Tag: Culture

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Personal development

Getting someone’s name right.

A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie.

On Wednesday I had to read out 111 award winners at an internal meeting. I read every name first and last, I asked the person if I pronounced their name incorrectly, please correct me, they did, in front of over 100 staff. I continued as I wanted to get the name right. Thanks for your patience.

We often feel embarrassed about pronouncing names we don’t know how to say. Ask them and then repeat and keep repeating until they have told you, that you have got it right.

In Australia it’s common for people to abbreviate names Ange instead of Angela. It’s ok as long as the person is happy with the abbreviation. Ask them first?

The abbreviation of the initials of the first and last name. This is used when people’s names are difficult to pronounce. Again check with the person they are ok? But make the effort to pronounce their name.

A colleague of mine said to use https://www.pronouncenames.com/search. It’s a great way to practice.

Remember Dale Carnegies saying. A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

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High Performing Teams Laughter Leadership Personal development

Lessons in leadership with Covid 19

My team are spread across multiple regions Queensland, Victoria and NSW. Since working from home, I have set up 30 minute coffee catch ups over Microsoft Team daily. We have been joined by the pets and children and the chat has been varied, but nothing to do with work.

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The team are closer, have more fun and know each other far better than any team I have ever led. In the past I would get the team together weekly and discuss business and quarterly to review the plans and progress, with a dinner to socialise once a quarter.  Fortnightly I would have 1;1’s where I would get to know the individual and what motivates them and how to challenge them to achieve new things. 

These daily coffee catch up sessions takes “norming”  to a whole new level.

five stages of team development

30 minutes daily allows the team to connect on a whole new level and more importantly I have learnt so much more about the team, personal situations and what makes them tick. I look forward to the call as the banter and connection is like nothing I have experience before.

When you have remote team members, they miss out on the office conversations and the relationship building with other team members is more challenging. These 30 minute daily sessions has created stronger rapport and the team work is now at a whole new level. 

There is a silver lining in every situation and for me I have learnt more about the people I work with than I would of done in the way I operated previously. If there is a silver lining with COVID 19 its about how to lead in more connected way. 

This way of working will continue beyond COVID19. 

 

 

 

 

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Personal development Strategy

Running with the baton v’s ping pong

Companies use the terms CX, NPS, CSAT , but unless your company employees run with the baton, customer experience will always be poor.

Customers hate being passed around from person to person, re explaining their needs. They want to have some one run it to ground to get the outcome for their Customer.

The converse is ping pong, where you get handed from one person to the other, no ownership, just someone trying to move you into someone else’s queue. The lack of ownership or willingness to find the answer, leads to hours of frustration and no outcome and appalling CX.

How do you build a culture of running with the baton?

1. Recognise great behaviour by calling out individuals demonstrating the traits

2. Build it into your values and call it out

3. Build a knowledge base to accelerate finding the answers

4. Be careful not to create a band aid, ensure the root cause is identified and an owner assigned to fix the underlying process.

5. Make sure the customer is updated regularly. Even if there is no news. Better to check in regularly than leave the customer guessing

Next time you deal with a frustrated customer run with the baton.

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Leadership Legacy Personal development

Culture how to measure change?

imageAt the Australian Institute of Company Directors update this week at the Recital Hall, the number 1 prioirty for Directors is culture. A question was asked by the audiance on how you measure culture?  There was some debate as whether you can.

This article is explain how to measure and how to drive cultural change.  First of all you need to understand the common behaviours of staff and this you can do simply by observing. Within a few days in the role at Telstra I had uncovered 6 behaviours that were resulting in poor culture.

No 1 was excuses were used to explain why things did not get done. I created a behavior framework showing what great looked like, good, aveage and poor being the excuse behaviour.  Great was driving for a result no matter what is in the way. Where there are obstacles, overcoming them to get the result.

I showed the 6 behaviours and 4 standards for each behaviour to my managers and asked them where they sat for each.  The discussion that developed helped them to see that the behaviour was not acceptable. In meetings or day to day conversation the managers would catch themselves as they gave me an excuse and then say ” you dont want to hear that and stop themselves, whilst they worked out the action they were going to take” the results are transformational.

This framework you can score before and then after to see the change. Now 18 months on the team operate at the highest level for each behaviour. So yes you can measure progress and more importantly help your managers to understand what is acceptable and non acceptable behaviour. Communication and consistently holding the team accountable for their behaviours is a must.

In Colcusion yes you can measure cultural change at every level in an organisation.

 

 

 

 

behaviour framework