused on further interest rate increases as the Federal Reserve responds to inflation. But to what extent is inflation triggered by surging jobs hiring and a falling unemployment rate?
Overall businesses are still experiencing great difficulty in hiring skilled workers. Massive retirements and COVID-19 are being identified as the main culprits. However, reports from research groups and trade/professional associations are identifying skilled worker deficits as the chief cause of workforce shortages and wage inflation. As Harvard economist Gabriel Chodorow-Reich stated, “companies will keep bidding up pay as they compete for employees.”
The McKinsey Global Institute report, “Rekindling US Productivity for a New Era,” (2/23) centers on the urgent need for worker training and education to fill the rising tide of vacant jobs across America. McKinsey’s research lends future credence to similar statements by the American Hospital Association, the Association of General Contractors, the National Federation of Independent Business, and many other organizations.
The skills-jobs disconnect has only grown since the 1990s. Companies generally fail to recognize that investing in their employees’ continuing knowledge growth is a core business function. In fact as they continue to focus on cost-cutting, they are further losing ground as automation requires better skilled people. Data shows that this skills-jobs disconnect will persist at least until the 2030s.
Is this the new normal? The longer businesses only circle these issues at 30,000 feet, the bigger the risk of the economy running out of the required skilled workers to keep it expanding.
What has to happen before this requirement is acknowledged by our business culture? We hope soon rather than after a major economic crisis.
LWS addition from Ron Slee: Mike Rowe recently said that “if you don’t work with your hands or build something, your job is at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence. The younger generations seek purpose in their work and expect that their employers will help them with continuing education and training. Or they leave.”
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Brand Identity = Measurable Customer Behaviors
Brand Identity = Measurable Customer Behaviors
Today’s blog post, “Brand Identity = Measurable Customer Behaviors,” is brought to you from a new contributor. Roy Lapa is an experienced marketing professional with 25+ years of experience in B2B and B2B2C heavy industries in various functions such as sales, customer service, remanufacturing, industrial automation, product support, marketing, and management (with over 10 at senior levels). Roy’s DNA is geared toward developing solutions that are data-driven, customer-focused, and innovative. Roy is the Managing Director & Co-Founder, AFP Marketing Agency LDA.
If you search online, you’ll find many different brand identity definitions that point to various components such as your values, communication style, what you want people to feel when they interact with you, how recognizable you are, promises you make, tone, voice, fonts, colours, etc. These achieve some level of awareness but lack tangibility for most industrial businesses. Let’s narrow the definition to something more tactile for industry manufacturers, dealers, distributors, and service providers:
Your distinct brand identity must be linked to repeatable, scalable, and measurable customer behaviours.
Archetypes
Archetypes have proven useful as a simple framework in helping define customer behaviours since they play a role in influencing human behaviour, according to Carl G. Jung1, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. With some industry input, I have mapped out some of the top mining and construction manufacturers onto the 12 brand archetypes illustration2. Though there may be some debate about each OEM placement, this simply serves as an example to help you figure out your brand-customer relationship.
Here are a couple of questions and an example for each to assist you in defining your brand-customer relationship.
Why am I here as a Manufacturer, Dealer, Distributor, or After Sales Provider?
Example: Mountain snow groomers keep failing within the warranty period leaving the customer unsuccessful in figuring out why. They follow all the OEM recommendations to no avail.
2-way relationship behaviour: Under customer pressure, you always figure out a way.
What primary market behaviour do I want to be known for?
Example: Looking for help completing a new and unique infrastructure project, a customer is unsure how to approach the project from a technical standpoint.
2-way relationship behaviour: When the customer asks if there a better way, you consistently invent.
This is not new, and yet in dealing with many companies, most want to leap forward to brand identity deliverables such as voice, logo, typography, colours, etc. Additionally, firms are eager to transition to using terminology that is recognized in the business world without first doing a strategic analysis of their primary purpose: a behaviour-oriented relationship. Exploring your core business archetype is an excellent way to discover your brand identity.
Brand Audit
An audit performed by an external company that employs a mixture of data science and interpretation, along with contextual industry insight provides a clear anchor point which will help you understand where you stand today. Reducing self-serving bias, illuminating internal blind areas, and deciphering what is authentic vs. noise requires effort. Further, strong biases result from relying only on internal personal experience, especially recent experiences, in evaluating what your organization’s archetype might be. Lastly, brand identity is unique to your business and if you want your customer to notice you walking down the street and actively seek to engage, being distinct is key.
Great job, you narrowed it down to one brand archetype. Although it may be possible to be known for more than one, be cautious you don’t mistake that as being able to provide something for everybody. In working with many organizations, I have seen less than a handful of organizations be successfully known for two archetypes and this rare phenomenon is usually only within a distinct division or subsidiary.
