AchieveGlobal's blog

An “Achieve” Survey Insight: Most Pressing Business Issues for 2012

By Sharon Daniels

Each month, AchieveGlobal conducts an online poll through our eNewsletter, Achieve. In February, our survey asked, “What is the most pressing business issue you face for 2012?”

Admittedly, we were a little surprised by the results!

Of readers who responded, only 1% ranked “Responding to Competition” as the most pressing issue. Similarly, only 1% ranked “Responding to Globalization” as their top challenge.

Other issues ranked relatively more evenly, as shown below:

But this survey provides further insight into how we think about the realities of competition and globalization. Additional discussion might have revealed that for the individuals and companies who participated in our survey, an environment defined by globalization and competition is simply the cost of doing business these days. In other words, these two factors perhaps serve as the foundation on which the other issues are prioritized.

Taking this idea further, most companies accept competition and globalization as reasons for placing emphasis on developing leaders, driving sales growth, improving morale and productivity, managing change and creating an innovative culture.

To me, this implies that intensified competition and globalization have become the new normal. Which raises other questions, how does this shift affect our strategic and tactical approaches? Are we seeing another quantum shift in our thinking? 

 Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

We Now Pronounce You: Sales-and-Service

By Sharon Daniels

For most companies, the norm has long been that sales and service were managed as two completely independent entities: a silo approach that saw the sales component as focused on selling products, and the service division focused on providing customer care… and ne’er the twain would meet!

Today, wise are the companies and their leaders that realize the benefits of marrying sales and service in order to benefit customers, and therefore the company itself.

During a recent ES Research Group panel discussion, I shared with other webinar participants some key thinking on how and why these changes are taking place.

One reality is that this is a marriage of convenience. Organizations have realized or are realizing – that customer care should be an integral part of their sales strategy, since service divisions can add important context to the selling-focus of their sales counterparts. While sales personnel are focused on pursuing business development opportunities – service personnel add the value of being responsive to customer needs, thereby building long-term relationships that result in retained customers and customer loyalty, as well as sales opportunities for upselling or additional penetration.

Sadly though, many companies that set out to integrate sales and service in an effort to increase sales revenues simply force that integration into place, without developing a full organizational support plan.

Companies that seek successful integration of sales and service need to go through a period of self-reflection, strategizing and planning. This can be done through:

• Clarifying and confirming organizational objectives
• Ensuring that executives and top management understand and are on-board with organizational objectives
• Communicating with every sales associate to gain full understanding of what needs to change and why
• Ensuring that every person throughout the organization understands the breadth and depth of what the organization does, including complete knowledge and awareness of how the company’s products and services benefit the customer
• Reassessing – on an ongoing basis – whether customers are having the sort of experience the company would like them to have, at all stages of the sales and service processes

The reality is that organizations must realize that sales and service teams often have drastically different objectives. It takes commitment to self-reflection and hard work at a fundamental level to unify those two philosophies and focuses into a single cohesive force.

As with any marriage, there will be the occasional conflict between partners. But strong marriages rely on mutual respect, along with open communication and a commitment to each other. Likewise, when sales and service adhere to their “marriage vows” the outcome is happiness and prosperity.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Inside Realities of Inside Sales

By Sharon Daniels

With change a defining force in the market today, it comes as no surprise that change also defines inside sales.

According to a recent article by InsideSales.com, “inside sales is growing at a fifteen times higher rate over outside sales” – or at 7.5% versus 0.5% annually.

While these numbers demonstrate a definite increase in the emphasis on inside sales, unfortunately we can’t say the same for how organizations are strategizing to capitalize on this trend.

The reality is that most organizations do not engage in thoughtful strategic planning when it comes to their inside sales teams. Generally, organizations neglect to consider how the inside sales group should work within the organization, or for example, how it can work alongside marketing. Nor do they identify ways in which the inside sales team should be leveraged – the purpose of the team, the skills required by team members, or even the products and services this team will sell.

I recently participated in a webinar hosted by ES Research, and shared with participants my thoughts on how such lack of planning affects the organization’s performance.

Most companies that fail to implement an inside sales strategy will suffer one or more of these three unfortunate outcomes:

• Delayed productivity, until the company rationalizes and fully leverages the inside sales team
• Channel conflict, as the company tries to uncover how the inside sales team should function best
• Increased turnover among leadership of the inside sales group or of the sales representatives themselves

I’ve written in previous posts about the importance of “defining moments” – and the realization that every encounter with a customer or prospect is key in building meaningful interactions with them. When organizations fail to define an inside sales strategy, the result is disconnected sales teams and sales calls that are improperly assigned. Growing recognition and appreciation for the efficiency of inside sales bode well for continued growth in this direction, but the potential for failure with serious fallout is tremendous.

