Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • 8 Ways to Display a People First Mindset

    8 Ways to Display a People First Mindset

    We’ve been working on training to help people implement  tactical ways to demonstrate a “People First” or relationship-driven mindset.  It started out as something to meet a need for a retail client and has turned into a professional development topic for an entirely different industry.

    In a world where every business is trying to figure out a way to distinguish themselves and create a competitive advantage, treating people like people is a good a place as any to start.

    To do this, the critical piece is to identify and meet needs.

    To create an environment where this can be done:

    1. Make eye contact.
    2. Smile.   Making eye contact and smiling at someone invites them to engage with you.  This is step one in opening the door to identify and meet a need.
    3. Open-ended questions.  Ask questions that don’t solicit a natural “yes” or “no” response. For example, not “Can I help you?” but “What can I help you with today?”
    4. Let people take ownership.  In the case of a retail business, one of the distinguishing advantages to buying in a brick and mortar store instead of online is that a person can see and touch the actual product.   Let people take ownership of the product.  Give it to them and let them hold it (but only if you know it meets their need, not to force it on them).   In a situation where there isn’t a product to take ownership of, let people take ownership of their experience so they can guide and mold the experience to meet their need.
    5. Learn and say/repeat name.   We aren’t naturally very good at remembering people’s names because when we meet people for the first time and ask them their name, we are subconsciously thinking about the next thing we want to say, not focusing on remembering their name.   Being conscious of listening to and recalling someone’s name can be a game changer because most people don’t do it.  When you address a person during your second interaction with them by using their name, they remember it because it is often novel for that to occur.   They are more likely, then, to engage with you to express their need(s).
    6. Break the rules.   There are policies everywhere you turn.   When you break the rules to be able to meet a need, people remember it.  As long as you aren’t putting more people at a disadvantage (see number seven below) by breaking the rule for one, break the rule if it meets someone’s need.
    7. Stand your ground with respect.  Sometimes putting people first means politely but forcefully correcting bad behavior.  This could include “firing” some customers, employees, etc.   When we cater to the vocal and negative minority, we aren’t putting people first.  We’re being a coward.
    8. And finally, DWYSYWD. Read more about that here.

     

    How do you put people first?

  • How to Move Your Goods to Greats

    How to Move Your Goods to Greats

    Our previous post, “Leaders, Focus on Moving Your Middle – Play Offense, Not Defense”, emphasized the importance of focusing on moving your middle majority to high performers.

    But how do you do that?  How do you get your good players, or your B players, to become A players?

    They all can’t be converted, but those who have usually have a leader that:

    1. Sets high expectations.   This comes in the form of setting challenging goals and holding people accountable to them.

    2. After high expectations are set, the leader then provides Assurance and Confidence.  This involves saying things like,  “I know we’ve set challenging goals, but I know you are capable of achieving what we’ve set out to do.  This is why I’ve given you responsibility to do this.”

    3. Finally, Direction and Support is provided. This involves:

    • Being approachable and available when needed.
    • Providing stretch assignments to help the individual grow.
    • Creating exposure to risks and failure. As a leader, you should expect failure and help people be comfortable with it coming.  This could include asking people when you meet with them regularly about how they failed during the week.  This shows you expect it and you want to know what was learned from it.

    When a leader can successfully set high expectations, provide assurance and confidence as well as direction and support, it leads to increased self-awareness for an individual.

    This then allows for authenticity to be shaped through hard work, determination and challenging assignments.

    Finally, and most importantly, you’ve then done what leadership is all about.  You’ve modeled how leaders create more leaders – completing the full circle of equipping someone else to move others (not just themselves) from good to great.

    How do you grow people to become star performers?

  • 4 Ways to Seize the Moment

    4 Ways to Seize the Moment

    I had the chance to catch-up on some reading while on vacation recently.  I received The Power of Moments from a co-worker as a birthday present (she knows my love language is books), and it had been sitting on my office desk just itching to be read.

    The book highlights the importance of four characteristics that create moments:

    1. Elevation- Experiences that “rise above the routine.”
    2. Insight– Experiences that “rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world”.
    3. Pride–  Experiences that “capture us at our best” including times of achievement and/or courage.”
    4. Connection– Experiences that are social and that are heightened because they are shared with others.

    And I can think of no better “moment” to share than that of our little girl’s first t-ball game this past weekend.

    Her coach apparently understands how to create a moment. Check out the video of her at bat here:

     

    You may not have noticed the nuances that make this a moment if you aren’t looking for them in the video, so here they are:

    1. Elevation-The coach went out of his way to get the Atlanta Braves announcer to record an intro for each kid… “Now batting for the Ball Patrol (yes, a play off of PawPatrol the kid TV show), number ten, Paige Ward!”   Yes, you read that right, the Atlanta Braves announcer.   He also asked parents to help select their kids “walk up song” and since Paige calls “This Girl is on Fire” her theme song, of course we had to go with it.  Her other favorite song “Body Like a Back Road” just wasn’t appropriate…   Four-year-old t-ball is eventful and memorable for a number of reasons, but it usually doesn’t include walk up songs and professional announcers calling out your name.   In addition, he had a smoke machine for them all to run through to come out on the field.
    1. Insight– This helped us as parents realize, more than perhaps the kids did, that this is supposed to be fun.  It isn’t about winning and losing and it isn’t about our kid being the best. It is about the sheer fun of the game.   An insight we all need to realize more.  Life is should be more about having some fun.
    1. Pride- Paige is one of two girls on her team. The other little girl on the team, unfortunately, didn’t want to play once she got there, got scared and sat in her grandmother’s lap the whole game.  But for Paige, this was an I can do this with all the boys type moment.  It was a moment to create courage at her first at bat. Oh how fitting then was her walk up song.
    1. Connection-T-ball is a team sport and a sport where family and friends come and watch.  It is shared and the sharing of it makes it more fun.  Our neighbors across the street came to see the walk-out routine and laugh with us at the mass chaos four year old t-ball is. All the grandparents were there.   It was something we will have shared memories about.

