Employee First Leadership
The customer is always right. How far off course did we go following this mantra? I think most people in business and sales can explain what this philosophy was intended to produce and yet we've all witnessed the unintended consequences and damage this has
done to the buyer and seller relationship.
This attitude came from our desire for instant gratification which never generates the best results. Do whatever it takes to make sales became the strategy in the, 'Just win baby! and 'Just Do It!' age of business. To win today, the mantra needs to shift to, 'Just Do It Right', but first let's look at the unintended consequences before we talk about how to become the leader who can reverse their effects.
The unintended consequences...
If the customer is always right, then the employee is always wrong. Imagine going to work and knowing you will always be wrong...Very demoralizing.
A dysfunctional relationship between buyers and sellers occurred during, 'The Customer Is Always Right' age. Buyers became much too entitled and salespeople focused on making a sale, not doing what's best for the buyer or making customers.
The focus on making new sales, not customers, caused buyers to feel that salespeople were more concerned about the transaction than they were about them or the outcome they wanted. Mistrust grew between buyers and salespeople. Both sides didn't trust the others intentions.
Salespeople, customer service and executives became afraid to tell buyers no, walk away or look for a better opportunity to do good business. Business is all about connecting with people who can help each other and it needs a healthy trust between buyers and sellers to grow and be profitable.
People were actually treated poorly. Employees were abused and buyers indulged to the point they became spoiled, non-compliant buyers who couldn't be satisfied, sold at a profit or become loyalty customers.
Employees began to not trust their own companies. The belief that the company really didn't care about them or the buyer grew. They started to feel that the company only cared about making a profit. Don't get me wrong, leaders need to make sure their company is profitable or they won't be around to care about people. However, if people are their company's greatest asset then they need to act like it.
The phrase 'Do what's best for the buyer' was, and in most cases still is, interpreted as, 'Do whatever they want' to get them to buy or go away if they are complaining.
We intended to improve customer service by pleasing the buyer. Instead, spoiled consumers soon had no loyalty. This reduced their buying decision to the lowest price which usually didn't result in what was best for the them, creating more dissatisfaction. This became a vicious cycle and war broke out between buyers, sellers and companies.
We talked about customer satisfaction, spent millions on surveys and customer retention programs while our intention and focus to make new customers (sales), offended our existing customers.
None of this is part of a good business plan which created many unrealistic expectations that could not be met.
Business historians will surely look back and write about how foolish 'The Customer Is Always Right' age of business was and the mess we made of business relationships during this period. We chased short term gains and created long term disaster!
Now it is time for the 'People First Age of Business' and the good news is that the results can be the longest most sustainable economic boom in history.
To lead your business to a healthy, profitable and sustainable place your people will need to
be more important than your customers. That's right, 'Employee First Leadership' starts with your people, then you can create a 'Customer First Company'. When employees are happy, energized and challenged they are better prepared to make and keep customers by doing what's best for them, not just selling them, but truly serving them.
be more important than your customers. That's right, 'Employee First Leadership' starts with your people, then you can create a 'Customer First Company'. When employees are happy, energized and challenged they are better prepared to make and keep customers by doing what's best for them, not just selling them, but truly serving them.
'Employee First Leaders' do what's best for the people who work for them, and then ask them to always do what's best for the buyer to make them a customer.
A 'Customer First Company' makes customers, not just sales. Doing what's best isn't always what the buyer wants but what's in their best interest. This holds true with your employees as well. What's best for them isn't always what they want but it's a leaders responsibility to serve people, not please people. Serve your people and ask them to serve others and make customers and your sales, revenue and profits will increase. In addition, you'll create long term sustainable growth.
I knew an uneducated man, a high school drop-out, who ended up owning a car wash. He left for lunch one day and left his son in charge. When he returned from lunch he found his son at the booth taking new customers money. The line of cars to wash grew longer. They seemed busy with lots of new customers and the son was happy. The son felt good as he talked with the new customers waiting to get their cars washed and the line continued to grow. The father took the son aside and explained that it's easy to take people's money but the most important part of the business was to keep them coming back. He further explained that it only happens because of perfectly washed cars.
He made the point to his son to stay focused getting the cars washed and keeping the line moving. I said he was uneducated, I didn’t say he wasn’t smart. The memory of this event comes to mind even when I am working with large corporations, industry leaders and multi-million dollar companies.
He was explaining 'Employee First Leadership' without knowing it. It's always more important for a leader to spend their time with the people who make customers because customers come back and send other people to your business ready to become new customers. In addition, word of mouth spreads virally in the social age and allows 'Customer First Companies' to establish their brand and grow faster.
This is 'Employee First Leadership' and it works for all businesses and organizations. Make the people who serve your customers more important than new sales and your business will prosper and grow.