With inside sales prospects looking so bright, a concerted strategy will pay off in higher worker morale, a better customer experience, and ultimately the bottom line.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

How Do You Know If You’re A Good Coach?

By Sharon Daniels

As a leader, dealing with a broad diversity of workers across age ranges, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, geographic locations, and even styles of work, we often struggle to get a true sense of whether we are effective in our motivational practices. Building on the humor of famous comedian, Jeff Foxworthy, you might say that if you engage in a specific set of motivational practices in the workplace, then you might be a good coach. Well, allow me to borrow that humor to make the following points…

AchieveGlobal recently published an online quiz to help leaders discern whether or not they are effective motivators, and how many effective motivational practices they’re engaged in. So here goes:

• If you agree that a combination of carrots and sticks should be kept mostly for use with livestock… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If you look for ways to harness potential instead of harnessing your workers… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If one of your top goals every day is to increase employee engagement… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If you have a poster that outlines the tenets of Self-Determination Theory pinned up in your office… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If the terms “autonomous motivation” and “controlled motivation” are as familiar to you as “job well done”… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If you remember and take genuine interest in the personal stories that workers tell you… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If you try to encourage an environment defined by choice and individual ownership of decisions… you might be a good coach.
  
  
• If you’ve eliminated controlling language from your vocabulary… you might be a good coach.

If you’re curious about how good a coach you really are, be sure to take our online quiz to find out how well you motivate your team. And there’s one more…

• If you’re at all interested in the results you get from this quiz, and plan to deepen your commitment to shaping a motivational workplace based on your scores… you might be a good coach.


Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

A Climate for Competition and Customers

By Sharon Daniels

The economy affects the sales process at very fundamental levels. As budgets shrink, customers look more closely at the value proposition that salespeople bring to the negotiating table. Because of this, innovation becomes a big ingredient for a successful outcome: the customer seeks new ways to fulfill their organizational needs, while the salesperson finds new ways to connect the strengths of their services and products to the needs of the customer.

Further, the shifting economy creates a climate for intensified competition.

Although we think of competition as something that we must fight against and overcome, there are real reasons that competition is, in fact, good for organizations in several ways:

• It catalyzes innovation
• Productivity tends to increase
• Customers are given greater choice
• Sales people have more opportunities to deliver value to customers
• Sales people are fully motivated

Ultimately, to win customer business, sales professionals must do two things: Assess the situation fully, and Apply tactics that are known to work. In each sales encounter, the salesperson must assess the sales situation and promote the advantages that define their company’s products and services. This is where it’s important for the salesperson to make a direct connection among the three components of selling: the customer, the competitor and the seller. What is it that this particular customer needs? What do other companies offer? How can our company beat the other companies?

The answer to this last question may be a matter of price, but it’s also about relationship, features, benefits, and the overall organization.

We also know that salespeople can take specific steps toward a successful sales process by:

• Building a strong opening and closing statement for the sales conversation
• Being prepared to address all the customer’s concerns
• Avoiding the temptation to make disparaging comments about competitors
• Not being afraid to ask the customer about which competitors they’re considering

So during this perfect storm for competition, sales managers can encourage their teams to Assess and Apply through a combination of approaches: making sure sales representatives completely understand customer buying issues and knowing the competitors well. It’s also key to ensure that salespeople are tuned in to every defining moment in the sales process by listening and responding at key opportunities.

For more information on this topic, listen to a replay of a recent webinar we hosted in partnership with Sales Management Association.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Create Cultural Ambience for your Customers

By Sharon Daniels

Have you ever noticed, when you walk into a restaurant, department store, or office building, you may immediately feel comfortable or uncomfortable? It’s that intangible sense of ambience – the feeling or mood that we associate with a particular place. And though it may seem nebulous, it is so real that ambience can dictate whether we want to linger in a place, return to a place, or avoid it like the plague.

The same can be said for a company’s culture. Create the right sort of culture and your customers will return time and again, and remain loyal to your company and its products or services. But how can a company go about creating a culture that will lure and retain customers?

