Blog - Page 5 of 28 - Influence Leadership

20 Aug 2019

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller Posted in defining you and your leadership, Leadership essentials, leadership roles, Organizational Effectiveness, Team Heath Permalink

The Team-Building Process in 6 Steps

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller On August 20, 2019

Lead Where You’re Strong, Team Where You’re Weak

Maybe you think, or even know, that there is a certain way you are expected to act, so you put on a persona each day you walk into the office.

You want to be the real you, but you’re so busy figuring out the right thing to say that you forget the best thing to do—be real and authentic to who you are.

Inauthenticity drains your energy and renders you ineffective.

Even more importantly, if you’re not comfortable with and can’t get along with you, how in the world are you going to get along with anybody else?

Everyone is wired for greatness, but everyone is not wired for greatness in the same areas.

It’s a key life principle, not just a business one. That’s why I encourage leaders to have their people use self-assessment tools so everyone gains an awareness who he or she is and best to work together.

For example, if you are a blunt, get-it-done person, you may be great in crisis management, but not so great where the situation calls for empathy and patience such as mobilizing the day-to-day habits that create a profitable workplace.

That doesn’t mean you’re inferior or defective. That doesn’t mean you’re weak, but you’re weak in that role. Continue reading and check here for tips on building a great team.

Team-Building Requires Interconnection—Instead of Shame

Weakness is more about role-fit than anything else. And finding yourself in a role that doesn’t leverage our natural strengths is stressful. You may play ufabet สมัคร casino games once in a while to help calm your mind and de-stress. Another great option for relaxation and entertainment is Zet Casino 24, where you can unwind and enjoy a wide variety of games in a fun, secure environment. For gaming fans, exploring Humanitz game cheat codes can also add an enjoyable and engaging twist to your downtime.

We do need to learn to stretch, grow, and adapt. But if we are spending most of our time and energy out of our strength zones, we’ll run into trouble and wear out everyone around us.

Genius and flaws exist in each of us, and neither one has to diminish the other. If you know where your genius lies, but struggle in one particular role, you can create a multifaceted team. It’s important to foster an environment where employees feel valued and respected for their unique characteristics safeguarded by law in the workplace.

Lead where you’re strong, team where you’re weak. Don’t have someone to team with? Lead where you’re strong and put a system where you’re weak!

Thankfully the process to “teaming” up your weak areas is straightforward.

In fact, the hardest part is mustering the honest, authentic courage to reach out for help and collaboration.

Teaming Process:

Recognize Areas of Weakness

Ask For Guidance

Hire the Strengths You Lack

Learn from Your New Team Member

Grow Strength as a Team

Move on to help others with similar problems

It’s time to admit you can’t do it all. And you’re not expected to!

What is expected of you is to realize that truth.

I help leaders all the time who say, I can’t admit weakness to my team or tell them what I’m not good at.

In a sense, the joke is on them, because their team members already know their weaknesses.

Think about it. How hard would it be for you to rattle off the top five things your leader doesn’t do well? Pretty easy, right?

So why would you assume that your direct reports can’t do the same? You aren’t hiding your weaknesses from them when you won’t admit them.

They know your weaknesses better than you do. That’s why you need to be authentic.

You’re not fooling anyone.

Team Building Begins With Humility

It takes humility to admit, “I am not amazing at this, so I should partner with someone who is.” Humility multiplies strength.

Pride isolates people and breaks down teams. Engaging in team-building activities, can help foster collaboration and mutual respect among team members. Special occasions don’t have to involve a boring meal; book an exciting escape room game with Lockbusters today.

A humble leader, rather than trying to do it all, functions like an air traffic controller who scans the radar and calls certain team members to move depending on the strengths needed in any particular situation.

If inauthenticity has created a rift between you and your team, you’re missing out on their support to cover your weaknesses and maximize your strengths.

Remember: leaders are to achieve results with—and through— their teams.

13 Aug 2019

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller Posted in Customer Service, Service Permalink

How Excellent Service Creates Customers for Life

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller On August 13, 2019

Build a Customer Experience They want to Write Home About

If focusing on service is a significant step on the InSPIRED leadership path, how do you go about making excellent service an everyday practice? You guessed it—by being Intentional.

Great service doesn’t happen by accident. Every member of your organization is a person who has good days and bad days.

Without a detailed plan in place for excellent service, you’ll only get the best any of those people can bring themselves to give on any given day.

But if you architect superior service every step of the way, you’ll know in advance, and with great certainty, the quality of your customer experience.