By Mike Moore
Avoid Mediocrity By Overcoming Your Nature
When you wake up in the morning you have an expectation or intention for your day. Your expectations and intentions are the first choice you make that begins to separate mediocrity from extraordinary. What are your intentions or expectations for the day ahead? I've asked individuals and groups, large and small, this question over the past two decades and the overwhelming number one answer is, “I want to have a good day”. When I ask people to define a good day, the definition is, “A day with little to no problems or hassles”. When I ask them how many days a year this intention or expectation is met, they usually answer, “None”. Yet, they wake up each day and repeat this behavior without changing their expectation or intention. The vast majority of people start each day with an unrealistic expectation or intention, that when not fulfilled, makes them frustrated, upset and unhappy. When we set expectations that aren't met, we are usually disappointed.
Managing your own intentions and expectations drives your daily emotions and state-of-mind. People who become mediocre focus on their circumstances and not their solutions. This makes their circumstances the driver of their emotions. This puts their emotions, or state-of-mind on a roller coaster ride of peaks and valleys that sabotages their ability to create the results or life they want.
First, let’s look at why people set an intention or expectation of no problems, no hassles and no worries, and defined this as a good day. When we wake up each day we have a choice to make, “Better or Comfortable”. Our human nature seeks comfort before improvement and is satisfied to be comfortable. We don't want to be average but have to choose to do things we don't want to do if we want to be extraordinary. We don’t wake up each day driven to be better human beings or to make things in our life better. So, the challenge is how to overcome our human nature and stop sabotaging our own lives.
When we define a good day as no problems, no hassles and no adversity and then meet the first problem of the day, how do we react? If you said, “Frustrated” you'd be right. Your expectation or intention has set you up to be frustrated. Not the best state-of–mind to handle life or work problems. This pattern of behavior begins a downward spiral of poor emotions. These emotions make you less capable of handling the next problem. Maintaining this emotional cycle may even make you avoid, withdraw or quit trying to overcome the obstacles in your day. The end result of this is mediocrity, at best.
This new definition can help you make a better first choice as you wake up each day. Define a good day as one where you find, meet and overcome problems and adversity. Yes, you need to wake each day looking for problems. Problems to solve that will help people. Just a note...You shouldn't be looking to make problems...that won't make for a better life. You need to look for and find existing problems, and then help solve them. If you are part of a problem, stop complaining and start finding solutions. This definition will help you to stop avoiding conflict and endure difficulties with the proper emotional state-of-mind. Armed with this new definition, when you find problems, you will be eager to meet them head-on and won't become frustrated. You'll become an overcomer and not a victim of your circumstances.
Adversity and problems are the obstacles that stand between where you are and the results or life you want. The first step to overcoming adversity and problems is to develop an attitude or emotional state-of-mind that can overcome the obstacles. Our attitudes are most affected by our intentions and expectations that create our daily choices and allow us to choose to be better rather than comfortable. This thinking will even start to help you embrace change and stop fighting to hold on to a status quo that may be keeping you average as well.
Redefine a good day, expect problems and hassles. Become an overcomer, a solution finder, and then you'll begin to experience a, 'Good Day'...everyday. This cycle of behavior will make your life is a journey of solutions that serve others and rewards you with the results and life you want.
A final thought for leaders...You are responsible to teach, prepare and help people set expectations that will allow them to live and work towards a better life. Helping people understand how their expectations and intentions are empowering them or sabotaging them is a good first step.
Change your expectations, to prepare for the hassles of life, to increase your happiness and improve your results. Expect more of yourself and less of others...These is one of the top traits of leaders, peak performers and the extraordinary.
By Mike Moore
Locker Room Leadership
Coaches who win are leaders, and leaders don't measure winning by the scoreboard. They measure winning by the positive effect they have on people's lives. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, anytime they keep score, it's important to play to win. Playing each game, day or event in life to win, making the effort, exhausting oneself in the pursuit of a worthwhile cause, is what exposes the opportunities to learn, grow and become the person who can win the bigger battle of developing into a lifelong winner.
Leaders, coaches and mentors view the score as a lifelong process, a marathon not a sprint. Don't ask them what today's outcome was...Ask them in 10 years how the people they led are doing, judge them by how they have influenced the people they led. Vince Lombardi, yes the one the trophy is named after, once said, "The most difficult thing I do is getting them ready to play each week". Winning in sports, business and life is more about who you are than your strategy or tactics...People make things happen and leaders help people become those who make the best things happen.
My father was a football coach, teacher and leader. He raised me, taught me and prepared me to become a coach and teacher. In the processes he taught me leadership. I grew up in his coaching office watching game film, on the practice field and in the locker room. I spent time with him learning to game plan and plan practices to prepare athletes to execute these plans. I watched him prepare his players to perform and was on the sidelines and heard the in-game coaching, halftime adjustments and post game speeches. These were always to get them ready to perform again.
