The Leader sets the tone when dealing with customers

Ever heard someone on your team treat a customer badly? Ever wondered what made them think it would be ok to act like that? Take a moment to think about how you the leader treat and value customers. Are you happy to hear from a customer or do you treat them like an annoyance to your day? If you have ever dodged a customer call and told someone else to tell them you are not available, then your team will think that is an acceptable way to handle customers. The attitude that you project when talking and interacting with your customers will rub off on those you lead. If you realize that you are in business to serve your customers, and frankly without them you are not going to be in business for long, then you will make sure to treat them well and provide them with top notch service.

If something does goes wrong for a customer never call out a member of your staff to the customer. Always absorb the blame while focusing on how to resolve the situation rather than make excuses. If you put blame on employees it damages their ability to service that customer account and they also may lose respect for you in the process.

Remember to always treat your customers with respect which includes when they are not around. It serves no purpose to bad mouth your customers with your staff. It creates a negative environment and potentially leads to the mistreatment of that customer. Be positive when it comes to customers and your interaction with them and promote that mind-set on your team.

Focus on Where You Excel

In the business world a lot of people always seem to focus on what you aren’t doing well. Here is an opposite approach to take as a leader…focus on continual improvement of what you do well! Doesn’t it make sense to become the best in certain areas rather than try to be mediocre in a bunch? You can surround yourself with talent to shore up the gaps, as long as you know where they are. If you are all over the place just trying to “do better” and are not focused in a particular area, then ask those close to you to identify what you do best and target those skills for advancement. It also puts you in a more positive position where you are doing more of what you do best.

The same can be said of those you lead. Focus on developing skills that they are good at and when possible assign tasks that they are not as strong with to others. In cases where they are in positions that they desire but demand certain skills they are not strong with, then they may need to reassess their fit for the position. Put people in roles that they will succeed in for the overall success of the business.

Leaving the Office Behind and Going on Vacation

When I go on a vacation I want to unplug and leave work at the office. The best way that I’ve found to ensure that happens is by taking a proactive approach. The longer that I plan to be out, the more in advance I take action. If I plan to be out for a week, I will start about a week in advance. I make a point to check in with anyone whose workflow I affect and all my team members who directly rely on me. I let them know when I will be out and I probe to see what they might need from me during that time. I may ask them to accelerate tasks so that my involvement can happen before I am out, or to postpone tasks that can wait until I return. Anything that absolutely must happen while I am out gets someone assigned to handle that task. If there are things that “might” come up, people are delegated to handle those issues as well. I make a point of closing the loop with anyone to whom I have delegated responsibility to ensure they understand any key strategies or issues that need to be kept in mind. This ensures that I will get the best possible work completed or decisions made by those I delegate to because they understand the key issues. While probing for anything that might come up from each person I take the opportunity to provide my feedback or insight on things that will be taking place in my absence. I will make the rounds again a day or so before leaving to address any last minute needs.

Some people might look at it that the people who need me have a responsibility to ask for my help before I leave, but I see it as another point of success in taking an active approach to leading a team or group. Following this approach has allowed me to take great vacations where I truly leave the work at the office and I return to things running smoothly.

Pick the Right Mentor

When bringing in a new leader or team member, think about what things they need to learn and who is the best person to help them learn it. In your current team you will have people with different strengths and weaknesses. If you take someone who is weak with process or organization and put them in a role to get your new team member up to speed on the way the company conducts business, you not going to be getting them off to a good start.

Getting a new person up to speed is something that needs to be taken seriously. It may seem like a basic effort, but if treated that way could leave you new team member confused and frustrated. Take an active role in talking with people who can help on the mentoring side. Highlight things that are most critical and emphasis the mentor’s role in ensuring the new team member has every chance at success.

