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On Ways to Persuade Others to Act

How do you get groups of people to take non-sales related actions? Is it a matter of using a catchy graphic or video to tell them what to do? Or interrupting them while they are doing something else? Or applying pressure with multiple reminders?

Sales and marketing professionals aren’t confused: persuasive messaging is required to sell products and services. However, if you aren’t a salesperson and you need to persuade a group of individuals to take a certain action, what skills should you employ?

Perhaps you even hate to use the word “sales” in reference to what you are trying to accomplish. But the task remains daunting: you must still say or write stuff that causes people to act. Whether they are employees, peers, board members, customers, the public or another stakeholder, where do you start?

In my column of November 17, 2019, I offered a solution. Begin by analyzing the “Unmet Needs” of individuals in the target group you are trying to influence. When their needs aren’t being met, people’s typical response is to co-opt a low-quality substitute into playing a “better-than-nothing” role. 

However, knowing these needs is just the beginning. The fact is, we live in a world of distracting messages and influences. Whether cash payments are involved or not, you must compete against these distractions for your subject’s time. Even your free offerings need to displace Facebook, Netflix and the news in order to be effective, going up against the millions those entities spend to get attention.

If you are willing to win the battle, I suggest a four-step framework from Michel Fortin, the experienced copywriter. For example, let’s assume that you are trying to arrange a Neighborhood Watch meeting for your community.

Step 1 – Enumerate the Features
These are elements that make your event attractive. They are factual: visible to the naked eye, incontrovertible and distinct. Make a list of these features such as: “The meeting is scheduled for Sunday afternoon at 4pm” or “The nice policeman who drops in occasionally will be there.”

Step 2 – Detail the Advantages
Each of the features you listed can do something that makes your product special. In other words, it provides an advantage. To craft them quickly, simply add “so that” to the end of each feature, and then complete the sentence. For example, “We have scheduled the meeting for Sunday afternoon so that everyone can attend.”

Step 3 – Compile the Motives of Your Prospects
These are the deep psychological drivers, motivations inherent in your targets’ minds. As such, they lie dormant even before the prospect is aware of your solution. You may find these within the Unmet Needs, and they should help you understand why they will take action.

For example, your targets may have a “Hassle-Free” motive for the meeting. Therefore, avoiding the busier days of the week should help.

Continue mapping motives to advantages until the list has been exhausted.

Step 4 – Craft Benefits
The final and most important step is to develop benefit statements you can use in your verbal, written or visual messages. These are practical outcomes which occur when features, advantages and motives are combined to produce a meaningful result. I use the phrase “which means” as a prompt.

For example, “The meeting is on Sunday so that everyone can attend, which means that we can finally come together to plan detailed strategies to protect each and every unit from the thieves living across the gully.”

In benefit statements, I often describe what will happen if the action I want fails to be realised. In the example above, I’m trying to imply that those neighbors who miss the meeting are putting their homes at risk.

When these statements are stacked together, the end-product can be quite persuasive. It should be. After all, it began with your prospect’s Unmet Needs.

However, many individuals don’t want to exert the time and effort to do such rigorous thinking. “De people dem fi know dem need fi come a di meeting” is used as a reason to avoid the hard pre-work needed to craft convincing statements. In the minds of those who are already persuaded, all that’s necessary is a nice, simple flyer.

Unfortunately, most flyers include little more than a list of features; hardly enough to produce the desired result. In a world of relentless demands on our time punctuated by rude surprises, that approach won’t do.  Don’t arrogantly assume your targets should know better and complain when they refuse to comply. Instead, plant the seeds of your success from the start by doing the in-depth work required to convert unmet needs into action. 

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How to Reward Your Employees Effectively

Could you make a mistake and offer the wrong gift to employees during the holiday season? What if it’s based on outdated assumptions that do more harm than good? Here are some findings from recent research to ensure your organization makes the most of the occasion.

The season for giving gifts to staff is fast approaching and, right now, someone in your company is making an important decision. What gifts should workers receive? It may seem like a small-time concern, but take a closer look: it’s tied up with management’s idea about what motivates employees.

In some years, managers get this wrong, thereby amusing or even insulting staff with their choice of gifts. In others they get it perfectly right, and it resonates in a way that lifts morale and engagement. What can you learn about employee motivation that results, at the very least, in doing no harm?

The big finding is that there’s a huge paradox at play:  the story employees tell their managers about gifts just isn’t true. To wit, when surveyed, most staff members say they prefer cash rewards. With regards to money, most respond with a knee-jerk, cultural reaction – of course they “want more of it”, as soon as possible. 

However, when employee performance is measured after the fact, cash turns out to be less effective in changing behavior than verbal praise or other visible rewards.