My father exposed me to many of the great coaches of the past 50 years and I learned from all of them. Coaches like Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant, Tom Landry, Red Auerbauch, Don Shula and Chuck Knoll.
As time passed I studied coaches like Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Tommy Lasorda, Bobby Cox, Bill Cowher, Mike Tomlinson, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh. The one who influenced me the most after my father, was in my opinion the greatest coach of all time...John Wooden.
As time passed I studied coaches like Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Tommy Lasorda, Bobby Cox, Bill Cowher, Mike Tomlinson, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh. The one who influenced me the most after my father, was in my opinion the greatest coach of all time...John Wooden.
The last time I spoke to legendary Major League Baseball Manager and family friend, Bobby Cox, he reminded me that I was doing what my father raised me to do...In business and life, rather than in sports.
My Dad spent my childhood, teenage years and early adult life preparing me and helping me refine my coaching insights and skills. He and I talked for hours on end about how to apply what we both knew about coaching to business leadership and management. We found that all he had taught me applied to coaching, executive leadership, sales management and salespeople. In addition, I learned something from every coach I ever played for, every person I ever worked for and every client I every consulted with or trained...Every single one of them!
I found that life and business are both a performing experience, just like sports. I also learned that people performed best when 'coached up' by a leader. I believe that sports are important to society not because of who wins or loses but because of the lessons we can learn about peak performance, coaching, teamwork and leadership. Don't get me wrong, winning makes playing the game more fun, just as achievements make life more fun, and coaching and leadership is about preparing people to have more fun!
After using all I had learned to lead, coach and manage people, I began writing, speaking, teaching and training people about what I had learned that would help others prepare to perform to their peak and produce their best results.
Their influence and impact on me, and many others is their legacy and the reason they will never be forgotten. The lessons I learned from my father, John Wooden and the other great coaches have served me well and helped me serve others.
Now, I am teaching leaders, managers and coaches how to build businesses, teams and individuals that can keep growing, learning and improving their peak performance. The following are some of the high points I teach in my 'Locker Room Leadership' seminars and coaching sessions.
- Great leadership, coaching, teaching and managing is an act of will.
- Leadership is something you do with people, not to them.
- If you stop learning you'll stop leading.
- In a locker room, boardroom, sales office or any group, if you pay attention, you can hear and feel the attitudes of the people.
- If you pay attention you can tell if people are ready to perform.
- Peak performance is a Spirit (Attitude), Mind (Knowledge and Skill) and Body (Actions) experience...To win in sports, business and life, they have to always be in that order.
- Leaders don't worry about averages or excellence they raise the standards...The lowest form of behavior that's acceptable.
- Who you are as a coach or leader is the lowest form of behavior you except...It's not your average or top people's performance but your lowest producing performers...That's who you are as a leader.
- Winning coaches spend time with the people they least want to engage...The people who need to improve the most.
- Leaders assign, monitor and teach to generate improvement.
- Leaders manage the atmosphere...the air! They do this by managing attitudes because attitudes create behavior that results in winning.
- Leaders inspire, motivate and hold people accountable to be their best.
- Leaders challenge people to change their average thinking, so they can grow and improve.
- Leadership skills can be taught, learned and improved but need insight, intuition and a personal touch to become most effective.
- Great leaders love people...That's where their insight, intuition and personal touch comes from.
- Most managers and coaches sabotage the results they want by trying to manage the results.
- When you manage results you’re too late to lead.
- Results, the score and winning, can’t be managed. Winning comes from preparing the spirit, mind and body.
- Results, the score and winning come from the intentions, attitudes, skills and actions that were present long before the results.
- Intentions, attitudes, behavior and skills can be taught and managed through the discipline of preparation.
- Winning will take care of itself when leaders manage the things that create the score.
- Leaders lift people to accomplish beyond their own expectations through preparation.
- Never forget that your standards define who you are as a coach or leader.
- Leaders never compromise their standards, instead they use them to teach, motivate and inspire.
- Leadership is about people first but no one person is more important than the team.
- Treating everyone the same is the fastest way to show favoritism.
- It takes courage to treat each person the way they deserve to be treated…The way that's best for them.
- Leader’s help people grow and become their best by working with them, to get them to do the things they don’t want to do, that will create the results they both want.
- Leaders manage people’s intentions, attitudes and dominant thoughts that create the behavior that produces the results.
- Leaders pay attention and listen to manage the atmosphere by managing the attitudes and state-of-mind of people.
- Great leaders get uncommon results from common people by requiring them do the work to become uncommonly prepared.
- In the absence of leadership, mediocrity will lead and failure is assured.
- You won't know how good a job you've done until you see how the people you've led, mentored and coached turn out...Sometimes that takes years.
By Mike Moore
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)