I’ve written recently about the specific steps a company can take toward building a needs-based approach to coaching in order to build engagement and retention among employees. Likewise, there are specific steps an organization can take toward building a culture that customers value, including:

• Building the corporate culture must start with top management;
• Executives should evaluate what customers value most about brand and employee behaviors;
• Once defined, the culture should drive the behavior of all employees;
• Front-line customer-facing associates are key to ensuring that customers experience this culture;
• Recognizing or rewarding behavior that exemplifies the corporate culture is critical;
• Consistency of standards in customer interactions is key to ensuring the customer positively experiences the corporate culture.

Every corporate culture is unique, but some are so well defined and ingrained into all customer interactions that they are the “secret sauce” for continued success.  By combining needs-based coaching for your employees with a relentless focus on building a strong company culture, your customers will remain loyal to your organization through thick and thin.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Never Mind Money, What’s the Real Motivator?

By Sharon Daniels

In a recent article in Talent Management Magazine, I shared some key thoughts about the importance of recognizing psychological needs of workers as we lead our teams toward higher levels of performance. The reality is that tangible rewards will only motivate a worker so far, and when external motivators are removed, employees tend to lose their commitment to performance.

Our extensive research dictates that responding to workers’ intrinsic needs is a far wiser approach, as it yields both engagement and retention.

The Talent Management article offers a balance of perspectives between the needs-based approach to coaching and another approach, offered by Ann Simon, toward engagement and retention of workers – through storytelling. At first, it may seem there’s no real connection between needs-based coaching and storytelling, but a second look reveals a common bridge between the two.

Narrative is a powerful concept. In reality, we understand and think of several things through the lens of a narrative. Movies and TV shows, of course, but also ads and news stories. It’s the way our mind works. When we’re presented with a sequence of events we try to find a logical flow of related plot points, and characters driven by goals and needs, obstacles and triumphs. We stay tuned to find out how things are going to be resolved.

And there’s a direct link between needs-based coaching and the use of narrative. Both approaches begin with the common understanding that a salary or monetary rewards are simply not enough to build sustained motivation. Workers want to connect with their organizations in meaningful ways, and they will only stay if their organization fulfills a deeper purpose than simply providing a paycheck.

The beauty of needs-based coaching is that it taps into this fundamental reality and offers workers exactly what they seek: deeper level connections between their life and their role at the organization. At AchieveGlobal, we have uncovered three basic psychological needs that employees share:

• Competence
• Relatedness
• Autonomy

For leaders, recognizing these needs is profoundly important, and successfully providing for these needs is really the key to building employee engagement and retention. In order to adopt a needs-based leadership style, leaders must master coaching skills that foster such an environment by:

• Offering needs-based feedback
• Shaping a motivational workforce
• Realizing talent in others
• Giving rewards and recognition

So, tying it all together, once a leader has built a welcoming and positive environment through needs-based coaching, the final step is to use the proper narrative to keep employees informed and energized. Whether written or oral, recognition of the value of employees and their contributions will go a long way to sustaining their engagement and retaining the best and brightest.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Finding That Sales Performance Groove

By Sharon Daniels

From the outside, it may seem that racecar driving involves an extremely simple principle. Drive as fast as you can around the track and win the trophy. The reality is that drivers have many obstacles that they must overcome and navigate around in order to win the race: limited visibility in the cockpit, competitors, and of course the performance of the vehicle. That’s where the crewmembers come in.

The driver must rely on communication with team members like the crew chief, spotter, mechanics and other specialists who guide the driver around the track, to find the racing groove, or the best route around the track. For the racecar driver, racing toward that winning performance is a factor of choosing the right team, and maintaining effective communication throughout the race.

If you lead a sales organization, the quest for winning sales performance builds on several of the same principles. When it comes to building a high-performance sales team, a similarly simple outlook boils the tremendous work it can take down to a few focused strategies.

In a recent Training Magazine article, I noted that research has shown us time and again that performance of most sales teams can be improved by:

• Maintaining focus on the full spectrum of “defining moments” that make up the entirety of the sales and post-sales process, thereby building a customer relationship defined by trust.
• Investing wisely in sales training. Research shows that companies that invest in moderate to substantial coaching and training tend to enjoy greater deal sizes, increased personal sales revenue, and more overall success.
• Encouraging every member of the team to own the customer experience, by training beyond the sales force, and including all team members who have customer facing roles.

Through ongoing coaching and training, the sales team too can become a winning team that’s geared for top performance. Achieving this level of success, though, means constantly asking the question, “how can we support our driver and get in the sales groove?”

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

We’re Generations…Together. Not Apart!

By Sharon Daniels

There’s a wonderful quote by George Orwell that goes, “Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

This age-based egocentrism is at the root of the imagined generational divide that can often work against productivity in the workplace. But there are steps we can take to work across the differences and collaborate toward greater efficiencies.

