1.  You hired the wrong person. Companies large and small have some ineffective hiring processes. Some of the most common mistakes:

1. You hold only one interview.
2. You talk more than the candidate in the interview.
3. You hire them because you like them.
4. You ignore warning signs instead of purposefully looking for them in each candidate.
5. You ask interviewing questions that ask what they ‘would’ do, or how they ‘would’ handle a situation.

What to do?

Review your interviewing process. Create deliberate, multi-interview steps, and use effective behavioral interviewing questions. Train your interviewers to be effective.

2.  You hire a transitional type of employee. Those businesses who hire students, for example, or employees in lower level positions, can expect to see turnover as these employees move up to higher positions, or complete their training and get a job in their field of study.   Restaurants are often in this category, but there are other industries where the turnover rate is high for the industry. If you are wondering if this is you, check with your industry association and get your statistics.

What to do?

Set up a process that is not an incredible burden to hire. If you know you experience high turnover and have a good interviewing process and a great place to work, accept the fact that hiring is part of your routine work. Just a few ideas: use applications/resumes and phone interviews to screen candidates to save you time of in-person interviews, involve multiple people in the process, schedule a brief first in-person interview to prevent you from spending a lot of time on the wrong person, and use references to learn more about the person.

3.  You have an unpleasant place to work. Your turnover may occur because people don’t want to stay and do what you have hired them to do. This may occur because:

1. You never clearly stated expectations of the job tasks and they didn’t know what they were getting into.
2. The team is hostile and unfriendly.
3. The managers are not effective in orienting, training, coaching, holding people accountable and developing people to bring out their best. You may end up firing a lot of people for this same reason.

What to do?

Management (processes, metrics and accountability) and leadership (set goals, inspire others, create the team) skills are very often assumed to be present in someone as soon as they assume a role with a manager title.   Although there are some who are natural leaders or managers, most must learn the skills and may destroy some teams in the process, or create a lot more work for an owner who must enable them to learn on the job. Send them to classes, have them read The Leadership Challenge, Opportunity Space and other great leadership books, hire them a coach, and purposefully mentor your leaders.

Passionately Share Clear Expectations

Passionately

It’s hard to get upset with a boss who is authentically passionate about customers, taking great care of them, and doing business in the right way. You must avoid expecting compliance because it’s the rule or just because you said so. Your team members must understand why it’s important, but not be allowed the liberty to grill you with questions about every plan, process or method you implement.

Share

So often expectations are in a leader’s head, but are not shared, not shared often enough, or not shared in a way that others really understand them. Team members need to engage – think about, talk about, report on and execute on their tasks, and why they are important to your customers and company values. And they need to hear your expectations over and over in a variety of different ways – and see those values in what you do and how you spend your time.

Clear

The distance from your head to your mouth is very long, and you may not be as clear as you think you are, and as you need to be. Expectations fall prey to assumptions, assumed agreement, what they think you really mean, and what they think is really best for you and the business. If you leave ambiguity, others will do what they think best, sometimes what is easiest and what enables them to stay in their comfort zone.

Expectations

Without micromanaging, what you expect must be communicated, starting with job descriptions, processes/procedures and evaluations, and continuing with ongoing coaching conversations and accountability through measuring metrics and regular reporting. Answering the question, “What do you want me to do?” can be difficult and is more often communicated as what you don’t want someone to do. What do I do when I don’t have what I need? Yell at who was supposed to give it to me? Make do without? Go find it myself? What is the proper protocol?

Business is not a democracy!

The owner’s or leader’s vision is incredibly important. It is this individual vision that makes the business successful – generic businesses that do it like everyone else don’t last. If a leader envisions a very collaborative culture, that’s fine and will work if that is what they passionately believe in, but that’s not the only or best answer in every situation.

The employees’ role is to execute the vision, and use their expertise, wisdom, knowledge and intelligence to execute well and share insights and ideas of how to do that better – not to disagree with the vision and fight it every step of the way.