Why is that?

I believe that, when surveyed, employees are literally reporting what they should want, rather than what actually produces higher performance. This is especially true for complex or creative work which can’t be quantified easily. 

In fact, monetary awards undermine intrinsic motivation in these situations in a phenomenon called “crowding out.” It implies that staff becomes distracted by the money, focusing away from the job at hand. This ruins quality and productivity.

Part of the reason this happens is that raw cash, when rewarded, offers only a temporary spark. In no time, it devolves into a commodity to be traded for ordinary goods and services such as JPS, NWC, rent and phone bills.

However, this isn’t true for other kinds of gifts which have more staying power. Here are some examples and the reasons why they perform better than one-time cash rewards.

1. Luxury Items

These are identified as goods and services which the recipient wouldn’t purchase for him/herself. Apparently, the fact that the gift is a luxury allows an additional level of indulgence. After all, once a reward has been given, it cannot be returned. Instead, it must be consumed and enjoyed which prolongs its effective life, even after completion.

In addition, the luxury gift grants permission to the recipient to partake in an “impractical” expenditure which takes them outside habitual behavior. This heightens the experience, usually increasing a sense of gratitude.

However, one-size-doesn’t-fit-all. Each person has their own ideas about what’s special. Choosing the right gift means knowing something about their personality and making a proper match.

2. Hedonic

Another element which augments the effect of a reward is an intention for it to generate positive emotions. In particular, in the workplace it could evoke feelings of being “included, appreciated, invested in and feeling valued.” This is so important that some researchers have attributed 80% of voluntary attrition to a lack of recognition by employers, echoing similar studies performed here in Jamaica.

In this context, sometimes the most meaningful rewards have no real tangible component whatsoever. Instead, they hit other emotional chords which are more powerful. For example, the words spoken when the gift is given should be accurate and specific, focusing on the unique contribution. This increases the impact.

3. Social

Finally, it’s also best if the reward is public, so that others can honor the individual. 

Furthermore, try to choose something that’s not perishable, such as a physical object; rather than a dinner for two.

Such visible rewards keep doing their job long after the event is over and can continue to be a talking point. Its line of sight reminds people of the reason the gift was given and continues to honor the recipient.

Too many companies treat their employees as if they are simpletons who just want more money or food (e.g. Christmas cake and Easter bun). It’s a not-too-subtle form of classism which needs to be traded in.

But don’t stop at changing the gift you give. Examine the underlying theory managers harbor about the motivations of their staff. Challenging this old thinking may avoid a problem this holiday season.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20191201/francis-wade-how-reward-your-employees-effectively

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What Does it Take to Truly Be In Communication?

Most people consider the phenomenon of “being in communication” to be a simple matter: it’s the state which follows a discussion between two or more persons. But is this standard high enough to get your organization through challenging times?

Others believe that communication is just about sending messages in the general direction of their intended recipients. Based on what we know of electronic messaging, that’s also not true. It’s too easy with new technology to blast another person with loud, confusing or random notes that do nothing to achieve the precious end-result of “being in communication”.

A definition: to “be in communication” means to be on the same page as others. People are together and in sync, achieving a high level of cohesion. A large frequency of authentic conversations occur which put prior issues to bed.Take a look at working groups in your office. Sometimes, the least effective ones are stuck with a list of matters which cannot be discussed. The breakdown in communication inevitably drags down performance, making it hard to complete the simplest of tasks.
Given these realities, what should leaders do to bring about a new level of communication to their organizations?

1. Understand that Being in Sync Is Unnatural

Functional teams are an aberration. Getting people to work well together is always going to be an ongoing, uphill challenge. Why?
To explain, it’s somewhat abnormal for a group of individuals to “be in communication”. If anything, our survival instinct leads us to scan our world for threats. We have a natural, inherited suspicion.

This invisible vigilance treats vulnerability and openness as weaknesses to be shunned. In other words, our very nature constantly pushes us out of communication with each other and ruins teamwork. Unfortunately, these are the very traits that teams need to bring into reality in order to “be in communication.” Just take a look around. Most people would rather stick to themselves and share as little as possible with others. In spite of this challenge, too many managers prefer to effect a level of casual nonchalance in their working groups which makes things fun and easy in the beginning, but causes havoc when the going gets tough. Instead, the best leaders don’t let their guard down.
Fully aware that mediocrity is always at the door trying to sneak in, they prepare themselves to communicate in group settings in a focused, intense way. Others react by calling them anal. But they persist, insisting that certain processes be followed by every high-performing team they  sit on, bar none.

What are some disciplines your leaders can implement to ensure quality teams operate from the same page?