The reality in today’s workplace is that it’s quite common for workers to represent a fifty-year age range or more, which means an increased likelihood that we are all working alongside co-workers who represent multiple generations. And while there may be some common historical experiences that define each generation, focusing on imagined differences most often proves to be counterproductive.

In a recent Diversity Executive article, I offered five practices that can promote cross-generational collaboration, and help workers bridge that divide. To be more inclusive, leaders should:

1. Question assumptions about generational differences. Leaders must encourage other workers to challenge age stereotypes, treating each person as an individual, and not as representative of an entire generation.
2. Explore commonalities among age groups. The problem with interactions that are based on stereotypes is that we fill in missing information with assumptions that are often incorrect. Instead, leaders should help team members focus on common goals and purposes.
3. Maximize each person’s strengths. An effective leader should explore each team member’s unique combination of past experiences and present interests. This may ultimately help the individual reach personal goals, while helping the team meet business objectives.
4. Bridge the divide. Leaders who encourage generationally diverse work teams help to promote idea sharing among employees who wouldn’t normally have opportunities to interact. This can be an extremely valuable experience.
5. Rise to the challenges. Leaders should also challenge employees with new projects, holding each team member accountable for treating co-workers fairly and without bias.

It should be obvious by now that entire generations are not more intelligent or wiser than others. Rather, their experiences and unique insights add value to all organizations. Therefore, a fundamental goal for every employee should be to remember that we each have something to give and something to gain from every collaborative experience in the workplace, whether intra-generational or inter-generational.

The end result of this will be a group of workers devoted to dialogue, sharing and innovation.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Earn Your Blue Ribbon in Sales

By Sharon Daniels

If you’re a trainer of any kind, the best compliment your trainees can pay you is winning races, collecting awards, and achieving goals. That goes for athletic trainers and sales coaches alike.

So we were truly honored recently to learn that, according to Aberdeen’s 2011 annual report Uncovering How the Best-In-Class Sustain, Reinforce and Leverage Best Selling Practices, AchieveGlobal customers show strong benefits of sales training.

But how do these companies put into practice the behaviors associated with Best-in-Class performance?

One finding in the report is that the practices of prospecting, nurturing and closing professional sales deals are “linked with making the verbal conversations between reps and their prospects/customers more meaningful.” At AchieveGlobal, we call these interactions “Defining Moments,” and consider each interaction between a sales organization and its customer an important opportunity to enhance that customer’s view of the organization.

The report also confirmed that companies that have earned Best-in-Class status (defined through percentages of reps achieving their annual quota, year-over-year improvements in average deal size and lead conversion rates) engage in specific practices. In fact, Best-in-Class companies:

• Have had sales training in place for an average of 5.6 years
• Have sales teams which include an average of 86% of sales reps who have received formal sales training.

And among other behaviors that define these companies, AchieveGlobal customers also:

• Build a collective wisdom that benefits current and future sales team members
• Ensure the right person and capabilities are matched to the right selling role
• Develop subject matter experts (SME’s) who help to provide internal reinforcement of material learned originally from external sales trainers.

As a trainer, there’s no better feeling than standing in the wings and watching trainees achieve their potential. It is comforting to affirm that matching tested methods and techniques to the innate skills of each individual has paid off. It is also a reminder that training doesn’t end – and that there is an ongoing need to continue to refine the sales training process in response to the ever-changing selling environment.

Interested in hearing more on how Best-in-Class companies drive revenue through owning the customer experience? Click here for FREE REGISTRATION to attend AchieveGlobal's sponsored webinar with Aberdeen Group on March 14th, 2012.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Transforming the Sales Organization

By Sharon Daniels

At AchieveGlobal, we think of ourselves as transformers. Not the science fiction, Autobot kind, but the kind that helps companies transform their sales processes and build a more successful sales organization.

Recently, we worked with Cardinal Health Nuclear Pharmacy Services as they positioned themselves to deliver greater customer satisfaction and retention, simultaneously building their sales performance.

The results? An increase in first year performance of well over 15 percent.

