July: Leadership

I’ve asked thousands of people to tell me about the best leaders they’ve worked with. One of the most common responses is that they helped me grow as a professional. While there isn’t likely anything revelatory about that response, it’s astonishing to me that leaders aren’t prioritizing it more. Especially in an environment where employee retention and engagement are such a major issue.

So how do you develop talent and help others grow?

• Be clear on what success looks like, and offer precise examples.
• Give them your focused attention.
• Observe and provide specific feedback.
• Provide continued opportunities for practice in safe environments.

Most of all – dedicate specific time for coaching and improving performance. It doesn’t take hours at a time. Some of the best coaching occurs in 5-10 minute conversations. Don’t let it fall to the background while you are doing other work. It will make a difference. You may even inspire someone!

Values define who you are as a company. From the environment you have, the way people interact, and how they approach their work.

But I regularly encounter company leaders that can’t even recall all their values, much less describe how they show up in action. If the leaders can’t do it, then the odds of those values guiding anyone’s behavior are slim to none.

So, dust off those values and make them useful with the following steps.

1. Revisit the values. Do they convey what you want them to? If not, update them.
2. Define the corresponding behaviors for each value. For example, what does it mean to be “authentic?” If you can’t make it behavioral, you won’t see it.
3. Communicate about values in routine interactions. Opportunities to reinforce are everywhere.
4. Model the values yourself. You need to be an exemplar of the company values to bring them out in others.
5. Hold people accountable. When someone gets good results but behaves contrary to the values, you need to address it. People won’t believe what’s on posters or mouse pads if you don’t.

Put in the work to operationalize your company values and you will see the impact it has on culture.

Customer experience is getting worse – that’s straight from this Wall Street Journal article and truer things haven’t been said about business in 2022. There are undeniable economic realities like the availability of materials, the cost of labor, and so forth. But there are always market forces that challenge businesses to deliver value for customers.

We are dealing more than ever with egregiously long hold times, poor performers who aren’t knowledgeable about or able to provide a needed service, systems that don’t work well enough to support customer service, and a lack of follow up on issues. These aren’t new economic issues – these are leadership issues. None of these customer experience problems are new. They are just worse. And at some point, leaders need to take responsibility and make changes to their business. If they don’t, when their dissatisfied customers have a legitimate option to move their business, they will. “We’re no worse than anybody else” is a poor strategy.

On a similar note, you may enjoy my recent article for Forbes, How Leaders Fight Skimpflation.

I read that “disappointment that is not expressed calcifies into resentment.” That’s from Emily Anhalt, a clinical psychologist. We all need to take care of relationships by communicating and working through frustrations as they happen.

The fact of the matter is that when there are issues that need to be addressed – personally or professionally, they don’t get better without talking about them. They just fester. And sometimes it’s challenging to talk about them, either because we fear consequences or that others won’t be receptive to us. But there may be few things more important.

I find it useful to think about connecting integrity to expressing our thoughts or feelings. From an interpersonal perspective, integrity has much to do with your thoughts and feelings matching your actions and words. And when we are off kilter in this area, it feels awful (I’ve been there and you have too). You can disagree without being disagreeable and as the old saying goes, you can say what you mean, without being mean. But it’s candor that creates real conversations. Otherwise, you aren’t taking care of the relationships in your life, and you just aren’t being you.

The Solution Sales course I created with LinkedIn is now available in Dutch and Italian. Add that to German, French, Chinese, Portuguese, and Japanese, and this course content is available to speakers of 8 different languages! Very cool.

Over 400,000 people have enrolled in the program, and it’s got a 4.8 out of 5 star rating, and (I can’t believe I’m measuring this but,) around 14,000 likes.

From new reps who need to understand the fundamentals to senior sellers who are honing their craft, the program has been extremely well received. Check out the Solution Sales Course on LinkedIn!

Join me on Tuesday, July 19 at 10am Eastern to discuss how leaders drive strategy execution.