2. Tune into Group-Based Routines Which Work
Here is a process Caribbean groups should follow to allow communication to flow. First, it’s important to start every team activity by giving people an opportunity to connect. Once that requirement is satisfied, the approach is the same as that used in other countries: define the purpose of the gathering, the agenda / steps to be followed and the logistics which must be in place. (I was taught to use PAL – Purpose, Agenda and Logistics.)

When this formula is adopted, “being in communication” becomes easier to accomplish because the team’s core activities are already being managed in the background. In other words, taking care of the basics yields added bandwidth. It can be applied to the careful speaking and keen listening required to get on the same page and stay in communication.
3. Tune into the Group’s Connections
When humans aren’t working closely together, but should be, some surprising behaviors manifest. For example, they may start blaming each other for what appears to be minor matters. This sometimes escalates into name-calling and even acts of verbal violence – “Bad Mind”.

As a leader, you must be hyper-aware of these small gaps before they become major issues. Often, all that’s needed is an insistence that people talk to each other, rather than rely on electronic channels. However, in extreme cases, you may need to intervene with outside help.

Therefore, it’s essential to learn how to tune into and monitor the degree to which individuals in your team are in communication with each other. Call this a kind of ESP if you will, an ability to tap into intangible, emotional data that your inner self serves up. Most of the time we ignore these private urgings, but a leader should never do so.
The success of your enterprise may rely on the accomplishment of difficult goals. They won’t happen without the deep cohesion that brings people together on the same page. It’s a phenomenon which most leaders must consciously will into existence or it just won’t happen.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20191006/francis-wade-what-it-takes-be-truly-communication?









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Responsibility, Authority and Accountability

What is the difference between responsibility, authority and accountability? Does it matter to most Jamaican companies?
One of the challenges that faces your organization is simple: how do people relate to each other to achieve goals that its individuals can’t accomplish alone? A part of the answer lies in the following quote:

“Responsibility is always taken. Authority is given, but Accountability is negotiated.”

Of course, this is no ordinary list. In fact, it corrects a problem staff have in most companies who use the terms interchangeably.

The reality? They aren’t the same. And when your employees mistakenly merge them into one, it perpetuates a confusion which blocks the path to high achievements.

Here’s how you can untangle them.

Responsibility
The quote indicates that people who are responsible create a special relationship with particular results. Furthermore, they do so using nothing more than an inner will or conscious intention. While this requires a level of intrinsic motivation, it’s also true that the trigger to initiate a new “zone” of responsibility may come from anywhere. Possible sources include a direct invitation from another, a catastrophic event or an inspiring biography.
Therefore, don’t think that you can “hold someone responsible.” The most important step takes place within the individual who exercises his/her free will.

However, some managers argue otherwise: they honestly believe they can use force to conjure up responsible subordinates. The result of their muscle? A Jamaican workplace full of Bredda Anansi-like fake-responsibility.

It’s tricky to spot: At the start it appears that someone has truly stepped up. The truth only reveals itself later, when the first big obstacle shows up and the blame game starts. Consequently, it becomes clear that they weren’t in the responsibility game at all: they were simply taking credit while things were going well.

Beyond such shenanigans, the amazing thing is that anyone can take responsibility for any outcome they wish. Our National Heroes were elevated precisely because they willingly did so for a large number of people, putting themselves in harm’s way to accomplish a grand, shared objective.

Most of us may never take responsibility at that high level. Fortunately, your organization doesn’t need you to be famous or a life-risker. All it asks is that you keep generating fresh zones of responsibility in service of shared goals. It’s up to you to continually define these areas and act accordingly.

Authority
By contrast, authority is granted by the leaders in an organization to those who play pivotal roles. Ideally, authority would only be given to employees with a long track record of responsibility. By virtue of stepping up to be responsible repeatedly, they would already have garnered a critical mass of credibility.

Unfortunately, most organizations don’t wait for this to happen. They promote people (even to the highest levels) whose only skill is buck-passing and complaining. According to one Caribbean CEO to his new subordinate: “I learned ages ago to never sign my name to anything around here. All you get is grief.”

Perhaps you can also recall a leader you met who is that twisted.

Sometimes, such persons are exposed as the frauds they truly are, but it happens too rarely. More often, they are tolerated and enabled by others who are petrified by the authority they wield.

Accountability
However, when authority works in daily life, it’s comprised of individual accountabilities. These are defined as discrete agreements (or partnerships) between a leader and a stakeholder to produce a particular outcome according to specific conditions of satisfaction. For example, I may promise my manager to “Sell x units by Sep 30th at a 50% profit margin.”