But success like this isn’t arbitrary. It requires a deep appreciation that the process the organization must undergo is nothing less than a transformation. For Cardinal Health, four specific steps defined the process:

1. Developing future role profiles. In this step, assessment specialists HR Chally completed job analysis and validation studies, from which sales role profiles were developed. This part of the process helped Cardinal Health to understand the changing skills and behaviors needed to meet the changing market demands.
2. Assessing the strengths and opportunities of the current sales force. Through this part of the process, Cardinal Health assessed the competency of sales personnel.
3. Leveraging existing strengths and developing needed capabilities. Once the company had assessed sales personnel competencies, an emphasis was put on rolling out development plans, giving constructive feedback, and coaching— including Sales Director “ride-alongs”— to improve performance.
4. Putting tools in place to hire for the future. By developing selection tools for hiring, HR Chally assisted Cardinal Health in implementing first and second behavior-based interviews and using an online assessment. These selection tools helped identify the most competent candidates for sales positions, and gave the company a realistic picture of the coaching that would be needed upon hire.

While the launch of the new initiatives marked an important milestone, the transformation process is both dynamic and ongoing. Since the launch, Cardinal Health reports several positive outcomes, including:

• Sales directors give preference to candidates who exhibit required competencies, instead of experience in nuclear pharmacy industry.
• Better aligned sales incentive plans.
• Overall increase in sales performance.

Change can be difficult. Recognizing that transformation is needed means admitting that your existing system is broken or outdated. Going through this process of self-reflection and self-critique may feel like starting from a position of loss, but it’s “No sacrifice, no victory!”

Interested to hear more about Cardinal Health’s sales success story? Join AchieveGlobal and Cardinal Health on May 16,th 2012 for a complimentary webinar. Click here to learn more.

 

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

How to Win Sales and Grow Market Share…Against the Odds!

By Sharon Daniels

For any company, the prospect of growing, compared to merely maintaining market share, during tough economic times is truly daunting. With tightened markets, and more discerning customers, sales teams must rise to an array of challenges beyond those that are par for the course in a more stable economy.

But one company did just that.

Waste Connections, Inc. is a leading 29-state solid-waste handling services provider, with a sales team that is both geographically and culturally diverse. The challenges confronting the company included the realities of a highly competitive industry, in which competitors have consolidated and merged in a high-stakes fight for every account, along with internal issues related to culture and geography.

AchieveGlobal was honored to work with Waste Connections to build a more unified team around common sales skills, behaviors and languages. The results of the intensive strategy were profound, but perhaps most startling was that following the three-day boot camps, average revenue per new account increased almost 5 percent.

How is that possible, particularly in challenging economic times and such a competitive market?

Prior to the training initiative, Waste Connections struggled to present a unified sales front. As a result of past acquisitions, the company’s sales team originated from different organizational cultures, and therefore had little consistency of understanding and had great variance in their application of sales methods.

The challenge for us was to work with Waste Connections in the area of sales training to build on its existing strategy of bringing the organization together. The training boot camps were mission critical, and we worked hard to build that atmosphere, even incorporating camouflage clothing to build a sense of common resolve and intensity of purpose.

After the boot camps training continued on an ongoing basis so that, today, representatives throughout the organization are all living and speaking a common culture and language. That unity of purpose is what continues to build ongoing market success.

When times are challenging, it’s one thing to envision the possibility of improving sales despite the circumstances. It’s another thing entirely to understand exactly what’s required to turn things around, put training in place to build stronger team relationships, develop new sales skills, and actually “walk the walk” by increasing sales in a tough environment.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

For Improved Coaching, the “I’s” Have It!

By Sharon Daniels

Two of my recent posts focusing on coaching have considered that leaders need to stir things up in times of uncertainty, and that leveraging internal motivation as opposed to external rewards can be very powerful.

As I jotted down ideas for this post, and worked toward a kind of capstone statement about coaching, it struck me that the I’s have it…

Leaders can improve their leadership by focusing on Ingenuity, Individualism and Intrinsic Motivators.

• Ingenuity
  The effective leader understands the value of resourcefulness and the power of originality. It is also important to recognize benefits of these traits in employees. Since effective coaching offers meaningful choices and encourages active involvement, the leader who focuses on ingenuity is ahead of the game. Ingenuity involves possessing inventive skill, which suggests the ability to create something from nothing, or to configure things in ways that others may not consider. Leaders need to be able to see the potential of the raw materials that lie before them, and to inspire others to see that potential too.

We tend to think of coaching within the organization as a hard skill, but there are many softer skills that contribute to effective coaching and leadership. Ingenuity touches on the leader’s ability to be imaginative, and to nurture creativity in others.

It’s worth remembering that creativity is not simply an innate characteristic that we are either born with, or without. But that leaders can encourage imaginative solutions by fostering environments where, for example, team members are engaged in interesting activities and feel at ease collaborating with others.