You’ll be able to deliver the gold standard when you define what optimal service must look like for your customer. If you communicate with your customers through email, you may benefit from resources like timetoreply to help monitor your customer service team’s productivity. Adding an ai chatbot for website can also help improve the customer experience of your clients.

Excellent Service Creates Exceptional Stories

As I serve business leaders and organizations around the world, I travel quite a bit and stay in many hotels. Sometimes my wife goes with me. When we visit San Diego, my wife loves to stay at the Hotel del Coronado (or Hotel Del). Most recently, we even enjoyed the Rovos Rail Pretoria to Walvis Bay route, a breathtaking rail journey that matched the charm of our favorite hotel stays. And for upcoming business or family gatherings, the many Scottsdale event venues offer some truly beautiful settings.

If you’ve never experienced the Hotel Del, it is a magical place to stay.

It was built in 1888 and turned into a National Historic Landmark in 1977. It has hosted presidents, movie stars, and all manner of famous people. Located right on the Pacific Ocean and just outside downtown San Diego, it has a unique vibe.

When we visited a few years ago, we checked in, got our keys, and went to the room. When we opened the door, the room looked nice, but no different than any other hotel room.

Plus, it faced the parking lot, so the view wasn’t great. A little disappointed, I went back down to the front desk clerk and explained that I was here with my wife and needed a bit of downtime. I asked if she might be able to put us in a better room.

Her response was excellent service in action. It gave us a customer experience extraordinaire.

She clicked a few keys on her computer, issued new room keys, and sent us to the new room. We walked down the hall both nervous and excited to see what was behind the next door. From the corner of my eye, I noticed the front desk staff working efficiently on a computer, their hands gliding over a business logo mouse pad that made even routine check-ins feel professional.

As we swung open the door, the view took our breath away.

This Californian cabana looked out over beautiful landscape and onto the Pacific Ocean. Out the back door was a small patch of grass that transitioned to the dunes and then on to the beach.

An incredible beach vibe immediately washed over us as we felt the stress slip away. We could hear waves crashing with immense power and beauty. Sunlight streamed in through windows and doors, as the salty smell of the ocean permeated everything.

It was the polar opposite of the parking lot view in the other room.

Excellent Service Sets You Apart

Did the lady at the front desk have to upgrade us to this room? Certainly not.

But in doing so, she delivered a wow experience like nothing I’ve ever experienced. That was no accident.

Long before we arrived, someone architected that experience, empowering and encouraging her as a frontline employee to make superior customer service a top priority.

No matter your industry, when you deliver that kind of experience to your customers, you set yourself apart from your competitors.

Any hotel could provide us with a decent room and a continental breakfast, but Hotel Del provided us with an experience we’re still talking about. Even better, we committed this year to annual stays by joining Hotel Del’s Club level membership. After this particularly outstanding teammate served us well, we more than returned the value of her service.

3 Tips For Excellent Service

Every team member has the ability to create a WOW experience for each customer—if they feel equipped and encouraged to deliver. Here are three tips for taking an average interaction from eh to excellent.

1. Get in Their Shoes

According to companies like Ayuda Connect, to best serve your customer, you have to think like your customer. What are they in front of you to experience? What might be a potential source of stress? What could put their experience with your brand/company/team over the top?

2. Take the Extra Step

The steps to excellent service are, more often than not, simple—they just take that extra step. Don’t be afraid to get a little messy on your mission.

So if you don’t have the information your customer needs or the authority to architect a WOW experience, take the time to gather, research, connect, ask, extend, engage, and even surprise! Elevate your brand with our custom subscription box solutions.

3. See the Big Picture

Every interaction between you, your team, and your customers is just one moment in their larger story. But a truly inspired brand can leverage a single moment into a memory. A branding company in ri will make sure you have an unforgettable brand.

It might feel inconveniencing to take the extra step for a customer you may never see again—but with the bigger picture in mind, that one act of InSpired value can spark a connection that brings them back again and again and again.

Make this level of excellent service part of your value proposition.

Anyone can do what you can do, but no one can do it the way you do it. I call it serving others “from tip to tail.” It means you see customers as valued individuals, without whom you wouldn’t exist.

Average brands/teams perform individual tasks day after day. InSpired brands/teams create customer experiences they will never forget.

Architect a wow customer experience to make service your strength. Lean into it—and shine.

06 Aug 2019

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller Posted in Organizational Effectiveness, Process, Strategy, Success, Vision Permalink

Why You Need a Productivity Plan in a Changing World

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller On August 6, 2019

Spoiler Alert: You Can Be Busy But Not Productive

It’s always interesting to try to imagine what the future will bring.