    So kudos to this coach that gets what it means to be a leader by creating moments.  Maybe it is easier to create moments for kids, but I think it can be just as easy to create them in the workplace if we will only challenge our thinking to elevate, create insight and pride and connect with others.

    When was your last workplace moment?

  • Leaders, Focus on Moving your Middle- Play Offense, Not Defense

    Leaders, Focus on Moving your Middle- Play Offense, Not Defense

    Let’s pretend you have a performance appraisal system that rates people on a scale of 1-7.  One being the worst, seven being rock-star status.   You have ten direct reports and you have honestly and accurately rated them all (we’re assuming a perfect world here, bear with me).

    Here’s the breakdown of where people fall:

    You have three people in the 1-3 range.

    You have six people in the 4-6 range.

    And you have one lone rock star at 7.

    Which group should you focus most of your energy on in the coming year?

    If customer satisfaction research leads us to any insight on this, you would ignore the bottom three and focus almost all your effort onto moving the six in the middle towards your rock star.

    According to the 2016 Forrester Research U.S. Customer Experience Index  that is described in The Power of Moments, “If you elevate the positives (those in the 4-6 range) you’ll earn about nine times more revenue than if you focus on eliminating the negatives (those in the 1-3 range).”

    But the middle majority typically gets less attention than anyone else.

    The research showed that most business executives focused on eliminating the negatives to their financial peril.   I think most leaders do this too.  They spend so much of their time and energy on those that aren’t cutting the mustard to the detriment of those worth the effort in moving to the rock star category. (more on how to move them in our next post).

     

    Don’t let the urgency of your bottom- the vocal minority that always seems to be screaming the loudest- keep you from focusing on the important middle majority that is worth your time and effort in investing.

     

  • How to Train Leaders to Act with Courage

    How to Train Leaders to Act with Courage

    I remember when I got feedback one time after a leadership training session that the training needed to include more role-playing.

    I hate role-playing.

    Or at least participating in it, so I assumed everyone else hates the exercise of pretending too.

    But besides hating it, I thought there were other learning methods that could emulate the same type of result that role-playing could, so I avoided it.

    But when I think about trying to coach and teach people through critical leadership moments- those that require courage- role-playing, or at least practicing what needs to be done may be the best method of learning short of doing it and just seeing how it goes.

    Practice or “preloading a response” as it is called in The Power of Moments, is particularly important in situations where courage is required.  This is because people “often know what the right thing to do is.  The hard part is acting on that judgment.”

    Practice can lead to positive outcomes in particular with certain leadership situations like standing or speaking up for what is right, praising someone (most people think they do this enough that practice isn’t needed, but if you watch people in most organizations and leadership positions, it isn’t done nearly enough) and or reprimanding or terminating someone.

     

    This practice of practicing creates a how to do it instead of a what to do guide.

    I’m reminded of how important this may be in trying to help our seven year old become a leader.

    He’s gotten into trouble this spring more frequently than usual.  Part of this has come through our conscious decision to allow him more freedom.  We are trying to resist the urge to be helicopter parents. Beyond our immediate watchful eyes, he’s made some bad choices and acted in a way that has led to consequences.

    We typically handle this behavior by telling him he isn’t doing the right thing according to our family guiding principles: 1) Be kind 2) Be honest. We’ve found that most all kid infractions and for that matter, almost all human infractions, can be summed up in a violation of one or both of these things.

    Then after this talk of explaining that he has done wrong, we punish him.

    But in getting feedback for ourselves and from others, we hear, “He knows what’s right and wrong.”

    He just doesn’t seem to know how to do it.

    Especially when he seems to be influenced more than most by what other people think of him especially boys his age.  And Lord knows the seven year old boy brain isn’t a fully developed thing.

    So as my husband and I have talked about this, we’ve started to see how we might role play with him through situations he may find himself in where he is tempted to violate being kind and/or being honest.

    Moments that require courage.  Courage to go against the crowd.

    So, for example, before he leaves our house to go play in the neighborhood or start his school day, we don’t remind him to be kind and honest, we walk through a situation where he might be challenged to do it.

    For example:

    “Pretend I just made fun of (insert name of someone in his class) by calling them fat.  What would you do next?”

    “Your teacher just told you to put down the iPad and start on your math assignment. What will you do next?”

    “You knock on (Insert name of friend here) door and he isn’t home.  What will you do next?”

    Based on his responses we continue the role-play and what if dialogue.

    The responses to these questions may sound like no brainers, but to him they often aren’t.   Just like how to fire someone may be a no brainer to someone seasoned at doing so, but to someone who hasn’t ever done it, it’s not.

    The scenarios are endless in his seven year old world and in the world of leadership, and there is no way for us to cover them all.  But by bringing things up before they happen and allowing time for him to think through what he will do- “preloading a response” we hope he will be enabled to know how to act with courage and kindness and honesty, instead of having to deal with the consequences that come because he simply hasn’t practiced to make perfect.

     

    How do you help leaders practice the hard stuff?  The stuff in which courage is made?