• Individualism
  We understand the benefits of recognizing workers as having needs specific to their communication preferences, their cultural backgrounds, and their work styles. Yet we continue to struggle with addressing individualism on a few levels.

The myth of the generational divide is just one example, in that organizations still seem to find comfort in pigeonholing workers based on assumptions about their age. It may be convenient to think of people as either Baby-Boomers, Gen-Xers or Millennials, but research points to this as inaccurate and counterproductive. Leaders who treat each person as an individual deserving recognition and understanding focus on the strengths and skills that person brings to the table, instead of what may separate us based on the arbitrary category of age.

• Intrinsic Motivators
  While the old system of using external rewards and punishments to get employees motivated still holds a seemingly logical attraction for many leaders, the reality is that coaching is more effective when leaders understand what truly motivates workers. A needs-based approach to coaching focuses on helping employees fulfill their three fundamental psychological needs: the need to feel valued as knowledgeable, the need to collaborate and the need for autonomy.

The leader who can let go of the external carrot and stick method, and instead shape a motivational workplace focusing on needs-based feedback, is a leader that helps workers realize their talent and fulfill their potential.

 

Coaching requires staying in touch with the complexity of current trends, while understanding the unique needs of one’s organization and workers.

It’s a tall order, but focusing on ingenuity, individualism and intrinsic motivators can help to build leadership that is committed to results through an employee-centered approach.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

“Rock the Boat, Don’t Tip the Boat Over!”

By Sharon Daniels

We can all remember that great 70’s hit by the Hues Corporation – “Rock the Boat!” This song came to mind recently when I attended the Argyle Executive Forum conference 2011 Leadership in Human Capital Spotlight: Learning and Development.

The program description for one of the panel discussions, titled, “Rock the Boat, Don’t Get Thrown Off: Lessons in Authentic Leadership” suggested that, “Leaders must be unreasonable, for they must challenge the status quo and develop change through new ideas and tactics.” And while the session included a variety of discussions on topics like collective leadership behavior, leadership self-knowledge and emotional intelligence, I must say that the idea of the need for leaders to be un-reasonable really made me think.

The conventional wisdom is that when times are rough, we think of leaders as needing to calm the waters, keeping things stable – and as the song says, helping to keep the organization safe from the rolling seas. But reality dictates doing what seems counterintuitive, while recognizing the need for balance.

When times are rough, the last thing a leader should do is lay quiet, simply hoping for calmer waters. Instead, the leader needs to rock the boat by focusing on innovation. The smart leader understands such times like these need leadership that shakes things up by adding new, challenging perspectives – ultimately adding greater value to the organization.

The experienced boat owner understands that keeping a sea-faring vessel on the same course when there’s a drastic change in sailing conditions makes little sense, and may even lead to broaching or capsizing. Instead, the captain needs to understand how to move the boat in response to changing wave action, and that means also understanding the capabilities of the boat itself.

The phrases “batten down the hatches” and “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” are both part of our lexicon. And, they can describe the role of leadership. The captain must chart a course that avoids treacherous seas where possible, but also is willing to face challenges and understands that the strongest gales are usually followed by the calmest seas.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Available Coaching for Internal Motivation: It’s not me, it’s you!

By Sharon Daniels

For many leaders, it’s daunting to think that external rewards are less effective or important to most workers than we may once have thought. It’s akin to the parent who suddenly discovers that promises of a new video game, or threats of taking away certain privileges, have limited effect on their child’s behavior. If you remove rewards and punishments when trying to motivate others, what’s left?

The answer to that question may at first deepen our anxiety as leaders. Research on motivation in the workplace has shifted from a focus on the carrot or stick methods of the early 20th Century, to a better understanding of the fact that most workers are motivated by deeper, more internal drives.

While there may still be some relevance in using rewards and punishment, we are far more aware today that, once an employee achieves a reward or avoids a punishment, the motivation diminishes almost immediately. The problem with external motivation factors are that they eventually come to an end, or become irrelevant, and therefore lose the impact they were designed to have.

In our recent report, Coaching Redefined: How Internal Motivation Can Fuel Performance, we revisit the Self Determination Theory of Professors Deci and Ryan, and the discovery that we all share three basic psychological needs:

• the need to feel valued as knowledgeable (competence)
• the need to collaborate (relatedness), and
• the need to exercise self-regulation (autonomy).

At a recent Argyle Executive Forum conference on learning and development, I discussed with session participants ways that leaders can support internal motivation.

The answer? By creating conditions that allow employees to satisfy their own needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy.