Align
Now comes the challenging part. All facets within your company’s behaviours and communications must be in alignment if you are not already working inside your core archetype to undergo a thorough transformation. What do we mean by all?
Track
Let’s move on to some measurable items to help direct your path for the long term. I have selected these five metrics as they provide a few customer angles to measure. Each one progressively represents a stronger indication of the health of your brand identity demonstrating a more engaging customer behaviour.
Are there more measurable options? Yes. Each of these five works well for most of the organizations within the equipment manufacturer, dealer, distributor, and service provider industries. From my experience, I would make a few metric adjustments, only if necessary, following your brand audit, brand identity creation, and establishment of certain fundamental joint marketing-business goals.
Real customers. Can you pick the most likely archetype that fits the quote?
References & Notes:
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Friday Filosophy v.03.10.2023
Friday Filosophy v.03.10.2023
Ron Slee shares quotes and thoughts from comedian Steve Wright in Friday Filosophy v.03.10.2023.
Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and film producer. He is known for his distinctly lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations.
Wright was ranked as the 15th Greatest Comedian by Rolling Stone in its 2017 list of the 50 Greatest Stand-up Comics. His accolades include the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for starring in, writing, and producing the short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings (1988) and two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations as a producer of Louie (2010–15). He is known for his supporting role as Leon in the Peabody Award–winning tragicomedy web series Horace and Pete.
He graduated from Emerson in 1978 and began performing stand-up comedy the following year at the Comedy Connection in Boston. Wright cites comic George Carlin and director and former standup comic Woody Allen as comedic influences.
In 1982 executive producer of The Tonight Show Peter Lassally saw Wright performing on a bill with other local comics at the Ding Ho comedy club in Cambridge, a venue Wright described as “half Chinese restaurant and half comedy club. It was a pretty weird place.” Lassally booked Wright on NBC‘s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where the comic so impressed host Johnny Carson and the studio audience that less than a week later Wright was invited to appear on the show again.
By then Wright had firmly developed a new brand of obscure, laid-back performing and was rapidly building a cultlike following and an onstage persona characterized by an aura of obscurity, with his penchant for non sequiturs and impassive, slow delivery adding to his mystique. The performance became one of HBO’s longest-running and most requested comedy specials and propelled him to great success on the college-arena concert circuit.
Numerous lists of jokes attributed to Wright circulate on the Internet, sometimes of dubious origin. Wright has said, “Someone showed me a site, and half of it that said I wrote it, I didn’t write. Recently, I saw one, and I didn’t write any of it. What’s disturbing is that with a few of these jokes, I wish I had thought of them. A giant amount of them, I’m embarrassed that people think I thought of them because some are really bad.”[
After his 1990 comedy special Wicker Chairs and Gravity, Wright continued to do stand-up performances, but was absent from television, doing only occasional guest spots on late-night talk shows. In 1999 he wrote and directed the 30-minute short One Soldier, saying it’s “about a soldier who was in the Civil War, right after the war, with all these existentialist thoughts and wondering if there is a God and all that stuff.”
The Time is Now.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.
Coaches Corner v.03.09.2023
Coaches Corner v.03.09.2023
In Coaches Corner v.03.09.2023, Coach Floyd Jerkins talks about management and leadership behaviors.
The New Everyday Coaching Behaviors
There is a lot of buzz about management and leadership styles today. While we’ve experienced changes in the workplace, people have always wanted to be treated as human beings. Respect, truly listening, and general compassion for our fellow humans win the day.
Employees across the board are more vocal today about how they are treated, so be careful about following shiny objects. There are different leadership styles that work well. There is unmistakable evidence that when all the decisions are made by a given few or when employees are told exactly what to do all the time, it’s demotivating. When they don’t have input about the culture of their work environment, it’s demotivating. They quickly become disengaged because they have no say or are given an opportunity to contribute to their work tasks. None of us want to be told what to do, and neither do our employees.
Coaching is a Participative and Situational Influencing Style
The coaching profession has exploded in recent years, and it is diversified across many different fields and industries. Some old practices are now relabeled to new and what’s called exciting terms. Everyone is a coach, and coaching is the new thing to discuss.
It is a noble profession and a management method that some of us have successfully taught and practiced for decades. To be good at it requires education, experience and some school of hard knocks. Just because you’ve attended a few classes and got the plaque on the wall, it takes more to walk the talk.
Coaching Description
Coaching is a participative and situational management style that requires managers to help others enhance their own performance. They help the individual or team unlock their potential by supporting them to learn vs. telling them what the answers are. Fostering an environment to learn and think independently contributes to developing the individual or team to reach their fullest potential. The coach is a facilitator, helping the team members to achieve their results.
Building Trust in Teams to Reach High Performance
Building trust in a team requires the leader to foster trust-building actions and decisions. When the leader stops thinking that people are there to be controlled or managed, this starts to open the culture to people not fearing a reprisal from the leader when they question something or take actions that turn out to be wrong.