Such agreements are the sinews of an organization. Without them, it’s impossible for my manager to have a proper follow-up conversation with me on October 1st. In other words, when accountability is missing, any result will do.

Once again, in an ideal world, persons promoted to positions of authority should have a firm grasp of this unique relationship. Usually, they can point to a number of accountable partnerships which helped them produce results, and explain the special role of this ingredient.

Unfortunately, you probably also have met managers who occupy important positions  but don’t know how to hold people around them to account. Therefore, when good things happen, it’s by sheer luck; not because they reinforced the sinews of accountability.

For example, sometimes weak leaders are fortunate to hire great employees. These rare workers reverse the tables, forcing (or shaming) their manager into an accountable relationship by insisting on high standards.

As a result, such cases are few and far between. For too many staff-members, their manager fails to create either accountability or responsibility. These rich worlds simply don’t exist.

Companies who separate and teach these three elements empower everyone. When they occur together, but separately, they open the door to outstanding results individuals cannot produce by themselves.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190825/francis-wade-responsibility-authority-and-accountability

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How to Help Employees Exert Emotional Labour

The challenge that organizations have is that they haven’t trained, rewarded or permitted their frontline employees to exert emotional labor to create human connection when it’s most needed. Seth Godin

Now and then I come across a quote which makes me stop and think. Here’s why this one brought the local customer experience to mind.

Most Jamaicans who travel to the United States are struck by how well-trained service workers are. At first blush, it appears that they really know how to smile, be polite and seem interested.

However, those who end up staying to live in North America tell a different tale. They recall a discovery: five minutes after a seemingly meaningful interaction the provider can’t remember your face or name. It was all an act.

Where it comes from is obvious – those who have peeked behind the scenes say it’s the result of thorough training tightly coupled with swift, harsh consequences for non-compliance. It gets the right behaviour, but does it produce genuine feelings?

Contrast that situation with the experience of tourists who visit Jamaica repeatedly for several years, making lifelong friendships which start with chance encounters on the beach, village or bus. These extraordinary, unscripted stories end up bonding entire families from different cultures. Sometimes, they even cross generations, in spite of the geographic distance.

How can these two contrasting experiences be reconciled by you, a manager who must develop staff to serve local customers? Godin’s quote offers a few clues.

1. Faking isn’t Creating

I suspect that frontline workers in the US have been trained to “fake human connection” on demand – to go through the motions, following a set of actions they have memorized and practiced. Unfortunately, they also haven’t learned to separate true emotion from fakery.

How to get past this obstacle?

If you believe that your front-line workers are acting the part but not actually creating authentic experiences, they may need deeper training. Noticing real emotions in the middle of a transaction isn’t easy, especially when the customer is upset. Most of us can’t: it takes a kind of emotional maturity few possess.

2. Doing Feeling Work

However, when we bump into someone who can regularly provide this experience in the worst of circumstances, we tend to think of their emotional maturity as a rare gift or talent. Unfortunately, this explanation puts them up on a pedestal, far beyond the reach of the unlucky majority.

Godin implies that this thinking is false.

“Emotional labour” is really what’s missing, he explains. It’s the trained effort most companies’ leaders just can’t be bothered to develop – the expense is too high. Their lack of care begins with haphazard hiring and continues with non-existent onboarding. Employees who receive this basic training are left to their own devices, never given the tools to produce emotional results. Then, when problems occur, most managers simply blame the employee: they fail to accept responsibility.

But Godin goes further: he hints that many companies don’t even “permit” their front-line employees to provide emotional labour. They actually make it hard.

Have you ever received a quiet act of kindness from an employee who put themselves in harm’s way to make an exception in your case? That’s someone who is working around the limits implemented by a blind, callous leadership.

3. Identifying Moments

These subversives are not only brave, but wise. They can tell when a human connection is most needed and act decisively to provide it.

But they aren’t just interesting: these moments are extraordinary opportunities to create lasting loyalty. Perhaps they explain why these tourists return to visit their newfound “family” in Jamaica. Their initial link was so positive, and so unexpectedly real, that they end up feeling closer to a Jamaican front-line worker than their actual neighbours or office colleagues.

Can workers be trained to identify these key moments in a customer’s experience?

They can, but if your employees have childhoods pock-marked with trauma, it’s much harder to do so. Unfortunately, given the low pay of our service providers, many have experienced such hardships and won’t get over them on their own.

If management steps in and provides the counselling, training and coaching needed to move past these obstacles, everyone benefits. The fact is, employees who are being trained to emotionally labour on behalf of customers who need a human connection need to deal with their own wounds first.