Anger, frustration, lack of patience, sarcasm, abruptness, or any of many other reactions that may damage professional relationships, cause tension, result in lack of performance and initiative, and resistance.

Consider these truths:

1. While we are well beyond animalistic and untamed in our responses, we still have emotional reactions based on our passions, beliefs and frustrations.
2. Despite these initial reactions, we have the ability to decide what to do and say next, if we decide to use that Opportunity Space before we respond.
3. Every person has their own ‘good and valid reason’ for doing and saying what they do and say, which makes sense to them, even if it doesn’t seem ‘good’ or ‘valid’ to others.

What does ‘emotional’ look like in the business world?

Emotional reactions in the business world come in the forms of:

• loud verbal frustration with performance of lack thereof,
• avoidance of people or situations,
• saying everything is okay and yet complaining when the person isn’t around,
• sarcasm with coworkers or employees,
• refusing to speak to another professional or gossiping,
• firing or writing off employees as incapable to avoid the tense conversation, just to name a few.

Why do ‘emotions’ have to get in the way?

Personally, I would much rather corral emotions than deal with someone who has let their passions be buried by life’s stressors, failures, and the beliefs of others.  ‘Emotions’ come into play because we are passionate, full of potential and see opportunities in the world of how things should be and could be.  Every one of us does.  If you feel your passion has been dulled by life’s events – find it again.  It’s a good thing and a powerful force.

Simple example:  Driving on the country road by my house, following a vehicle going 24mph in a 45mph zone, where I had been known to drive 65+mph in my Audi S4 before I started driving the mini-van…  I begin to get emotional, frustrated and mad because of this person’s slow driving.  Why?  Because I’m just an emotional, grumpy person?  No, it’s because there are certain things I am personally passionate about:

1. Unused potential – we could get somewhere a whole lot faster if we went the speed limit, and we could use our time much more productively than driving.  I thrive on finding unused potential and maximizing results – even if those results would be to have an extra 10 minutes to play with Lincoln Logs with my children.
2. Lack of concern for others – when someone ignores the impact they are having on others, they cause unneeded stress and frustration, and possibly have more serious consequences if there is a more critical reason to get somewhere.
3. I don’t like being late – because I see it as inconsiderate of the other person’s time, we were already running late for soccer practice, and I could make up a bit of time on this country road.

At the same time, as a former Nursing Home Administrator, I’m compassionate to the elderly driver, who may be preserving their freedom by continuing to drive, while going slowly to compensate for senses and reflexes that aren’t as strong as they used to be.  So, immediately my emotions calm down, until I see the elderly driver talking on the cell phone in the car in front of me.

It’s not about you!

Remember, it’s typically not about you, and another’s behavior is usually not meant to be a personal attack.   People do things for their own reasons, based on what is happening in their world, and often do not consider, or purposely plan, consequences that affect you.

How to address situations that cause ‘emotional’ reactions?

Use the moment between when they say or do something and you react, which I’ve called the Opportunity Space, to make the best decision.  Consider:

1. What do you want to accomplish in the long term?  Your own mental and physical health?  Productive relationship with this person?  Specific results you may need this person’s help with?  Utilization of strengths you believe to be present in the person who is aggravating you?
2. Where are they coming from?  They have a ‘good and valid reason’ for doing what they are doing – in their head, it makes sense.  Think of six possible reasons why they are doing what they are doing, see if you can learn how they are thinking, identify common beliefs and values, pinpoint a common goal or common approach on which you can agree, and then move forward to a solution.
3. How are you making them feel?  Your words, non-verbal expressions, and actions can have serious consequences on another person.  Remember, they are an ‘emotional’ being that has strong passions and beliefs as well.  You cannot take back words and it takes a lot longer to repair a relationship than to keep trust and respect by acting purposefully.

Once you get emotional in a conversation, it ceases to be productive and you lose credibility – regardless of what prompted your behavior.