If you can’t trust people to do their jobs well, then one of the following situations needs to be addressed:
Progressive Coaching Focuses on Employees Strength
When you trust people to do the job, and it doesn’t come out right, that’s a coachable moment. If you have good people in the wrong positions, you need to go back to the job description and ensure you have it correct. If your people are properly trained for the position, look closely at the manager. Maybe they just can’t let go of power and control. There are different leadership styles that work well.
When there are emotional or unhappy employees in your business, at some time they’ve tried to tell you about it. Maybe your ears turned off, or your reaction signaled them to think twice about bringing it up again. Spirited people may request more than once to change a system or process but eventually become frustrated and shut down because they don’t feel heard. Jumpstarting them again can be tough to do.
A coach wants to know what is behind the conversation. What is behind the emotions? A coach is genuinely an interested listener. They make it easy for people to talk to them about almost anything. Effective listening is a learned skill set. Also, learning to listen isn’t always about what’s said. Watch what people do; that’s always revealing.
When your employees are improving, and the culture of the business supports learning and teaching, their enthusiasm and abilities to be effective are greater. They become more connected to the business and its mission and purpose.
A coach creates a focused approach to developing their people. Sure, we want to get business results, but that only happens after your people do what they do. As I’ve said before, good people can do extraordinary things when given a chance to succeed. Focus on each employee’s strengths and help them unleash their natural talents.
Answer Man to the Rescue: Stop Giving All the Answers
Managers are often promoted because they were problem solvers in their previous position. They had the ability to fix things when they were broken. The mindset is that it’s typically much faster to do the work themselves or faster to tell someone what to do vs. showing them how to do it. This management approach is a real challenge in an organization striving to move forward with new leadership styles.
Nothing is worse than training a staff that you have all the answers all the time. It’s debilitating to the team and a significant factor in staff turnover. In my article, Answer Man to the Rescue I point out that you are not superman or superwoman who has all the answers all the time.
Learning to let go of power and control requires the leader to delegate. You want team members to own the solutions. Being a good coach means helping them develop the best possible solutions that are good for the customer and good for the business.
The more you can engage your employees to contribute to the decision-making process and encourage them to speak up in a safe environment, the more they feel connected and empowered.
I know some of you are thinking, wait a minute, it’s much easier and faster if I just give them the answer and then move on to other issues. The real challenge is that you are not creating problem solvers who then solve them without ever asking you. You are robbing your employees of the opportunity to figure it out, and that’s such a waste of human talent and energy. You, then, are the problem, not the solution.
Psychological Management Practices That Foster Business Development
In my article, “Improving Your Employees Psychological Income,” I address pieces to the puzzle of delegation and accountability through empowerment. This is an important step to learn how to help teams perform at a high level. The magic of dimes exercise is a useful tool to help your leaders transfer from “what’s going wrong” to what’s going right” and develop some focus on the things that matter the most.
Intentionally becoming positive is a practice all by itself and tough to master for many. Instead of always pointing out what’s wrong, the coach accepts these instances as coachable moments and learning opportunities. The discussion centers on the mistake, how it happened, and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. We fix the source of the problem, so it doesn’t happen again and stays out of the emotional upheaval.
Open and Direct Communications Style
In today’s world of people management, there are new rules and new paradigms of people being sensitive to certain words and phrases. To say you should not patronize or be critical of others is an understatement. It all boils down to what Dale Carnegie wrote in his 1936 book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Treat others like you want to be treated. Empowering and coaching others is not a new concept.
Whether you are a small business owner, a leader in a business, or possibly a company preparing to scale your model to reach larger goals, mobilizing and cultivating your human assets is key to your success.
There are duplicatable steps to implement empowerment. You can read more about it in this article. “Conditions of Empowerment.” This provides a general guideline for the information. Make it clear what teams are responsible for by following:
By using an open and direct communication style, you can make it clear what your people are responsible for. Give them the room to go about it their own way.
Implementation isn’t always easy and there usually isn’t a clear road map. Habits can be hard to break, so recognize if you always see the negative in a situation. You’ll have to catch yourself if you start making negative remarks. You can relearn how to make a better and positive style of reply under nearly all circumstances through conditioning. Just do what an athlete does to get better, they perform the same moves every time under certain conditions, then tweak the responses to gain the maximum results they’re seeking. It is possible to phrase everything in constructive terms – even a negative sentiment. Practice makes perfect!
In Closing…
It just makes common sense that people are better motivated when they are happy and focused. It’s also a lot more fun to work around teams of people who are excited to come to work every day and who share a common goal.
The real success of a leader today is easily measured by the success of the people that work for them.
Did you enjoy this blog? Read more great blog posts here.
For our course lists, please click here.