This puts them in the driver’s seat: able to respond to the customer without their history getting in the way. Now, they can deliberately create the kind of deep loyalty customers enjoy but rarely experience. It’s emotional labor which provides a win for all concerned.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190616/francis-wade-how-encourage-emotional-labour

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The Dilemma of the Bored Employee

Why is it that your employees who start out excited about their jobs lose interest so quickly? Is it a problem with their age, a cultural phenomena or just fate? Can their experience be enriched by savvy managers?

The dilemma begins with most leaders who compare employees to cars and their jobs to long-term parking spots. In other words, all they need to do is slot people into positions and leave them. From that point on, the person is expected to perform the role faithfully and occupy the position indefinitely.

Unfortunately, that‘s not how things work. As you may know, there are a startling number of staff who merely go through the motions: “It’s just a job.” Long gone are the challenges which kept them up at night. All that’s left is a routine they can now do without thinking.

Predictably, they turn their attention to other life demands. They raise children to pass exams with top grades. They sign up for marathons. They become deacons in their churches and volunteers in community organizations. While there’s a great deal of good they accomplish in all these other areas, their career remains stagnant: the same job from one day to the next. A few convince themselves that the steady salary is worth the deadening sacrifice. Others refuse. They walk away, quitting to find a different career or start their own company.

Meanwhile, executives in your firm probably remain clueless about the real depth of disengagement: the high percentage who give their work-life the bare minimum. Understanding why employees are more dissatisfied than ever can help you produce a breakthrough culture.

The New Employee
Today’s entering staff member is often surprised at the stale environment found inside most companies. The truth is, little has changed over the years. People at all levels are still stuck in the car-and-parking-spot frame of mind.

Why are they shocked? They have been raised in a world of high engagement in which social media, entertainment and games occupy a great deal of their personal energy. Each of these platforms is  engineered to grab hold of a user’s attention and keep it for extended periods of time.

By comparison, most jobs in the workplace seem to be designed to lose, disrupt or even destroy attention. It’s tempting to think this has something to do with technology: instead, it’s all about intention.

Creators of highly engaged online environments realize they are in a competition with other experiences. With every bit and byte, they intend to keep users interested and use attention as a measure of success. The makers of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram don’t want you to slip away.

Unfortunately, there are probably few managers in your company who see their challenge in the same way. They fail to recognize that “experience design” is part of their job, instead pretending as if nothing has changed over the years.

The outcome? Employees who can hardly last 15 minutes alone or in a meeting without reflexively searching their smartphones for something better.

A New Challenge

Most of your fellow managers probably just shrug their shoulders, complaining. For them, the point of engaging staff is not to entertain them, but make them productive.

Perhaps they could adapt the mindset of game designers. One of their leading thought leaders, Amy Jo Kim, asks: “How can we create experiences that get better as employees become more skilled?”

In most companies, the focus has been the opposite. HR has been trying to keep employees’ experience the same once they reach a certain level of skill: the old car-and-long-term-parking-lot model. The result is boredom.

Behind this unwanted outcome is a lack of responsibility. Most manager’s don’t believe that their job is to engineer an outstanding experience. In their minds, work is not a place for intrinsic fulfillment or purpose: it’s a crude exchange of money for labour.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to tackle this issue head-on. As a new employee at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1988, I joined a system which made room for technical employees who had no interest in becoming supervisors. A technical ladder allowed many to be promoted and recognized without having the burden of direct reporting relationships.

At a micro level, your company can train managers to develop detailed ladders of skills. Imagine if, at any moment in time, your employees could know exactly which rung they occupy. Furthermore, they would also be able to pinpoint which skills they are developing. This way, they know when their next personal improvement target happens to be.

This form of career gamification can engage even long-term staff, blocking the default – boredom – which thwarts your company’s goals.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190602/francis-wade-dilemma-bored-employee

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8 Skills Employees Need that Require Zero Talent

How can a manager be promoted, only for others to discover that he lacks certain basic, foundation skills? Someone, somewhere dropped an easy ball that could have been corrected if the company had the right perspective on how to develop new employees.

There‘s an interesting meme floating around pointing out 10 skills that every employee needs to possess. It adds a zinger: they don‘t require a drop of talent, implying that no excuses are possible. While the list wasn‘t developed for Jamaican companies, here is a local version of this popular meme based on my experience.

#1 – Being On Time

In our environment, this is a huge challenge. Like many other firms in tropical climates, we allow lateness to run rampant, even in executive suites. Also, people who are punctual don‘t confront those who aren’t. Finally, our companies don’t develop a way to teach employees what “on time” means in their context.

For example, I had a friend who regularly told others she was “just around the corner” even when she hadn’t yet started the car. In her mind, she was “on time.” By contrast, I worked with a company in which “on-time” meant that you arrived early and prepared yourself to start on the exact, scheduled minute. Yet another organization translated the phrase to mean “anytime before the most important person arrives.”