The Jetsons cartoon show, based in the year 2062, envisioned a future where robots do all the housework, cars fold up to the size of a briefcase, and much of what we need is automated.

We’ve got forty more years to see how that turns out. The movie Bladerunner, set in 2019, envisioned a future where rogue replicants were virtually indistinguishable from humans.

Back to the Future II, set in 2015, predicted hover cars, self-lacing Nikes, and food rehydrators. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted a colonized moon by 2001.

While predictions of the future are often wrong, what we know is that the present will change dramatically in a short period of time.

The more technology advances, the more the business environment must advance with it. If you aren’t paying attention, you may just get left behind. Learn about Kamau Bobb Google‘s research on educational disparities.

You need a productivity plan.

Consider this list of things that didn’t exist fifteen years ago:

iPhone
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
Instagram
iPad
Netflix streaming
Google Maps
Snapchat
Spotify
Android
Uber
Lyft
Alexa
Airbnb
App Store
Google Chrome
WhatsApp
Fitbit
Waze
Slack
Square
Dropbox
Pinterest
Venmo
Bitcoin
Hulu
Kindle

The lesson for an InSPIRED leader is this: change is inevitable and you can either get left behind or develop a plan for growth that puts you in the best place for success.

Stand still and you’ll be outpaced rather quickly. But if you’re nimble enough to move wisely with the changing times, you are in a position to grow with them.

But this lesson comes with a warning.

Tyranny of the Urgent vs. a Productivity Plan

There’s a mistaken notion that being busy is the same thing as being productive. It’s the tyranny of the urgent in action.

By responding to the urgent, we tend to neglect the really important things in life—production capacity, personal growth, striving to make a difference, living a life of adventure, building a family, or crafting a leadership legacy.

In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Red, “the guy who can get anything,” says, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

In a counterintuitive way, busyness may seem productive, but it can actually be a distraction that slows you down. When you don’t invest time to put first things first, you’ll fall behind faster and struggle to catch up.

The truth is many people don’t know how to adapt when things change, so they remain still, embracing the madness they know. However, nothing in life remains still.

If you’re not intentionally growing, developing, and moving, you’re not standing still—you’re getting left behind. That’s why you need a productivity plan.

No One Gets Productive by Accident

I’ve spent my fair share of time in airports around the world. Have you ever paid attention to what happens when you step on one of the “moving sidewalks” between concourses?

These giant conveyor belts run silently in the floor, moving people along at about 1.4 miles per hour. The average person walking briskly (as you might expect in an airport) moves at about 3 miles per hour.

So, if a person walks onto a moving sidewalk and continues a normal stride, he or she can go farther, faster.

But consider this. Suppose you and a friend are walking through the concourse together at a steady 3 miles an hour clip trying to make a connecting flight.

Your friend jumps on the moving sidewalk and keeps walking at his normal pace. You stop to find something in your carry-on, figuring you’ll just catch up in a minute. But when you look up, you can’t even see your friends in the crowd ahead. He’s gone, and you’ve been left behind.

Unfortunately, many people make this same mistake in leadership.

They set aside intentional development and think they can just catch up later. But when you stop, you stagnate. Stagnate long enough and you’ll die. There is no standing still in life.

You’re either moving forward or falling behind.

Spend Your Time Where You Want to Reap Results

So if you shouldn’t stay still, but you shouldn’t hop on the hamster wheel just for the sake of moving, what’s the answer?

It comes down to your priorities. Your to-do list is broken.

Spend time only on the urgent.

So where you spend your time? Are you taking advantage of the “moving sidewalks” or sitting against the wall waiting for the right moment to move. (HINT: you’ll be waiting forever.)

Where are you growing and where are you letting yourself stagnate? Don’t neglect it. Otherwise, the world will pass you by, and you’ll wonder where everybody went.

I’m not advocating hustle and grind 24/7 with no rest or relaxation.

I’m advocating an intentional, holistic productivity plan for developing every day in the midst of executing with excellence.

We can’t live in either ditch. We need results for today AND results for tomorrow.

30 Jul 2019

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller Posted in Integration, Leadership essentials, leadership roles, Organizational Effectiveness, Team Heath, Uncategorized Permalink

Why Your Winning Team Should Act Like Sled Dogs

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller On July 30, 2019

Build a Thriving and Efficient Force for Productivity and Support

Part of what makes the great Iditarod race such an inspirational feat is the level of teamwork necessary at every step.

What looks like a bunch of dogs all doing the same job is actually a multi-faceted team—trained, orchestrated, and equipped by their musher.