Don’t Slam People In Front of the Company Meeting

One of the worst ways to provide corrective feed back to someone is in a public forum. If you want someone to listen to you and take what you have to say as constructive feedback intended to help them grow, then find the right time to make your comments. It would not be the right time to do that in a company meeting. You might think you are making an example of them and that others will get the lesson too, but you have done more harm than good because you have likely embarrassed the person and made them resentful of your comments. You have also shown others that if you make a mistake you will get called out in front of the group which in the long run may discourage risk taking based on creative thought. Additionally, you have set a negative tone. It’s not just about what you say or even how you say it, it also matters where and when. It’s always better to criticize in private.

Tell ‘Em What You Want and How and Why

The people that you work with have lots of things to accomplish every day. As a leader, strive to ensure that what you do makes it easier for them to do their job. When you need some help from someone tell them exactly what you are looking for. If you have a project that needs to be completed and have some ideas in mind how to do it, tell them, don’t hold back. If you know exactly how you want it done, it doesn’t make sense to turn them loose only to have to redirect them later. If you don’t know how you want it done and are wide open how to get to the goal, tell them that too so they know they have a clean slate. If you have ideas, share them up front. If you know of pitfalls that may happen, give them a heads up. There is no reason to make someone guess. Most people want to do a good job and make the person giving them the assignment happy, so tell them how to make that happen.

Think about the extra information that you would like to have when someone gives you an assignment and provide those details. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes just for a moment and think about how you can make their success more likely. Help them to understand the whys and how this task fits into a larger picture and any related strategies. With the right information, people at every level make better decisions. Give people every chance to succeed.

Helping New People Join the Team - Lunch Buddies

I’m going to write a few entries about how to best assimiliate new people into your group. An often overlooked activity that can have extremely large rewards is having a plan for getting new team members to feel part of the team. A lot of times companies just think that they can drop someone in, give them a tour and a little company background, tell them a couple of tasks to perform, and they are done. They can learn the rest as they go along is the thought. Well it takes more than that to make someone feel a part of the team.

On teams that I lead, one thing that I always have in place before a new person joins are lunch buddies. The lunch buddy offers to go to lunch with the new team member the first day or first couple days. It can be the same person all week or several different lunch buddies for exposure to different team members. This doesn’t mean that the lunch buddies are buying lunch, it means that the new person has someone to have lunch with. This also helps to establish a more friendly relationship with people on the team. Sometimes people bring their lunch with them to work which is ok. The lunch buddy doesn’t have to eat with them, but they do offer to eat lunch and they go over the ins and outs of lunch such as when people typically take lunch, whether they eat in or out, and some local places to get lunch. The lunch buddy doesn’t sit back and wait for the new person to ask questions, they offer information. The lunch buddy takes initiative and sets up contact.

Being the new guy is hard enough, so give them the best chance to succeed and feel like they are part of the team and not an outsider. Current team members aren’t always good at reaching out to new people, not because they don’t want to, but because they are not sure how. The lunch buddy idea helps facilitate interaction and getting people to know each other. Try having a lunch buddy program in your group and let me know how it goes.

Develop Leadership Presence

What is leadership presence? When you walk into or join a group it is usually immediately obvious who the leader is. They act a little different than the other members of the group. They have a quiet confidence. They don’t appear to be someone who is easily rattled. It is important to remember that you have the ability to choose your response. You will not always be able to control what happens around you, but you can always control how you respond to that stimulus.

Take a crisis moment for example. Assess the situation, think through a plan of action, and implement. You may thing that you need to immediately have all the answers, but you don’t. Soliciting the input of others in a calm respectful manner during crisis helps add to your presence. It shows competence to know what you know and get help when you need it. Running off making uninformed or misinformed decisions does not. Complaining or crying about the circumstances does nothing to enhance your leadership presence. As the leader you need to come up with a plan even if that plan entails research or consultation as a first step. It is all about confidence. People want a leader that they can feel good about following. Someone that they know will take them where they need to go. Day in and day out, it is about the little actions that the leader makes that either develops their presence as a leader or sends them back to the trenches.

Own your organization

I went to work as a consultant at a company and was talking to an executive in charge about why there wasn’t a QA group in place in their organization. While they agreed that there should be one, they also said that they didn’t know why there isn’t one. They went on to complain about it for a couple minutes and acted like it was someone else’s responsibility to get one in place. I wanted to bluntly say, rather than complain about it, put one in place. If their comment would have been more along the lines of “Yes, there should be a QA team. When I took over this group there wasn’t one in place and I am working on changing that,” I would have felt they were a leader who owns their organization.

If something isn’t working right in your group, don’t expect someone else to fix it for you. Start the change process and work to get rid of whatever issues stand in your way. Not all problems can be solved right away. It is not about having immediate fixes, but in having action plans and making progress on those plans. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once said, "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand,as it is in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor." As a leader remember to always sail and run your ship like you are in command and act with the ability to do what is necessary.

Stay away from complaining

Leadership is about focusing on things that you can change. Leave it to the team members to stand around the water cooler to complain about red tape and things that are outside of their control. As the leader don’t let yourself fall into that same activity. As a leader you should believe that you are in a position to affect change. If something is not effective, or is worth complaining about, you can work on it and have a positive impact. Of course there will be things that you cannot change and will have to accept as policy or the way that the business is done, but it serves no value to you as the leader to jump on the bandwagon of complaining with team members. You might think that you are empathizing with the feelings of the team, but you are taking away some hope that the team members have that you are advocating for them, that you can make something happen. Everyone wants to feel like their leader can get things done.

If you want to be a leader you need to get things done and you need your team to believe that you can and will. Complaining along side them only makes them think that you are as helpless as they are. You have to ask yourself if you want to be one of the team or you want to be perceived as a leader. If you want to be the leader than go about making positive changes and complaining about a lot less.

Stay Calm

Leadership is about staying calm. When things get tense or the pressure gets turned up, people look to those who are able to stay calm and able to make well thought out decisions. There is a tendency to either run around like mad or withdraw into paralysis state when the heat is on and anxiety levels are high. Slow things down for people by breaking issues down into small chunks for easy digestion. Be the calming influence to others that they need and make the decisive decisions that are required.

One of my favorite quotes I think of when times are challenging is by Publilius Syrus, who wrote, “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” This quote always reminds me that it is when times are difficult, that we provide the most value as leaders. It is then, when we truly must rise and provide leadership for the team or group. You will be judged and valued by how you handle the tough high stress situations, which is best done through calm deliberate action.

Leave everything a little better than how you found it

As a leader you are in a position of influence. Even if you are in a group for a short period of time you have the ability to have a lasting impact on the team and the people individually. Use the opportunity to help people to improve or add skills. A lot of times people are capable but afraid and just need encouragement. Believe in people so they can learn to believe in themselves and their abilities. Encourage people to invest in themselves with classes, reading, and getting degrees. I can remember a young IT team member that I encouraged to go to school to get the college degree he was missing. Years later I heard through another person that he was really appreciative of my encouragement in going after that degree and getting it made a huge impact on his career. He only worked on my team for a short while, but I was able to make a difference in his career and the contribution he makes to the organization.

Another way to leave things a little better is to set up systems and procedures. Give people the tools to do a better job. Create structure and methods so that the process is repeatable. Never let all the knowledge of how to get things done reside only in your head. When you leave, so will the advances that were made in getting things done unless the systems are in place.

While leading you also have the ability to help others raise the level of their thinking. Help grow understanding so that team members can take ownership in what they do. Too many leaders just focus on people doing tasks and don’t share the vision or reasoning so that the team members know why they are doing what they are doing. Help people know how and why things work so that they can apply their knowledge to make their job better. Understanding helps people take ownership allows teams to rise to the next level.

You can move on knowing that you are leaving things a little better than how you found them.