The point is that your firm must teach its own definition of “on time” plus all the detailed enabling behaviors, starting with the CEO and her direct reports.

#2 – Work Ethic/Effort

New employees are often slow to appreciate that for every corporate skill, there is a ladder of accomplishment. Unfortunately, those who are unaware, usually occupy the lowest rung. This is no matter of disrespect.

The fact is, if they are taught the existence of higher skills and how to achieve them, they can become inspired.Their objective, before they are confirmed as full-time staff, should be to show they have climbed the rungs of some key skills. For example, a summer student should be able the demonstrate an unbroken string of on-time arrivals at work. These may seem to be too easy, but don’t under-estimate the effort required to learn new behaviors and apply them consistently.

#3 – Body Language

Have you ever seen a young person slouch in his office chair, apparently ready to doze off? Newly hired workers just aren’t taught that their body language influences others. The impact on customers, colleagues and managers is part of what they will be held accountable for.

#4 – Energy

Whereas it may not have been cool to be an eager-beaver in their prior lives, young employees need to learn that the tables are now turned. How they get work done is vitally important, and they aren‘t “allowed” to have a bad day that drags down others. Every hour is intended to be an opportunity for enthusiasm and engagement, and they must learn to manage their sleep and nutrition to accomplish this goal. Habitually overcoming the “I-don‘t-feel-like-it” blues is a vital new capacity to develop.

#5 – Attitude/Resilience

This is perhaps a nebulous skill but companies need to go beyond the level of cliches and define it clearly. Science has shown that there are concrete steps in techniques like Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy which can be followed to transform a poor attitude. This will benefit them on the job and in every part of their lives.

#6 – Passion

With few exceptions, most employees are passionate about at least one thing in their lives. Companies do a poor job of nurturing these strong feelings, allowing new hires to slip into the ranks of the disaffected and disengaged within months. However, developing a love of one’s work is a skill that can be taught, even though it’s usually left to chance.

#7 – Being CoachableJamaican workplaces are rife with stories of new employees who are convinced that they “already know” everything. When this lack of self-esteem interferes with the development of a “Beginner’s Mind” it’s time for an intervention. A good one would interrupt their habits and show them how to accept coaching, a capacity which does not come naturally to high achievers.

#8 – Being Prepared (To Do Extra)

New hires must learn to over-prepare if they hope to succeed; they simply have fewer in-company experiences to draw from. Then, once projects start, they need to be ready to go the additional mile repeatedly. This behavior is a signal that they are taking their careers seriously.

Many of these eight practices can be tied to company standards enforced by your firm’s environment. Your organization must make them explicit: a strong start to a successful career. This ensures that when promotions occur, the recipients are fully trained.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190421/francis-wade-8-employee-skills-require-zero-talent

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Why Strategic Planning Offers Team-Building Opportunities

Why is it said that a well-conducted strategic planning retreat can be the best executive team-building session ever? What elements should you include so that the time spent helps participants work better than before?

First, you must start by setting aside any recent, fluffy definition of “team-building”: it’s  become synonymous with “entertaining.” For many it means “changing out of work clothes to engage in an activity completely unrelated to the job”. Here in the Caribbean activities such as paintball, casino nights, church services and Soca parties have all earned the label, even as they deliver a “feel-good” experience.

However, many executives are not amused. They see it as unproductive, a way to bribe employees by giving them some fun (they supposedly want) in exchange for doing work (which they don’t really want.) This perverse logic represents old thinking. It comes from a time when productivity had to be coerced.

By contrast, the highest performers who typically make it to the executive ranks are already motivated. For them, team building shouldn’t be a break from work. Instea, it should enhance it by giving them a focused, intense opportunity to fix communication problems, deal with unresolved issues and learn new soft skills.

However, if you are designing such an outcome, don’t expect it to be easy. The best way to start is by focusing on observable behaviors which are missing. Once they are identified, provide your trainees the chance to practice them in a safe environment. Think of it as the equivalent of sparring with a partner in boxing, practicing in the nets in cricket or doing 100 free throws in basketball practice. Repetition, especially under the watchful eye of a demanding coach, works.

A strategic planning retreat, due to its intense nature, can be engineered to produce such outcomes. Here’s how you do it.

1. Recast the Retreat as a Balance

The worst mental model to have of a strategic planning retreat is to think of it as a round-about way to develop a key document. In fact, it’s easier to get the CEO or consultant to just sit down over a weekend and type away until the task is done.

When convinced by others, some leaders condescend to conducting a full team retreat just to get other people to agree to their ideas. In these settings, the event is simply a rubber stamp. The goal of including colleagues is to sell them on the CEO’s or consultant’s brilliance.

By contrast, an authentic retreat which infuses team-building at every step views the process of developing the details as co-equal with the final product. When they are both respected, you can achieve a fine balance between engaging participants and upholding the quality of the end result.

2. Use the Retreat to Engage and Train

The best process to create a group strategy involves two kinds of thinking activities. The first, “divergence”, means generating new ideas. The second, “convergence”, is the activity of bringing about agreement between different parties.

In a strategic planning retreat, it’s possible for you to emphasize these two opposite phases, teaching participants how to recognize each one. Now, they can learn the relevant skills within each activity and how to switch between them.

In particular, convergence is fraught with danger. In these phases, a good retreat should have moments when the fight for contending ideas becomes fierce. After all, the stakes are high and people from separate disciplines see the same facts with the special lenses they have been trained to use.

Don‘t be like members of weak teams which try to avoid such tussles by putting decisions to a vote. Effective groups work out their differences in an open discussion. Before doing so, take your participants through a self-evaluation of the specific skills needed when diverging or converging. As they make progress towards the end result, get them to reflect on how to improve them in real time.

The truth is that a strategic planning retreat is actually made up of everyday conversations. It’s just that you can seize the opportunity for participants to reflect on the quality of these discussions as well as the final output.

If you also provide an experienced coach to give feedback in the moment, that’s a huge bonus. She should encourage each person to take risks, to try out fresh skills. Expect some new behavior changes to occur in real-time that stick around for years to come.

The bottom line is that a strategic planning retreat is an ideal chance to practice and up-level everyday executive skills. By the end, the benefits the company gains far exceed that of the best party or outside exercise. That’s real team-building.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190224/francis-wade-strategic-retreats-best-team-building

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Why Strategic Planning Offers Team-Building Opportunities

Why is it said that a well-conducted strategic planning retreat can be the best executive team-building session ever? What elements should you include so that the time spent helps participants work better than before?

First, you must start by setting aside any recent, fluffy definition of “team-building”: it’s  become synonymous with “entertaining.” For many it means “changing out of work clothes to engage in an activity completely unrelated to the job”. Here in the Caribbean activities such as paintball, casino nights, church services and Soca parties have all earned the label, even as they deliver a “feel-good” experience.

However, many executives are not amused. They see it as unproductive, a way to bribe employees by giving them some fun (they supposedly want) in exchange for doing work (which they don’t really want.) This perverse logic represents old thinking. It comes from a time when productivity had to be coerced.

By contrast, the highest performers who typically make it to the executive ranks are already motivated. For them, team building shouldn’t be a break from work. Instea, it should enhance it by giving them a focused, intense opportunity to fix communication problems, deal with unresolved issues and learn new soft skills.

However, if you are designing such an outcome, don’t expect it to be easy. The best way to start is by focusing on observable behaviors which are missing. Once they are identified, provide your trainees the chance to practice them in a safe environment. Think of it as the equivalent of sparring with a partner in boxing, practicing in the nets in cricket or doing 100 free throws in basketball practice. Repetition, especially under the watchful eye of a demanding coach, works.

A strategic planning retreat, due to its intense nature, can be engineered to produce such outcomes. Here’s how you do it.

1. Recast the Retreat as a Balance

The worst mental model to have of a strategic planning retreat is to think of it as a round-about way to develop a key document. In fact, it’s easier to get the CEO or consultant to just sit down over a weekend and type away until the task is done.

When convinced by others, some leaders condescend to conducting a full team retreat just to get other people to agree to their ideas. In these settings, the event is simply a rubber stamp. The goal of including colleagues is to sell them on the CEO’s or consultant’s brilliance.

By contrast, an authentic retreat which infuses team-building at every step views the process of developing the details as co-equal with the final product. When they are both respected, you can achieve a fine balance between engaging participants and upholding the quality of the end result.

2. Use the Retreat to Engage and Train

The best process to create a group strategy involves two kinds of thinking activities. The first, “divergence”, means generating new ideas. The second, “convergence”, is the activity of bringing about agreement between different parties.

In a strategic planning retreat, it’s possible for you to emphasize these two opposite phases, teaching participants how to recognize each one. Now, they can learn the relevant skills within each activity and how to switch between them.

In particular, convergence is fraught with danger. In these phases, a good retreat should have moments when the fight for contending ideas becomes fierce. After all, the stakes are high and people from separate disciplines see the same facts with the special lenses they have been trained to use.

Don‘t be like members of weak teams which try to avoid such tussles by putting decisions to a vote. Effective groups work out their differences in an open discussion. Before doing so, take your participants through a self-evaluation of the specific skills needed when diverging or converging. As they make progress towards the end result, get them to reflect on how to improve them in real time.

The truth is that a strategic planning retreat is actually made up of everyday conversations. It’s just that you can seize the opportunity for participants to reflect on the quality of these discussions as well as the final output.

If you also provide an experienced coach to give feedback in the moment, that’s a huge bonus. She should encourage each person to take risks, to try out fresh skills. Expect some new behavior changes to occur in real-time that stick around for years to come.

The bottom line is that a strategic planning retreat is an ideal chance to practice and up-level everyday executive skills. By the end, the benefits the company gains far exceed that of the best party or outside exercise. That’s real team-building.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190224/francis-wade-strategic-retreats-best-team-building

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How to Reach Customers with Engaged Communities

What can be done about the apparent high level of dissonance between local brands and their respective customers? Most executives and customers at companies like JPS, Digicel and NCB want a close, trusted relationship, but why do managers complain that this outcome is harder to deliver than ever?

As a consumer, I notice that the brands I frequent spend a lot of time and energy shouting (i.e. advertising) at me. They behave like someone who has become unhinged: yelling out unexpected things at inappropriate times, forgetting they know who I am and trying to interrupt to satisfy their insatiable need for me to “Buy Now.”

In their haste they forget that I once made a purchase and was probably satisfied. This dementia leads them to pool me with other strangers who have never spent a penny, treating us all alike.

This is an expensive error. Instead of having inexpensive, quiet conversations with frequent customers, they crank up their advertising budgets to an anonymous public that’s already complaining about too many distractions. They’d be much better off creating online communities that allow their customers to interact with each other in fruitful ways. In fact, they should know from experience why this is crucial.

Most companies have long abandoned the idea that an employee should never speak to someone outside their department without going through their immediate manager. It’s more productive to talk directly. Yet, firms are perfectly fine treating customers as if they are silos, doing nothing to encourage cross-talk. Consequently, they pay a high cost.

Not that your customers submit to this treatment and stay silent. They are too busy talking to each other about your brand via the latest technology. Behind your back, they are using WhatsApp, Messenger and other social networks that share news faster than any announcement, billboard or banner ad.

Some motivated fans go further, and set up their own Facebook pages, groups and Twitter hashtags. Case in point: West indies Cricket. There is one official Facebook page, but ten groups set up by individuals. Given the squad‘s poor performance, and the animosity felt towards its administrators, it’s not hard to imagine the content of these forums.

Unfortunately, in the case of the three major brands I mentioned, their Facebook pages are also filled with complaints. Hardly a complimentary note can be found. Why? People with strong feelings just want to know they are not alone and actively seek out others.

Fortunately, inexpensive technology now exists for your company to be proactive and turn the tide. Instead of waiting around, launch online communities that serve the needs of all stakeholders by giving customers a way to speak with, learn from and help each other.

In the past few months, I have set up a new (free) network for Human Resource professionals at CaribHRForum. To prevent some big mistakes, I did some research into online communities and was amazed: what used to be a hit-or-miss affair now has solid, recent resources and studies behind it. Here are the steps I recommend you take, condensing best practices I am learning to use.

1. Define Community Goals with Customer Input

Effective online communities are a partnership intended to satisfy the unmet needs of brands and their customers.

Your company should simultaneously develop objectives for the community while fostering a small group of customers. Give them access to a basic platform and get them talking to you and to each other about their needs.

2. Upgrade to a Scalable Platform

This is the point to make some tradeoffs. While Facebook is free, it’s noisy and distracting. The average person spends only a few seconds viewing their brands, according to data collected.

Paid community platforms allow members to be more focused and are built for growth. Select one of the many which exist that suits your needs and find someone to manage it.

3. Match hypothetical with actual behavior

Once you get up and running, put yourself in learning mode. Perform the following tests of your community member’s habitual behavior and your tactics.

Test #1 – Members should all be treated alike.

See what happens when you offer a feature or piece of content to different segments. They may not be real.

Test #2 – Members respond to incentives.

This assumption is the lazy manager’s default. In reality, people’s motivation can be complex, especially within communities with long-term relationships at play.

Test #3 – Members will recruit others.

Ask them to take action in the real world to invite others and see how they respond.

Remember, your customers probably had an initial positive experience and desperately want to relive it. Your new online community is a structured way to bring them together to achieve a win-win: a meeting of your goals and theirs. Repeat the trick often enough and they’ll thank you for trading in your shouty ads for decent, engaging conversations.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/business/20190127/francis-wade-customer-engagement-overkill