A full team is made up of 16 dogs, running in 4 different positions. Every dog has a particular strength, and every musher knows exactly which dogs will play each position best.

It takes the same analysis and social understanding to create a winning team in the workplace!

Let’s look at each pack member in detail and how their strengths translate to your team. Keep in mind which of your own members would thrive in each position.

Who Are Your Lead Dogs?

Lead dogs know their way on the trail without being watched and you can trust them to make decisions guiding others on the team.

Lead dogs are smart, possess initiative, common sense, and the ability to perform even in less than ideal conditions.

How can you tell which of your team members will execute well as a Lead?

Some will take that initiative pretty early. But sometimes you take a leap of faith on an untested pack member— and they surprise you

Let the Leads get to know your heart, and keep them close. Learn to develop a mutual intuition and give them access where the rest of the team might not have.

Watch for their health, so you don’t have to replace them. Make sure their “paws” are in good shape—in other words, make sure they are free to run without anything hindering their running with all of their potential.

Stay Prepared with Swing Dogs

The best teams have members who can operate in other positions. The Lead can be a burdensome place that wears, wearies, and stresses.

So it’s natural for mushers to have their ‘leaders in waiting’ to run in the next position—which is Swing. These dogs have to be leaders in their own right, and for many, becoming that Lead dog is the next natural step.

Swing dogs are directly behind the leader, understanding their moves and translating that to the rest of the team.

They ‘swing’ the rest of the team behind them in turns or curves on the trail. They protect the Lead dogs from attempting a turn—only to find the rest of the team choosing not to follow!

They are crucial to making sure everyone makes the journey and stays in sync.

Pro tip: When Swing dogs are able to rotate with the Leads, both sets will remain fresh and the results will show.

The Powerhouses: Your Team Dogs

Not everyone on your team will be a Lead dog. In fact, if you had a pack full of them, your mission would probably fail. Chaos would ensue with everyone trying to lead.

That’s why, settled in the middle, are Team dogs.

They don’t have to be concerned with the stress of leading and the sled is a comfortable distance behind them. They are free to simply pull with power and run.

These pack members make up the momentum and pull you need to get the race done. To get the project finished. To keep going towards the prize.

Most of your Team dogs will never be Lead, and they are fine with that. But you know what? If we didn’t have them, we couldn’t do what we do. They are vital to every pack—and every business.

We should accept that the race is not their life—and let them run from 8 to 5 as hard as they can, then clock out and leave it all.

Steady the Sled with Wheel Dogs

Wheel dogs run at the back of the pack, but are important for the steadying element they bring the entire team.

It takes a calm and even temperament to run close to the jolting, unpredictable sled.

These dogs know how to pull with power and steadiness to maneuver the sled around turns and rough bumps. (Not all dogs can handle it, nor should they.)

The sled is not always pretty—things like cash flow and layoffs and contingency planning. There are things in your business that not every pack member needs to see and some will be scared off by.

Which people do you allow close to the sled of business?

Team dogs need to run unhindered from the burdens of the sled. But remember, even Wheel dogs that are closest to the sled are still not on the sled itself.

Though Wheel dogs are seasoned confidantes, people you count on to help you turn the business, they’re not meant to be pack mules for your emotional burdens.

Keep an eye on those boundaries, establish outside sources of emotional care and support, and you’ll keep the Wheel runners—as well as the team as a whole—healthy.

Create Your Racing Team

Of course, your people aren’t actual racing dogs. And you probably don’t wake up every morning, tie on your fur hat, and climb into a wooden sled.

But it’s still true that how well your team performs is in direct proportion to how well you know your people and put them in the right spot on the team.

All positions are necessary. Knowing which ones your team members naturally play and allowing them to run there not only increases their satisfaction, but can lead to better team performance in the long run.

Building the perfect team is rarely a sprint—more like an adventure of endurance that is wildly rewarding to those who take the time to learn and truly prepare.

As always, if I can help you maximize your team’s unique talent, drop me a note using the form below.

23 Jul 2019

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller Posted in Leadership essentials, leadership roles, Organizational Effectiveness, Success, Team Heath Permalink

One Leader’s Tragic—but Avoidable—Story of Failure

Sticky Post By Chris Fuller On July 23, 2019

The Secret to Managing Team Relationships

Captain William Bligh possessed a strong ship, crewed by forty-three talented Royal Navy seamen. He had charted a clear course and mission.

But even in the harsh industry of 18th century sailing, Bligh had a tough reputation.