While leaders may feel that less emphasis on rewards or punishments puts employee motivation beyond their control, there are actually real and specific things that leaders can do to foster a motivated workforce through needs-based coaching, including:

• Shaping a motivational workplace
• Giving needs-based feedback
• Developing plans that focus on intrinsic needs, and
• Offering rewards and recognition

The difference between external motivation and internal motivation, according to the research, is the difference between short-term gains and sustained performance over time. So really, the shift in thinking from rewards and punishments to needs-based coaching, is like a shift from thinking of cost to thinking in terms of investment.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Formal Benefits of Informal Learning

By Sharon Daniels

Why do foreign exchange students who wish to learn a language visit the host country? Because immersion learning works.

The old-school approach to learning a language meant reciting vocabulary by memorizing lists of words, or learning to conjugate verbs by rote… tengo, tengas, tengan… But most language learners who immerse themselves by visiting a country would likely tell you their rate of learning increased exponentially.

The reality is an extremely important way most people learn: through informal learning experiences. This was the topic of discussion at a recent Argyle Executive Forum conference titled 2011 Leadership in Human Capital Spotlight: Learning and Development, which I attended back in early December.

At AchieveGlobal, we believe that 20 percent of organizational learning takes place through instructor-led, classroom-based or formalized content, while around 80 percent of learning takes place as workers put this learning into practice, or problem-solve in real-life situations.

The power of informal learning and the real-world benefits that organizations tend to gain have given new life to the idea of informal mentorships, by which learners in an organizational context can benefit from consistent support and help as they move from rung to rung on the ladder of their careers.

Many companies are realizing that in order to benefit from the real advantages of informal learning, they need to formally recognize the power of informal learning. But this can be quite a daunting step to take. As we discussed at the Argyle conference, for many organizations, there are real control issues around informal learning. How is it possible to measure informal learning and its successes?

The wise organization moves beyond this concern. It can be difficult to do this in a culture that relies heavily on measurable returns on quantified investments. For this reason, truly realizing the benefits of informal training can mean quite a fundamental paradigm shift at the organizational level.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

A New Era of Social Learning

By Sharon Daniels

Research and trends support what we have known for a while. Social media is considered extremely important for building business presence and company outreach. After all, as the experts would have us understand, Facebook alone has over 800 million users, and if it were a country – would be the third largest in the world!

Early last month, I participated in an Argyle Executive Forum conference: 2011 Leadership in Human Capital Spotlight: Learning and Development in New York. As the meeting overview outlines, the conference set out to examine the innovative strategies that learning executives are using to develop and implement successful corporate cultures.

Given the above facts just about Facebook, it’s not surprising that one area of innovation that became focal in many discussions during this meeting was how social networking has become part of the new learning reality. But while Facebook provides an important case study, and serves as a prevalent model in any “new, new media” based learning and development initiative, there are of course many other social media platforms that are similarly valuable.

The broader reality is that the new demands for learning and development fit hand-in-glove with capabilities that the wider field of social media provides. For instance, there’s increasing desire for learning to take place outside formal learning environments, and on a continuous basis. Social media provides channels to achieve precisely this sort of environment – where learners can share their experiences, and continue to engage in active learning while actually being immersed in the realities of what they are learning.

The benefits that social media provide to learning environments are remarkable. This new way of social learning means that workers are continually able to access tools that allow them to collaborate, even while they continue to internalize the material they are learning, and put new ideas into practice.

The benefit that this provides to the organization is that learning becomes less formal and rigid, and instead is more naturally and efficiently integrated into each learner’s workflow and life. If all this points to retained learning, then building an environment that encourages social learning is well worth the consideration and effort.

 

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Learning Environments Evolved

By Sharon Daniels

Back in December, I participated in the Argyle Executive Forum conference 2011 Leadership in Human Capital Spotlight: Learning and Development, and if I had to sum up in one word how participants defined today’s organizational learning environment, I’d have to say: EVOLVING.

Recently, we’ve been seeing the organizational learning environment evolve along two axes:

• Focus on individuals
• Emphasis on conversations

In the past, leaders were rewarded for operating with a traditional command and control approach. Today’s learning environment is better defined by an increased focus on the individual, and appreciation for the wholeness of each individual worker’s life.

Wise leaders understand that organizational hierarchies are diminishing across most industries. The fact that one individual may have management competence may not necessarily make him/her more valuable to an organization than a worker who may have a particular skill-set. This is, of course, part of the ongoing trend toward flattening of the organization context for learning.

The learning environment is also evolving to include greater focus on dialogues and conversations.