Note:  This assumes each person’s best intentions and there are situations where people trigger your emotional response on purpose, to manipulate the situation, or out of anger.  You should be alert to these possibilities and consider those with whom you interact.

And have you heard in response, “Good!” or “Fine.” and wondered just what those phrases really meant?  Sometimes they mean to communicate:

1. “Things are not all that great right now, but we’ve got a solid plan to address them.”
2. “I’m really not sure how things are going, but nothing appears to be in fire, so I think we’re okay.”
3. “If I say, ‘Good!’ or ‘Fine.’ you will not worry as much and give me some room to go figure out how things are really going.

This is not only the case if you have a few slackers on your team who avoid accountability.  In many very successful businesses, even good performers may not have a handle on specifically how things are going.  There is this common aversion to data collection and analysis in many organizations because it requires time and effort that could be spent doing things instead.

Brad Robertson, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) St. Francis Hospital has a sign hanging in his office which reads, “In God We Trust, all others bring Data.”

What data might your team need to bring you?

• Customer service metrics
• Sales and Pipeline data and pipeline building activities
• Profitability, and the related pricing, expenses, execution, rework, delivery
• Company overall health – current assets, long term liabilities
• Where we are, where we’ve been, trends, projections
• Industry specific measurements

How often do you need to see this data?

Part of the objective of gathering data is that the process can become part of the daily routine, so metrics are gathered and reviewed routinely (at least monthly, more often for some metrics), not only by a leader, but by team members as well.  If a doctor had to assess you without any tests, lab results or equipment such as a blood pressure cuff or stethoscope, and only saw you once in a while, an intuitive doctor might be able to make some guesses, but you would not have the same opportunities for good health.  It’s the same for the business or department you lead.

Identify the right data to gather, the easiest way to obtain it, a set time to review it, a consistent way to use it for making solid decisions, and stay consistent in that process.

On a final note, for those of you reading this who think that data is fabulous and you could spend all day just gathering and analyzing because there is so much good information to be gleaned, be careful to balance the value of gathering and reviewing accurate data with the objective of using it to improve business processes and ensure greater success.

• Energized by your progress?
• Depressed by the lack of achievement year to date?
• Frustrated by what took you off track?
• Unsure of how exactly you are progressing because you haven’t looked at your metrics yet?

Top 5 reasons why people fail to achieve their goals:

1 – Never wrote goals in the first place. If you never committed to paper, you didn’t see the value in spending that time, were unsure of exactly what your goals were, were never committed enough to put them on paper – lest you fail, or believe things change so quickly that you were going to go with the flow. The commitment from goals in your head, to goals written on paper by your hand, and shared with others – is a big commitment. And it’s a leap for most people. If you have never written your goals, jump that hurdle and put them on paper. Then share them with someone. And, if you have a team who is responsible to achieve these goals with you, by all means, share the written goals with them!

2 – Goals were way too ambitious. Have you ever made a list in your head of what you want to accomplish on your day off, or on a weekend – and never made it even half-way through? Excited by the prospect of a day off, or some ‘free’ time on the weekend, we quite rightly, think of all the things we want, need and would like to accomplish, including some time lounging at the pool. In business, it can be the same way. If you are excited about your job or your business, you will have high hopes and ambitions. Don’t let them get away. Just make sure when you write your goals list, you pinpoint realistic goals, corresponding strategies and reasonable action items, so you and your team can make progress, and can celebrate those achievements at month or quarter-end. Then, also keep a list of your hopes and dreams, ambitious goals and ‘to do someday’ items, and consistently chip away at that list.

3 – Never created a detailed plan. Being able to execute on a project or initiative is a lot harder than it may appear, and the skill is not in everyone’s toolbox. Even the most diligent of people cannot always get things done on time without a solid plan in place that clarifies objectives, creates the roadmap, identifies milestones, pinpoints key action items, assigns responsibility, allows for obstacles that will inevitably occur, and monitors progress on execution of that plan. This is not a lengthy paper document, but it is a plan on paper, with the ‘how’ we are going to get this done (in relatively small bites), ‘who’ is going to do it, by ‘when’, and ‘what we will do when things don’t go as planned.’

4 – Failure to measure progress. It takes some work to identify metrics to measure performance upfront when goals are written, and then to take a moment to check on those metrics throughout the quarter. However, it is more effective to spend this time upfront than to get to the end of the time period and find out you missed your goal. Enormous Accounts Receivable balances don’t occur in 90+ days without first occurring in 30 and 60 days. Closed sales don’t plummet without first seeing a drop in calls and appointments.   Whatever you are concerned about should have a measurement associated with it, not only so you can measure your success, but also your progress. Some measurements are more subjective, and based on manager or owner evaluation. These can be just as effective, when the criteria are spelled out up front.

5 – You moved the finish line. If you work with or for someone who might be called an “Achiever” or even an “Over-Achiever,” you’ve learned that no matter how much success is experienced, it’s never enough – and they are quick to celebrate and move on to the next challenge. Written goals help with this challenge as well, because while you are excited about achieving a goal and setting the next one, you can’t continually move the finish line and not frustrate the team. However, the team can move the finish line as long as the success is acknowledged and don’t burn themselves out working overtime.

When job descriptions are written, typically it is in an ideal bubble, where someone thinks through what needs to be done, and who is the best person to do it.

Then reality hits.

Ambitious employees keep very busy doing what needs to be done and what they are asked to do. This is admirable and necessary in the short term. But, continuing this way will create a very reactionary culture in an organization. Being too busy becomes the excuse for staying in urgent mode, and never moving to the more strategic and important components of the job.

Certainly, there is a need to be somewhat flexible and adaptable, since not all tasks, scenarios and activities can be foreseen in a job description, and being the person to jump in and get things done is very valuable. However, strategic activity is what moves the company forward through and out of the day-to-day of today and into future and greater success.

Take a moment to think about the key strategic roles that you need to play in your current position:

• What needs to get done consistently, but often gets pushed to the back burner?
• What are the things that you’d like to be able to do in your role, but rarely find time for?
• Who would you communicate with more routinely if you had the time?
• Where, or to whom, should you give more feedback?
• For what meetings or milestones would it make sense to spend more time preparing?
• In what areas would it make sense to measure current performance more accurately?
• What are you doing to make things work better and more efficiently?
• Strategy is by nature forward-looking and focuses on improvement. What is your role in improving systems and processes, beyond routinely executing them well?
• What are the most key components of what you do that impact your customers?
• When do you spend time on activities that impact future operations?
• What is your role in consistent improvement of operations, which continues when cash flow is good and things are running smoothly, AND when times are tight and crises are occurring?
• Which components of your job may not be noticed if you don’t do them, but detract from overall success of the organization if they get pushed aside? (safety committee, staff meetings or daily huddles, improving a process that isn’t broken to stay ahead of the competition, team building activities, and professional development for strong employees – all may be included in this category)
• Look at your individual professional goals for 2013. Do they reflect the strategic components of your job? Have you made more progress in those areas or on the goals that revolve around routine daily activities?

No doubt you’re busy, doing important work and doing it well. At the same time, ask yourself what strategic components of your job description have you let slide, and what priority will you put on bringing one or two back into the forefront?

Myth #1:  People must like one another.

For a team to be really successful, its team members must like one another, be like a second family and have commonalities. People who are alike, like working together more.
The Truth:  Likeness can provide a false sense of security.  Complementary talents, which are valuable, often come with different personality styles.  Learning to work with others unlike yourself can be rewarding, as long as you don’t expect work to provide your social life.

Myth #2:  No unnecessary conflict is good. 

Good teams only praise each other, do it often, respect and don’t second-guess one another. They focus on being supportive and refrain from unnecessary conflict and confrontation. Team members must choose or compromise between getting the job done and treating one another humanely.
The Truth:  Conflict represents unique ideas and approaches being voiced, inadequacies and lack of motivation surfacing, and passions being shared.  Tackled correctly, these can be the spring boards to greater success for the whole team!

Myth #3:  People work better in teams.

People like working together and work better in teams. Teamwork is more productive than individual work, and the larger the team the better.
The Truth:  There are many times when working with others might slow you down, especially if your energy is not derived from interaction with others.  Certain activities that require collaboration are completed better in teams, and other times, working alone provides the environment for focus and fuels a ‘get it done’ approach that is difficult to coordinate in a team.

Myth #4:  The team is the goal.

A great team is an honorable goal. It takes a lot of hard work to create one.
The Truth:  Only if your goal was to build a team.  Most of the time, the goal or result you were tasked to, or wish to accomplish requires the work of a team, but the creation of one is purely a functional task, not an end in itself.

Myth #5:  Managers build teams.

Managers and owners are responsible for building teams. They need to hire the right people and the team will work well for a long time.
The Truth:  Managers play a valuable role in assembling capable team members. However, the really strong and effective team is the one who works hard to build its own abilities and effectiveness, and increase them over time.   The right people who are stagnant, turn into the wrong people.

Myth #6:  There is no ‘I’ in team.
Team members must be focused more on the group than on themselves and their individual success; and work hard not to do anything to the detriment of the team.
The Truth:  There may not be an ‘I’ but there is an ‘M’ and an ‘E’.  A team is comprised of people with complementary skills, offering each other mutual support.  Each person MUST focus on how they can grow and develop their skills to be able to contribute to the team, and focus on themselves and what they do well and don’t do well.

But, what is it we are listening for?
Haven’t you been in a situation where you felt you were supposed to listen as the person went on and on…? That certainly didn’t feel like the productive thing to do at that time!
And are you supposed to listen, when you feel you already know “the answer”?

Purposeful listening is paying attention to hear the messages the person is trying to communicate, relating them to your overall purpose for having the conversation, and asking the right curious questions to arrive at these two results.

Listen with a purpose. Know why you are entering a conversation in the first place. If you don’t know why, don’t enter the conversation yet. I’m serious. If it is simply for social purposes, make sure the other person would see it that way too, or they may be trying to communicate something serious and you appear to ignore them.

When you enter a conversation with a purpose, you stay focused on what you want to accomplish, while realizing that unless the other person begins to see and buy in to that purpose, you will not be successful – whether you need their help or cooperation, their willingness to be passive, or their active engagement.

You want reports to be completed on time.
They have a million excuses.
You want to tell them to get them done on time, ask if they get it, get a head nod, and have results be consistent and what you’ve demanded.
Fat chance.
The idea behind listening is to find out why they’ve been late – really why they’ve been late.
By asking questions that lead them through their thought process, and listening to the answers clearly enough to lead them in a way that they will follow you willingly, they will discover why their reports are late. Then you can ask my very favorite question: What specifically will you do differently?

Some of my other favorite questions as you listen are: (asked with genuine curiosity)
Really? Why do you think that happened?
How else could you have approached this?
Then what did they say? (chances are they aren’t listening well to others, leading to miscommunication, a productivity killer)
Why do you think they did what they did? Seriously, why do you think they were ‘upset’, ‘stubborn’ or ‘lazy’?

In order to listen well, you must know what it is you want to accomplish in the conversation, set an agenda if you can, listen for obstacles and positive movement forward, and ask the right curious questions to steer the conversation in a productive direction.

What is it that YOU need to talk about?

Each of us has things we feel passionate about, ways that customers should be treated, standards to which we hold our peers and vendors, and strategies we believe will deliver what our customer demands, whether it is your boss (internal customer) or an external customer.

Why is it that you don’t speak up?

Do you ever hold back, even if you feel strongly about something?  It should be done a certain way, and it’s not happening that way?  Everyone should participate and they don’t?

You may hold back if:

• you know it will be a tough conversation, and you don’t want to create conflict;
• you’ve convinced yourself it’s a small detail (although it matters to you) and it’s not worth the argument;
• you know someone will have good excuses that are tough to argue;
• you know you disagree and may not feel like sorting through where you’re right and they’re wrong, and where they’re right and you’re wrong…

Do you avoid those conversations?

Avoidance of conflict, and lack of value put on the bold thinker – sucks the life out of many organizations.  Each one of us has high standards for ourselves and others, even if we may have buried those under bureaucracies, people with stronger personalities, and avoidance of irritating daily challenges that try to prevent us from moving forward.

Let your unique voice speak!

These passions are what are most unique and awesome about you!  These are what you can most offer your company and yourself!  When you routinely listen to yourself and share what is important to you, you will bring out your highest potential and your God-given greatness!

Listen to your unique voice, don’t squelch what wants to coming screaming out, don’t believe others when they tell you it doesn’t matter, and get impatient and find your determination to make positive change happen.

You must speak up, and when you do, you must use the Opportunity Space well – that moment before you speak.  You must communicate in a way that both conveys the urgency you feel, and takes into account where the other person is coming from and how what you will say and how you will say it, will make them feel.

And if you think there is no sales in your job because you are not the owner or the official salesperson, think again.  You sell your ideas, your concerns, your approach, your strategies and your objectives every day to team members, strategic partners and your boss.

Since that time of resistance, I’ve learned a few things, and below are the non-technical (not the nuts and bolts of how to sell) things you must do to be successful.

The ‘Musts’:

1. You must make connections with new prospects.  Sound simple?  Many people rely too heavily on current customers for recurring or new business, and keep calling on those same prospects they think will buy, but haven’t yet.  You must find new prospects whether you cold call, network, obtain referrals, initiate a marketing plan or hire a telemarketer.  Within your organization, make new connections with those involved elsewhere in the chain of events of which you are a part.
2. You must track your sales activities.  I’m fanatical about tracking operational metrics in a business because it is the only way to measure what you are currently doing, assess how much more you want/need to do, and tweak your systems.  If you are not selling enough, but don’t have a concrete picture of what you are doing now, and therefore don’t know what to change, you will start shooting in the dark with sales strategies.  Track activity – calls, appointments, proposals, etc.  Whatever your goals, track your key activities that will get you there.
3. You must ask curious questions.  As a leader, if you want to build powerful relationships and be able to motivate and inspire your team, you must connect with them.  Connecting occurs when you can understand where they are coming from, meet them there, and lead them in the right direction.  This also applies to the prospect.  Learn about them before you push your product on them – lest it be the wrong fit.  Get them talking to the point where they are selling themselves!  This is the best way to build strong relationships in every area of work, and personal life too!
4. You must know yourself, as Socrates would tell us.  A major obstacle to a leader’s success is a lack of understanding of why you and others do what you and they do.  Are you driven by results, by the journey, the pat on the back, security or by the happiness of those involved?  This greatly affects how you sell, and why your prospect will or won’t buy.  Spend time in 2013 understanding you and others – read up on Emotional Intelligence.
5. You must get some training.  If you need to sell, you need to learn how.  I often think that the skill most often assumed, but not present, is the ability to lead others, which is why so many exceptional employees who are promoted to leadership, then struggle with the new role.  However, I think the ability to sell is also very often assumed, especially if you happen to land a big sale or two at the outset.  It requires a very specific set of skills, which must be developed and expanded over time.  Within any organization, the ability to connect with others is critical, often undervalued and not natural to most people – so get some training to develop those skills.

I’ve learned to greatly enjoy selling because I enjoy the process of connecting with people who I can help and who want and need my professional expertise.  Take a look at your sales function.  Does it need an overhaul this year?  Greater revenue certainly helps to buy time to fix a whole lot of operational issues.

Need help with sales?  Contact my all-time favorite Sales Trainer and Coach, Andrew Gieselmann http://www.csp.sandler.com/  He handles the technical, the nuts and bolts and all the details I’ve left out of this article…