Historical accounts tell us his crewmen described him as a stern, overbearing, and critical leader—frequently successful in achieving objectives, but harsh with punishment.

He was focused, but either not self-aware or, more likely, he just didn’t care.

The consequences would go down in infamy.

Bligh could have succeeded in accomplishing the mission IF he had been an InSPIRED leader—if he understood how to manage relationships with his crew.

Leadership Passion – Leadership Awareness = Mutiny!

In 1787, Bligh and his crew, along with Bligh’s comrade and leading lieutenant, Fletcher Christian, set sail from England on a ten-month journey. They were bound for Tahiti and its famous breadfruit harvests.

They reached the island, but instead of purchasing, loading, and leaving with his precious cargo right away, Bligh allowed his men to stick around for five months without any direction or discipline. Bligh refused to understand and manage his people in ways that led to success for the whole team.

Bligh never took his eyes off his prize—making it to the West Indies to resell the breadfruit and make a pile of cash.

His devotion to the mission, however, blinded him to wise execution.

Rather than respect his people, he crippled them.

When he piled his men back on board The Bounty after months of rest and socialization with the Tahitian women, he expected instant results without instituting any processes.

British historian Richard Hough notes Bligh “failed to anticipate how his company would react to the severity and austerity of life at sea … after five dissolute, hedonistic months at Tahiti.”

The problems began immediately. His men grumbled. They complained to Lieutenant Christian about leader Bligh’s strict discipline and exhausting expectations.

Bligh had a people problem—he didn’t have trust from his crew.

But at the core, Bligh failed managing his crew’s expectations.

He had permitted his men to get cozy doing nothing and now had a group of men who resisted his hard-nosed efforts to get them working again.

Bligh responded to the crew’s resistance with an even harsher crackdown.

So only three weeks into their journey home, The Bounty’s frustrated crew, including Bligh’s comrade Fletcher Christian, slipped into their captain’s cabin, tied him up at cutlass-point—and set him adrift in the Southern Pacific.

Pain Points of the Unaware

Bligh’s story has become legendary through various retellings of the infamous “Mutiny on the Bounty.”

While you probably haven’t set your boss adrift on the open sea, or been marooned by your employees, you’ve likely been tempted to do so.

Has your boss (or have YOU) ever…

Failed to manage expectations?
Given orders without laying out roles, processes, and goals?
Changed course without communicating with the crew?
Gaslighted community concerns and complaints?
Ignored the gap between leadership teaching style and team learning style?

Lack of awareness—of self, of team, and of direction—will always lead here one way or another.

It comes down to a management of trust.

When a leader fails to lead people well, the team can’t trust that their next order will lead to success. Missions will fall apart. Even talented teammates, like Bligh’s crew, will rebel.

Through another series of adventures, Bligh eventually made his way back home. Unfortunately, he didn’t learn his lesson. His unwise and demanding leadership style led to three more mutinies.

Practical Steps for Awareness

How would others describe you and your leadership style?

It’s an intriguing question because it causes you to pause and reconsider everything you think you know about yourself and your interaction with others.

It means you have to think not only about what you intend by your words and actions, but how your words will be received, perceived, and experienced.

This simple practice of awareness is a leadership key that has kept teams afloat through even the hardest storms. How to begin? Be ready to look, listen, and learn.

Look at your team, your leaders, and your clients. How do they interact? What frustrates them? Where do they excel? How does the environment affect morale, productivity, creativity, etc.?

Listen to your team, your leaders, your clients. Conversations between team members will reveal the unsolved, chronic mistakes long before mutiny breaks out. If you’re stuck in the echo chamber of your own goals and expectations, you’ll miss these crucial moments.

Learn from your team, your leaders, and your clients. The best leaders are self-aware of their own fallibility—and the room they have to grow. They look for new ideas daily to challenge their perspectives, encourage team flow, and keep the organization from stagnation.

How Will They Tell Your Story?

Everything—from how you carry yourself when you step into a room, how you listen when someone is talking, make eye contact, react to feedback, say your favorite leadership mantras, encourage or discourage—creates an experience that either inspires or exasperates.

Unfortunately, most people lack self-awareness. They prefer to remain blissfully ignorant and blame everyone else for any problems they create.

They fail to realize how their words, actions, attitudes, and personality impact performance and relationships with the people they interact with on a daily basis.

These leaders may know their strengths, but they overuse them to their own detriment.

That’s not good enough if you aspire to be an InSPIRED leader.

Leadership legacies are written by you—BUT are preserved and passed down through the followers you leave behind.

It’s too late for Captain Bligh to change his story.

What will YOU do with yours?

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