Leadership of yesterday was a top-down model, while today, leadership means facilitating conversations among all team members across all functions of the organization. A truly refreshing example of this is that we’re witnessing organizations placing far less emphasis on performance reviews, and much greater focus on developing more meaningful understanding of an individual’s career aspirations, passions, and how they balance their work-life responsibilities.

Organizations that can understand learners as individuals – each with a particular set of motivations, learning preferences and capabilities – can better tailor their learning initiatives and modalities to the specific needs of each worker.

Fostering ongoing dialogue also deepens understanding of what learners need in order to accomplish specific learning objectives. Organizations that want workers to learn effectively are themselves learning about how to facilitate an environment where learning best takes place.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

5…4…3…2…1 ! Happy New Management Resolutions!

By Sharon Daniels

Those last five seconds of the New Year countdown can be quite emotional! Reflections on whether you’ve accomplished everything you set out to over the past year, and projections of what the dawning year will hold are wrapped into a single moment of anticipation and nostalgia.

Whatever dominates your thoughts during this season of renewal, the end of the year is always a great time to ponder the mistakes made in the past year and set a course for success in the New Year. The same goes for managers who are wise to use the end of the year as an opportunity to think about how to avoid five major management mistakes.

Counting down from five, there’s great wisdom in considering some of the top management mistakes that can cause challenges and issues in the New Year. And as the sun rises on 2012, it makes good sense to consider the best strategies for avoiding these blunders. Some of the top management mistakes for 2011, not to be repeated in 2012…

• Mistake #5: Thinking money is all that matters. While money is important, it won’t drive motivation in the long term. Managers must focus on the sources of intrinsic motivation if they want to drive sustained employee commitment.
  
  
• Mistake #4: Using an employee’s age or generation as a predictor of ability. Research shows that employees of all levels and ages are guilty of age stereotyping, a practice that can be extremely detrimental to your team’s morale and productivity. Instead, the successful manager should focus on connecting with all employees on the individual, human level and on promoting cross-generational collaboration.
  
  
• Mistake #3: Resisting teleworking. Teleworking not only provides benefits in employee retention and morale, but also boosts productivity and reduces operating costs. Managers can be quick to cite reasons that they’re against teleworking, but for many companies with proper virtual leadership, the benefits far outweigh the challenges.
  
  
• Mistake #2: Training through a narrow-minded outlook. Thinking that effective training can only take place in a classroom setting is so… well… last year! The 2012 approach is all about multiple modalities, a blended approach, and understanding the benefits of informal, immersive learning.
  
  
• And the #1 Management Mistake to avoid in 2012? Underestimating the power of reflection. Research shows that managers who are aware of their own leadership strengths and liabilities, who adjust current strategies adopt new strategies, and recognize strengths and liabilities in other people, are better equipped to lead and effective team.

Happy New Year from the entire team at AchieveGlobal, and may all your management decisions be bright!

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

All For One… Virtual Workforce

By Sharon Daniels

In my previous posts on leading virtually, I wrote about what it takes to lead a virtual team – separated across geographies, cultures, and even time zones. To recap, leaders must overcome several challenges, including understanding how to address the diversity of a virtual workforce while also recognizing that virtual leadership requires far more than mastering a few technological tools or platforms.

In order to build a productive virtual workforce, leaders can use a simple framework that provides a focus on key principles. You might think of this model as representing a Yin and Yang balance for virtual leadership.

Two key elements define the first level: cohesion and commitment.

Effective virtual leaders build awareness that, despite team members being separated by distance, they must be united in focus, goals and collaboration. Specifically, leaders can help team members understand that the work they do leads to meaningful outcomes. Leaders should also think of ways to build clear communication and encourage both inclusion and responsibility.

While group cohesion is vital, it’s also imperative that individual team members build a sense of commitment to the mission of the team and to the broader strategic goals of the organization. To build this individual commitment, leaders should provide opportunities for virtual team member success by communicating often with team members, while encouraging individual action and ownership.

What can leaders do to help build both group cohesion and individual commitment?

Leaders should focus on helping all team members, regardless of their location, to feel both satisfied and valued on three levels:

• Competence (team members should feel valued for their knowledge and skill)
• Relatedness (they should feel fulfilled when collaborating with co-workers, and valued for this)
• Autonomy (team members should be encouraged to exercise individual discretion to achieve business goals).

If a leader can create an environment that helps team members feel valued for these traits, it increases the likelihood that the virtual team will build success.

It really is a balancing act, and striking that perfect balance builds a team that works harmoniously, which means productivity and ultimately, success for the organization.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida